TWENTY-NINTH ANNUAL MEETING. 135 
JAMES H. CARRUTH, 
By E. H. S. Barney and B. B. SmMytTu. 
James H. Carruth was born in Phillipston, Mass., February 10, 1807. He 
died at Van Buren, Ark., September 14, 1896, after an illness of only four days. 
He was always in fair health, and till near the end of his long life was lively and 
cheerful as when 20 years younger. 
Professor Carruth was of Scotch-Irish descent. His ancestors settled in Mas- 
sachusetts about 1740. He studied at Amherst, Mass., near his home, and 
afterward went to Yale, where he took a classical course and graduated in 1832. 
At the time of his death he was one of the few of his class still living. 
He studied theology at Auburn Theological Seminary, and was given a license 
to preach in the Presbyterian church. He taught and preached for some little 
time in various towns in New York, especially Watertown and Cherry Valley. 
He was married to Jane Grant, the mother of all his children, in 1841. In 
1856 he came to Kansas and helped to make Kansas a free state. He was here 
through the troublous times of this state’s history. At first he lived on a claim 
near Osawatomie, but after a few years was elected to the professorship of natu - 
ral sciences at Baker University, Baldwin. Here he served three years; then 
moved to Lawrence, where he lived for 25jyears. In the meantime he was lecturer 
on botany at Washburn College for a year or so. In 1875 his wife died. While 
in Lawrence he preached at Clinton and other places occasionally as a supply. 
A few years before his death he left Lawrence and went west, and afterward 
south. 
At an early age he developed a taste for botany, and in 1868 was elected to the 
position of state botanist, which position he held until he left the state in 1892. 
For many years he was the highest authority in the state on this subject. 
He was aconstant collector of plants. He made many trips over the state, en-- 
tirely at his own expense, collecting plants either for his own herbarium or to fill 
orders from colleges east. He collected up to the last year of his life, largely in 
New Mexico, Indian Territory, and Arkansas. In 1872 he published a catalogue 
of the plants of Kansas, in Vol. I of the Transactions of the Kansas Academy, 
with supplementary lists in succeeding volumes. ~ In 1876 he published a ‘‘ Cen- 
tennial Catalogue of the Plants of Kansas,’’ embracing 1,082 species; to which 
additions were made from year to year until 1884, increasing the number of Kan- 
sas plants to 1,515 species. These additions were published in this Academy’s 
Transactions. 
He was one of the organizers of the Kansas Academy of Science in 1868; at- 
tended its first meeting, that year, and was a’constant worker in the Academy up 
to 1890. He was a vice-president of the Academy from 1875 to 1881. 
In 1893, at the annual meeting held at Emporia, he was elected to a life mem- 
bership in the Academy in token of his botanical labors for the state of Kansas. 
He did considerable work on phonetics also, and was the originator of a 
number of very interesting theories on this subject. He published a history of 
Sequoyah, or George Guess, and gave a synopsis of Sequoyah’s efforts in con- 
structing an alphabet for the Cherokee nation. 
Professor Carruth, though a man of great learning, was exceedingly modest, 
and this self-depreciatory nature, while helping to win for him many warm 
