The Record of a Quaker Conscience

Cyrus Guernsey Pringle (1838-1911) was an American botanist who spent a career of 35 years cataloguing the plants of North America, especially Mexico. He is in the top 5 of historical botanists for sheer quantity of new species discovered - approximately 1,200 new species, 100 new varieties, twenty- nine new genera, and four new combinations. He studied in Hinesburg and Bakersfield, Vermont, and later at Stanbridge, Quebec, before entering the University of Vermont in the year 1859, enrolling in the classical course. During the American Civil War, about five months after his marriage, he, along with two other Vermont Quakers, was drafted into the Union Army on July 13. They all shared the Quakers' disapproval of war, and when Doctor Pringle's uncle offered to pay the $300 necessary for his release, he would not allow this to be done, regarding that solution as a selfish compromise with principle. He wrote about his experience in: The Record of a Quaker Conscience: Cyrus Pringle's Diary (1913).