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Correspondence of Charles Mohr and G. W. Clinton |
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The
Correspondence of Charles
(Carl) Theodore Mohr (1824‑1901) and George
William Clinton (1807‑1885) Introduction by P. M. Eckel The letters of Charles Mohr to George Clinton are
presented on‑line in anticipation of the upcoming meetings of
scientific societies in Mobile, Alabama (USA) in July, 2003, Mohr's long‑time
place of residence. There has been a representation of interest in Mohr's
biography recently with several treatments posted on the internet: http://www.as.ua.edu/biology/scf/herb.html http://www.nmnh.si.edu/botany/colls/us-hist.html http://www.alabamaheritage.com/bissue.htm http://www.homeoint.org/clarke/n/nat_p.htm http://oasis.harvard.edu/html/gra00032.html http://www.jimmo.com/cgi-bin/display.pl?8&0&0&0&3 The following posting represents transcriptions of
original letters written to George W. Clinton in the 1860's and 1870's,
archived in the Research Library of the Buffalo Museum of Science, Buffalo,
New York. Transcriptions were made under less than ideal conditions and have
not been reevaluated since this was done decades ago by myself, but are
presented here nevertheless with the expectation that they may be of
particular interest now. Problems with transcription include transliteration
of local place names in Alabama, Christian names, bibliographic references,
and generic and species names for plants unfamiliar to the transcriber. Note
that some attempt has been made to preserve Mohr's idiosyncratic method of
writing. "Charles Mohr" by Larry J. Davenport (13
pages): http://www.jimmo.com/cgi-bin/display.pl?8&0&0&0&3 has a wealth of biographical information developing in a
beautiful story‑line. The biographical context to which the following
paragraphs refer follows Davenport's essay, which includes a section on
plants named after Mohr, and a discussion of Mohr's major treatise, the
"Plant Life of Alabama." Mohr's 46 letters, reproduced here in transliteration,
span his life from the date of the first letter of April 30, 1867 to February
21, 1879, a period of 12 years. Mohr was 40 years old in 1867. He moved, with
his wife and children to Mobile, Alabama, in 1857 and resided there for the
next forty years ‑ essentially the rest of his life. All of Mohr's
letters to Clinton were posted from Mobile. Intellectually, this period
represented the time when Mohr was passing from pursuits in pharmacy and
medicine in which he was both successful in business and theory, especially
during the Civil War when Mohr worked in these fields for the Confederate
government, then to geology at the immediate end of the Civil War, and to
botany, which occupied most of the 1870's. Mohr was interested in botany all his life, and botany
was the underpinning of his medical and pharmaceutical career. In the 1870's
he was most vigorously pursuing the avocation of amateur botanist. He
possessed a personal herbarium, comprised of what was left from various
excursions to Surinam (Dutch, or Netherlands Guiana) east of Venezuela on the
northern coast of South America, and from collections in southern Ohio and
Kentucky, but especially from Mexico where he tried to establish himself and
his family. Mohr was to suffer all his adult life from severe bouts
of rheumatic illnesses, often noted in his letters to Clinton. His foray into
Mexican residency was to alleviate his distress: "I often revel in my
imagination in the remembrance of the perpetual spring in the plateaus of the
mexican [Andes?], where rheumatism is as unknown as frosts and snow"
(November [17?], 1874). The labels on specimens in the Clinton Herbarium of
the Buffalo Museum of Science (BUF) collected by Mohr frequently refer (with
variant spellings) to Orizaba, a city in the Mexican state of Veracruz on the
Gulf of Mexico. The name 'Orizaba' may also refer to the highest peak in
Mexico, Citlaltepetl, a volcanic peak of 18,700 feet in central Veracruz
where Mohr and his friends collected: "I had the attention of the author
called to it by designating it as new species of Symblepharis, collected on
the Eastern slope of the Pico del Orizaba 7000' altit. 1857" (October
28, 1872). "If my friend [Oru?] Carlos Sartorius was yet alive, I might
be able to make up these defficiencies, as he took a great intrest in the
bryologie of his surroundings; It is this a new cause of regret of the
departure from this life of that veteran botanist and nestor of science in
Mexico, whose hospitable hermitage in the ever glad mountains of the Orizava
range was ever open to the travelling and ardent naturalist" (November
16, 1872). Mohr departed Mexico in 1857 for the same reasons he had
had for leaving Germany in 1848: fleeing a conservative uprising against a
liberalized government and a new liberal Mexican constitution. He settled in
Alabama on the Gulf of Mexico in the city of Mobile where he raised his
children to love the country of their residence, and, of course, this
included the government of a reunited United States. The fact that Mohr
evaded the social upheavals of his time, first in Europe (there were no less
than 50 rebellions in Europe in 1848) but also in Mexico, did not mean Mohr
was himself liberal in his political views. When his friend Clinton endured
an election in Buffalo in 1870 or 1871 for Superior Court Chief Judge after
the former Judge Verplanck died (1870), Mohr wrote him: "I congratulate
you in having passed safly the ordeal of an election, and that the vox populi
proofed itself truly as vox Dei; I must say that by looking at matters as
they are going down here, my confidence in the old adage is sadly shaken, and
I should tremble for the fait [sic] of any friend of mine whose destiny
should depend upon the decision of that tribunal wich finds its expression in
a popular election" (December 10, 1871).]. References to collections made 'in the north' (April 30,
1867) probably refer to botanical forays around Cincinnati, Ohio where Mohr
and his brother and sisters resided after first coming to the United States:
the brothers in the fall of 1848, perhaps through New York, their port of
entry, and briefly in Philadelphia. Mohr was anxious to exchange plants of a
useful and medicinal nature in the northern states with George Clinton. By
1867 he had removed to the South and had focused his collecting efforts in
lower and central Alabama, especially in the Mobile area and areas, and along
the coastal islands, on the Gulf of Mexico associated with Mobile Bay. He
was, as was the case with many people in the Confederate States isolated by
the war cutting lines of communication (telegraph, railroads, highways, sea
lanes) that were of primary strategic importance to the belligerants.
"Particularly interesting and truly gratifying to me are these evidences
of progress [in the natural sciences in New York State], as I have been
during the long 4 years of the late war shut out from all communication with
the world and lately ignorant of that, what was going on in the realms of
science" (April 30, 1867). Mohr's focus on the plants growing in Alabama was in
contrast to his early aspiration to collect in relatively unknown areas of
the world, such as the western United States. Young men in droves traveled to
California in 1849 to make their fortunes and the twenty‑four year old
Mohr was no exception. Out of the German community in Cincinnati where he was
living after coming to the United States was formed the Cincinnati Gold
Mining and Trading Company. This company elicited the participation of 50
young men, including Mohr, to set out for the West overland from stations in
Missouri. It must have been agony to collect plants over the great
distances laboriously traversed, and to collect in California, only to lose
everything during his attempt to return to Cincinnati via Panama. His letters
show he retained an interest in the botany of the West, encouraging the
investigations of those more fortunate than he. The focus of Mohr's personal herbarium was Alabama
because, as time went on and his family grew larger, his health prohibited
exotic journeys. The success of his pharmaceutical business and the demands
made on his time plus the restrictions of war rooted him in that State. His
letter of July 10, 1868: "I was not able since 11 years to get up a
correspondence or exchange with a botanist within the borders of the southern
states. In consequence I can offer only that what I can collected within my
limited neighbourhood, or on a occasional hurried business trip in the
interior of Ala. Your last letter
found my health greatly impaired; by the advise of my physician I made a
short stay in the country to recruit my health and gain strength. I did spend
a couple of weeks at and on a plantation 14 miles from Montgomery. I found
several very interesting plants, it being the first time that I spent some
time in that region in the vernal season." In a recent Web site posting from the University of
Alabama, Tuscaloosa, two herbaria are given as curated by the University, the
Mohr Herbarium (ALU), being incorporated into the herbarium of the Alabama Museum
of Natural History, and a second, that of the University of Alabama (UNA),
associated with the Department of Biological Sciences there. The two herbaria
have been merged under the University aegis (UNA), and the specimens from the
Mohr Herbarium were integrated into the University collection. Prior to this merger, the 4500 specimens in the Mohr
Herbarium consisted of two large elements, collections by the State Geologist
of Alabama in the latter 19th century, Dr. Eugene Allen Smith, and by his
associate, Dr. Denny, president of Alabama University, in addition to those
of Charles Mohr. The percent of this collection attributed to the efforts of
Mr. Mohr is not specified, although all the specimens are computerized. The
website indicates that the oldest collections (1870's) were not made by Mohr,
but by these two gentlemen. Sometime during the correspondence with George Clinton,
Mohr was approached by Smith, and contracted to prepare a Flora of Alabama.
Mohr did not mention this to Clinton, perhaps because it was too early for
Mohr to make that kind of commitment and to communicate as much to a
correspondent. In the latter half of 1876, Mohr made a tour of the
North, promising to visit Clinton and Miss Wilson, his assistant (see below)
at the rooms of the Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences in Buffalo, New York,
as well as Clinton himself and his family at Clinton's house (August 25 &
26, 1876). Mohr was anxious to venture north as long ago as March of 1869
(see letter). By early November he was back in Mobile after visiting Leo
Lesquereux in Columbus, Ohio. In Cincinnati he visited his brother and
sisters. He had with him on return "plants, books, pamphlets etc."
gotten during this trip (November 10, 1876). The salubrious excitement derived
from this trip may also have derived from having been approached to undertake
a professional study of the flora of Alabama, for which he traveled north to
acquire the academic tools necessary in its execution. Two years after this trip north, "I have in the
hours after business during the first 3 to 4 months of the year worked up our
indigenous materia medica, after that I have given my time to a critical
study of the Graminea of our state, so as to enable me to make correct list
and one as full as possible of the same for a handbook of Alabama, with an
article on its forage plants and an other one on its Forrests and their
products" (August 26, 1878). It was probably during the 1880's, after the
correspondence with Clinton ended, that Mohr made his most vigorous and
concentrated exploration of the vascular botany of the state of Alabama and
it is then perhaps that he retained the Alabama specimens that would
ultimately become part of the Mohr Herbarium. Among the Mohr fraction of the 4500 specimens in the Mohr
collection, a number must include those sent him on exchange from Buffalo,
New York, western New York State and southern Ontario, Canada, along the
northeastern shore of Lake Erie and adjacent upstream sections of the Niagara
River. These are the specimens collected by Clinton himself, with duplicates
in the Clinton Herbarium of the Buffalo Museum of Science in Buffalo, New
York. Clinton perhaps also sent duplicates of material received upon exchange
with other botanists in Europe, receiving exotic material from Asa Gray and
John Torrey, the latter with duplicates derived from material at the
developing National Herbarium, part of the Smithsonian Institution. The letters also focus on a period of enthusiastic
bryophyte interest in Clinton's and Mohr's lives, the latter anticipating
with enthusiasm determination of his specimens by the two leading bryophyte
experts for the North American flora: William Sterling Sullivant and Leo
Lesquereux, both of Columbus, Ohio, of both American collections, and those
made in Mexico. As can be seen in the letters, Mohr had to finally send some
of his material back to Germany for identification, some as species new to
science subsequently published in early volumes of the new Journal of the
Torrey Botanical Club. Mohr also may have received duplicates of a valuable
bryophyte herbarium acquired by the Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences
through the efforts of Clinton and Leo Lesquereux: 'I need scarly [sic] tell
you, how thankfully I will receive some of the duplicates of Schimpers
europaean mosses. Having lately established an exchange with a young
bryologist in Germany I will have shortly [=north?] middle and southwestern
Germany fully represented; truly alpine, high northern and particularly South
europaean species will be most welcome (Schimper has collected much in
Spain and other countrys around the Mediterranean)" (November 16, 1872).
In Mohr's letter of the first of January, 1873, he announced that the
Schimper duplicates have arrived, including many fungi: "In connection
with my warmest thanks for the valuable contributions to my collection by the
receipt of your list package containing the rare and most perfect specimens
of Shimperian mosses and extensive collection of fungi,I tender to you my
best wishes and congratulations at the begin of a new year." Mohr, like Clinton, came to rely briefly on Charles
Horton Peck (1833‑1917), at the State Herbarium in Albany. Peck was a
protege of Clinton's during the final years of Peck's specialisation in
bryophytes. Peck soon turned to the study of fungi, where he distinguished
himself as one of the foremost American mycologists. Doubtless some of the
mosses, liverworts and fungi in the Mohr Herbarium derive from these
exchanges. Mohr also came to enjoy an interaction with Miss Mary
Wilson, an associate of George Clinton and Collections Manager of the
herbarium Clinton was preparing for the Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences.
Clinton initiated the organization of this collection in 1866‑1867.
Wilson was an avid student of lichens, and a correspondent of Edward
Tuckerman, of Amherst College, Massachusetts, the formost lichenologist in
the United States. Toward the end of her career in Buffalo, Miss Wilson also
turned to the study of fungi, maintaining a corresondence with Peck. Mohr's specimens have been disseminated world‑wide:
according to the Index Herbariorum Part II (4) "Collectors 'M'"
(Vegter, I. H., 1976, Regnum Vegetabile vol. 93, Utrecht, Netherlands) his
specimens have the following distribution: Original Herbarium: [update: presently the Mohr
Herbarium (ALU) is incorporated into the Herbarium of the University of
Alabama at Tuscaloosa, Alabama (UNA).] His specimens span the period roughly
1873‑99. There are 15,000 Mohr specimens at the Smithsonian
Institution, including material from Florida, South Carolina, Mexico and
Iowa. The herbarium of the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University possesses
specimens from the southern United States. Alabama collections, made roughly between 1868‑98,
exist at UNA, 96 are reported from Berlin in Germany (B), others were
deposited at the Clinton Herbarium of the Buffalo Museum of Science (BUF),
Cordova (C) in Argentina, bryophytes in Edinburgh (E), Scotland, 316
specimens at the Field Museum (F) in Chicago (these, from Texas collected
1880‑1887, perhaps derive from exchanges with Elizabeth Atwater ‑
see letters below). Some Mohr specimens reside in Saint Petersburg, Russia
(LE). Cryptogams mainly from Mobile exist in Munich, Germany (M); 200
vascular plants are at the University of Michigan Herbarium at Ann Arbor
(MICH). Other specimens are at the Missouri Botanical Garden (MO) in St.
Louis, probably from a contemporary correspondence with Dr. George Engelman
(also a Clinton correspondent). More reside at the New York Botanical Garden
(NY) and Wellesley College (WELC) in Massachusetts (vascular plants). Mohr's Central American specimens are said to be at NY.
North American specimens in general, including Mexico, are in Kew Gardens
(K), England, Russia (LE) and at the Smithsonian Institution (US). The grass
collections mentioned in letter August 26, 1878 may be among Mohr's grasses
at the Mississippi State University in the town of Mississippi State (MISSA). In an effort to present these letters to the public at
this time, no further attempt to discuss or analyze them will be made here.
The letters, among other things, show an insight into the career of Judge
Clinton and the evolution of the Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences. The
letters could be examined to locate specimens of significance at both
Buffalo, New York, and Mobile, Alabama, as well as other institutions. I thank Marshall Crosby and Bob Magill for research
support and use of the Web facilities of the Missouri Botanical Garden. I
thank John Grehan and David Hemmingway for permitting access to the Clinton
Herbarium and the Research Library at the Buffalo Museum of Science, Buffalo,
New York. Richard Zander, architect of the Res Botanica Website, was
instrumental in the posting of these letters and images. Note: Editor's comments are in square brackets. At the
beginning of every letter there is a volume number and another number (e.g.
Vol. 5 No. 116). This is George Clinton's own system for organizing his
letters in sequence, the volumes roughly corresponding to a given year and a
number given each letter as he received it. Actually only the letter number
occurs on each individual letter); Clinton later had his letters bound
together into volumes. The letter and number in square brackets is part of
the numbering and cataloguing or inventory system developed during the 1990's
at the Research Library of the Buffalo Museum of Science. On each letter, the
black ink is Clinton's handwriting, the pencil marks are the library's. At
the bottom of each letter Clinton wrote the date when he received it and
whether he took action. P. M. Eckel Editor, Clinton Papers St. Louis
Alabama |
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