Botanist and inventor George Washington Carver died on January 5, 1943, in Tuskegee, Alabama. Carver was born into slavery in the early 1860s in Diamond Grove, Missouri. His exact birth date is unknown. One night while the Civil War still raged, night raiders kidnapped the week-old Carver, his mother, and sister. His family’s owner, Moses Carver, was only able to find and save George and would raise him and his brother as his own children.