David Townsend

David Townsend (December 13, 1787 – December 6, 1858) was an American banker, botanist, and civic leader from Chester County, Pennsylvania. He was a lifelong friend and business associate of noted botanist William Darlington and was a founder and chief cashier of the National Bank of Chester County. The plant genus Townsendia was named in his honor.

Biography Townsend was born in the village of Pughtown, Chester County, Pennsylvania, to Quaker farmers Samuel and Priscilla Yarnell Townsend. He studied elementary math and English at a local country school and became a clerk in the office of the Register and Recorder of Chester County in 1810. He moved to West Chester that year and lived in the borough until his death.

He was elected as a commissioner of Chester County in 1813 and became county treasurer in 1816. In 1814, he became a founding director of the National Bank of Chester County, where he held the position of chief cashier from 1817 to 1849. His friend William Darlington served as the long-time president of the bank. Townsend helped oversee the construction of a new bank building between 1835 and 1837. In addition, Townsend became a trustee of West Chester Academy in 1821 and board treasurer and financier from 1826 to 1854. For two weeks in 1827, he served as prothonotary of Chester County. He resigned from the bank after suffering an accidental head injury, which eventually disabled him and caused his death. Townsend corresponded with other botanists across America and Europe, including John Torrey, Francis Boott, and William Jackson Hooker, who named a genus of flowering plants related to the asters Townsendia in his honor. Hooker first described this genus in his 1834 book Flora Boreali-Americana. Hooker praised Townsend's specimens (collected locally or obtained from European colleagues) as among the "handsomest" that he had ever seen. When he resigned, the bank directors presented him with a token of their esteem: a pair of silver pitchers with engraved representations of Townsendia. The school received Townsend's collection of plant specimens after his death, along with Darlington's and Hoopes'. Cared for as part of the University library's special collection, and today it is called the Darlington Herbarium (Index Herbariorum code DWC).

Other herbaria also have specimens from Townsend's collection, include the National Herbarium of Victoria, Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria, the herbarium of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, and the Shirley C. Tucker Herbarium at Louisiana State University. The specimens he collected often feature a label in red or blue, with an elaborate lacy border.