John Torrey Papers (PP)

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Biographical Note

John Torrey was born in New York City on August 15th, 1796, and as a youth collected and observed the plants of the area. When he was 15 years old, his father was appointed fiscal agent of the State Prison at Greenwich, in what is now Greenwich Village. There he met Amos Eaton, a pioneer in natural science education, who was at the time incarcerated on charges of forgery. Eaton encouraged Torrey's interest in botany, mineralogy and chemistry. In 1815 Torrey began medical studies at the College of Physicians and Surgeons. In 1817, while still a medical student, he prepared "A catalogue of plants, growing spontaneously within thirty miles of the city of New-York" for the newly-formed New York Lyceum of Natural History, of which he was a co-founder. He received his medical degree in 1818 and briefly opened a medical practice in New York, continuing to spend his leisure time with other scientific pursuits, particularly botany and chemistry.

In 1824, the newly-married Torrey accepted a position as professor of chemistry, mineralogy and geology at the United States Military Academy at West Point, where he was also assistant surgeon. That same year he published "A flora of the northern and middle sections of the United States." Three years later, he left West Point for a position as professor of chemistry and botany at the College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City.

As his reputation grew, renowned botanists entrusted their specimens to him for identification. His own investigations extended to the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains on their Western boundary having been furnished with the collections of Dr. Edwin James, botanist of Major Stephen H. Long's 1820 western expedition. As early as 1823, Torrey reported descriptions of some new species from the expedition to the Lyceum of Natural History. He took an early interest in the genus Carex and was asked by Schweinitz to edit his "A monograph of the North American species of Carex."

Growing dissatisfied with the accepted Linnean system of classification, Torrey became one of the first American botanists to apply John Lindley's new "natural system" in a paper entitled "Some account of a collection of plants made during a journey to and from the Rocky Mountains in the summer of 1820, by Edwin P. James, M.D. Assistant Surgeon U.S. Army" in 1826. In 1831, Torrey supervised the publication an American reprint of the first edition of Lindley's "An introduction to the natural system of botany," bringing Lindley's work to a wider American audience, and appended a catalogue of North American genera arranged in accordance with it.

Torrey began perhaps the most important professional relationship of his life in 1832, when he met Asa Gray, a young doctor with a keen interest in botany. They had been exchanging specimens for almost two years, beginning while Gray was still a medical student, before meeting face to face. After a joint collecting trip to the New Jersey pine barrens Torrey engaged the younger man as an assistant and, in many ways, a surrogate son. Their close personal and professional association lasted for the rest of Torrey's life, through their joint work on "A flora of North America," and Gray's appointment as professor of botany at Harvard.

Because of his early interest in the plant life of New York State , Torrey was appointed State Botanist for the newly-created New York Natural History Survey in 1836, which required him to prepare a comprehensive flora of the state. "A flora of the state of New York" was published in 1843 and was the largest single work of its kind to date. In addition to his duties as State Botanist and at the Medical College, Torrey had, in 1830, accepted an appointment as professor of chemistry at Princeton, which he held until 1854.

Despite his many professional engagements, Torrey's work on the "A flora of North America" occupied a prominent role in his life, including identifying and describing the hundreds of plants collected during the government-sponsored surveys for the Pacific Railroad and the Mexican Boundary Survey. Torrey also prepared botanical reports for the expeditions of Stephen Long, Joseph Nicollet, John Frémont, William Emory, Lorenzo Sitgreaves, Howard Stansbury, Randolph Marcy, and Charles Wilkes.

When the United States Mint established an Assay Office in New York in 1854, Torrey was offered the position of assayer based on his skills as a chemist and the recommendation of his close friend Joseph Henry. After some consideration Torrey accepted, and the steady work allowed him to retire from academia and devote his free time solely to botany. He was to hold this position until his death on March 10th, 1873.

Scope and Content

The collection largely consists of incoming and outgoing correspondence pertaining mostly to Torrey's work as a botanist and professor. Much of the scientific correspondence is in regard to identification of plants from the vast interior of the North American continent collected during government sponsored expeditions. Unrelated letters to and from other correspondents, some of which pre-date Torrey's birth, are also in the collection. It is unclear how Torrey came into possession of these letters.

The collection also contains plant lists, botanical notes, and correspondence with Asa Gray, all from John Frémont's expeditions of 1842 and 1843.

Unpublished Torrey manuscripts titled "Florula Princetoniana" and "Calendarium florae for the vicinity of New York" have been cataloged separately and now reside in the Rare Book Room. The collection also contains artwork drawn by Isaac Sprague, D'Jurco V. Knevels, and John Torrey himself, among others; and other drawings Torrey used as a reference for his identification work. The collection's artwork is located in the Mertz Library's Art and Illustration collection, Collection #60. Two artifacts, John Torrey's vasculum and his family coat of arms, are also contained in the collection.

Restrictions

Access restrictions

This collection is open for research with permission from Mertz Library staff.

Copyright

Requests for permission to publish material from the collection should be submitted in writing to the LuEsther T. Mertz Library of the New York Botanical Garden.

Related Material

The New York Botanical Garden Archives

William Baldwin Papers (PP) (1811-1819)

Lewis David von Schweinitz Papers (PP) (1800-1833)

William Henry Leggett Papers (PP) (1862-1883)

Torrey Botanical Society Records (RA) (1844-2013)

The New York Botanical Garden Library

Art and Illustration Collection-(drawings from the Pacific Railroad Reports)

Missouri Botanical Garden Archives

George Engelmann Papers (1831-1914)

Library and Archives of the Gray Herbarium, Harvard University

Asa Gray Papers (1830-1953 (bulk 1830-1888))

Smithsonian Institution Archives

Joseph Henry Collection (1808, 1825-1878, and related papers to circa 1903)

Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Archives

Directors' Correspondence Collection (includes Torrey correspondence from 1824-1871)

Sterling Memorial Library, Yale University

Silliman Family Papers (1717-1977 (bulk 1717-1911))

D. Cady Eaton Papers (1853-1914)

Beineke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University

William Hemsley Emory Papers (1823-1886)

American Philosophical Society Library

John Torrey Papers (1819-1864)

Charles Wilkins Short Correspondence (1813-1867)

C.S. (Constantine Samuel) Rafinesque Papers (1808-1840)

Asa Gray Papers (1838-1887)

Rush Rhees Library, University of Rochester

Chester Dewey Papers (1800-1877)

David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University

John Torrey Papers (1818-1859)

Administrative Information

Preferred Citation

John Torrey Papers (PP), Archives, The New York Botanical Garden.

Acquisition Information

The bulk of the collection was transferred to NYBG from Columbia University when the Torrey herbarium and library were transferred. Additions were incorporated over the years by purchases by Nathaniel Lord Britton and John Hendley Barnhart, and donations from the collection of John J. Crooke. A few items were donated by Raymond Torrey and others letters were removed from specimens in the NYBG Steere Herbarium and incorporated into the collection.

Processing Information

Originally processed by Susan Fraser, NYBG Archivist, October 2000, with grant funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities. (NEH-PA 23141-98). Converted to EAD in August 2006 by Kathleene Konkle under a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH-PA 50678-04). Revised in 2019 by Lenge Hong as part of "Digitizing and Transcribing the John Torrey Papers: Natural Science and Exploration in the 19th Century," funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH-PW 234827-16).

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