Archives West Finding Aid

Martin W. Gorman, the son of Peter and Mary Gorman, was born on a farm near the town of Eaganville, Renfrew County, Ontario, Canada, on November 23, 1853. He attended McGill College in Montreal in 1876 and later worked as a bookkeeper for a wholesale hardware store in Montreal. In February 1885 Gorman moved to Portland, Oregon where he was employed as a bookkeeper in a bank. In a letter to his brother John, in 1892, Gorman wrote that he was studying botany. He made his first journey to the Yukon in 1893, on behalf of a Portland bank which had backed salmon canneries. While there he gathered several boxes of plant specimens.

Gorman traveled to the Yukon several times, with various expeditions, and also did much botanical work in the Pacific Northwest, becoming a leading authority on the flora of the Northwest, especially trees. Gorman's private herbarium was received by the University of Oregon Herbarium in Eugene after his death; in May 1993 those specimens were transferred to the Oregon State University Herbarium in Corvallis. Other specimens he gathered are in the Smithsonian Institution. He is credited with discovering at least ten species new to science.

During the summers Gorman made collecting trips to all parts of Oregon and Washington. From findings he made as a member of an expedition on Mount Baker in 1906, he later published a booklet entitled Vegetation of the Northwestern Slope of Mount Baker.

At the close of the Lewis & Clark Exposition, Gorman was appointed curator of the Oregon Forestry Building, a position he held until his death in Portland, Oregon, on October 7, 1926.