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Neligh man's plant samples prove historic
NELIGH, Neb. (AP)--For more than a century, 171 plant specimens that William Meredith Darlington--a Northeast Nebraska farmer and civic leader--collected have been resting in a farmhouse attic and a museum cupboard.
Darlington, when he was 20 years old, collected the specimens in Madison County during the summer and fall of 1898, then pressed and glued the plants onto separate sheets of paper.
During a recent inventory of Antelope County Museum artifacts, Levern Hauptmann discovered Darlington's plant specimens in the bottom of a cupboard.
The well-preserved plants had been donated to the museum by Shirley Tingle in 1983. Tingle had, at that time, purchased Darlington's farm east of Neligh and found the mounted plant samples in the farmhouse attic.
Hauptmann contacted Dr. Robert Kaul, professor emeritus of biological sciences at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, who also serves as curator of the Bessey Herbarium at the Nebraska State Museum in Lincoln.
Kaul traveled to Neligh recently and examined the collection. He said Darlington's plant samples are very unusual and that the herbarium has no examples in its collection from Madison County's 1898 time period.
He also said that seven of the specimens could be considered rare.
But the most unusual aspect of the plants simply is that they have survived for this long. Kaul noted that insects have not destroyed the plants and many roots and seeds remain intact.
It's possible that their undisturbed state in the covered wooden box accounts for their preservation.
William Darlington's love of nature inspired the theme of his graduation oration, "Beauty in Nature." Darlington graduated from Norfolk High School in 1899 at age 21. His oration published in the class yearbook declared, "The glory of the Plains is in their luxuriant covering of grasses."
After a year of study at the University of Nebraska, Darlington returned to Norfolk and worked as a postman for five years. In1904, he married Mable Whitla of Battle Creek.
In 1917, Darlington moved his family to the farm east of Neligh where he and his wife raised their six children and operated a dairy. During World War II, Darlington switched to raising beef cattle, hogs and chickens.
His wife died in 1938, and Darlington married Agatha Carstensen of Neligh in 1943. He continued farming until 1958, devoting his remaining years to caring for his lawn, flowers, trees and shrubs. He died in 1969 at age 91.
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