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Lake Poinsett and the Poinsettia
Joel Roberts Poinsett
(1779-1851) was appointed Ambassador to Mexico by President John
Quincy Adams, and served in that capacity from 1825 to 1829. In Mexico
he discovered a beautiful shrub with large red flowers growing next to
a road on a hillside near Taxco in December 1828. He took cuttings
from the plant and brought them back to his greenhouse in South
Carolina. William Hicking Prescott named the plant “Poinsettia” for
Poinsett around 1836. (Prescott, Arizona was named for William Hicking
Prescott.)
In 1836 Joel Poinsett got
John Charles Fremont his first position as a mathematics instructor to
the midshipmen on board the USS Natchez. After two years Fremont was
commissioned a second lieutenant of the U.S. Topographical Corps. His
first assignment was to assist Joseph N. Nicollet in a reconnaissance
of the Minnesota and Dakota territories. He and Nicollet surveyed the
Coteau, and Fremont gave the second largest lake in what became
eastern South Dakota the name Poinsett for his patron. Fremont later
explored the Rocky Mountains, surveyed the Oregon Trail in 1842, and
ran unsuccessfully for President in 1856.
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