William Darlington, an American botanist and politician, born in Birmingham, Chester co., Pa., April 28, 1782, died in West Chester, Pa., April 23, 1863. He received the degree of M. D. from the university of Pennsylvania in 1804, and in 1806 went to Calcutta as surgeon of a merchant ship. A sketch of his voyage, under the title of "Letters from Calcutta," was afterward published in the "Analectic Magazine." He returned in 1807, married, and for several years practised medicine at West Chester. Here he soon entered into politics, and on the breaking out of hostilities in 1812 he aided in raising an armed corps in his neighborhood, and in 1814 was chosen major of a volunteer regiment. He was a member of congress 1815-'17 and 1819-'23. He founded at West Chester an academy, an athenreum, and a society of natural history. In 1813 he began a descriptive catalogue of plants growing around West Chester, which was published in 1826 under the title of Florula Cestrica, afterward merged in the Flora Cestrica, published in 1837, and rewritten and republished in 1853, containing a complete description and classification of every plant known to exist in the county.

In 1843 he edited the correspondence of his friend Dr. William Baldwin, with a memoir, under the title of Reliquim Baldwin-ianm. He also published "Mutual Influence of Habits and Disease" (1804-'6); "Agricultural Botany" (1847), "Agricultural Chemistry" (1847), and "Memorials of John Bartram and Humphrey Marshall" (1849).