Biography

American botanist from New York State. Homer House worked as a researcher and as a professor at numerous institutions in New York, Washington DC and the Carolinas. Born in Kenwood, New York, he graduated from the College of Liberal Arts in 1902 and went on to receive an MA from Columbia University in 1903. House remained at the university in 1903-1904 as a botany assistant and spent the following two years working at the US National Museum and the US Department of Agriculture.

Moving to South Carolina in 1906 he was employed as Associate Professor of Botany and Bacteriology at Clemson College, but was soon asked to resign after students signed a petition to have him removed. The Board of Trustees found certain charges against him to be true and House subsequently spent 1907-1908 at the New York Botanical Garden. After several years as Professor of Botany and Dendrology and Associate Director at the Biltmore Forest School in North Carolina, he moved to the New York State Museum in 1913 and became the Assistant State Botanist in Albany. House remained there for the rest of his life and was named State Botanist at the death of Charles Peck in 1917. His major collection of plant specimens is housed at the herbarium of the New York State Museum (NYS) and is estimated to contain some 27,000 specimens, collected on the east coast. House married Erma M. Hotaling in 1904 and gained a PhD for his thesis "North American species in the genus Ipomoea" in 1908.

Sources:
Homer Doliver House (21 July 1878 – 1949), Collectors of the UNC Herbarium, University of North Carolina Herberium:
http://www.herbarium.unc.edu/Collectors/HOUSE_Homer_Doliver.htm.