Thomas Barbour Lathrop was an American philanthropist and world traveler.
14 Facts About Barbour Lathrop
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Barbour Lathrop was born in Alexandria, Virginia to Jedediah Hyde Lathrop, a descendant of the Lathrop family of New Hampshire and Mariana Bryan of Virginia.
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Barbour Lathrop spent two years at a New York City boarding school before being sent to Germany to attend the University of Bonn.
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Barbour Lathrop rebelled against his father's insistence that he practice law and was cut off from any further financial assistance.
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Barbour Lathrop moved to San Francisco in the early 1870s and worked as a reporter for The San Francisco Morning Call.
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Shortly after its founding in 1879, Barbour Lathrop became one of the earliest members of the Bohemian Club where he was well known for his conversational brilliance and keen wit.
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Barbour Lathrop considered the Bohemian Club in San Francisco his home for the rest of his life.
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Barbour Lathrop's father died in 1887 and left him an equal share in the family fortune.
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Barbour Lathrop left his job as a reporter and became a philanthropist and world traveler.
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In 1893, on a steamship to Naples, Italy, Barbour Lathrop met a young biologist named David Fairchild, whom he persuaded to become a plant explorer.
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Barbour Lathrop financed Fairchild and accompanied him on his early travels in search of plants for introduction into the United States.
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Barbour Lathrop was the first recipient of the Meyer Medal which is given in recognition of outstanding services to US plant introduction.
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When he became too old to travel, Barbour Lathrop spent the winters with the Fairchild Family in Coconut Grove, Florida.
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Barbour Lathrop died on May 17,1927, in Philadelphia, where he had stopped to stay at The Bellevue-Stratford Hotel on his annual trip to San Francisco.