Charles Sprague Sargent

Artist Info

Charles Sprague SargentBrookline, Massachusetts, 1841 - 1927, Boston

Sargent, Charles Sprague (24 Apr. 1841-22 Mar. 1927), botanist and administrator, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Ignatius Sargent, a distinguished merchant in the East India trade, and Henrietta Gray. Of a well-to-do family background (he was third cousin to the artist John Singer Sargent), Charles Sprague Sargent was privately educated in Boston (mostly at Epes Sargent Dixwell's school) and graduated from Harvard University in 1862, having studied classics. His academic career was undistinguished; he completed his Harvard education eighty-eighth in a class of ninety. In 1863 he enlisted in the army as an aide-de-camp, earning the rank of second lieutenant on the staff of the Department of the Gulf. Following discharge from the service in August 1865, with the rank of brevet major, Sargent left for a three-year tour of Europe and returned in 1868.

Shortly after returning to the United States Sargent received and accepted an offer of appointment to the directorship of the Harvard Botanical Garden and a professorship of horticulture, positions that he held between 1872 and 1873. On 24 November 1873 he took on the directorship of Harvard's newly established Arnold Arboretum, and in 1879 he assumed the official title of Arnold Professor of Arboriculture. Giving up the position only when he fell ill in 1927, Sargent was best known as a guiding force of the arboretum, helping to make it one of the leading institutions in American botanical science, and a driving force in the establishment of forestry research and in the establishment of national parks and forests.

Sargent had not had much early formal training in the botanical sciences, though he had an interest in horticulture and dendrology, which had been fashionable pastimes for well-to-do Bostonians. It was only after he became director of the Arnold Arboretum that he became an authority in arboriculture and dendrology, especially of the native trees of North America. With his growing knowledge of arboriculture and with the help of generous endowments that he secured from his numerous wealthy friends and his own personal finances Sargent built up the arboretum from its original 150 acres of "worn-out farm" to 250 acres of a sprawling world-class facility. Sargent designed the arboretum with the help of noted landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, who was then planning the Boston park system. In addition to building the garden, Sargent contributed personal resources to the Arnold herbarium and especially to the Arnold library, which began from his personal collection that he had donated.

In addition to building and directing the Arnold Arboretum, Sargent was a moving force behind forestry research and conservation, then vitally important countrywide. In 1879 he embarked on a government-sponsored program to survey national forests. The project took some five years and earned Sargent a reputation in forestry research. His efforts were published as part of the Tenth Census of 1890. This expertise later aided him in his conservation efforts. Between 1882 and 1883 he was a member of the group that surveyed the glaciers of Montana as part of the Northern Pacific Transcontinental Survey; in 1884 he served as chair of a committee to investigate policy on the Adirondack forests of New York. He strongly supported the creation of national parks and forests and was instrumental in helping to preserve millions of acres of native forests. His work also helped to create the Bureau of Forestry, which was appended to the U.S. Department of Agriculture; as a result in 1896 he became chair of a committee appointed by the National Academy of Sciences to set policy on native forests.

Sargent's scientific contributions were primarily composed of descriptive botanical studies, especially on the trees of North America. Between 1891 and 1902 he produced the massive Silva of North America, illustrated with 740 plates in fourteen quarto volumes. Revised in 1922, the work became the authoritative source on North American trees. In 1905 he completed his Manual of North American Trees. He additionally edited the Journal of the Arnold Arboretum and the Garden and Forest, a popular journal that was instrumental in raising consciousness about forestry conservation.

In pursuit of his botanical studies, Sargent traveled widely to collect specimens that could be grown in New England and also took note of landscape designs, gardens, and horticultural practices around the world. In 1894 he published Forest Flora of Japan. Sargent shared much of his own knowledge and botanical specimens with noted international establishments, like those at Kew Gardens, Edinburgh, and Paris, and returned favors by hosting noted botanists at his home estate. Many of the trees and plants gracing North American sites were species introduced with the help of Sargent. After 1900 Sargent's own research centered on study of the complex genus Crataegus (hawthorne); he described more than 700 species, some of which he introduced into cultivation.

Noted honors given to Sargent included fellowship to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, membership in the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and foreign member of the Linnaean Society of London, in addition to other international organization memberships. He also received several awards from noted horticultural societies for his work in introducing and cultivating new varieties.

In 1873 Sargent had married Mary Allen Robeson (the daughter of Andrew Robeson), a charming Boston socialite. The Sargents had five children. By contemporary accounts Sargent appears to have been a quiet and somewhat conservative individual who was methodical in his work habits but pursued his interests with enthusiasm. He died at his home estate of "Holm Lea" in Brookline, Massachusetts, which was a spectacular example of the sort of arboreal landscape that he had helped create.

Bibliography

Sargent's correspondence and other materials are located at the Arnold Arboretum Libraries and the University Archives at Harvard University. The most comprehensive historical treatment of Sargent and the Arnold Arboretum is S. B. Sutton, Charles Sprague Sargent and the Arnold Arboretum (1970). See also William Trelease, "Charles Sprague Sargent," Biographical Memoirs (National Academy of Sciences) 12-13 (1929-1930): 247-70; and Alfred Rehder, "Charles Sprague Sargent," Journal of the Arnold Arboretum 8 (1927): 68-86. See also the entry on Sargent in Harry Baker Humphrey, Makers of North American Botany (1961). Obituaries appear in Journal of Forestry 25 (1927): 513-14, and Proceedings of the Linnaean Society of London 119 (1926-1927): 96-98.

Vassiliki Betty Smocovitis

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Citation:

Vassiliki Betty Smocovitis. "Sargent, Charles Sprague";

http://www.anb.org/articles/13/13-01456.html;

American National Biography Online Feb. 2000.

Access Date: Tue Aug 06 2013 10:57:41 GMT-0400 (Eastern Standard Time)

Charles Sprague Sargent (1841-1927) was the first

director of the Arnold Arboretum, and served the

institution for over 54 years. Born to a prominent

Boston merchant family, his unique vision,

horticultural knowledge, publications, commitment