Civil War CDV of Sam Ensminger, 11th Indiana Volunteer Infantry. Obituary from the Crawfordsville, Indiana, Daily Journal, 26 Sept. 1921: Dr. Samuel L. Ensminger died at ? o'clock last night at his home 411 W. Main Street after as illness of three and a half years, following a stroke of apoplexy. The doctor was 77 years of age and was one of the best known physicians in the city for all his life had been spent here. Dr. Ensminger was identified with a number of medical organizations among them the national, state and and County associations, the American Association of Railway Surgeons, of which he had been quite active, and others of a like character. He was a member of the Knights of Pythias lodge and also had for many years been a member of Center, now the Wabash Avenue Presbyterian Church. He was one of the charter members of McPherson Post, GAR. In 1876 he was united in marriage to Miss Louise Austin of Rensselaer, Ind who with the son, Dr. Leonard Ensminger of Indianapolis, survives him. He also leaves a sister, Frances Hatfield of Chicago and one grandson in Indianapolis. Funeral services will be held Tuesday afternoon at 2:30 o'clock at the Wabash Avenue Presbyterian Church. Rev. Chester Wharton, former pastor of the Wabash Avenue Church will have charge of the services and it is probable that Rev. Mathew L. Haines formerly pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Indianapolis will deliver an euology. Friends who wish to view the remains may call at the home prior to the time for the funeral service. It was the request of Dr . E. that there be no flowers sent. Samuel Leonard Ensminger was born on a farm 3 miles south of the city October 2, 1844 and was the son of Joseph and Jane Fulton Canine Ensminger. When the civil war broke out Dr. Ensminger, then a boy of only 16, enlisted in the three years service and went in camp near Lafayette. Owing to the boy's extreme youth; however, his father went after him and by bringing pressure to bear was able to secure his release from the army and brought him back to Crawfordsville. Early in the following year he again enlisted in the 3 years' service and joined Co. I of the 11th Indiana Volunteers, General Lew Wallace's command. He served in the Vicksburg campaign and upon the expiration of his three years' service reenlisted as a veteran. Being transferred to Virginia in 1864 he went through the Shenandoah Valley under Sheridan and at the battle of Cedar Creek was dangerously wounded, his injuries being reported as fatal. For several weeks he laid in an improvised hospital at Winchester, VA and as soon as able to do so he joined his regiment. At the battle of Cedar Creek another man who was wounded was J.H. Coffman, a Confederate soldier, who afterward came to this city and conducted a newspaper which eventually became the Argus-News and later the Review. Mr. Coffman and Dr. Ensminger were neighbors and on the anniversary of the battle, Oct 19, 1864, the two men used to take dinner together and talk over the incidents of the battle in which each was wounded. Dr. Ensminger was promoted by stages from a private to 1st Lt. and for many years had been a member of the Loyal Legion. Following the war he was a member of the famous Montgomery County Guards. The deceased entered Wabash College and remained through his junior year when he left college to obtain funds for taking up the study of medicine which he had decided to make his life work. In order to do this he took up surveying and during this time he worked for the old Indianapolis, Bloomington & Western RR now the P & E Division of the Big Four. He began the study of medicine in 1870 and completed the course two years later, graduating from the Miami Medical College of Cincinnati, Ohio. After his graduation, Dr. Ensminger carried on his medical work with McClelland & Cowan, a pioneer firm of physicians who had an office for many years n the site of the Lee Bakery, East of the Crawford House. For 15 years he was associated with Dr. EH Cowan of this city in the medical partnership. In medicine Dr. Ensminger met with great success. he was widowly known as a surgeon of exceptional ability and he had for many year s been the official surgeon at this place for all the railroads entering this city, including the traction line. As an instance of the hardships the physicians of the earlier days had to endure and as an example of Dr. Ensminger's devotion to duty, there is an interesting story of how he drove to the country on a professional call one night during a heavy spring freshet. There were fewer bridges then than now and he found it necessary to ford a stream that had become a raging torrent. So swollen had the stream become, in fact, that while trying to cross the current carried the horse and buggy down the stream. The doctor managed to cut the horse loose from the buggy, however, and although he had lost his medicine case, he made the call. The horse was discovered the next day in a pasture

On Synonymy, Infraspecific Variability and Nomenclature: This plant is almost always sold as a cultivar of Lobelia fulgens, but that is an old synonym of L. cardinalis. It has also been sold as a cultivar of L. splendens, another old synonym. Floridata [1999] and other authorities have wrongly considered this cultivar to be of the hybrid L. x. speciosa, but the consensus now seems to be that they were wrong, indeed, the history of the form makes the Floridata claim very doubtful. It is noteworthy that 'Queen Victoria' is much less hardy than the native populations from Canada or much of the USA; 'Queen Victoria' and its descendant 'Elmfeuer' also require no vernalization, Texan or Missouri plants don't either, but Michigan plants do, and can need up to two months of cold, wet storage for uniform germination. L. cardinalis was named in 1753 by Linnaeus from plants originally collected in Virginia. Although L. cardinalis was already grown in Europe from Canadian collections made in the mid-1620's, 'Queen Victoria' most likely stems from plants sent to Paris and Berlin from central Mexico by the great scientific explorers Alexander von Humboldt and Aime Bonpland around 1804; these plants would soon be described as L. splendens and L. fulgens in 1809. In 1809 it also first reached Britain from the European continent. The main difference between the two plants was said to be the amount of pubescence; L. splendens had completely glaborous, hairless leaves, whereas L. fulgens, like the L. cardinalis of the USA and Canada, was covered in small hairs. L. splendens was also said to be some 30cm taller than L. fulgens. In flower size both these Mexican plants had larger flowers than the L. cardinalis of that time [info from 1812, more from 1815]. Thus the flowers size and hairlessness of the leaves of 'Queen Victoria' show that it was likely developed from the original Mexican L. splendens. The dark burgundy foliage first appeared in the English gardens of the 1840's and this form was initially named as L. splendens var. atro-sanguinea (='black-bloodied'). It had soon become a popular gardening subject in Europe, and less so in the USA and Australia. By the 1850's there were also already numerous garden varieties of these L. fulgens cultivated in Europe; pyramidalis, multiflora, and marryattae. The marryattae form had purplish flowers. By the 1890's, after in 1883 L. fulgens had been synonymized with L. splendens, these were all being called forms of L. splendens var. fulgens. Thus L. splendens had four or more varieties by the 1890's; var. splendens, var. atro-sanguinea, var. fulgens with numerous forms, the little used horticultural var. ignea from 1857, later var. texensis and a few others briefly joined these. Meanwhile L. cardinalis also had horticultural forms, such as alba. Also, the first modern cultivars had started to appear in Europe by the 1870-80's, of which 'Queen Victoria' was among the earliest. Even more confusingly, especially in France in the late 19th century a group of 'hybrids' had developed, dubbed Lobelia x. hybrida or L. x. perennis hybrida, which were bred lines, cultivars derived from crosses between L. fulgens and cardinalis, with some admixture of syphilitica, and possibly some arnaena thought to be involved. One of the last of these was the violet-flowered L. x. hybrida 'Gerardii' (now L. x. gerardii, of which numerous cultivars were later developed), which was a cross of L. cardinalis 'Queen Victoria' x. L. syphilitica which arose in the Botanic Garden of Lyon in the early 1890's. 'Rivoirei' from the mid-1890's had even larger flowers, deep rose or dark pink. At present, Lobelia x. hybrida has been split into different hybrids or simply cultivars of the species, the generally unidentifiable mixtures are now known as Lobelia x. speciosa (for example 'Russian Princess'). In 1914, L. splendens, L. fulgens and L. cardinalis were still considered separate species in the USA, but L. texensis was already considered a synonym of L. splendens by most US authorities (despite Lobelia cardinalis var. texensis (Raf.) Rothr. [1878/9]). Also by 1914, numerous different beliefs were circling regarding Lobelia splendens var. atro-sanguinea and the cultivar 'Queen Victoria' along with a few others, most in the USA were convinced it should actually be called Lobelia fulgens var. atro-sanguinea. On the other hand 'Queen Victoria' was usually sold as a cultivar of Lobelia cardinalis in the US trade in the 1900-10's. In Europe 'Queen Victoria'