Dr. Henry Parker Sartwell, Botanist

Carte-de-visite portrait of Dr. Henry Parker Sartwell (1792-1867), American botanist. Studying botany for almost 50 years, Sartwell devoted his attention to the Carex genus starting in 1846, attempting to amass a collection of every known Carex species in North America. The herbarium he created, containing about 8,000 species, now resides at Hamilton College in New York. Handwritten inscription at the bottom of the image field reads, "Dr. H.P. Sartwell, 1865."


 
From Portraits of Scientists: Increase Lapham's Cartes-de-visites Collection. "...A self-educated engineer and naturalist, Increase Lapham was Wisconsin's first scientist and one of the state's foremost citizens. He wrote the first book published in Wisconsin; made the first accurate map of the state; investigated Wisconsin's effigy mounds, native trees and grasses, climactic patterns, and geology; and helped found many of the schools, colleges and other cultural institutions, including the Wisconsin Historical Society, that still enrich the state today.