THE BRYOLOGIST. 
Vol. VIII. January, 1905. No. 1. 
WILLIAM STARLING SULLIVANT. 
January 15, 1803— April 30, 1873. 
A Biographical Sketch, adapted from that of Asa Gray, as given in the Supplement of 
the leones Muscorum, 1874. 
Annie Morrill Smith. 
It is only fitting that the first place in this number of The Bryologist 
should be given to a sketch of the life of the one for whom our Chapter is 
named, William Starling Sullivant. He was born at the little village of 
Franklinton, then a frontier settlement in the midst of the primitive forest, 
near the site of the present city of Columbus, Ohio. His father, a Virgin- 
ian, and a man of marked character, was appointed by the government to 
survey the lands of that district of the “Northwest Territory” which 
became the central part of the now populous State of Ohio: and he early 
purchased a large tract of land, bordering on the Scioto River, near by, if 
not including, the locality which afterwards was fixed upon for the State 
Capitol. William was his oldest son. He received the rudiments of his 
classical education at the Ohio University at Athens, upon the opening of 
that institution, after a term in a Kentucky school; was transferred to Yale 
College where he was graduated in 1823. His father died that year and his 
services were demanded by the family to care for the estate, which was 
mainly in lands, mills, etc. To qualify for this he became a surveyor and 
practical engineer and took an active part in business till the latter part of 
his life. Mr. Sullivant was thrice married; his first wife was Jane Marshall, 
of Kentucky. She died within a year after marriage. His second was Eliza 
G. Wheeler, a lady of rare accomplishments, a zealous and acute bryologist, 
her husband’s efficient associate in all his scientific work until her death of 
cholera, in 1850 or 1851. Her botanical services are commemorated in Hyfi- 
num Sullivantce of Schimper, a moss then new to Ohio. His third wife, 
Caroline E. Sutton, survived him as well as children, grandchildren and 
great-grandchildren, all to inherit a stainless and honored name and to 
cherish a noble memory. 
Mr. Sullivant was nearly thirty years old and already married, with his 
residence established in a suburban home surrounded by a rich flora, before 
his taste for such studies developed, He collected and carefully studied the 
plants of central Ohio, and made neat sketches of the minute parts of many 
of them, especially grasses and sedges, and began his correspondence with 
the leading botanists of the country, and in 1840 published “A Catalogue of 
Plants, Native or Naturalized, in the Vicinity of Columbus, Ohio,” of sixty- 
three pages, to which he added a few pages of valuable notes. His only 
other publication in phanogamous botany is a short article on three new 
The November Bryologist was issued November 1st, 1904. 
