(b. 15 December 1943)
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Herbarium (NCU) has cataloged over 300 vascular plant specimens and one bryophyte collected by William Daniel Seaman. As our collection continues to be databased, without doubt many more specimens will be found. He usually signed his labels as “W. D. Seaman”. It seems that NCU is the sole herbarium curating specimens collected by Seaman.
Most of the specimens were vouchers for Seaman’s Master of Arts thesis, “A study of the vascular flora of Mecklenburg County, Virginia” which was completed in 1970 under the direction of Dr. A.E. Radford in the Botany Department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Dr. Seaman was born and raised in Ridgeway, Warren County, North Carolina. In addition to his M.A. in botany, Seaman has earned a Masters of Divinity from Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri and a Doctor of Divinity from Concordia Seminary in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He has taught biology, human anatomy & physiology, physics and computer sciences at the college, high school and junior high school levels, and was ordained into the Lutheran ministry in 1971. He served as the pastor of Our Savior Lutheran Church in Hickory, North Carolina for 25 years. In 2013 he lived in Raleigh, North Carolina and served as the Mission & Ministry Facilitator for the Southern Region of the Southeastern District of the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod.
PUBLICATIONS:
Seaman, W.D. (1970) A study of the vascular flora of Mecklenburg County, Virginia. M.A. Thesis, Botany Department, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Seaman, W.D. (1982) Assessing church growth. Fort Wayne, Indiana: Concordia Theological Seminary.