Gideon Lincecum

Born in 1793 in South Carolina, and self-taught in medicine, botany, and zoology, with lessons from the Choctaw, Gideon Lincecum became a frontier physician practicing in Georgia, Mississippi, and Alabama. In 1848, he came to Texas and settled in Washington County where he made extensive field observations of plants, insects, weather patterns, soils and animal behavior. He also collected specimens from more than 500 species of plants, published in professional journals, and corresponded with eminent scientists, including Charles Darwin, Spencer Baird and Joseph Henry. In these ways, Lincecum left behind a critical record of the Texas landscape before extensive Western settlement.