Stephen Elliott (botanist)

Life

Stephen Elliott was born in Beaufort, South Carolina, on November 11, 1771. He grew up there, then moved to New Haven, Connecticut, to attend Yale University. He graduated in 1791 as the valedictorian of his class. From Yale, he returned to South Carolina to work the plantation that he had inherited.

He was elected to the legislature in South Carolina in 1793 or 1796 (sources disagree) and served until about 1800. He then left the legislature and devoted himself to the management of his plantation. He was re-elected to the legislature in 1808 and worked to have a bank established by the state. When the bank was founded in 1812, he resigned from the legislature and was appointed president of what was then called the "Bank of the State of South Carolina", a position that he held for the rest of his life.

His leisure was devoted to literature and science, and he cultivated the study of botany with enthusiasm. Elliott was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1808. In 1813 he was instrumental in founding the Literary and Philosophical Society of South Carolina, of which he was president. He gave free lectures on botany, and was for some time editor of the Southern Review. In 1825 he aided in establishing the Medical College of South Carolina, and was elected professor of natural history and botany, which he taught until his death in 1830.

Elliott engaged in a long and active correspondence with many of the botanists of his time, but wrote an especially large number of letters to Henry Muhlenberg of Pennsylvania. The material that Elliott collected on numerous field trips and his intimate knowledge of the southeastern flora was of great value to botanists elsewhere. Elliott's herbarium was one of the largest in America during his lifetime. Its specimens proved invaluable to John Torrey, Asa Gray, and others. The herbarium is preserved at the Charleston Museum.

The US Federal census of 1830 records that both Elliott and his wife had extensive slaveholdings across the South Carolina and Georgia Lowcountry, enslaving 287 people in total.

He died in Charleston, South Carolina March 28, 1830. His son Stephen grew up to become a Protestant Episcopal bishop.