William Hemsley Emory

William Hemsley Emory, around 1870

William Hemsley Emory (born September 7, 1811 in Queen Anne's County , Maryland , † December 1, 1877 in Washington, DC ) was an American military and geodesist .

Life

Map of Texas and the Countries Adjacent , William Hemsley Emory, 1844

Emory graduated from the United States Military Academy in West Point , New York , in 1831 . After four years of military service, he left the US Army to train as a civil engineer , and in 1838 he returned to the military as a surveyor . He earned himself in the context of a border dispute between the United States and the United Kingdom that ended in the Oregon Compromise in 1846 . He was honored in the Mexican-American War and stayed in the newly won US territories as a surveyor . He was part of the commission that established the border with Mexico after the Gadsden purchase , and worked as an exceptionally talented cartographer west of the Mississippi River . In 1849, Hemsley was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences for his achievements . In 1858 he came with the rank of Major in the Indian Territory and to Texas , where he white settlers from the Comanche , Kiowa and Cheyenne in the Wichita Mountains or before the Chickasaw and Choctaw supposed to protect in the Indian Territory.

When the Civil War broke out , Emory held the rank of Lieutenant Colonel of the 3rd Cavalry . In March 1861 he was sent to Fort Smith , Arkansas , to defend the Indian territories there. Under pressure from Confederate troops , he withdrew - without losses - to Fort Leavenworth , Kansas , but this allowed the Confederates to occupy Indian territory and move parts of the Five Civilized Tribes to join them. In March 1862, Emory was promoted to Brigadier General . He served in the Peninsular Campaign under Major General George B. McClellan and did a great job during the Battle of Hanover Court House ( Battle of Hanover , May 27, 1862). In 1863 Emory was transferred to Louisiana and served under Major General Nathaniel Prentiss Banks in the Red River Campaign (1864), where he again distinguished himself in the (lost) Battle of Mansfield . That same year, Emory and his people were transferred to the Shenandoah Valley, where they fought under Major General Philip Sheridan .

After the Civil War, Emory himself was promoted to Major General of the Volunteer Forces in September 1865 . He then switched back to the regular troops, where he commanded various units, before he left the army in July 1876 after 45 years of military service for reasons of age and in the rank of Brigadier General .

His son William H. Emory junior (1846-1917) was a Rear Admiral in the United States Navy .

botany

In the botanical part of the exploration report Report on the United States and Mexican boundary survey, made under the direction of the secretary of the Interior, by William H. Emory from 1859, there are numerous first descriptions of new plant species by John Torrey , George Engelmann and Asa Gray , why William H. Emory as the main author of the book sometimes appears under the abbreviation Emory after the scientific name of these species.

Dedication names

Honorary taxa to Emory are the prairie corn snake ( Pantherophis emoryi ), the bitter ash family Castela emoryi , the oak Quercus emoryi , the cactus family Grusonia emoryi and Bergerocactus emoryi as well as the genus of the figwort family Emorya .

Web links

• William Hemsley Emory in the database of Find a Grave (English)
• Emory, William Hemsley (1811-1887) . In: Oklahoma Historical Society (okhistory.org)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Adm William Hemsley Emory (1846-1917) - Find A Grave Memorial. In: findagrave.com. March 5, 2010, accessed December 3, 2016 . 
2. ↑ Author entry and list of the described plant names for William Hemsley Emory at the IPNI , accessed on November 21, 2017
3. ↑ Lotte Burkhardt: Directory of eponymous plant names . Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-946292-10-4 , doi: 10.3372 / epolist2016