 |
Re-imaging Joseph N. Nicollet's Mapmaking Expeditions |
|
Charles Andreas Geyer Charles (originally Karl) Andreas Geyer (1809-1853) was born in Dresden, Gemany, and was the botanist on the 1838 and 1839 expeditions of J. N. Nicollet. He met Nicollet originally in 1835 but declined the opportunity to accompany him on an 1836 trip to the headwaters of the Mississippi. Geyer’s Botany Journal of 1838, housed in the Smithsonian Institution Archives, provides one of the best semi-quantitative descriptions of southern Minnesota and was certainly the source for much of the information in Nicollet’s The Rise and Fall of the Vegetation. Geyer collected over 400 plants in 1838 but unfortunately most of these were lost in transit from Fort Snelling to St. Louis and only 77 of the specimens he collected in 1838-1839 are thought to have made it to the John Torrey of the New York Botanical garden for cataloging and inclusion in the text that accompanied Nicollet’s map. Geyer went on to further explorations in the western U.S. See the 1838 Geyer Botany Journal See the 1838 Geyer Botany Journal Page-Flipping Animation On-line article on Charles Geyer originally published in Minnesota Plant Press in 1989: <http://www.stolaf.edu/depts/biology/mnps/papers/heinz198983.html>. On-line transcription of unfinished manuscript by Nicollet, originally published in MN Plant Press in 1999: Virtual Herbarium includes over 20 images of herbarium specimens (dried, pressed plants) collected by Geyer: |