Chester County PA Archives Biographies.....Dr. William BALDWIN, 1778-
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Sandra Ferguson [ferg@ntelos.net]


from Futhey and Cope's History of Chester County (1881)

DR. WILLIAM BALDWIN, son of Thomas Baldwin, a respectable member 
of the Society of Freinds, and an approved minister in that 
society, was born in Newlin township, this county, March 29, 
1778. He received no other than the common English education 
afforded by the country schools of that day, but he evinced at 
an early age an eager desire for knowledge, and as one of the 
readiest models of gratifying that desire became a teacher of 
a country school in the vicinity of his birthplace. After some 
time spent in that arduous vocation he turned his attention to 
the profession of medicine. He accordingly became a the pupil of 
Dr. William A. Toss, then a popular practitioner of medicine in 
Downingtown, Pa. While a resident there he became acquainted with 
Dr. Moses Marshall, --who was a scholar and botanist, and had 
materially assisted his uncle, Humphry Marshall, both in the 
establishment of his botanical garden at Marshallton and in the 
preparation of his work on American forest-trees and shrubs, -- 
which first awakened in young Baldwin a taste for the study of 
plants, and led him to become a sagacious and enthusiastic botanist. 
While waiting for the means to obtain a diploma he made a voyage to 
China as surgeon of a merchant-ship, and on his return received the 
degree of Doctor of Medicine.
    Being thus inaugurated in the profession, he soon after married 
and took up his residence in Wilmington, Del., where his researches 
in the vegetable kingdom attracted the notice of Rev. Dr. Muhlenberg, 
of Lancaster, Pa.,and opened the way for an instructive and 
delightful correspondence with that eminent botanist.
    Dr. Baldwin's health was always frail. A predisposition to 
pulmonary consumption pervaded all his father's family, and finally 
swept away every member of it. In the autumn  of 1811 the doctor was 
induced to seek a refuge from our Northern winters in the State of 
Georgia. During the war of 1812-15 he was appointed a surgeon in 
the United States Navy, and was stationed chiefly at the seaports 
of Savannah and St. Mary's. All his leisure time was devoted to the 
exploration of the botany of that region and in contributing to the 
valuable "Southern Flora" of the accomplished Stephen Elliott. A 
genus of plants belonging to the Southern Compositae was named 
Baldwinia by Mr. Nuall, --" as a just tribute for the talents and 
energy of William Baldwin, M.D., a gentleman whose botanical zeal 
and knowledge have rarely been excelled in America." His researches 
were industriously pushed in the wildreness among the Southern 
Indians, and extended into East Florida as far as St. Augustine.
          Dr. Baldwin's reputation as a botanist induced the 
government, in 1817, to apppoint him to accompany the commissioners 
to Buenos Aires and other South American ports, to ascertain the 
conditions and prospects of the Spanish colonists. He went as surgeon 
of the ship "Congress", and the prominent incidental object of his 
appointment was to investigate the vegetable productions of the 
places which might be visited. In the preformance of this collateral 
duty, notwithstanding the feeble state of his health, he was most 
assiduous and eminently successful.
      On his return from South America, he was selected to accompany, 
as surgeon and botanist, Maj. Long's expedition up the Missouri River.



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