SKETCH OF L. D. VON SCHWEINITZ. 839 



plants, we have a total of nearly fourteen hundred new species 

 added to botanic science by the talents and industry of a single 

 observer. The whole number of species known at his death was 

 estimated at sixty thousand. 



Until he was about fifty years of age his health had been ex- 

 cellent. But the various and increasing cares of his official posi- 

 tion finally had their effect. The sedentary work involved in 

 writing a dissertation on the affairs of his community, which pre- 

 vented for a time his usual out-of-door exercise, was the immedi- 

 ate cause of a severe cough and other alarming symptoms of de- 

 cline. His spirits, which had been uniformly cheerful, became 

 depressed. A journey to the West to establish a branch commu- 

 nity of the United Brethren in Indiana was temporarily beneficial, 

 but his system was undermined and the progress of disease could 

 not be stayed. On February 8, 1834, came the end of what his 

 memoirist calls " a life of various, constant, and unobtrusive use- 

 fulness." 



A widow and four sons survived him. All the sons entered 

 the Moravian ministry. The eldest, Emil Adolphus de Schwei- 

 nitz, was born in Salem, N. C., in 1816. He filled various ecclesi- 

 astical offices in Pennsylvania and North Carolina, was made a 

 bishop in 1874, and died in 1879. The second son, Robert, was 

 born in Salem, in 1819. He has filled various charges and was for 

 many years President of the Executive Board of the American 

 Moravian Church. Since his retirement from the active ministry 

 he has been general treasurer of the Church and of its Foreign 

 Mission Department. The third son, Edmund Alexander, was 

 born in Bethlehem in 1825, and died there in 1887. He also 

 became a bishop, and was the author of several books on the his- 

 tory and polity of the Unitas Fratrum. In 1856 he established a 

 weekly journal for the Moravians in America, which he edited 

 for ten years. Bernard, the youngest son, was born at Bethlehem, 

 in 1828, and died at the age of twenty-six years, being at the time 

 in charge of a church on Staten Island. During the latter years 

 of the father's life he used de in place of von in his name, and the 

 sons have always used the new form. 



Von Schweinitz was of high stature, erect carriage, and robust 

 habit. The portrait accompanying this sketch is a copy of a 

 miniature painted some years before his death, and consequently 

 represents him in the prime of life. He had an unusually ami- 

 able and attractive disposition, which made him a general favorite 

 with high and low. His conversational powers were of a high 

 order, and contributed much to an ease of intercourse which was 

 an important factor of his usefulness. Humor, anecdote, and 

 repartee were always at his command, while the varied and excit- 

 ing scenes through which he had passed and the prominent per- 



