William Carter Stubbs

William Carter Stubbs (7 December 1843 – 7 July 1924) was a chemist and sugar industry researcher from Virginia who worked in Alabama and Louisiana. He also took an interest in genealogy.

Life and work

Stubbs was born in Gloucester County, Virginia to Jefferson W. Stubbs and Ann Walker Carter Baytop. He studied at the William and Mary College and Randolph-Macon Academy. During the American Civil War, he served as a cavalryman in the Confederate States Army under Fitzhugh Lee in the 24th Virginia Cavalry. He received a PhD in chemistry from the University of Virginia and taught at the East Alabama College and then became a professor of chemistry in Alabama at the Agricultural and Mechanical College in 1869. In 1885 he was appointed State Chemist for Louisiana and made director for the experimental stations. Work at the Louisiana sugar experiment station was sponsored by the Louisiana Sugar Planters Association[1] and dealt predominantly with research associated with the sugar industry.[2] The USDA obtained 70 varieties of sugarcane for Stubbs to evaluate and in 1893 he received 500 varieties and the final selection of varieties D74 and D95 led to a boom in sugar production. The Audubon Sugar School begun in 1891 offered a course in agriculture under Charles E. Coates which included engineering and chemistry but it was closed in 1896[3] and the course taken over by the Louisiana State University.[4]

Stubbs married Elizabeth Saunders Blair in 1875, the couple had no children. He also took an interest in genealogy and wrote, along with his wife, on the descendants of John Stubbs. He died from pneumonia at his home in New Orleans and is buried in the Metairie Cemetery.[4]

The Louisiana State University named a hall on the campus in Baton Rouge after Stubbs. This was however recommended for a change of name following re-examination of his role in US history. A 1910 portrait depicts him with a Confederate lapel pin and a Confederate flag is emblazoned on his tombstone. Since he was reliant on the exploitative system of sharecropping involving coerced black farm workers who had to bear generational poverty and physical abuse the use of his name was considered inappropriate under LSU Policy Statement 70.[5]

References
  1. Heitmann, John A. (1986). "Organization as Power: The Louisiana Sugar Planters' Association and the Creation of Scientific and Technical Institutions, 1877-1910". Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association. 27 (3): 281–294. ISSN 0024-6816. JSTOR 4232525.
  2. Scott, Roy V. (1959). "Farmers' Institutes in Louisiana, 1897-1906". The Journal of Southern History. 25 (1): 73–90. doi:10.2307/2954480. ISSN 0022-4642. JSTOR 2954480.
  3. Legendre, B. L. (2012). "The Audubon Sugar Institute". Journal of the American Society of Sugar Cane Technologists. 32: 90.
  4. Ross, B.B. (1925). "William Carter Stubbs". Journal of Association of Official Agricultural Chemists. 8 (4): iii–vi. doi:10.1093/jaoac/8.4.iii.
  5. Recommendations for LSU Board of Supervisors to Rename LSU Facilities
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