Lewis David von Schweinitz papers

Lewis David von Schweinitz (1780-1834) is commonly recognized as a founder of American mycology. Born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania 13 February 1780, his heritage was Silesian, and he was educated by the Moravian Brethren. In his eighteenth year he traveled to Germany with his family where he entered a theological seminary. Upon graduation he became a teacher in the Moravian academy of Niesky, Silesia and was ordained deacon in 1808. In 1812 he returned to the United States and assumed a position as a church administrator in Salem, North Carolina. His authority as a mycologist is based in part on the extensive herbarium of fungi and plants collected in North Carolina and in Pennsylvania where he finally settled.

Though his clerical vocation was his life’s work, von Schweinitz developed a parallel career in botany and mycology. He published seminal papers in these subjects and collaborated with John Torrey, Johannes Baptista von Albertini, and Prince Maximillian II of Weid, among many others. He collected fungi in the eastern states and exchanged specimens with American and European botanists. His Synopsis Fungorum Carolinae Superioris (1822) and Synopsis Fungorum in America Borealis (1832) are landmark studies in the history of mycology through which he was recognized as the foremost authority on cryptogamia of his time. Both William Farlow and William Trelease characterized von Schweinitz as ‘the first American mycologist.’

His work consisted of extensive catalogues and systematic descriptions of fungi, mosses, ferns, lichens, and flowering plants, published in The American Journal of Science, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society , and other notable scientific journals of the time. In his 1832 Synopsis alone he described over 3000 species of fungi, more than half of which were species new to science. He was also an accomplished illustrator and created watercolor prints and drawings of botanical subjects that supplemented his descriptive work. Lewis David von Schweinitz died in 1834 with an unfinished work in progress. His personal herbarium of nearly 23,000 specimens was bequeathed to the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia.