1899] BRIEFER ARTICLES : 473 
ALVIN WENTWORTH CHAPMAN. 
(WITH PORTRAIT) 
Diep, April 6, after an illness of 
a brief hour, at Apalachicola Florida, 
Alvin Wentworth Chapman, B.A., 
M.D., LL.D., at the age of eighty- 
nine years and seven months. 
With his demise passed away the 
Nestor of American botanists, the 
last of the active workers to whom 
the great progress made during the 
past sixty years in the exploration 
and investigation of the flora of this 
continent is to be ascribed. 
Dr. Chapman left a short sketch 
of his life, written about a year 
before his death, which we give here in his own words: 
A BRIEF OUTLINE OF THE HISTORY OF MY LIFE. 
I was born, the youngest of a family of five children, on the twenty-eighth 
day of September 1809, at Southampton, in the state of Massachusetts, of 
English parentage; my paternal ancestor emigrating from the north of Eng- 
land, and my maternal from the Pomeroys of Devonshire. 
T attended the public schools of the town for eight years, and then com- 
menced the study of classics preparatory for entrance upon a collegiate 
course, and in 1826 joined the class of that year at Amherst College, gradu- 
ating with honor in September 1830. In May of the following year I came 
to Georgia as a teacher in a family on Whitemarsh islan 
and two years afterwards was elected principal of the academy at Washing- 
ie ton, in Wilkes county, where I commenced my professional studies with Dr. 
, ae Albert Reese of that county. In the winter of 1835, at the solicitation of the 
i late Dr. Nicholson, of Gadsden county, I came to this state, which has been 
Q my residence ever since ; first at Quincy, then at Marianna, and since 1847 in 
this city, 
My life has been uneventful, and I am known mainly beyond the limits of 
this city as a botanist, and the author of the //ora of the Southern United 
States, which has received the approbation of botanists both at home and 
abroad. 
* 
shee 
At my great age I find myself the sole remaining representative of my Fac® 
