George Washington Carver

A Kansas Portrait

One of the world's most important scientists, George Washington Carver, spent his formative years in Kansas.

Born the son of slaves around 1864, Carver and his mother were purchased by a Missouri farm couple named Carver. Opposed to slavery, the Carvers gave Mary her freedom and allowed her to take their last name. While George was still a baby, his mother was kidnapped by Confederate raiders and never seen again.

After living with the Carvers for many year, George came to Kansas around the age of 13, attending school in Fort Scott while supporting himself doing laundry at a local hotel. Three years later he moved on to railroading and ranching jobs, living in several small southeastern Kansas towns as well as New Mexico for a brief time. Interested in many aspects of nature, Carver examined and sketched plants and animals in all the places he lived, including the Kansas towns of Paola, Olathe, and Spring Hill.

While living in Olathe, Carver became acquainted with ex-slaves Ben and Lucy Seymour. He attended school, worked in a local barbershop, and helped Lucy with her laundry business. Carver came to Minneapolis, Kansas, with the Seymours when they moved there in the summer of 1880. He was 16 years old.

Carver attended high school in Minneapolis and was accepted into Highland Presbyterian College in northeastern Kansas. He was rejected upon his arrival at the school when officials discovered he was black. Discouraged, Carver then homesteaded in western Ness County near the town of Beeler. He farmed there for a couple of years, observing and making sketches of the local flora and fauna. Friends began to refer to him as the "Plant Doctor."

By 1888 Carver's desires to attended an institution of higher learning took him outside Kansas. He enrolled at Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa and later transferred to the state agricultural college (Iowa State University) at Ames. He became the first African American on the faculty at the latter institution.

Carver was working in the botany department at Iowa State when Booker T. Washington asked him to sign on at Tuskegee Institute. Carver moved to Alabama in 1896 to lead the Black college's agriculture department. For almost 50 years he remained at Tuskegee, teaching and pursuing his scientific studies. His work included finding over 300 uses for the peanut. Among Carver's many inventions were a way of turning soybeans into plastic, wood shavings into synthetic marble, and cotton into paving blocks. He also disseminated his extensive agricultural research to farmers through conferences and demonstrations.

When he died on January 5, 1943, Carver was widely recognized for his intelligence, humility, and inventiveness. President Franklin D. Roosevelt called him one of the world's most significant scientists.