Biography of george washington carver timeline history

George Washington Carver was an agricultural scientist and inventor who developed hundreds of products using peanuts though not peanut butter, as is often claimed , sweet potatoes and soybeans.

George washington carver fun facts

He would go on to teach and conduct research at Tuskegee University for decades, and soon after his death his childhood home would be named a national monument—the first of its kind to honor a Black American. The elder Carver reportedly was against slavery , but needed help with his acre farm. When Carver was an infant, he, his mother and his sister were kidnapped from the Carver farm by one of the bands of slave raiders that roamed Missouri during the Civil War era.

They were resold in Kentucky. Carver grew up knowing little about his mother or his father, who had died in an accident before he was born. Moses Carver and his wife Susan raised the young George and his brother James as their own and taught the boys how to read and write. James gave up his studies and focused on working the fields with Moses.

George, however, was a frail and sickly child who could not help with such work; instead, Susan taught him how to cook, mend, embroider, do laundry and garden, as well as how to concoct simple herbal medicines. At a young age, Carver took a keen interest in plants and experimented with natural pesticides, fungicides and soil conditioners.

He was taken in by Andrew and Mariah Watkins, a childless Black couple who gave him a roof over his head in exchange for help with household chores. A midwife and nurse, Mariah imparted on Carver her broad knowledge of medicinal herbs and her devout faith. Disappointed with the education he received at the Neosho school, Carver moved to Kansas about two years later, joining numerous other Blacks who were traveling west.

For the next decade or so, Carver moved from one Midwestern town to another, putting himself through school and surviving off of the domestic skills he learned from his foster mothers. He was initially accepted at the all-white college but was later rejected when the administration learned he was Black. In the late s, Carver befriended the Milhollands, a white couple in Winterset, Iowa , who encouraged him to pursue a higher education.

Despite his former setback, he enrolled in Simpson College , a Methodist school that admitted all qualified applicants.