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Americans have found that building and maintaining a nation that includes peoples from all over the world and every possible lifestyle from the menial workers to the masters of industry and capitalism requires intelligence, tolerance, and perseverance. In the formative years of the United States, it was necessary that many people make significant contributions in a variety of fields for the nation to establish a secure place in the world scientifically, economically, and politically.
A man who, in a number of fields, helped the United States develop into a strong nation was Stephen Elliott. Born in 1771 in Beaufort, South Carolina, Elliott’s impact on science, politics, education, and economics left a positive legacy that is still proving beneficial to his state and nation today.
Elliott’s parents died young and Stephen lived with his older brother until the age of 16 when he moved to New Haven, Connecticut to study under Judge Simeon Baldwin and in in 1788 entered Yale College. He excelled as a student, graduating in 1791 as valedictorian of his class and a member of Phi Beta Kappa Academic Honor Society.
Returning to Beaufort after college, Stephen helped manage his family plantations in Georgia and South Carolina. In 1796 he married Esther Habersham and the same year was named state representative for Helena Parish near Beaufort, and in 1800 became a South Carolina state senator. Stephen and Esther had a large family of 13 children.
His years in the senate were busy and productive. In 1808 he proposed the Free School Act which led to the state’s first public school system, a major step in the history of education in the state. In 1812 he wrote the act that set up the Bank of the State of South Carolina. When the bank was established, Elliott resigned his seat in the state senate and moved to Charleston, South Carolina to become the bank’s president, a position he held until his death in 1830. Under his leadership, the bank made loans to planters as well as business people and proved to be an important asset to the state economy. With branches established in five South Carolina cities, it lasted until the turmoil of the Civil War years.
Over the next years, Elliott helped found and for a time was president and then trustee of the South Carolina College which became the University of South Carolina in Columbia. Elliott became president of the Charleston Library Society for a few years where he devised a new book classification system, and in 1814 founded the Literary and Philosophical Society of South Carolina and served as its president until 1830.
Along with promoting literary and philosophical endeavors, one of the Literary and Philosophical Society’s main interests was to promote the study of science and natural history. Given the fact that the backbone of the southern economy was based on agriculture, the study of botany and the south’s geological features was especially important. In order to maximize profits, planters needed to understand their soil and the science behind the crops they grew such as cotton, corn, and rice. Plus, a number of wild plants found in forests and meadows were important for their medicinal value. While president of the Society, Elliott encouraged the members to collect and catalog plants they found around them and on their travels.
Botany and geology came to be viewed as useful and necessary sciences, and under Elliott’s leadership the Literary and Philosophical Society grew into a well-respected organization. When Elliott died in 1830, its next president, John Bachman, a Lutheran pastor and naturalist who often worked with John James Audubon, changed the Society’s name to The Elliott Society of Science and Arts. The Society stayed together until South Carolina seceded from the United States in 1861 when politics and military considerations took precedence over science. A group of former members attempted to revive the society in 1867 after the end of the war, but most South Carolinians were too busy rebuilding their homes and the state economy to devote as much time and effort to the society as before the Civil War.
Elliott’s fame as a scientist spread throughout the United States, and in 1819 when the American Geological Society was formed, he was made one of its vice presidents. He was also made a member of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, the American Philosophical Society, and the Linnaean Society. Another example of his many interests, was that in 1828 Elliott and attorney and diplomat Hugh Swinton Legare started a quarterly literary magazine which they named The Southern Review. In its four-year life, The Review published poems, essays, and biographies.
In 1824 Elliott helped found the Medical College of South Carolina and lectured there on natural history and botany. He no doubt emphasized the importance of botanical research to discover more ways to use plants in medicine. During this time, he also helped support and maintain the Orphan House in Charleston.
He was made a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and an Honorary Member of the Lyceum of Natural History of New York. He was awarded the Doctor of Laws degree from Yale, as well as honorary degrees from Harvard and Columbia Universities, and in 1825, an honorary M.D. from the Medical College of South Carolina. And in recognition of his business acumen, he was made a commissioner of the South Carolina Canal and Railroad Company.
Although Elliott excelled as a legislator, educator, banker, and businessman, he is probably best remembered today for his botanical work and his extensive collection of plants. In 1788 botanist Thomas Walter had published his Flora Caroliniana, the most extensive book on the flora of South Carolina up to that time and the first to use the Carl Linnaean system of classification. A few years later Elliott considerably expanded Walter’s work by hundreds of species in his Sketches of the Botany of South Carolina and Georgia which he published in 13 volumes between 1816 and 1824 and later condensed into two volumes. Elliott also collected type specimens of each plant which Walter did not do. Elliott’s Sketches contains some of the most complete descriptions of the flora of the region. He also amassed one of the most extensive collections of plants in the country, most of which passed to the Charleston Museum.
Elliott had a number of plants named after him as well as the genus Elliottia. Perhaps one of the most interesting is a tree species Elliott described which came to be named the Pinus elliottii, a conifer more commonly known in the southern United States as the slash pine. Although so numerous and fast growing in some areas that some people consider the trees almost a nuisance, they have traits that make them remarkable trees.
To start with, its unusual name “slash pine”, has two possible sources. One comes from the tree’s propensity to grow in swampy moist areas that some people call slashes. Another origin of the name could be from the fact that the bark of the tree is slashed in order to harvest the sap which is then processed into the solvent turpentine, as well as pine tar and pitch which are used as wood sealants. Conifers in general have softer wood than most deciduous trees, however, the wood of the slash pine is harder than most other conifers and has a higher strength-to-weight ratio than some hardwoods which makes it suitable to sometimes be substituted for deciduous hardwoods in construction and furniture making.
Growing in areas that every few years are set ablaze by lightning strikes or controlled burns to clear out underbrush, it is interesting that Pinus elliottii has evolved at least two mechanisms to help it cope with wildfires. One is that as it grows it sheds its lower branches so that a ground fire cannot set them ablaze and then rise to set the canopy on fire. Another feature that prevents fires from injuring the tree is the multi-layered bark. Fire will burn the outer layers of the bark and not penetrate into the inner layers and on into the trunk. These and other adaptations have kept Pinus elliottii a viable and useful species for thousands of years through many fires.
In contrast to the abundant Pinus elliottii, anotherElliott namesake is the Elliottia racemosa or Georgia plume, a rare but also seemingly fire-adapted shrub or small tree with clumps of small white flowers. Found primarily in eastern and southern Georgia, Elliottia racemosa is today considered a threatened species.
Elliott corresponded and worked with a number of prominent botanists of his day, including Henry Muhlenberg, a Pennsylvanian of German ancestry and education who was one of the most prominent American botanists of the early 1800s. Elliott also worked with Dr. John Bricknell, a physician and botanist from Savannah, Georgia and named in his honor the genus Bricknellia which contains over 100 plant species. Elliott’s papers, that today are housed at Harvard University, include a collection of about 90 letters which show that he also corresponded with several other botanists concerning the collection and identification of hundreds of plants.
In the 1780s, internationally renowned French botanist Andre Michaux established a garden in Charleston where he cultivated plants that he sent to France for the gardens around the Chateau de Versailles near Paris. Michaux died in 1802 in Madagascar after spending years exploring and collecting plant specimens in Persia (today’s Iran), North America, the Caribbean Islands, and parts of Africa. Although Elliott did not meet Andre, he visited the Michaux garden in Charleston and corresponded extensively with Andre’s son Francois Michaux, author of The North American Sylva, who, like his father, traveled extensively and became a botanist of international fame.
Besides his lengthy Sketch of the Botany of South Carolina and Georgia, Elliott also published a two-part study on soybeans and other legumes called Observations on the Genus Glycine and Some of its Kindred Genera. Having been introduced into the United States in 1804 from Asia, soybean cultivation was not widespread. No doubt Elliott’s article helped planters have a better understanding of this new crop which became very important in later years. Another article with practical information was Some Observations on the Culture of the Cherokee or Nondescript Rose as a Hedge Plant. Both articles were published in the Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, now called the Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University.
Stephen Elliott died in Charleston on March 28, 1830 at the age of 58, too young when one considers the numerous contributions he made to America and to science globally. In light of his excellence in many fields of endeavor, it would not be a stretch to call him a true southern polymath. From his academic career at Yale, to success as a politician, banker, railroad commissioner, educator, and especially his work in the sciences, he demonstrated competence in a multitude of diverse fields.
Perhaps his greatest genius was in his organizational skills as shown through his systematic work of collecting and cataloging thousands of plant specimens, a collection that today is still considered one of the best ever assembled in the south.
Elliott’s meticulous research on the flora of the southern part of the United States, both native species and those introduced from other parts of the world, has been a great help to botanists for many years. In 1900, the journal Science referred to him as “the father of southern botany”.
His cultural, educational, and business, and especially scientific skills have proven to be significant. He left a great legacy for all of us to learn from and live up to.
Ted McCormack
