John Milton 7 BIGELOW
Mount Elliott Cemetery; Detroit, Wayne County, MI
16814.12 John Milton 7 BIGELOW, son of
Marshall 6 ( Roger 5 , Joseph 4, Joseph 3, Joshua 2,John
1) and Elizabeth (HILL) BIGELOW, was
born in Peru, Bennington co, VT, 23 June 1804. After the War of 1812
he moved with his parents to OH. He married in November 1832 in
Fairfield county, OH Maria L. Meiers, the daughter of H. Meiers,
Esq., of Lancaster, Ohio. Maria was born in Ohio ___ 1815, and
died 16 Sep 1888 (aged 72–73) Hamtramck, Wayne County, MI. John was
a surgeon, botanist, explorer and is known for his treatise on
grasses of OH and another book on the flowering plants of OH. He
also is known for identifying and classifying plants of the
Southwest from his trips for the Army and the railroads in the
1850's. He died at Detroit, Wayne, MI on 18 July 1878. From the 1850
census of Lancaster, Fairfield, OH, we determine the children as
follows:
Children of John and Maria (Meiers) Bigelow, all born in OH:
16814.121 Henry, b ca 1834.
16814.122 John G., b 08 Feb 1836 Lancaster,
Fairfield County, OH; d 26 Jul 1909 (aged 73) Detroit, MI
16814.123 Rachel E., b ca 1838. d 18 Jun
1892
16814.124 James M., b ca 1840. d 11 Oct 1873
Railroad accident;
16814.125 William L., b ca 1842.
16814.126 Francis C., b ca 1844. d 04 Apr
1884 (aged 40) Hamtramck, Wayne County, MI; "Reverend Father"
16814.127 Mary B., b ca 1846.
16814.128 Cordelia, b ca 1848.
Sources:
Bigelow Family Genealogy Volume. II page.257;
Bigelow Family Genealogy Volume. I ;
Howe, Bigelow Family of America;
1850 census Lancaster, OH.
2021 Email: From:
Sam Brunk < sbrunk@utep.edu >
I see
a posting of yours—now 15 years old—on John M. Bigelow, who was,
among other things, a botanist who served on the U.S.-Mexico
boundary commission in the 1850s. I am wondering if you
know anything about the location of his papers. I have
come across letters he wrote to others (in the Biodiversity
Heritage Library), but not letters he received from people like
George Engelmann. It may be that he didn’t save them, but
I thought that someone in the family might know. Thanks in
advance for any help that you can give me.
Sam Brunk
Professor of History
Univ. of Texas, El Paso
Ohio History
Volume 51 Ohio History
OHIO MEDICAL HISTORY, 1835-58
DR. JOHN MILTON BIGELOW, 1804-1878
AN EARLY OHIO PHYSICIAN--BOTANIST By A. E. WALLER*
Meeting the name Bigelow in botanical
publication the reader is sometimes confused. The name of John M.
Bigelow, the subject of this paper is close to John Bigelow a
journalist and newspaper correspondent of New York City of the same
period and also to a Dr. Henry Jacob Bigelow interested in
anesthetics of whom this paper will make no further mention, as well
as to Dr. Jacob Bigelow of Massachusetts.
Dr. Jacob Bigelow 1 requires a brief notice here
since he is more frequently mistaken for John M. Dr. Jacob Bigelow
in 1814 published a list of the plants growing in the vicinity of
Boston under the title Florula Bostonensis. It became a popular work
for all those persons wanting a small guide book to the plants of
the area and it passed through three editions. It followed the
Linnean Sexual System for naming plants. The 1824 edition is
sometimes offered for sale as a literary curiosity, having the
reputation of being the last work published in the United States
which followed the Linnean system.
Dr. Jacob Bigelow also authored the American Medical Botany, a
recognized forerunner of the modern American pharmacopoeia
establishing the
standard practice for the current Food and Drug Acts. Three volumes
of this work were published between 1818 and 1820. As a result of
this great editorial labor Dr. Jacob Bigelow was the correspondent
of a number of scientific men in European countries. The Swiss
botanist, De Candolle, honored and commemorated his name by applying
it to a newly discovered golden rod.
Dr. Asa Gray of Harvard described several
American species in this genus, Bigelovia. Dr. Jacob Bigelow's name
is to that extent perpetuated for the botanists. By the rules of
priority followed in naming plants, the creation of this genus
automatically prevented John M. Bigelow having any of the genera he
discovered named in his honor. There are a number of species, new to
science when he collected them, carrying his name. Even the most
virtuous, however, are not above folly. It does not harm the memory
of Dr. Jacob Bigelow now to record that once he was a member of a
committee of Boston citizens who solemnly listened to statements of
eight persons who swore they had seen a sea serpent off the
Massachusetts coast. In all seriousness the committee prepared a
pamphlet from these hearings and sent it off to the distinguished
explorer and sea captain, Sir Joseph Banks, in 1817. Astonished but
canny, Sir Joseph replied, as might the scientist of today under
similar circumstances, that "future observation will no doubt clear
up" the remarks noted in the pamphlet.
This connection with the Atlantic seaboard and
Europe will or should be sufficient to clear up the confusion
between Jacob Bigelow and John M. Bigelow. For John M. spent all but
a few years of his life in Ohio and Michigan, and his botanical
collections cover the southwest and include Texas, New Mexico,
Arizona and California, as well as his early work in central Ohio.
Dr. John M. Bigelow's birth reputedly occurred
in Peru, Bennington County, Vermont, June 23, 1804. 2 In
1815 his father moved to Licking County, Ohio, near or in Granville,
where he had his boyhood schooling. This was meager and the family
was poor. Young John was a voracious reader and spent time poring
over any books he could obtain. Legend also drapes him with the
familiar garments of a boyish school teacher by which means he
earned enough money to attend and receive a diploma March 8, 1832,
from the Medical College of Ohio at Cincinnati.
In November, 1832, he married Maria L. Meiers,
daughter of H. Meiers, Esq., of Lancaster, Ohio. At the Medical
College of Ohio, Dr. John Leonard Riddell 3 was
professor of botany and adjunct professor of chemistry between 1830
and 1836. It may well have been this mentor's enthusiasm that was
communicated to John M. Bigelow and inspired in him a love of plants
that was to remain with him throughout his life. Dr. Riddell's
Synopsis of the Flora of the Western States published in 1835,
together with a supplementary Ohio list is the first catalog of Ohio
plants
published by a resident botanist. There is, however, no written
testimony to prove this interesting teacher-pupil relation.
The first public record of Bigelow's medical
practice is from the Lancaster, Ohio, Gazette and Enquirer of
January 2, 1834. It reads, "Dr. J. M. Bigelow has removed his office
to his dwelling on Columbus Street, a few doors south of General
Sanderson's residence." A small but thoughtful notice establishing a
young medical practitioner in a distinguished neighborhood. He was
about 30 years old, and was beginning to take his place in the
community. Similar notices of changes of address, probably because
of the increases in the size of his family or because he was seeking
a more convenient office and of medical partnerships formed and
dissolved are to be found in the Lancaster newspapers between 1834
and 1860. It is thus known that he was associated in a partnership
with Dr. Robert McNeil in 1844-1845. This is the younger Robert
McNeil who, in 1847, became a surgeon in the Mexican War. Again in
1856 he formed a partnership with Dr. G. W. Boerstler which lasted
for two years. Dr. Boerstler was a founder of the Ohio State Medical
Society, and active throughout his long life as a Lancaster
physician.
Aside from the assumption that the partnerships
displayed good sense in increasing his office practice, what we now
know of Dr. Bigelow indicates that he had his own reasons for
wishing to be away from his office. We do not know exactly how
remunerative or absorbing his work with his patients may have been.
We do know that he was developing another sort of work that was to
demand a share of his time. His other love was botanizing and he was
beginning to collect plants zealously and with a growing
understanding.
It should be remembered that in the period
of which we now are writing, a doctor was keenly interested in
observing and knowing plants. He would want to identify them and if
possible find those used in pharmaceutical preparations. This no
doubt calls to the reader's mind the names of Dr. Asa Gray and Dr.
John Torrey, American botanists and both holders of degrees in
medicine.
Purely utilitarian ideas however were not
always uppermost in the minds of these men. Ohio was just in process
of being carved from wilderness. Torrey and Gray were just beginning
to accumulate materials from which the knowledge of North American
plants was built. The earliest plant collectors and botanists were
European and a great many of the type specimens of our commonest
plants are in European herbaria. You will also remember that as the
applications of the plant sciences to agriculture, horticulture,
forestry, pedology and other fields of learning were scarcely
dreamed of at that time, training in medicine and pharmacy were
almost the only courses of study which included any subject to which
the name botany might apply. In short botany and medicine were
closely allied, as they had been for many centuries previously.
One can, therefore, see in Dr. Bigelow's
medical partnerships and in his absences from his office the same
urge that assails many another doctor who wishes to find out more
about his medical work or to explore it from another angle. In the
case of Dr. Bigelow this was eventually to lead him into the field
of plant collecting wherein his claim to fame is well established.
His research took him from the town of Lancaster farther out into
the country and finally across the continent to the Pacific Ocean.
Materia Medica was in Bigelow's day largely obtained from the plant
kingdom.
Fortunately one can trace the way in which
John Milton Bigelow's activity forms a link in the great chain of
scientific exploration to discover the physical extent and the
nature of the then unknown parts of continental United States. Not
later than 1840, though how much earlier it is difficult to say, he
had become acquainted with William S. Sullivant, at that time a
student of plant life. A letter (4) to Torrey and Gray in the files
of the Torrey letters in the New York Botanical gardens dated
December 29, 1840, sets forth the facts, and establishes itself as
his first letter to Dr. Torrey. He writes: "The whole subject of my
letter, I give as the apology that might seem necessary in a total
stranger addressing you." He also mentions he is sending certain
plants notably asters and golden rods for further identification.
The significant fact is this statement, "Last summer I collected
pretty thoroughly, having been stimulated to it by an ac- quaintance
with Mr. William S. Sullivant of Columbus." He apologizes that his
plants are not put up with the neatness required of a professed
botanist. "Many times some of my most interesting specimens are
brought home in my hat and probably before I have time to smooth out
some of the wrinkles consequent upon their cramped position in the
hat, a call is made post haste and my poor plants are obliged to
suffer the withering influences of a hot summer day," he complains.
The letter further contains one other important item showing that
Dr. Bigelow was more than an ordinary country town doctor. He
states, "I am also anxious to get a good microscope; if Dr. Gray can
procure one from France of the quality and at the price of Mr.
Sullivant's I should be glad."
What are the threads connecting these names
and events? Sullivant, distinguished resident of Columbus, was the
oldest son of Lucas Sullivant, the surveyor, who died a wealthy
landowner. His son, William Starling Sullivant, having spent
approximately twenty years since his father's death in consolidating
and increas- ing his fortune had, about 1839, decided to turn his
attention to botany. He was later to become so noteworthy for his
studies of
-
1 Howard Kelly, Some American Medical Botanists (Troy, New York,
1914).
2 W. B. Atkinson, Physicians and Surgeons of U. S. (Philadelphia,
1878)
* Papers from the Department of Botany, Ohio State University, No.
449.
3 Clara Armstrong, "Plant Names Commemorative of Ohio Botanists,"
Ohio Naturalist (January, 1901).
4 a. The Bigelow letters to Dr. John Torrey are on file in the New
York Botanical Gardens, Bronx Park, N. Y. The entire collection was
recently photostated for Mr. A. D. Rodgers to whom thanks are due
for permission to examine and use them.
b. For all the newspaper notices from Lancaster, Ohio, grateful
acknowledgement is herewith offered to Edward S. Thomas and the WPA
assistants at the Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society
Museum.
mosses as to be known as the "father of American Bryology." The
account of his career has recently been made the subject of a book
by A. D. Rodgers.5 Sullivant
at that time was just getting started and had been for three years
in correspondence with Dr. Torrey and Dr. Gray, America's two
leading botanists. Early in the year 1840, Sullivant had published
his first botanical trea- tise, A Catalogue of Plants Native or
Naturalized in the Vicin- ity of Columbus, Ohio. Dr. Bigelow's
letter to Torrey and Gray indicates at this time that he knew
Sullivant well enough to have heard of his work, perhaps even to
have seen the precious microscope or used it, and to want one of his
own at the same price. May it not be inferred that Bigelow possessed
an interest in medicine and botany that is superior to idle
curiosity and that he was wealthy enough to afford such a scientific
luxury as a good microscope? He was at least bold enough to ask.
Dr. Asa Gray's name and career,6 well known to almost
everyone who has a nodding acquaintance with American plants needs
little mention here. It may be recalled, however, that at this time
(1838) he had been chosen professor of botany in the newly founded
University of Michigan, but as the buildings were not completed, the
Regents had entrusted to him the assignment of making the first
purchase of books for the general library and sent him abroad with a
fund of five thousand dollars to buy the books. This unusual
procedure on the part of the Regents not only resulted in beneficial
sequences to the Michigan Library but Dr. Gray met Darwin and Hooker
in England and other scientists on the European continent and formed
lasting friendships. On his return from Europe, the pleased Regents
extended Dr. Gray's leave for a year. As everyone knows he worked
with Dr. Torrey on the flora of North America and later went to
Harvard instead of assuming his post at Michigan. Dr. Gray had
brought a microscope which was shipped to Sullivant in April, 1840.
In May, 1840, Sullivant wrote Gray that he was making "short trips
around the country of 2-3-4 days." It may have been in these short
trips that Sullivant first met Bigelow. He does not happen to have
mentioned how or where the meeting took place. Yet the remarks
quoted from Bigelow's letter above prove that Bigelow knew all about
Sullivant's microscope, doubtless the first one in central Ohio, and
that he considered himself an able enough scientist to request that
Dr. Gray perform for him the same kindness he had for Sullivant.
Sullivant's microscope was one of the earliest brought into Ohio.
The point of all of this is its
significance for early Ohio plant studies. Sullivant's catalogue of
the plants collected near Colum- bus was followed the next year by
Bigelow's Florula Lancastriensis.7 John M. Bigelow's
title for this work follows the Jacob Bigelow Florula Bostonensis. It is
known that Sullivant possessed a copy of this popular plant guide.
The Florula Lancastriensis of John M. Bigelow has the subtitle of a
catalogue Comprising nearly all the flowering and filicoid plants
growing naturally within the limits of Fairfield County, with notes
of such as are of medical value. For the grasses and sedges credit
is given to Dr. Asa Horr who lived in the northern portion of
Fairfield County at Baltimore, Ohio. The paper was presented, at
least by title (one can hardly imagine anyone having the courage to
read a lengthy list of plant names) to the Medical Convention of
Ohio in May, 1841. It was published in the Proceedings of that
convention. The minutes of the meeting record that a vote of thanks
was tendered to Dr. Bigelow for presenting it.
At the present time not more than three
copies of the Bigelow-Horr paper are known to exist. The Florula Lancastriensis has
frequently been referred to in the century that has passed since its
publication. Notice of it is contained in Dr. Britton's compilation
of State and Local Floras, and in the Torrey Bulletin. It formed the
basis for some of the plants not seen but included "Fide Bigelow,"
in the Sugar Grove paper of Dr. Robert F. Griggs.8
5 A. D. Rodgers, Noble Fellow (New York, 1940).
6 A. E. Waller. See foreword in Rodger's book cited above.
7 John M. Bigelow, "Florula
Lancastriensis," Proceedings Ohio Medical Convention
(Columbus, 1841).
8 Robert F. Griggs, "A Botanical Survey of the Sugar Grove Region,"
Ohio Biological Survey 1, No. 3.
Marin Chapter California Native Plant Society
John Milton Bigelow (1804-1878)
John Milton Bigelow was a surgeon and botanist
from Ohio. In 1849, after publishing a treatise on grasses and a
book entitled A list of the medicinal plants of Ohio, he
joined the Army expedition led by Lt. Amiel Weeks Whipple to
survey the U.S-Mexican border. In 1853 he again joined Whipple
on one of the exploration parties sent out by the War Department
to "ascertain the most practicable and economical route for a
railroad from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean." It
was following this expedition that Bigelow made botanical
collecting trips to northern California.
In his 1949 Marin Flora, John Thomas
Howell says: "John M. Bigelow...came to the San Francisco Bay
region in the spring of 1854, and from April 16 to 20 he made a
botanical collecting trip through the redwoods north of Mount
Tamalpais to the ocean on Point Reyes Peninsula. Never before
had these parts been visited by a botanist, and his collection
with respect to the novelties in it, is the richest ever made in
the region. Scoliopus and Whipplea,
two genera of frequent occurrence in the woods of Marin County,
were based on Bigelow's collection, and no fewer than twenty
species and varieties were described by Torrey and others in the
botanical reports of the expedition and elsewhere. From Marin
County, Bigelow went on to other rich fields in Sonoma and Napa
counties, and thence to the foothills and middle slopes of the
Sierra Nevada, but it is not likely that anywhere in all his
travels, in or out of California, did he ever enjoy an excursion
so rich as the one from Corte de Madera and Rancho San Geronimo
to Punta de los Reyes."
Modified - 03/18/2022
(c) Copyright 2021 Bigelow Society, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Rod Bigelow - Director
rodbigelow@netzero.net
Rod Bigelow
Box 13 Chazy Lake
Dannemora, N.Y. 12929
rodbigelow@netzero.net 
BACK TO THE
BIGELOW SOCIETY PAGE
BACK TO
BIGELOW HOME PAGE
