Darlington, William

(b. Dilworthtown, Chester Country, Pennsylvania, 28 April 1782; d. West Chester, Pennsylvania, 23 April 1863)

botany.

“Nestor of American botany,” Asa Gray’s wreath, epitomizes this judicious confidant of Gray and recorder of the history of botany. The son of Edward and Hannah Townsend Darlington, he left the farm to apprentice himself to John Vaughan, M. D., of Wilmington, Delaware, and soon enrolled for Benjamin Smith Barton’s lectures at the University of Pennsylvania (M. D., 1804). Self–confident then, as throughout his life, he sent a copy of his thesis to Jefferson. Darlington spent seventeen months as ship’s surgeon and in 1808 married Catharine Lacey, daughter of General John Lacey, of New Mills, New Jersy; they had eight children.

Darlington volunteered in the War of 1812. He was thrice elected representative to Congress from West Chester, organized the Bank of Chester Country, and served as its president for thirty–three years. At the same time he was successfully practicing medicine—he was an advocate of strong purgatives and copious bleeding—but botany always dominated his life. His Florula Cestrica (1826), the enlarged Flora Cestrica (1837; 2nd ed., 1853), and two books for the farmer, Agricultural Botany (1847) and American Weeds and Useful Plants (1859), are all readable, often animated books with a strong historic emphasis. Acknowledged the most valued compendium on early American botany is his Memorials of John Bartram and Humphry Marshall (1849). His Reliquiae Baldwinianae (1843) contains materials on William Baldwin and his contemporaries based on personal acquaintance and unpublished documents.

Darlington was a long–time confidant of Asa Gray; and his voluminous correspondence documents the growth of American botany, including as it does foreign and domestic botanists, both amateur and professional. His antiquarian sympathies saved Rafinesque specimens that another botanist might have discarded. That his works were valued by his contemporaries is witnessed by two honorary degrees, from Yale University (LL. D., 1848) and Dickinson College (Sc. D., 1856). Darlington was something of a classicist: His bookplate reads “Miseris succurrere Disco,” and his tombstone in Oaklands Cemetery, West Chester, bears a Latin inscription he composed.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. Darlington’s notebooks and MSS were dispersed after his death: the most significant materials are now at State College, West Chester, Pennsylvania; the T. J. Fitzpatrick Collection at the University of Kansas; and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. His extensive correspondence was divided between West Chester and the New–York Historical Society. Some letters in the Conarroe Papers. VII, 42–91, various dates, are in the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. His books, often annotated, are at West Chester; but presentation copies of his own works, freely given, are encountered in botanical libraries here and abroad. Darlington was one of the founders and served as secretary–treasurer of the West Chester Academy, and was an organizer of the Chester County Cabinet of Natural Sciences and the Medical Society of West Chester. His writings and biographical sketches are listed in Max Meisel, Bibliography of American Natural History, 3 vols. (New York, 1924–1929). His Memorials and Reliquiae Baldwinianae have been reprinted (New York, 1967, 1969) with extensive commentary by J. Ewan.

II. Secondary Literature. The most recent biographical accounts are by Dorothy I. Lansing, William Darlington, M. D. (West Chester, Pa., 1965) and by Robert H. Leeper, Dorothy I. Lansing, and William R. Overlease in Dr. William Darlington Commemorative Program Addresses, issued by the Chester County Medical Society (West Chester, Pa., 1965). Obituaries by those who knew him are T. P. James, “William Darlington,” in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 9 (1863–1864), 330–343; and Asa Gray, “The Late William Darlington,” in American Journal of Science, 2nd ser., 36 (1863), 132–139, where an unpublished autobiography is mentioned.

Joseph Ewan