The Slave Child Nobody Named

In 1864, night riders kidnapped an infant and his mother from Moses Carver's farm in Diamond, Missouri. The mother was never found. The baby, sick with whooping cough, was traded back for a racehorse. No one recorded his birth date. No one knew his father. The world did not even give him a proper name.

Yet George Washington Carver grew into one of the most brilliant agricultural scientists America has ever known. From a childhood spent pressing wildflowers into handmade books, to his groundbreaking research at Tuskegee Institute, Carver discovered over three hundred uses for the peanut and sweet potato, revolutionizing Southern agriculture. He called his laboratory "God's Little Workshop" and rose every morning at four to walk the fields, praying and listening for what the Creator would reveal through soil and seed.

When asked how he made his discoveries, Carver answered simply: "I go into the woods and there I gather specimens. I say, 'Great Creator, what do you want me to do with these?' And He tells me."

The world had thrown Carver away before he could walk. But the God of Psalm 139 had knit him together in his mother's womb, knew every thought before it formed, and had searched out every path he would walk — long before a single soul on earth bothered to learn his name. The One who fashioned George Washington Carver in secret already knew exactly who he was.