Kansas.com, KS
07-11-06
Carver homesteaded, started research in Kansas
George Washington Carver became one of the most prominent Americans of
the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
But the years that most shaped him were those he spent growing up in Kansas
and Missouri, where he was born.
His father died before he was born. And while he was an infant in 1864, the boy
and his mother were kidnapped by Confederate raiders. She was killed.
In 1877, Carver moved to Fort Scott to attend school. He supported himself by
doing laundry. But two years later,at age 14, he left the community after seeing a
black man lynched.
He moved to Minneapolis, Kan., where he attended high school. In 1885, he
applied to a Presbyterian college in Highland and was accepted, but then was
refused admission when school officials discovered he was black.
Carver moved to Ness County, where he homesteaded a claim near Beeler and
built a 114-foot sod house. In his spare time, he made sketches of the plants and
animals of Kansas -- reflecting a fascination for nature he'd had since childhood.
As his interest grew, he was nicknamed the "Plant Doctor."
He earned his master's degree in botany from Iowa State University before
accepting a position at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, where he headed the
Tuskegee Experiment Station.
It was there he began research on the peanut as well as other plants, looking for
crops to plant on land depleted from growing cotton for decades. He discovered
more than 300 products that could be made from the peanut, including coffee,
paper and milk.