Ferdinand Lindheimer

Vocation

German-American botanist who spent his working life on the American frontier. He is known as the Father of Texas Botany, with over 20 species and one genus bearing his name. Lindheimer collected fifteen hundred species in the south Texas area, over a period of thirteen years. Lindheimer was educated at the Frankfurt Gymnasium, a Berlin preparatory school, the University of Wiesbaden, and the University of Jena. In 1827 he became a teacher at the Bunsen Institute in Frankfurt, where he became an active proponent of governmental reform of Germany. He became one of the Dreissiger refugees who left Germany after participation in the failed Frankfurt Putsch insurrection in 1833. In 1834, Lindheimer arrived in Belleville, Illinois, whence he traveled by boat to New Orleans. Lindheimer and several companions began traveling to Texas, but were diverted to Mexico where he lived and worked for more than a year. Late in 1835 he departed Mexico as the Texas Revolution was beginning and was shipwrecked on the coast near Mobile, Alabama. Lindheimer headed to Texas and arrived at the San Jacinto battlefield the day after the final battle of the Texas Revolution. In 1844 he met Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels, Germany, who was making final arrangements for the settlement of a German colony in Texas, which would be known as New Braunfels, Texas. Lindheimer lived the remainder of his life there. During the late 1830s and early 1840s, Lindheimer collected botanic specimens in Texas, part of this time for Dr. Asa Gray of Harvard University. Lindheimer persuaded Wilhelm Bruckisch of the Silesian Beekeepers Society to bring black Italian bees to Texas for pollination of the fruit trees in the Guadalupe River valley. In 1852, Lindheimer was hired as an editor, and along with Carl Adolph Douai, helped found the German-language newspaper known as the Die Neu-Braunfelser Zeitung. Lindheimer died December 2, 1879 in New Braunfels. Link to Wikipedia biography