Frank Conkling Seymour list of Martha's Vineyard plants

Frank Conkling Seymour was born in July 21, 1895, the only son of botanist and mycologist Arthur Bliss Seymour and his wife Anna Julia Seymour (née Conkling). He grew up in Waverley and attended Belmont High School before entering Harvard in 1912. His work earned him multiple scholarships for academic excellence and he received his A.B. in 1916. Seymour went on to become a minister and married Marion Eunice Jones in 1921. The couple lived in North Amherst until Marion’s death in 1934, at which point Seymour resigned from the North Congregational Church and moved to Wisconsin.

Seymour married Irene Fluery Lerch in 1946; the couple had two children, Catherine and Robert. He devoted much of his free time to botany and eventually moved back to New England, where he worked as curator of the Pringle Herbarium at the University of Vermont from 1967 to 1973. Between 1968 and 1976, Seymour made several collecting trips to Nicaragua. Seymour spent his later life in Gainesville, Florida, where he continued his research at the University herbarium. He also maintained an affiliation with Missouri Botanical Garden as a research associate. Seymour died in Massachusetts on January 15, 1985.

Sources

Harvard Freshman Red Book. Cambridge (MA): Caustic-Claflin Co.; 1916.

Pringle Herbarium. Profiles of Important Collections. Burlington (VT): University of Vermont, Department of Plant Biology; [accessed 2017 Apr 4]. www.uvm.edu/~plantbio/pringle/

Scholarships for the Current Academic Year. Harvard Alumni Bulletin. 16: 243-251; 1914.

Seymour FC. 1980. A check list of the vascular plants of Nicaragua: Based largely on collections in Nicaragua made by the author and companions, 1968-1976. Plainfield (NJ): H.N. and A.L. Moldenke.