County of city: Linn County
Location of city: MO-5, central in county
Location of courthouse: 109 N. High St., Linneus
Elevation: 827 ft (252 m)
Population: 267 (2013)
The Person:
Carolus Linnaeus
Lived 1707 – 1778
"Carolus Linnaeus is one of the giants of natural science. He devised the formal two-part naming system we use to classify all lifeforms.
"A well-known example of his two-part system is the dinosaur Tyrannosaurus rex; another is our own species Homo sapiens.
"Linnaeus pushed the science of biology to new heights by describing and classifying our own human species in precisely the same way as he classified other lifeforms. Other people at the time demanded that humans must be regarded as a special case in biology, different from animals.
"Carl Linnaeus was born on May 23, 1707 in the village of Råshult in southern Sweden. His father was Nils Ingemarsson Linnaeus, a church minister and amateur botanist; and his mother was Christina Brodersonia.
"Carl Linnaeus started school at the age of 10. He was not a bad student, but he did not excel. He continued to work hard on his own private botanical studies.
"In the winter of 1730/31 Linnaeus continued working hard on botany in Uppsala. In particular, he had grown dissatisfied with the way plant species were classified. He began making notes about how he could improve this.
"He wrote a book about Lapland’s plants called Flora Lapponica, describing his new discoveries. He also started using a two-part naming system – which would eventually become the Linnaean or binomial system, used worldwide to name living things.
"It also came to him that he could use his new system to name animals as well as plants.
"The classification of lifeforms is called taxonomy. Linnaeus classified living things by looking for similarities. For example he would look at the teeth of different mammals to decide if they were related. In modern times, DNA is used to classify lifeforms. In the case of fossils, where no DNA is present, scientists still use similarities between fossils – and between fossils and current lifeforms – to classify them.
After publishing Systema Naturae, Linnaeus also visited England and France, where he met other scientists, collected specimens, and discussed his work.
Linnaeus was not a modest man. He was well-aware of his achievements, and in later life, he wrote of himself:
“No one has been a greater botanist or zoologist. No one has written more books, more correctly, more methodically,
from personal experience. No one has more completely changed a whole science and started a new epoch.”
"Linnaeus returned to Sweden in 1738, becoming a physician in the nation’s capital city, Stockholm. While in Stockholm, Linnaeus helped found the Royal Swedish Academy of Science and became its first president.
"Carolus Linnaeus was knighted by the King of Sweden in 1761 and took the nobleman’s name of Carl von Linné.
"He died at the age of 70, on 10 January, 1778, after suffering a stroke. He was survived by his wife Sara, and five children. Two of the couple’s other children died when they were very young.
"Linnaeus died on his farm about 6 miles (10 km) from Uppsala. He had bought the farm 20 years before his death. The farm was called Hammarby. Linnaeus cultivated his own private gardens at Hammarby and had hoped to be buried there. In fact he was buried in Uppsala." ~ Famous Scientists
He has a statue (bust) and a building named for him at the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis.
The Place:
"The first settler in Linneus was Colonel John Holland, who came from Virginia in the early spring of 1834 and located his claim approximately where the courthouse is now. Heavy timber (and timber wolves) surrounded the two-room cabin for many years.
"After the cabin was built, Holland left his female slave Dinah in charge of 30 sheep and the premises until he returned from the East with his family and other slaves many weeks later. Therefore, the first female resident of Linneus was a black woman. She was freed upon his death in 1855, but remained in Linneus all her life. Her account of her experience alone with the wolves and sheep can be read in the History of Linn County.
"In 1834, Linneus was made the county seat. Within 10 years there were approximately 100 residents. The city of Linneus was incorporated on February 9, 1853. Early school classes were held in the Holland cabin and were taught by his daughter Sallie. In 1847, the first public schoolhouse was built near where the railroad eventually ran. The nearest true doctor was Keytesville. However, Judge James A. Clark did most of the regular doctoring for the settlement although he had never had any medical training. Quinine and calomel were his main medicines." ~ History of Linn County, 1882, Birdsdall & Dean, pp. 405-408