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Gideon Lincecum dies
On this day in 1874, physician and naturalist Gideon Lincecum died at his Long Point home. The self-educated Lincecum, born in Georgia in 1793, moved in 1818 with his wife and family to Mississippi, where he began practicing medicine. In 1835 he joined an exploring expedition to Texas, during which he studied the fauna in the vicinity of Eagle Lake; thirteen years later, he purchased 1,828 acres of the fertile prairie land he had seen on his Texas visit and arrived in Long Point on his fifty-fifth birthday with his wife, ten children, numerous grandchildren, and ten slaves. In Texas, while continuing to practice medicine, Lincecum became recognized as an astute naturalist, corresponded with internationally known scientists, and contributed valuable collections to the Philadelphia Academy of Science and the Smithsonian Institution. Charles Darwin sponsored the publication of one of Lincecum's papers in the Journal of the Linnaean Society in 1862. In 1868, at the age of seventy-six, Lincecum joined a Confederate colony in Mexico. He spent five years there working his banana plantation, exploring Indian ruins, and continuing his natural history collection and correspondence. He returned to Texas in 1873 and devoted his remaining years to writing his autobiography. He was originally buried in Mount Zion Cemetery, near Long Point, but his remains were moved to the State Cemetery in Austin in 1936.
- Links to Related Handbook of Texas Online Articles
- LINCECUM, GIDEON
- LONGPOINT, TX
- EAGLE LAKE, TX
- STATE CEMETERY
- EXPLORATION
- Other Texas Day by Day Articles for This Date
- Screwmen protest hiring of African Americans (1882)
- Texas home for Confederate veterans chartered (1884)
- Military historian Slam Marshall joins the army (1917)
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