Botanists in South Carolina: Francis Peyre Porcher

 

Title page of Francis Peyre Porcher’s Resources of the Southern Fields and Forests from the Biodiversity Heritage Library

Francis Peyre Porcher (1824-1895) was born on his grandfather’s plantation in St. John’s Berkeley outside of Charleston in 1824.  His great-grandfather was Thomas Walter, a Charleston businessman, plantation owner, and botanist who wrote Flora Caroliniana (1788), the first flora of a North American region using Linnaean classification (see earlier post).  Porcher’s parents were also interested in botany.  His father, a Charleston physician, died when he was eight years old.  This left his wife to manage their plantation and raise six children, yet she still found time to satisfy her interest in plants.  Porcher often went botanizing with his mother and uncle.  They were sometimes accompanied by Henry Ravenel, a young man from a neighboring plantation who also had an interest in botany (see last post).  He was ten years older than Porcher, and they remained lifelong friends even after Ravenel moved to Aiken in western South Carolina (Haygood, 1987).

Porcher went to South Carolina College and then to South Carolina Medical College, graduating in 1847.  His thesis, “A Medico Botanical Catalogue of the Plants and Ferns of St. John’s Berkeley, S.C.,” was considered so valuable it was published by the College.  Two years later, this became the basis for his Sketch of the Medical Botany of South Carolina (1849); Henry Ravenel had assisted him on this project.  After graduation, Porcher studied in Europe for over two years at leading medical institutions in France and Italy.  Then he returned to Charleston, where he partnered with Dr. Julian John Chisholm in a practice that included treating the slaves of wealthy plantation owners, many of whom Porcher knew through his family’s plantation (Townsend, 1939).

Since slaves were property, owners wanted to keep them in good health, so it paid them to seek expert care when needed.  In 1855, Porcher and Chisholm founded a hospital for treating enslaved people, since there had never been such a facility in Charleston.  Porcher and Chisholm were being less humanitarians than smart businessmen in establishing a separate medical facility, one that could provide services for difficult cases.  Porcher also visited plantation infirmaries, which were effective for many of the health needs of the enslaved and were usually staffed by enslaved women with expertise in herbal medicine.

When the Civil War began Porcher joined the Confederate medical corps serving first in South Carolina and then at Fort Nelson in Portsmouth, VA where he was stationed until the area was taken by Union troops.  Then the Confederate Surgeon-General, Samuel P. Moore, granted Porcher leave to complete what became Resources of the Southern Fields and Forests in support of the war effort.  Moore had originally asked Porcher to write the book at the beginning of the war, but as the Confederacy’s situation deteriorated, the book was more urgently needed.  Because of his previous publications on South Carolina plants and his medical experience before and during the war, Porcher had already laid the foundations for this text. Besides his own botanico-medical expertise, Porcher had another key advantage in preparing his manuscript:  his life on plantations and his treatment of slaves gave him access to the knowledge of enslaved healers.

Martia Graham Goodson (1987) begins her article on the medical-botanical contributions of African enslaved women to American medicine:  “That the daughters of Africa were a rich source of medical knowledge was not lost on the professional doctors of the Slave South, whose livelihood came from tending sick slaves” (p. 198).  She uses Francis Porcher as an example, noting his sophisticated medical background, including his European studies.  She argues that his education in materia medica began on the plantation where he grew up and depended on his contact with enslaved women working in plantation infirmaries.  For many entries in Resources Porcher mentions how particular species were used by enslaved healers, though no one is referred to by name.  As Goodson notes:  “’Used extensively’ by ‘the negroes’ is a phrase that permeates Porcher’s descriptions of the medical wealth of the plants of his native state.  In fact, nearly one-third of the plants are described as being ‘used extensively on the plantations’ or ‘used by the negroes’ or ‘used in domestic practice’” (p. 200).

Porcher’s 600-page text was published in 1863.  He often went into great detail describing where and when a particular plant was likely to be found, how it should be harvested, and not only what it could be used for, but how it should be prepared for use.  From the number of plants mentioned as valuable in producing soap, curing diarrhea, and treating fever these were obviously critical needs—and very basic ones.  This book was not just for the military, though it was distributed to all Confederate physicians.  Since the South could no longer rely on the Northern states or foreign trade for the medicines and other goods they needed, everyone had to become self-sufficient and utilize local resources as much as possible.

In a sense, Porcher was attempting to make all Southerners practical botanists who could maximize their use of what was available to them, even if they hadn’t hitherto paid much attention to plants in the past.  The book remained popular and was reprinted after the war, when Porcher returned to his medical practice.  Though life in Charleston was difficult as it was throughout the South, he had a needed expertise, a good reputation in his practice, and social connections that still counted for something, with many of these extending well beyond the South because of his service in the American Medical Association.  He resumed teaching at the Medical College, did research on yellow fever, and died in Charleston in 1895.

References

Goodson, M. G. (1980). African Slave Contributions to Medicine. The Western Journal of Black Studies, 11(4), 198–203.

Townsend, J. F. (1939). Francis Peyre Porcher, M.D. (1824-1895). Annals of Medical History, 1, 177–188.

Note: I want to thank Herrick Brown and Lauren LaFauci for discussions on Francis Porcher that were very helpful to me.  Also, I am grateful for the assistance I received in assessing the Porcher papers at the South Caroliniana Libary at the University of South Carolina, Columbia.

Botanists in South Carolina: Henry Ravenel

 

Specimen of Limnobium spongia from the Ravenel Herbarium at the A.C. Moore Herbarium, University of South Carolina, Columbia

Henry Ravenel was born in 1814 in an area outside Charleston that had been settled by French Huguenots in the 17^th century.  They had fled religious persecutions by Catholics in France.  Many had first gone to Protestant England and then sought greater freedom and economic advantage in the British Colonies.  The Ravenels were plantation owners and had the money to send their son to a nearby academy and then to South Carolina College, now the University of South Carolina, Columbia, where he received his degree and where his herbarium resides.  While he was always interested in plants and went botanizing with those similarly inclined on nearby plantations, he did not go into medicine, as did others of that time with a botanical bent.  Instead he took up plantation life, inheriting land from his father.

Ravenel also pursued his study of botany, collecting specimens, seeking information from such experts as Asa Gray, Edward Tuckerman, and George Engelmann, and eventually becoming particularly interested in cryptogams.  When William Henry Harvey, the British botanist, was in Charleston on a lecture tour in 1849, he met Ravenel and was impressed by his knowledge.  Writing to William Jackson Hooker afterwards, Harvey bemoaned the fact that Ravenel was moving away from studying vascular plants and focusing on fungi.  Ravenel and Moses Ashley Curtis, a North Carolina clergyman/botanist decided to collect specimens for a fungal exsiccati.  Curtis eventually bowed out of the project, but continued to provide assistance, and Ravenel eventually published five volumes of Fungi Caroliniani Exsiccati between 1852 and 1860.  He also contributed to Fungi Americani Exsiccati (1872-1880) along with the British mycologist M. C. Cooke.

In 1853, Ravenel made a major change, selling his plantation and moving his family to a farm in Aiken, South Carolina, just east of the border with Georgia, near Augusta (Haywood, 1987).  He hoped the change to a drier and somewhat cooler area would improve his failing health.  Perhaps he also hoped that the land would be healthier too, because as early as 1843 he had banded together with other low country farmers to form an agricultural society to investigate ways of improving the diminishing fertility of their plantations.  His new property, Hampton Hill, provided him with a good income from the peach trees and grape vines he planted that were tended by about 80 slaves.  Then the Civil War changed everything.

One reason there is so much known about Ravenel’s life is that, besides the evidence of his broad correspondence with John Torrey, Asa Gray, and others, he kept a diary from 1859 until his death in 1887.  An edited version was published by Arney Childs (1947), a history professor at the University of South Carolina.  It is a fascinating book for someone like myself who is trying to learn Southern and botanical history at the same time.  Ravenel began with several entries on family and visiting relatives for Christmas, and on December 31, 1859 he decided “to record a few words upon political affairs. . . .  The future is now wrapped in uncertainty” (p. 4).

After war was declared Ravenel put nearly all his money into Confederate war bonds, something that was common among Southerners with means.  They saw it as a way to ensure the victory of their cause.  Since the bonds proved worthless, the ultimate outcome for Ravenel and many others was no financial reserve to fall back on after the war.  Fruits like peaches and grapes became luxury items in the South and were difficult to ship to Northern markets.  Ravenel sought several times to sell his land, but repeatedly turned down offers that were far below what the land had been worth before the war.  Eventually he did sell it for less than half what he had been offered right after the war.

He turned to botany as a way to earn some money, arranging to collect for others and also to write for agricultural and botanical publications.  He sold his botany books, many of them precious like 12 volumes of de Candolles’s Prodromus that netted $40.  He also eventually sold his microscope and the remaining issues of his exsiccati that he had.  He was pleased that his northern correspondents got in touch as soon as communication became possible, and he asked Gray for advice on starting a nursery.  When he put the same question to Philadelphia nurseryman Thomas Meehan, he received seeds and cuttings as a gift, and later a $50 “loan” that Meehan made clear didn’t have to repaid.  Ravenel’s friend from his youth, Dr. Francis Peyre Porcher, who is the subject of the next post, tried to find employment for him in Charleston but there just wasn’t anything to be had.  This is when Ravenel wrote in his diary that he regretted not having had enough resolve to go into medicine.

Through all this he continued to collect, but after his death his widow had a hard time selling his herbarium for what she considered its worth.  She ended up splitting it, with the cryptogams going to the British Museum (now the Natural History Museum, London).  A Ravenel relative bought the vascular plant collection and gave it to Converse College in Spartanburg, SC.  Eventually, the college transferred it on permanent loan to the A.C. Moore Herbarium at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, where it has been carefully curated and digitized.  The herbarium also collaborated with other university departments in the digital humanities project, Henry Ravenel: Plants and Planter, producing a website where Ravenel’s correspondence, journals, and specimens are all available and searchable.

References

Childs, A. R. (Ed.). (1947). The Private Journal of Henry William Ravenel 1859-1887). University of South Carolina Press.

Haygood, T. M. (1987). Henry William Ravenel, 1814-1887: South Carolina Scientist in the Civil War Era. University of Alabama Press.

Note:  I want to thank John Nelson and Herrick Brown of the A.C. Moore Herbarium at the University of South Carolina, Columbia for introducing me to the world of Henry Ravenel, teaching me so much about him, and helping me to decipher his handwriting.