Dr. Gideon Lincecum

Lincecum was largely self-taught. He spent his boyhood mostly among the Muscogee (Creek) people, practiced medicine with herbal remedies learned from Native people on the Tombigbee, and recorded Choctaw traditions in the Choctaw language. He moved to Long Point in 1848 and in Texas collected 500 plants with medicinal uses, kept a weather journal charting drought cycles and studied insects. Darwin sponsored his paper on the agricultural ant in the Linnaean Society's journal in 1862. At seventy-six he joined a Confederate colony at Tuxpan, Mexico, for five years. His remains were moved here from Mount Zion Cemetery in 1936.

What the plaque says

Dr. Gideon Lincecum, a veteran of the war of 1812, internationally famous botanist, friend of Darwin. Born in Georgia April 22, 1793, died at Long Point, Washington County, Texas, November 28, 1873.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Texas State Cemetery — steps away
  A hill east of the Capitol that began with one general's grave in 1851 and now holds Stephen F. Austin, governors, Barbara Jordan and more than 2,000 Confederate veterans and widows.
• French Legation State Historic Site — 0.3 mi
  A raised pine house built in 1840 and 1841 for France's envoy to the Republic of Texas, who left Austin in a rage over a neighbor's pigs before it was finished.
• George Washington Carver Museum — 0.4 mi
  East Austin's museum of Black history and culture, grown from a segregated branch library moved across town in 1933, with a permanent exhibit on Juneteenth at its core.
• Texas State Capitol — 1.0 mi
  Austin's fourth statehouse, a Renaissance Revival capitol of 1888 that stands 311 feet to its Goddess of Liberty and was restored after the 1983 fire.

More markers nearby

• Robert Crudup — steps away
• Robert Potter — steps away
• Thomas Pliney Plaster — steps away
• James Wales Jones — steps away