Charles Clemons Deam

Cornelius Amory Pugsley Silver Medal Award, 1939

 

Charles Clemons Deam (1865-1953) received the Pugsley Silver Medal "for far-reaching contributions to Indiana's conservation program through his services as a forester and botanist." He was a dominant figure in a golden age of botanical exploration in Indiana. Dean exemplified what can be achieved with determination, dedication, discipline, and commitment.

 

Charlie Deam was born on a farm near Bluffton, Indiana, in 1865. It was a hard-working, no-nonsense, boyhood dominated by chores needed to keep the farm viable. He recalled, "life was mostly work with an occasional day off because of a squirrel hunting desire that my father possessed." He learned at an early age all about corn, wheat, apples, cherries, pears, herbal remedies, garden plants, seeds, and weed pests. But at the same time, he loved to read, and read anything he could get his hands on.

 

In 1881, the family was subjected to typhoid fever. It killed his mother, but although the doctors gave up on Charlie living, he survived. In 1882, a high school opened in Bluffton, and Charlie walked the five miles to and from it each day, graduating in 1884. He taught at a local county school for a year, saved some money and borrowed more, using it to enroll at DePauw University in 1885. After two years, "I ran out of money, so I quit - besides I already knew more than they could teach me," and he walked most of the 115 miles back to Bluffton.

 

After trying a variety of jobs, he focused on drugstores, working in several of them, where he learned the business before ultimately purchasing his own in 1891 in Bluffton. By putting into practice ideas accumulated when working for others, Charlie made his store a success from the start. However, he was a driven workaholic and the success came at the expense of his health. The pressure of running the drugstore set the stage for an incredible chain of events.

 

One wintry evening just before Christmas in 1892, when his clerks were busy and a perfume salesman was hounding Charlie for attention, a lady asked to look at wallpaper samples. Wishing to oblige her, Charlie got the sample books and stood by to take her order while the salesman and more customers waited. After a while the lady sheepishly confessed that she was only killing time waiting for her husband. Charlie exploded, screaming opinions about such a waste of his time. The woman fled nearly in tears. The salesman tried to calm Charlie down. Charlie ran him out of the store in front of stunned customers. Later the salesman returned and told Charlie, "Young man, I can tell you that you are just starting in a business and are working yourself to death. The condition you're in, you'll run all your customers away. You can do as you please, but I advise you to get out in the open. Get some other interests."

 

Charlie took this advice with the same energy that he did everything. His work with medicines and drugs, and his farm background, led to a natural interest in plants. He and his new wife, Stella, began taking trips into the woods to collect and identify plants. Between 1893 and 1909, Charlie Deam evolved from Bluffton druggist to self-taught scientist of increasing renown. "I didn't know that flowers had names until I was 32," he once said, stretching the truth by only a few years. When his wife became pregnant and could not accompany him on these walks, Charlie found a 19-year-old companion who lived next door to his store who was a zoology major at Ohio State University, and he taught Charlie the basic botany methodology employed by scientists. With abundant income from his drugstore, Dean bought books, subscribed to scientific journals and began corresponding with leaders in the science.

 

In 1899, Deam attended the annual meeting of Indiana Academy of Science and here began to acquire his reputation as a noteworthy botanist. On visits to Mexico in 1900 and Guatemala in 1904, he found new plant specimens which cemented his reputation. However, by 1905 he realized that worldwide botany was too much for one man to master and that, in order to really achieve, all botanists need a small segment of the science in which to specialize and a limited geographic territory in which to work. Thus, Deam decided to focus on Indiana botany. In the spring of 1906 he had 665 specimens in hand; by the end of 1906 this increased to 1,785, and by 1908 it was 5,377. The growth of the collection was extraordinary, especially given the difficulty of travel in those years.

 

In 1909, Indiana passed a law creating a full-time job for a state forester. It was offered to Deam, because of his impressive study of botany. He was reluctant to leave the drugstore in charge of a manager, but was persuaded by friends in the Indiana Academy of Science to accept the position in the interest of science and conservation.

 

In 1912, Deam published his first book, Trees of Indiana, published by the State Board of Forestry. Over 10,000 copies were distributed in three years, and thousands of requests remained unfilled. This publication brought him enhanced personal recognition, honors, and expanded associations.

 

In 1913, Deam refused to pay the two percent on his salary to the political party in power, which was expected of all appointees, so he was dismissed as state forester. However, he was hired back into that position in 1917 at the insistence of Richard Lieber who was appointed chief of the State Board of Forestry in that year. Indeed, Lieber made Deam's appointment a condition of his accepting the position.

 

In the interim years, Deam continued with his personal collection. He purchased a Ford Model T touring car, equipped it with an electric starter, the first of its type made by Ford, then ordered a special truck-type body from a Bluffton wagon maker. This "weed wagon" slept two and enabled the collected materials to be transported. During his 50 years of collecting Indiana specimens, Deam traveled over 125,000 miles in Indiana visiting every township in the state, and keeping careful records of the location, soil conditions, and climate of each of his 70,000 specimens.

 

In 1924, Deam published Shrubs of Indiana. Its importance was captured in his comments, "There has never been a book written on the shrubs of Indiana and none ever has been written in the United States to cover a like area that gives an adequate description of every species found within the area."

 

As the years went by, Deam realized that the dynamic science of forestry was leaving him behind. His main interest was in plant taxonomy and writing so he indicated a desire to resign as state forester. Lieber wanted to support his work, so created a new position of research forester with a modest state salary and funds for secretarial and other help. Deam's time was to be his own to finish his book Grasses of Indiana, and he was then to tackle his biggest challenge to write a full, new book on the Flora of Indiana. Twelve years and 1236 pages later, this masterpiece was completed in 1940. The state funds provided him with a full-time research assistant for this work who shared his passion for botany. The monumental work brought together a century of accumulated knowledge about the vascular plants of Indiana. The book became a model for other states. While now outdated, Flora of Indiana provides an irreplaceable documentation of Indiana's historic flora. As time goes by, the importance of this record increases.

 

Deam sold his specimens collection of 73,000 pressed sheets to Indiana University in 1932 for a dime a sheet, which helped alleviate some of his financial concerns stemming from the effects of the Depression on his drugstore business. At his home in Bluffton, he developed an arboretum, orchard and gardens on their six acres and kept meticulous records of the growth and development of all the species he planted.

 

Charlie Deam was an intense, irascible, opinionated, Hoosier original, born just weeks after the Civil War, who became a world-renowned botanist despite never completing his undergraduate degree. In his honor, his admirers have named a lake, Deam Lake, a 13,000-acre wilderness area in the Hoosier National Forest, a kind of tree, and about fifty small plants. Three universities awarded him honorary degrees. The four books he wrote between 1911 and 1940 are still read and consulted by botanists. Indiana University students in Bloomington leaf with reverence through his collection of 73,000 paper sheets of pressed, dried, insect proofed, and mounted plant specimens, mothballed and secured in fireproofed cabinets. Deam's 3000-volume botanical library is also shelved in the Deam Herbarium where his specimens collection is housed.

 

Source:
Adapted from Robert C. Kriebel (1994). Plain Ol' Charlie Deam. West Lafayette, Indiana: Indiana Academy of Science & Purdue University Press.

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