Victor Louis Cory

Victor Louis Cory (1880-1964) was an American botanist.

Cory was born September 27, 1880, in Albia, Iowa, to Phillip Rose Cory (1845-1912) and his wife Emma Rebecca Smith (1854-1938). His father, Phillip, was a wheat farmer and a veteran of the Civil War.

Cory received his undergraduate degree from Kansas State Agricultural College in 1904 and his master's degree in botany from the University of Minnesota in 1922.

During his lifetime he worked for The Department of Agriculture, The Mandingo Corporation, Texas A and M University and Southern Methodist University. His Botanical specialty was taxonomy and he discovered and named many plants and had several plants named after him by other botanists.

In 1917, after his marriage to Frances Zenobia, he went to work for a New York philanthropist who had employed a group of scientists and agriculturists; this was the Mandingo Corporation. Their goal was to teach various West African tribes farming skills and other skilled considered necessary to modem life. On their way to Sierra Leonne, their ship, the four-mast schooner Hattie Prescott, was torpedoed and sunk by a German submarine. Cory and eleven others escaped in a lifeboat and after four days at sea were able to land safely on the Moroccan coast. The Mandingo project lasted two years but sleeping sickness and the great flu epidemic of 1919 decimated their group and brought this great experiment to an end.

At about the time Cory was getting to Sierra Leonne, his first child Ralph Lee Cory was born on Nov. 3, 1917. After his return and while he was superintendent of the Experiment Station at Pecos, Texas, their second child, Kenneth Wayne, was born on Nov. 7, 1920, and died April 20, 1921. It was after the death of this child that Cory and his wife moved to Minnesota for Cory to continue his education.

After receiving his Masters degree and completing almost all requirements for his doctorate, they returned to Texas where Cory was once again employed by Texas A and M University. They moved to the Experiment Station south of Sonora, Texas in 1923. Their third child, Edith Jean, was born Dec. 12, 1924, in Sonora.

While at the Experiment Station, Cory's botanical publications were nationally and internationally published. One of his publications was the first "Catalog of the Flora of Texas". During this time he identified and placed 33,000+ plant specimens at the herbarium at Texas A and M, over 13,000 at Asa Gray Herbarium at Harvard University, and others at herbariums around the world.

Cory retired from A&M in September 1945 and the family moved to Dallas where Cory went to work for Southern Methodist University in their herbarium. He retired in l952.

Cory died of Alzheimer's Disease on May 1, 1964. He was Methodist and was buried at Grove Hill Cemetery in Dallas, Texas.