His parents Joseph Sanborn and Eunice Ellen (Winslow) Lamson died when he was 3 years old and he was adopted by the Virgil Scribner family near Manchester, Maine.
He received preparatory education at Hebron Academy, Kents Hill School, and Coburn Classical Institute and graduated from Maine State College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts in 1873.
He was the botanist for the Northern Transcontinental Survey and completed an inventory of grasses and forages in Montana in the summer of 1883.
His role was to study parasitic fungi affecting crops and he became the chief of the USDA Section of Mycology in 1886.
Working with farmers he was able to try different disease control formulations and collect statistical data related to plant infection.