Francis Blackwell Forbes

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Francis Blackwell Forbes
BornAugust 11, 1839
Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
EducationColumbia Grammar & Preparatory School
OccupationBotanist
Spouse
Isabel Clark
​
​
(m. 1867)​
Children5
Parent(s)John Murray Forbes
Anne Howell
RelativesJohn Murray Forbes (cousin)
John Kerry (great-grandson)

Francis Blackwell Forbes (August 11, 1839 – May 2, 1908) was an American botanist with expertise in Chinese

seed-producing plants
who also worked as a merchant and opium trader in Asia.

Early life

Francis Blackwell Forbes was born in New York on August 11, 1839, one of three children of the Reverend John Murray Forbes,

opium trade and in the Old China Trade during the First and Second Opium Wars
, amassing a large fortune.

Forbes was educated at Columbia Grammar & Preparatory School in New York.

Career

After Columbia, Forbes went to China and became a partner in

Russell & Co., a firm that was dominant in Far Eastern commerce in the 19th century.[3] He was also associated with the Shanghai Steam Navigation Company, which had a fleet of flat-bottomed steamers on the Yangtze River, and he was for many years the Swedish and Norwegian Consul-General at Shanghai.[1][3] In recognition of the latter undertaking, he was made a Knight Commander of the Swedish Royal Order of Wasa.[3]
Apart from a two-year stay in Europe in 1875–76, Forbes lived in China from 1857 to 1882.

In 1882, Forbes moved to England, where he was managing director of the Serrell Automatic Silk Reeling Company, which failed in 1894. He then retired to Boston.

Botany

Due in part to his family's deep involvement with the opium trade, Forbes developed a lifelong interest in the

Hongkong. His coauthor was the British botanist William Hemsley (who is said to have done the bulk of the work on the later stages of the project, owing to Forbes's time being limited by outside business commitments), and the illustrations were by Matilda Smith.[3] Forbes and Hemsley were the first to describe a number of Chinese species in this work. It met with lavish praise from such contemporary experts on Asian flora as Karl Maximovich and Ferdinand von Richthofen.[4]

This monumental project was inaugurated by

Linnean Society.[4] The first parts were published in 1886, and copies were freely circulated among English residents in China, some of whom—such as Augustine Henry—contributed specimens that were written up in later volumes.[4] Subsequent parts came out in the journal in the years 1887–1905.[3] By the time the last volumes were published, the collection of Chinese plant species in Kew Gardens had more than quadrupled, topping 12,000 species.[4]

Henry Fletcher Hance named the species Euonymus forbesii after Forbes.[5]

Personal life

On May 8, 1867, Forbes married Isabel Clark (ca. 1846–1931), the daughter of William Mather Clark, a banker, and Isabella Staples. They had five children: Francis, William, James, Evelyn and Isobel.[1]

Forbes died in

Boston, Massachusetts
, on May 2, 1908, survived by his wife, who died in 1931.

Legacy

Forbes donated his

spermatophytes—to the British Natural History Museum around 1904, a gift that the museum termed "a collection of special importance".[6] The Massachusetts Historical Society (MHS) holds documents pertaining to his plant-collecting activities, including botanical notebooks for the years 1869–1880s. Papers relating to his commercial activities are held by the MHS as well as by the Baker Library at Harvard Business School.[5]

The standard author abbreviation F.B.Forbes is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.[7]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e "Forbes Family Papers" . Massachusetts Historical Society website.
  2. ^ Reitwiesner, William Addams. "The Ancestors of Senator John Forbes Kerry (b. 1943)". Wargs.com, accessed 8-20-2015.
  3. ^ a b c d e f "Obituary Notices". Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London, 1909, pp. 38–39.
  4. ^ a b c d e Thiselton-Dyer, William Turner. "Historical Note". Journal of the Linnean Society, vol. 36, 1903–05, p. v.
  5. ^ a b "Forbes, Francis Blackwell (1839-1908)". JSTOR Global Plants website.
  6. ^ Britten, James, ed. Journal of Botany, British and Foreign, vol. 43. London: West, Newman, 1905, p. 323.
  7. ^ International Plant Names Index.  F.B.Forbes.
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