Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Everhart, Benjamin Matlack

EVERHART, Benjamin Matlack, botanist, b. near West Chester, Pa., 24 April, 1818. His father, William Everhart, the son of a Revolutionary soldier, was a merchant, and a member of congress in 1853-'5. Benjamin was educated in private schools in West Chester, and spent his early life in mercantile business there and in Charleston, S. C. From boyhood he was an ardent student of botany, and since retiring from business in 1867 he has devoted himself almost entirely to that science, particularly to cryptogamic botany. In connection with J. B. Ellis, of New Jersey, he has been active in issuing yearly fifty volumes, called “The Century of North American Fungi,” each volume describing 100 species. At the same time, with W. A. Kellerman, of Kansas, they are publishing the “Journal of Mycology.” He is a specialist of deserved repute in his science, has discovered many new fungi, and several such plants have been named for him by his fellow-scientists. — His brother, James Bowen, author, b. near West Chester, Pa., 26 July, 1821, was graduated at Princeton in 1842, and studied law in West Chester, Philadelphia, and at the Harvard law-school. After practising law in West Chester for a few years, he travelled extensively in Europe and the east, and then devoted himself to literature. He was elected to the state senate in 1876, and was re-elected in 1880, but resigned in 1883, having been chosen as a Republican to congress, where he served in 1883-'7, and then retired to private life. His writings, which are marked by terseness of style, include “Miscellanies,” in prose (West Chester, Pa,, 1862); a volume of short poems (Philadelphia, 1868); and “The Fox Chase,” a poem (Philadelphia, 1875).