Edmund R. Van Buren

Edmund R. Van Buren was born in New York. Records indicate that he fought in the Civil War in the 20th New York National Guard. It is unclear when he moved to Florida after the war, but records show that he lived in Jacksonville, Florida, in the late 1870s. In 1889 he filed a patent for his "Machine for decorticating fibrous plants." This machine, also called the Van Buren Tropical Fiber Machine, was used in experiments in the early 1890s by Charles Richards Dodge of the United States Department of Agriculture. Dodge experimented mostly with sisal hemp, using the Van Buren machine to decorticate leaves of sisal hemp to produce clean fibers.

• Birth: November 18, 1843, Kinderhook, New York
• Death: January 24, 1891, Jacksonville, Florida

Name Variations:

• E.R. Van Buren
• Edmund Van Buren

Sources:

• Findagrave.com
• Report of the Secretary of Agriculture. "Report of the Special Agent in Charge of the Fiber Investigations, 1891." United States. Dept. of Agriculture. U.S. Government Printing Office, 1892.
• 1890 patent for Van Buren's Machine for decorticating fibrous plants
• Webb's Jacksonville city directory, 1878-9

References in the Texts:

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• April 9, Saturday

For other topics referenced in the Expedition texts, please refer to the Index to Subjects and Names.
1892 Everglades Exploration Expedition : Three Digital Texts, 2015