J. Hale
-
Name
Josiah Hale
-
Dates
1791 - 1856
-
Specialities
Algae, Spermatophytes
-
Roles
Collector, Determiner
-
Movement Details
United States of America, Louisiana
-
Notes
Collector Notes: Louisiana: NY
-----------------------
FROM Jstor (http://plants.jstor.org/person/bm000336771), consulted 10 Sep 2014:
Hale, Josiah (c. 1791-1856)
source of this information: Herbarium, Natural History Museum (BM)
Contributor
Natural History Museum (BM)
First name(s)
Josiah
Last name
Hale
Initials
J.
Life Dates
c. 1791-1856
Specification
Plant collector
Organisation(s)
GH, KSC, MO, NO, NY, US
Countries
North American region: United States
Associate(s)
Durand, Elias Magloire (Elie) (1794-1873) (specimens to)
Gray, Asa (1810-1888) (specimens to)
Rafinesque, Constantine Samuel (1783-1840) (tutor)
Riddell, John Leonard (1807-1865) (specimens to)
Torrey, John (1796-1873) (specimens to)
Biography
American physician and botanist who collected plants in Louisiana. Josiah Hale was born in Franklin County, Virginia, and moved with his family to Harrodsburg, Kentucky, as a teenager. He went on to receive the MD degree at Transylvania College in Lexington, Kentucky, in 1822. Here he was taught by C.S. Rafinesque (1783-1840), the professor of natural history and botany, who inspired Hale's interest in plants.
Hale initially set up practice as a physician in Port Gibson, Mississippi, moving on to the town of Alexandria in 1828. He collected plants during this period, but did not produce any written accounts of the Louisiana flora. Having made a great fortune from his work, Hale retired from practice in 1834 in order to devote all his time to botany. From this point forward he dispatched considerable consignments to botanists such as Elias Durand of Philadelphia (whom he met in Philadelphia in 1837) and John Torrey and Asa Gray. The latter mention him in their Flora of North America, citing him as a "zealous botanist, who has favored us with extensive collections and important observations". The genus Halea Torr. & A.Gray was dedicated to him.
Hale married the widow Mrs Martha Crain in 1838, with whom he had two daughters. A severe blow came to the family when Hale lost $100,000 in a financial crash in about 1845. For the next four years Hale worked as a court clerk to get his finances back on track, and then returned to medicine, being elected the first president of the Louisiana State Medical Society. He moved to New Orleans in 1850, where he worked as a physician and spent his spare time continuing to study natural history, in particular striking up an alliance with John L. Riddell (1807-1865), author of Catalogus Florae Ludovicianae (1852). Hale, meanwhile, published a "Report on the Medical Botany of the State of Louisiana" in the New Orleans Medical & Surgical Journal of 1852. The following year, Hale, Riddell and 25 others founded the New Orleans Academy of Sciences, of which Hale was the first president. He remained in New Orleans for five years, leaving in 1855 to practise in Canton, Mississippi. After falling ill with heart disease shortly after the move, however, he returned to New Orleans, but died in July 1856.
Hale's collections in the herbarium of John Riddell were acquired by Dr Charles Mohr of Mobile in 1886. These are now in the United States National Herbarium. About a hundred sheets credited to Hale in the New Orleans Academy of Sciences were deposited at Tulane University, New Orleans.
Sources:
J.H. Barnhart, 1965, Biographical Notes Upon Botanists, 2: 112
J. Ewan, 1977, "Josiah Hale, M.D., Louisiana botanist, Rafinesque's pupil", Journal of the Society for the Bibliography of Natural History.
see also: http://www.herbarium.unc.edu/Collectors/Hale_Josiah.htm -
Collections