William Marriott Canby Sr. (1831–1904) was an American banker, business executive, philanthropist and botanist. He is famous as a leading expert on the flora of Delaware and the "eastern shore" region of Maryland and as an epistolary correspondent with Charles Darwin concerning

insectivorous plant Carnivorous plants are plants that derive some or most of their nutrients from trapping and consuming animals or protozoans, typically insects and other arthropods. Carnivorous plants still generate some of their energy from photosynthesis. Car ...

Biography

After education at the

Friends School Friends schools are institutions that provide an education based on the beliefs and testimonies of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). This article is a list of schools currently or historically associated with the Society of Friends, reg ...

Westtown West Town or Westtown may refer to any of the following places. United Kingdom *West Town, Peterborough in Cambridgeshire *West Town, Hayling Island in Hampshire *West Town, Backwell in North Somerset United States *West Town, Chicago in Illinois ...

and from private tutors, William Marriott Canby conducted several successful businesses in Wilmington, Delaware. He used his business profits to finance botanical expeditions throughout North America. He was one of the founders of the Delaware Western Railroad, which became part of

Baltimore and Ohio Railroad The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad was the first common carrier railroad and the oldest railroad in the United States, with its first section opening in 1830. Merchants from Baltimore, which had benefited to some extent from the construction of ...

Company. He was an active philanthropist in Wilmington. He was the first president of Wilmington's Board of Park Commissioners, served on the Board for over twenty years, and is credited as the person most responsible for creating Wilmington's city parks. He was elected as a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1868. His son Henry Mathews Canby (1871–1937) also served on the Board from 1913 to 1928. William P. Bancroft was a cousin of William Marriott Canby, Sr., and the two worked together on creating parks in Wilmington. From about 1858 to 1893, William M. Canby collected about 30,000 botanical specimens. In 1893 he sold the herbarium collection to the College of Pharmacy of the City of New York. He immediately began collecting more specimens and made a second collection with about 15,000 specimens, donated to the Natural History Society of Delaware.

Family

In the 1800s the Canby family of Philadelphia was a prominent Quaker family and had family connections to the

Biddle family The Biddle family of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania is an Old Philadelphian family descended from English immigrants William Biddle (1630–1712) and Sarah Kempe (1634–1709), who arrived in the Province of New Jersey in 1681. Quakers, they had emig ...

and to the Morris family. Henry Marriott Canby married Edith Dillon Mathews (born 1835 in Zanesville, Ohio) on 15 July 1870. The photographer Marriott Canby Morris (1863–1948) was a nephew of Henry Marriott Canby. The children of William Marriott Canby, Sr. and Edith Canby included William Marriott Canby, Jr. (1874–1937) and Henry Mathews Canby.

Honors

About 1930 the Wilmington City Council renamed Southwest Park as Canby Park in honor of William and Henry Canby. The Wilmington neighborhood Canby Park Estates is named in honor of the Canby family. Wilmington's Rockford Park has a memorial dedicated to William Marriott Canby, Sr.

Selected publications

* (See Augustus Fendler.) * * * 1877. ''Desiderata''. 8 pp. * 1874. ''Darlingtonia Californica, an Insectivorous Plant''. Proc. Am. Assoc. Adv. Science 23²: 64–72. 1874. * 1868. ''Notes on Dionaea muscipula Ellis''. Gardener's Monthly 10:229-232. * 1862. ''Correspondence: Canby (William Marriott) and Engelmann (George)''

Eponyms

The following is a partial list of taxa named in honor of William Marriott Canby. ;

Genera Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nomenclat ...

: * ( Papaveraceae) ''

Canbya ''Canbya'', also known as the pygmy poppies, is a genus of the poppy family Papaveraceae consisting of two species found in the dry parts of western North America. Both species are small, no more than a few centimeters tall, with flowers less tha ...

Parry PARRY was an early example of a chatbot, implemented in 1972 by psychiatrist Kenneth Colby. History PARRY was written in 1972 by psychiatrist Kenneth Colby, then at Stanford University. While ELIZA was a tongue-in-cheek simulation of a Rogeria ...

ex A.Gray ; Species: * ( Acanthaceae) ''

Siphonoglossa ''Justicia'' is a genus of flowering plants in the family Acanthaceae. It is the largest genus within the family, encompassing around 700 species with hundreds more as yet unresolved. They are native to tropical to warm temperate regions of the A ...

canbyi'' ( Greenm.) Hilsenb. * ( Apiaceae) '' Angelica canbyi'' J.M.Coult. & Rose * ( Campanulaceae) '' Dortmanna canbyi'' ( A.Gray) Kuntze * ( Celastraceae) ''

Paxistima ''Paxistima'' is a small genus of shrubs in the family Celastraceae containing two North American species. *''Paxistima canbyi'' (Canby's mountain-lover) is an uncommon shrub native to the Appalachians and surrounding areas in the United State ...

canbyi'' ( A.Gray)Proc. Amer. Acad. Arts 8: 623 1873 as Pachystima Canbyi (IPNI)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Canby, William Marriott 1831 births 1904 deaths 19th-century American botanists 20th-century American botanists Burials at Wilmington and Brandywine Cemetery 19th-century American railroad executives