George Washington Carver Book Report

October 5, 2001
Samantha Weber
Grade 4
Language Art through History



GEORGE WASHINGTON CARVER

George Washington Carver was born in 1864 to a slave woman near Diamond Grove, Missouri. While he was still a baby, he and his mother were stolen from their owners, Moses and Sue Carver. The Carvers hired a bushwhacker to try and find them and bring them back, but only the baby was found and the mother was never heard of again. The Carvers kept George, as well as his older brother Jim who hadn’t been stolen, and brought them up together. George was very frail and couldn’t do hard work, but he helped around the house with “Aunt” Sue. He was good with his hands though and when he saw Aunt Sue knitting and crocheting, he asked himself, “Why can’t I do that?” And he did – he taught himself and was very good at it all his life.

George Carver was black and lived after the Civil War. Although blacks were “free” then, they did not have the same rights or respect as whites. He lived in such a way as to bring respect to himself and to his race. He became famous in his own lifetime and became the “Father of Synthetics.” (A synthetic is a product made by taking something apart chemically and then putting the parts back together differently. It is not a naturally existing material, but is manmade.) But, he had many more “claims to fame.” Even when he was a young boy, he was called “The Plant Doctor” because he was able to take people’s plants that were dying and make them well again. He was also a very talented artist and won an award for some of his work at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. Saving the South by introducing the peanut and the sweet potato and kicking out “King Cotton” who had ruined the soil was also one of his great achievements.

Some “little” things about him that impressed me were that he got up a 4 o’clock in the morning at the farm where he grew up and that when he was 10 years old he went to Neosho 8 miles away from the Carver farm. He moved there all by himself so that he could go to school. All he had to take with him was a sack of food that Aunt Sue gave him. The Carvers were very sad to see him go, but they knew that George wanted an education very badly and in Neosho there was a school for black children.

George had no money lots of times but he did different things to earn money, food, or housing. There were three things he always kept in his mind when he moved from place to place: 1) Where shall I sleep? 2) What shall I eat? And 3) What shall I do? Sometimes he did errands for people: cooking, cleaning, or working with his hands knitting or crocheting. Then someone taught him how to “do laundry” and he was able to start his own laundry business, which he even continued when he finally got to go to a college.

Things that I learned from reading about him are:
• that getting a good education is important.
• “Keep on keeping on” (this paper is a good example for one of those times!) even when you feel like giving up.
• Making money has nothing to do with true accomplishment.
• Living a simple life is okay.

In the book I read about him, by Anne Terry White as well as at the website, http://www.cr.nps.gov/museum/exhibits/tuskegee/gwcoverview.htm, God was a big part of George’s life. He believed God had a call and a plan for him. Doing what God wanted him to do was the most important thing to him. There were many times when God was evident in his life. The woods were a special place to George because when he had to take care of plants for his neighbors he always took them back to the woods and he could almost feel God there. (I thought this was kind of neat because I think that if I had been George, knowing I’d been stolen as a baby, I would have been afraid to go off in the woods alone.) Also when he was a boy, he had a dream about a pumpkin in a cornfield carved out by a knife. In a cornfield around where he lived, he found a knife the very next day. He thought God had given him the knife. It was an important sign to him that God knew him and cared for him because he had wanted a knife for a long time.
Starting with George’s first trip to Neosho, God always provided for his needs. He moved often and every time he went pretty much without anything and without knowing where he would get food or shelter. He seemed to have a lot of faith that God would provide and God was always faithful.
I think that George W. Carver could always keep keeping on because he believed that God had something important for him to do. I liked the story of his life because it encourages me to believe that God has a plan for me and that I should keep doing my best for God.