OLUB. , 



Botanical Gazette. 



Vol. VIII. JULY, 1883. No. 7. 



Some North American Botanists. 



VII. Stephen Elliott. 



As one of the pioneers in American botany, Stephen Elliott 

 holds a distinguished place. His labors and investigations in 

 this department of Natural Science are so well known that every 

 reader of the Gazette is familiar with his name. Those who 

 knew him thus as a southern botanist, and hence honor his mem- 

 ory, are naturally desirous of learning more of him ; of the po- 

 sition he held among his cotemporaries ; of his attainments in 

 other walks of life, and of all these traits of character and of 

 intellectual activity of which, finding as they do, abundant proofs 

 in that department of science with which they are familiar, they 

 expect also to find in other phases of his life. It is to gratify 

 this laudable desire that this sketch is undertaken. 



Mr. Elliott died in 1830, at the early age of fifty-eight. All 

 his cotemporaries are gone from whom personal reminiscences 

 might have been obtained, but I am indebted to his grandson, 

 Dr. John B. Elliott, now Professor in New Orleans Medical Col- 

 lege and in the University at Sewanee, Tennessee, and also to a 

 eulogy by Dr. James Moultrie, in November, 1830, before the 

 Faculty of the Charleston Medical College, and to the " Philo- 

 sophical Society" for much information of his early life. _ 



Stephen Elliott came of good stock, and mental activity was 

 an inheritance which he cultivated and transmitted to his descend- 

 ants. The late Bishop Elliott, of Georgia, his son, was for a 

 time, as his father before him had been, President of the South 

 Carolina College, and ended his life well beloved and universally 

 lamented, in the higher plane of the Christian ministry. Of his 

 later descendants of another generation, yet living and doing 

 honor to his name, it is not becoming to speak. 



He was born at Beaufort, South Carolina, November 11th, 

 1771, the third son of William Elliott, who intermarried in 1760 



