When my kids were little, I would take them to the George Washington Carver Park about 45 minutes away. It is close to Joplin in Diamond, Missouri. There at the park, you can visit the home of George Washington Carver and see the surrounding beauty of the Ozarks. George Washington Carver was a brilliant scientist.
He was born a slave in Missouri in 1864. He was taught reading and writing by his mother. He later became a world-famous agriculturalist. He is most known for his work on peanuts. We can credit to this man a better version of the peanut butter enjoyed by many in their lunch sandwiches every day.
He became the first African-American student at Iowa State Agricultural College. Carver also happened to be an instructor at the Tuskegee Institute. While Carver is most known for his work with peanuts, he specialized in developing methods of crop rotation particularly for the cotton farmers of the southern region of the United States. He developed hundreds of inventions through plant pathology research. Carver also was an agricultural advisor to such well-known leaders as Gandhi and Theodore Roosevelt.
George Washington Carver passed away in 1943 at the age of 78. His epitaph reads, “He could have added fortune to fame, but caring for neither, he found happiness and honor in being helpful to the world.”
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