The UNC Herbarium seeks more
information (particularly a photographic portrait) of Rev. Lighthipe.
Please email Carol Ann McCormick mccormick@unc.edu
The University of North Carolina Herbarium
(NCU) has catalogued approximately 50 specimens collected by Lewis Henry Lighthipe. Of
those, about 2/3 are from Florida and about 1/3 from New Jersey (particularly
the Pine Barrens).
The Harvard University Herbarium’s database of
botanists lists other herbaria holding Lighthipe’s
material as BKL, E, ILL, MICH, MIN, MO, MSC,
NY, POM, S, TEX, and VT.
It seems that Rev. Lighthipe
was interested many aspects of natural history. Fossils collected by Lighthipe
(specifically Erquelinnesia molaria Hay
– a turtle) in Birmingham, Burlington County, New Jersey are in the
collections of the Philadelphia Academy of Sciences (1).
J.K. Small named Phlox lighthipei in honor of Rev. Lighthipe.
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The following text is from: Barnhart, John Hendley
(1928) Lewis Henry Lighthipe. Torreya
28:13-14.
Lewis Henry Lighthipe
was born at Orange, New Jersey, 24 January 1843. He graduated from Columbia
University in 1863, and from the General Theological Seminary, New York City,
in 1866, receiving his master's degree from Columbia in the same year. He at
once entered the ministry of the Protestant Episcopal church, being ordained
in 1866 by W. H. Odenheimer, bishop of New Jersey.
His clerical career was chiefly in the states of New York and New Jersey, but
from 1894 to 1899 he was located at South Jacksonville, Florida.
Mr. Lighthipe was an
enthusiastic amateur botanist. He became a corresponding member of the Torrey
Botanical Club in 1885, and was elected an active member 8 February 1887. He
was notably faithful in his devotion to the interests of the Club, attending
the meetings with much regularity until the infirmities of advancing age made
it necessary for him to give up the trips from his New Jersey home, and
finally led him to resign. His resignation was accepted 13 January 1920, and
the minutes record the fact that “in recognition of his thirty-four years of
faithful service to the Club, it was voted to transfer his name to the list
of corresponding members.”
He was a charming man and a pleasing speaker,
but so modest and unassuming that his name rarely appeared as a botanical
writer. The only scientific paper with his name as author seems to be one of
a single page, entitled “Notes on the New Jersey flora,” published in the
Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club for January 1886; but his name appears
frequently in the minutes of the Club in connection with brief notes, and at
the meeting of 14 April 1903 he presented a paper on “The flora of the pine
barrens of New Jersey,” of which the abstract (in Torreya) occupies two printed
pages. Many specimens, from New Jersey and Long Island, collected by him are
no in the Local Flora herbarium, and he collected plants also during his
residence in Florida. His personal herbarium of about 7000 specimens was sold
in 1920 to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.
After several years in retirement, Mr. Lighthipe died in his birthplace, Orange, 14 December
1927. His connection with the Torrey Botanical Club, as corresponding member,
active member, and again as corresponding member, thus covered a total period
of more than forty-two years.
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Lewis Henry Lighthipe’s
parents were Lewis Condit Lighthipe (26 May 1815 –
3 April 1900) and Henriette Ingraham
(17 January 1817 – 7 February 1858).
Lewis Condit Lighthipe worked in a hat
forming mill in Orange, Essex County, New Jersey.
Lewis Henry Lighthipe
had several siblings:
Agnes Content Lighthipe (15 April 1846 – 28 January
1903)
Abbie Bennett Lighthipe
(17 September 1849 – 6 January 1915)
William Ingraham Lighthipe
(8 February 1853 – 1 January 1918)
Margaret Lam Lighthipe (20 March 1855 - ?)
James Alfred Lighthipe (20 Dec. 1857 - 10 April
1925)
Lewis Henry Lighthipe
was married to Helen McFarlane, and together they had three children, Marion,
William, and Alice.
Trinity Episcopal Church on Mill Street in Vincentown, was one of Lighthipe’s
postings. “The cornerstone of [Trinity
Episcopal] church was laid on September 27, 1871 by a Bishop Oldenheimer and the church had its first service on June
2, 1872. The Rev. Lewis H. Lighthipe was the first vicar… The parish was officially
organized April 14, 1873. In records
written the day after Easter that year, Rev. Lighthipe
wrote, “At this time, there are twenty-seven families, eighty seven
individuals, eighteen communicants and thirty-one people in Sunday
School.” (2) Lighthipes’
tenure at Trinity was long, but not without controversy.
New Experience for an Old Church (1895
December 24) The New York Times
NEW-BRUNSWICK, N.J., Dec. 23 [1895]. –
The Trinity Episcopal Church at Woodbridge has closed Sunday for the first
time in 144 years. The cause was a
quarrel between the Vestry and the Rev. L.H. Lighthipe,
who had been rector of the church several years. He was asked to resign two weeks ago, and
said he would resign when the parish should pay him his salary, which had not
been paid for a long time. Some of the
property of the church was mortgaged and the pastor was paid, and last week
he went to Jacksonville, Fla., to take charge of a parish. The church was built in 1754.
According to Barnhart, Lighthipe
returned to New Jersey ca. 1899.
Whether he resumed a pastoral post is unclear.
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Partial List of Publications:
Lighthipe, L. H. (1886) Notes on the New Jersey flora. Bulletin
of the Torrey Botanical Club 13(1): 4-5.
Rowlee, W. W. Charles E. Bessey,
L.H. Lighthipe, George V. Nash (1893) Botanical
Notes. Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club 20(2): 68-70.
Berry, Edward W. and L.H. Lighthipe
(1905) Proceedings
of the Club. Torreya 5(5): 93-96.
SOURCES:
1. Spamer, Earle E., Edward Daeschler,
and L. Gay Vosterys-Shapiro (1995 ) A study of fossil vertebrate types in the
Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia:
Taxonomic, systematic, and historical perspectives. Philadelphia: The Academy of Natural Sciences of
Philadelphia Special Publication 16.
2. http://trinityvincentown.org/history.php
