He was the son of William Theophilus Totten of Rockingham County, North Carolina, minister, educator, and president of Yadkin Collegiate Institute (later Yadkin College) for twenty-six years.
His academic career was spent as a faculty member of the Botany Department for fifty years, teaching general botany, dendrology, pharmacognosy, and plant taxonomy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
The university completed the Totten Center, named for him, in 1976 as the first permanent building in the North Carolina Botanical Garden.
[2] Totten was a member of many scientific societies and the author of The Plant Life of Hartsville, S. C. (1912); The Trees of North Carolina (with William Coker) (1916).
[3] A specimen currently grows near the front entrance to the Totten Center at the North Carolina Botanical Garden.