John Edmonstone
John Edmonstone was a black enslaved man probably born in Demerara, British Guiana, who later gained his freedom. He learned taxidermy from Charles Waterton, whose father-in-law Charles Edmonstone had a plantation in Demerara.
After he was freed, Edmonstone came to Glasgow with his former master, Charles Edmonstone. From there he moved to Edinburgh, where he taught taxidermy to students at the University of Edinburgh, including Charles Darwin.
Edmonstone gave Darwin inspiring accounts of tropical rain forests in South America and may have encouraged him to explore there. The taxidermy Darwin learnt from Edmonstone helped him greatly during the voyage of HMS Beagle.
Edmonstone is regarded as one of the "100 Great Black Britons". However, Darwin does not mention him by name, so the identification of Edmonstone as Darwin's teacher is not completely certain.
A poem narrated from the perspective of John Edmonstone appears in the Winter 2019 issue of African American Review''.
