British botanist (bryologist) and entomologist at Cambridge University, who collected in Maryland in 1698. William Vernon hailed from Hertford where he received his early education before entering Peterhouse College, Cambridge in 1685. At this time he befriended John Ray and developed an interest in mosses and Lepidoptera and graduated with a BA in 1689.
After being named a fellow of the college in 1692 he took a leave of four years and visited the United States in early 1698. Travelling at the same time as the German physician David Krieg, they collected plants, animals, fossils and shells in that state, although their movements remained separate. He returned in the winter of the same year.
The majority of Vernon's specimens were distributed amongst the clergy, including to Archbishop Tenison and Bishop Compton as well as Sir Hans Sloane. His and Krieg's specimens were sent from Sloane to Ray who struggled to identify many of them and sorted them by taxa, regardless of collector, so that now it is difficult to tell which was collected by which. They were, however, of some use to Ray in the final volume of his Historia Plantarum (1704).
On his return the Royal Society awarded Vernon 20 pounds to collect in the Canary Islands in early 1699, but Vernon missed the ship and with another not due until the end of the year, he settled for collecting in Kent. A member of the botanical club which met at the Temple Coffee House in London at the turn of the century, little is known of his activities after he returned to Cambridge in 1702. He did continue to collect plants in the Cambridge area and began to specialise in the mosses, assisting Ray with the cryptogamic sections of his Historia Plantarum (1686-1704). The genus Vernonia was named after him by J.C.D. Schreber.
Sources:
G.F. Frick, 1987, "Botanical explorations and discoveries in colonial Maryland, 1688-1753", Huntia, 7: 5-59
M. Lawley, "William Vernon", The British Bryological Society:
http://rbg-web2.rbge.org.uk/bbs/Learning/Bryohistory/Bygone%20Bryologists/WILLIAM%20VERNON.pdf, accessed 18 January 2011.
