lV BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 
of the cholera.” Meanwhile Dr. Engelmann’s uncles had resolved to make some land investments 
in the valley of the Mississippi, and he willingly became their agent. At least one of the family 
was already settled in Illinois, not far from St. Louis. Dr. Engelmann, sailing from Bremen for 
Baltimore in September, joined his relatives in the course of the winter, made many lonely and 
somewhat adventurous journeys on horseback in Southern Illinois, Missouri, and Arkansas, which 
yielded no other fruits than those of botanical exploration; and finally he established himself in the 
practice of medicine at St. Louis, late in the autumn of 1835. St. Louis was then rather a frontier 
trading-post than a town, of barely eight or ten thousand inhabitants. He lived to see it become 
a metropolis of over four hundred thousand. He began in absolute poverty, the small means he 
had brought from Europe completely exhausted. In four years he had laid the foundations of 
success in his profession, and had earned the means for making a voyage to Germany, and, fulfilling 
a long-standing engagement, for bringing to a frugal home the chosen companion of his life, Dora 
Hartsmann, his cousin, whom he married at Kreuznach on the 11th of June, 1840. On his way 
homeward, at New York, the writer of this memorial formed the personal acquaintance of Dr. 
Engelmann; and thus began the friendship and the scientific association which has continued 
unbroken for almost half a century. 
Dr. Engelmann’s position as a leading physician in St. Louis, as well among the American as 
the German ‘and French population, was now soon established. He was even able in 1856, without 
risk, to leave his practice for two years, to devote most of the first summer to botanical investigation 
in Cambridge, and then, with his wife and young son, to revisit their native land, and to fill up a 
prolonged vacation in interesting travel and study. Inthe year 1868 the family visited Europe for 
a year, the son remaining to pursue his medical studies in Berlin. And lastly, his companion of 
nearly forty years having been removed by death in January, 1879, and his own robust health 
having suffered serious and indeed alarming deterioration, he sailed again for Germany in the 
summer of 1883. The voyage was so beneficial that he was able to take up some botanical in- 
vestigations, which, however, were soon interrupted by serious symptoms. But the return voyage 
proved wonderfully restorative, and when, in early autumn, he rejoined his friends here, they could 
hope that the unfinished scientific labors, which he at once resumed with alacrity of spirit, might 
still for a while be carried on with comfort. So indeed they were, in some measure, after his return 
to his home, yet with increasing infirmity and no little suffering until the sudden illness supervened 
which in a few days brought his honorable and well-filled life to a close. 
In the latter part of his life Dr. Engelmann was able to explore considerable portions of his 
adopted country, the mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee, the Lake Superior region, and the 
Rocky Mountains and contiguous plains in Colorado and adjacent territories, and so to study in 
place, and with the particularity which characterized his work, the Cacti, the Coniferw, and other 
groups of plants which he had for many years been specially investigating. “In 1880 he made 
a long journey through the forests of the Pacific States, where he saw for the first time in the state 
of nature plants which he had studied and described more than thirty years before. Dr. Engelmann’s 
associates [so one of them declares] will never forget his courage and industry, his enthusiasm and 
zeal, his abounding good-nature, and his kindness and consideration of every one with whom he 
came in contact.” His associates, and also all his published writings, may testify to his acuteness 
in observation, his indomitable perseverance in investigation, his critical judgment, and a rare open- 
ness of mind which prompted him continually to revise old conclusions in the light of new facts 
or ideas. 
In the consideration of Dr. Engelmann’s botanical work, —to which these lines will naturally 
be devoted, — it should be remembered that his life was that of an eminent and trusted physician, 
in large and general practice, who even in age and failing health was unable, however he would 
have chosen, to refuse professional services to those who claimed them; that he devoted only the 
be 
Pace 
