The Man Who Invented Peanut Butter

© 2003 Boaz Rauchwerger

Quick - before you have that next peanut butter sandwich - who invented peanut butter?

There are clues in the life of this inventor that can help us move through challenging times. His story of great achievements is a testament to persistence and quiet perseverance.

He was born to a slave girl, on a plantation in Diamond Grove, Missouri, around 1864. No one seems to know the exact year. Shortly before his birth, his father died in an accident. He and his mother were kidnapped by slave raiders. Although the baby was returned to the plantation, his mother was never to be seen again.

He grew up in post-emancipation Missouri under the care of his parents’ former owners. As a small child, he was prone to illness and was very frail. Thus, he was not strong enough to work in the fields. Relegated to household chores and gardening, he explored the woods around his home and developed an interest in plants. He collected a large variety of wild plants and flowers, which he planted in a garden.

That interest grew to such a point, as he helped neighbors and friends with ailing plants, that he became known as the “plant doctor.” Since there were no schools for African Americans in Diamond Grove, he learned how to read, write and spell at home. He had exceptional observational skills and a keen curiosity.

At about the age of 10, he began venturing to other communities in Missouri and Kansas to quench his thirst for knowledge and expand his formal education. At first he attended a colored school in nearby Neosho, Missouri. In exchange for room and board, he did chores for a black family. Minneapolis, Kansas, is where he put himself through high school – often dropping out temporarily to earn some money so he could enroll again and continue.

It was in 1890 that he enrolled at Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa, to study piano and painting. He showed talent in art and music and made many sketches of plants and flowers. His art teacher recognized his horticultural talents and convinced him to pursue an agricultural career. In 1891 he became the first African American to enroll at Iowa State College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts, now known as Iowa State University.

Although his interests in music and art were strong, he excelled in botany and horticulture and was encouraged to go into the graduate program when he completed a bachelor’s degree in 1894. Due to his excellent work in plant breeding, he became the college’s first African American faculty member.

During the next two years, he developed scientific skills in plant pathology and mycology, the branch of botany that deals with fungi. In the process of completing work on his master’s degree, in 1896, he published several articles on his work and gained national respect.

It was at this point that Booker T. Washington invited him to join the faculty of Alabama’s Tuskegee Institute, which he founded. There he found a lack of interest in the study of agriculture. Many of the students associated agriculture with sharecropping and poverty. They wanted to learn industrial skills or a trade that would make it possible for them to earn a living away from the farm.

He began attracting students by dignifying farming. He injected the discipline with science: botany, chemistry, and soil study. Finding widespread poverty and malnutrition among the local black farmers, he tackled that challenge with a scientific approach.

During his time, cotton was the main crop of the South. Farmers kept planting cotton on the same plots of land, thus exhausting the nutrients of the topsoil. Testing the soil, he found that it lacked nitrogen, and that accounted for consistently low harvests. His advice to the farmers was to alternate planting cotton and peanuts. Over the next few years, farmers saw a dramatic increase in crop production.

He offered alternative crops that were beneficial for the farmers, for the land, and for rural economic improvement. He shared with farmers some practical agricultural knowledge that promoted health, sound nutrition and self-sufficiency. He taught his students that education should be used for the betterment of the people in the community.

The development of the peanut helped him solve the problem of malnutrition in the rural South. He emphasized that the peanut was a valuable source of protein that could enrich the diets of the farmers and improve their health.

His work resulted in the creation of 325 products from peanuts, including peanut butter. His efforts also resulted in more than 100 products from sweet potatoes and hundreds more from a dozen other plants native to the South.

He patented only three of his 500 agriculture-based inventions. "God gave them to me, how can I sell them to someone else?" was his attitude. Living frugally, and taking only a small portion of his salary, he donated his life savings to a fund in his name that would encourage research in agriculture sciences.

During a tenure at Tuskegee, that lasted nearly 50 years, he gained an international reputation in research, teaching and outreach. During his lifetime he received many honors. A movie was made of his life in 1938. A museum was dedicated in his honor at Tuskegee and commemorative stamps were issued in his honor in 1947 and 1998. Following his death in 1943, a fifty-cent coin was minted for him in 1951.It was in 1990 that he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

His amazing story encourages all of us to realize that we are capable of accomplishing so much more. You know that the father of America was George Washington. Now you know that the father of peanut butter was George Washington Carver.

A Daily Affirmation of Accomplishment

I take small steps daily to accomplish incredible things in my life.