You can’t grow up in Delavan without knowing that Abraham Lincoln visited the town in 1841, but what about the rest of the town’s history? Dive into Delavan’s days of yore here in Hometown History.

This town has more than just a presidential visit, many notable people were born right here. These people went on to shape art, serve under a future president,, and further scientific understandings. The first of which this column will explore is Harriet Baldwin Creighton.

Born on June 27, 1909 in Delavan, Illinois, was botanist and cytogeneticist Harriet Baldwin Creighton. At the age of 22, she alongside Barbara McClintock would go on to run an experiment and publish a scientific paper that confirmed “the mechanism by which X and Y chromosomes exchange genetic information during the formation of egg and sperm cells.” Have you noticed that you have the same eyes as your grandma, or that your baby has their dad’s nose? Before the work of Creighton and McClintock there was no known reason as to how that happened.

With what’s gone on to be described as a landmark experiment and paper, these two extraordinarily brilliant women examined maize (corn) chromosomes under a microscope. They began crossing these chromosomes and recognizing the traits that were present as they implemented specific sections of the chromosome. Throughout their experiment they were able to conclude that our chromosomes contain genes, “leading to today’s recognition that the genome is a graspable entity.” They also proved that genes were parts that were able to be studied individually away from the chromosome as a whole.

Later within the same year their experiment was replicated by a third party, solidifying the results. Creighton and McClintock built upon the knowledge from Mendel and his pea plants which proved the groundwork for knowing that a living entity must inherit its essence from its parent entity. It went further in showing genes are physical things which are responsible or this rather than just the chromosomes as a whole. Their work is the foundation to so many things we experience in everyday life.

They may have even touched your family. Because of the work of Creighton and McClintock things such as IVF (In Vitro Fertilization) can exist making it possible for so many families to have children who struggled with it before. They showed the world how physical traits are observable and how those traits can be crossed. Their work was fundamental in understanding life. Because of them, scientists are able to gene edit which directly affects the quality of the food on your table.

Harriet Baldwin Creighton went on to become the president of the Botanical Society of America in 1956, a position she held for a year. Though she went a long ways from Delavan, it’s undeniable that she is a town legend and hero.

Creighton and McClintock laid the framework for so much, we learn about these biological facts of life primarily between 5th and 9th grade and while Mendel’s experiment is highlighted multiple times throughout those years, the history and science textbooks seem to have forgotten about this Delavan woman and her lab partner. These scientists were ahead of their time and for that they’ve gone unappreciated. Show some love and gratitude to these transformative geneticists and their discovery of “Jumping Genes” today with Hometown History!