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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



faithfulness contributed very largel}' to make the Garden and Tower 

 Griove Park what they are to-day. Mr. Shaw, however, never abandoned 

 his personal supervision, and he thus spent the last twenty-five years of 

 his life perfecting what he had begun. Until the summer of 1885 he 

 had not been out of St. Louis, except to drive out to dine with a friend, 

 for about twenty years. At this time the hot weather caused a failure of 

 his usual good health, and he went to northern Illinois and Wisconsin 

 for some time. He returned much improved and resumed his accus- 

 tomed avocations with renewed vigor. 



On the twenty-fourth of July, 1889, he received numerous visitors 

 who congratulated him upon the beginning of his ninetieth year. Al- 

 though weak, he was able to meet them in the drawing-room, and his 

 mind was as clear as ever. This, however, was his last public appear- 

 ance. An attack of malaria resulted in his death on August 25. On 



Saturday, August 31, he was laid 

 to rest in the mausoleum which had 

 been already prepared in the midst 

 of the garden which he had created 

 — not only for himself, but for all 

 succeeding generations. 



Mr. G. W. Letterman is one of 

 the few persons who have worked 

 upon botany in the vicinity of 

 St. Louis during their whole life- 

 time. Mr. Letterman has worked 

 especially in Missouri, but is also 

 very familiar with the plants of 

 the region included in eastern and 

 northern Texas, Louisiana, Arkan- 

 sas and Indian Territory. He has 

 accumulated a very large her- 

 barium, in which the flora of 

 St. Louis is represented probably 

 better than in any other private 

 herbarium. 



George Washington Letterman,'^ the son of John and Charlotte (Blair) 

 Letterman, was born near Bellefonte, Center County, Pennsylvania, of a family 

 which had lived for three generations in Pennsylvania, his father being of 

 Dutch, and his mother of Irish descent. From the public school he entered the 

 State College in Center County, but left before graduation to join the Union 

 Army, in which he enlisted as a private; serving until the end of the war he 

 was mustered out of the service with the rank of captain of volunteers. After 

 crossing the plains to New Mexico in 1866, he returned to Pennsylvania, and 

 then going west again to Kansas, with the idea of becoming a farmer in that 

 state, he finally, in 1869, settled in Allenton, Missouri, a railroad hamlet about 



'"^ Sargent, C. S., " Silva of North America," 13: 79-80, 1902. 



Fig. 17. Mk. Geo. W. Letterman. 



