George Washington Carver was born early in 1864, close to the end of the Civil War and in the midst of the episodes of violent raids around Kansas, Arkansas, and Missouri. His mother was enslaved on a farm in southwestern Missouri, which was far from the major battles of the war but central to the guerrilla-like violence.
When George was still young, he and his mother Mary were kidnapped and taken to Arkansas. Moses Carver, the owner of the farm, comissioned a Union soldier to find them. Mary was not rescued and eventually died, but George was found and brought back to the Carver farm. George never knew his father, who died in a nearby town around the same time of the kidnapping. Moses and Susan Carver essentially raised George as a result.
Moses Carver was a Unionist who ran a frugal and almost entirely self-sustaining farm. His nieces and nephews helped tend to the farm, and once they grew up and left the household, he sought help to compensate for their departure. Moses Carver in turn purchased a slave named Mary. Mary had two sons, Jim and George. Jim was healthy and strong, but George was not. As a child he was often sick, and as a result fell ill often in his adult life. Because he was not strong enough to work all day in the elements, George helped Susan with indoor work, but ultimately spent his time wandering the fields and woods, studying nature. This fascination with animals, plants, and the earth grew with Carver and landed him at Tuskegee’s Agricultural Department.
As a result of his upbringing, George was enthralled with nature and understood how to maintain it and its natural cycles at a young age. This fascination and curiosity served him well as he went on to school. After one year at a school in Missouri, George independently moved to Kansas. Alone, he found jobs to earn his living and also attended school. His knowledge of household chores served him well as he sought a job to earn a living while pursuing his education. This ingenuity and work ethic are the hallmark of his legacy.
Carver is well-known for his inventions and his life journey, but Mark D. Hersey offers a biography of Carver with emphasis on a different shade of his life: an environmentalist. The James B. Duke Library has a copy of this specific perspective on Carver’s life and is available in the General Collection. Click the image below to access more information about the book, and George Washington Carver as a conservationist.
Hersey, Mark D. My Work is That of Conservation : An Environmental Biography of George Washington Carver. N.p.: The University of Georgia Press, 2011. Print.
Chase’s Calendar of Events. 2014 ed. N.p.: McGraw Hill Education, 2014. Print.