Elizabeth G. Britton and Carl Warnstorf letters to Edwin Faxon

Edwin Faxon was born in Abington, Massachusetts on September 16, 1823 to Elisha and Hannah Faxon. He retired as the head of his father’s leather business at the age of 58 and began to explore New England, collecting plants in the White Mountains with Cyrus G. Pringle. Faxon sent his collection of sphagna to Dr. Carl Warnstorf in Germany in 1889, who used the specimens to revise his Contributions to the Knowledge of North American Sphagna. Faxon then translated the work from German to English. In 1896 he published, with Daniel Cady Eaton, Sphagna Boreali-Americana Exsiccata, a collection of 172 specimens. He died in Willoughby, Vermont on June 12, 1898.

Elizabeth Britton was an American bryologist. She, along with her husband Nathaniel Lord Britton, was one of the Torrey Botanical Club members who led the fundraising efforts for the creation of the New York Botanical Garden. She also found the Sullivant Moss Society, later called the American Bryological and Lichenological Society.

Carl Warnstorf was a German bryologist who published Contributions to the Knowledge of North American Sphagna in four issues of the Botanical Gazette in 1890.

Sources:

Kennedy, George G. 1900. Edwin Faxon. Rhodora. 2(18):107-11.