John Bartram

Background

John Bartram was born on May 23, 1699, on his father’s farm near Darby, Pennsylvania. He was the eldest child of William Bartram and his first wife, Elizabeth Hunt, both members of the Society of Friends.

Education

John had only a common country schooling; but, from the age of twelve, as he later said, he had “a great inclination to Botany and Natural History,” although for a time medicine and surgery were his “chief study.”

Career

On reaching manhood, Bartram inherited from an uncle a farm on which he established himself and his young family; he sold it in 1728 and bought another, of 102 acres, on the banks of the Schuylkill River at Kingsessing, four miles from Philadelphia. Here he converted the marshy lands into productive meadows by draining them; and, through intelligent use of fertilizer and crop rotation, he was soon reaping more abundant crops than most of his neighbors.

By 1730 he had laid out a small garden where he cultivated plants, shrubs, and trees from different parts of America. As Bartram’s interest in scientific botany grew, James Logan, chief justice of the province and a learned amateur of science, encouraged him with loans and gifts of books. About 1734 Bartram was introduced to the London mercer and enthusiast of science Peter Collinson as “a very proper person” to provide specimens of the products of American fields and forests; and thus his career was launched.

Collinson ordered seeds, plants, and shrubs; got Bartram other customers; advised him on what would sell in England; and instructed him how to pack and ship the specimens and even how to behave toward his patrons. The dukes of Richmond, Norfolk, Argyll, and Bedford; Lord Petre; Philip Miller, author of Gardener’s Dictionary, Sir Hans Sloane; and Thomas Penn all enriched their gardens and greenhouses with plants obtained from Bartram. In this way Bartram introduced more than a hundred American species into Europe.

Collinson and his friends annually raised a fund to pay for their purchases and thus to underwrite Bartram’s collecting. Sometimes they sent him botanical works as gifts so that he could identify the plants he found, and Collinson persuaded the Library Company of Philadelphia to give Bartram a membership so that he might use its collections. In addition, Collinson introduced Bartram by letter to Linnaeus, Gronovius, G. L. Buffon, and other European naturalists, and also to Americans who shared his interests.

With a market for his plants thus assured, Bartram began to make a series of botanical journeys to distant parts of the country. The first, in 1736, was to the sources of the Schuylkill River. In 1738 he traveled to Virginia and the Blue Ridge, covering 1,100 miles in five weeks and spending but a single night in any town. He made shorter expeditions to the New Jersey coast and pine barrens and to the cedar swamps of southern Delaware. The yield to science from these explorations was so great that in 1742 Benjamin Franklin and other Philadelphians opened a subscription to enable Bartram “wholly to spend his Time and exert himself” in discovering and collecting plants, trees, flowers, and other natural products. The subscription was abandoned when Logan opposed it, and Bartram never had the kind of financial independence he repeatedly sought. Nonetheless, in the summer of 1742 he tramped over the Catskill Mountains, and in 1743, with Conrad Weiser, the province interpreter, and the cartographer Lewis Evans, he traveled through Pennsylvania into the Indian country of New York as far as Oswego and Lake George.

By 1750 Bartram was famous. Copies of his journals circulated in manuscript in London, and that of the trip to Onondago was published there in 1751. Such American naturalists as Dr. John Mitchell of Virginia and such philosophers as Cadwallader Colden of New York sought him out. Peter Kalm spent so much time at Kingsessing that Logan complained that during an eight-month visit to Philadelphia the Swedish botanist had seen no one but Franklin and Bartram.

Bartram’s observations were not limited to things botanical. He collected shells, insects, hummingbirds, terrapin, and wild pigeons. He described the mussels of the Delaware River, rattlesnakes, wasps, and the seventeen-year locust; and from his letters about them Collinson fashioned communications that were printed in the Royal Society’s Philosophical Transactions. Except for the introduction and notes for a Philadelphia edition of Thomas Short’s Medicina Britannica and two short pieces on snakeroot and red cedar for Poor Richard's Almanack, Bartram wrote almost nothing for publication; even the Onondago journal, in Kalm’s estimate, contained not “a thousandth part of the great knowledge which he has acquired in natural philosophy and history.” Bartram was also interested in every scheme to promote scientific inquiry in America, and he offered several of his own.

In 1743 Franklin succeeded in establishing for a few years a less ambitious group, the American Philosophical Society, to which Bartram was especially devoted. In a letter to Garden in 1756 he proposed a kind of geological survey of the mineral resources of the North American continent. Bartram was always ready to become a traveling naturalist, supported by the government or private patrons and reporting his discoveries to his sponsors. As increasing numbers of explorers and collectors uncovered and carried away mammoth fossils from Big Bone Lick, Kentucky, in the 1750’s and 1760’s, Bartram expressed the hope that wealthy “curiosos” would “send some person that will take pains to measure every bone exactly, before they are broken and carried away, which they soon will be, by ignorant, careless people, for gain.”

The dose of the French and Indian War brought Great Britain a vast increase of territory in North America, and Bartram set out to explore it. He traveled in 1761 to the forks of the Ohio River and to the springs of western Virginia, crawling “over many deep wrinkles in the face of our antient mother earth”; and in 1764 he appealed to Collinson to raise funds to send him on an exploration of Florida. In consequence of his friend’s representations, in 1765 Bartram was named king’s botanist with an annual stipend of fifty pounds. Although he complained that it was not enough, Bartram set out all the same, accompanied by his son William.

Entertained by governors and other officials, he traveled from Charleston through Georgia into Florida, visiting plantations, noting the quality of the soils, and recording trees, plants, and fossils. During these journeys he discovered the lovely Franklinia altamaha, which has never since been found in its native soils and survives today only in descent from a specimen Bartram brought back to his garden. In Florida, Bartram went up the St. John’s River to Fort Picolata, where he and William witnessed an impressive Indian treaty ceremonial.

This was Bartram’s last trip. He was aging, and his sight was failing. He spent his remaining years at Kingsessing, surrounded by family and friends, tending his garden, visited by the great and the curious. One visitor, J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, later published a pleasing, although romanticized, account of Bartram’s life and manner of living.

Achievements

• Bartram published journals of his travels, the most important of which was Observations on the Inhabitants, Climate, Soil, etc. Made by John Bartram in His Travels from Pennsylvania to Lake Ontario (1751). The most significant part of his work was actual collecting of specimens for Collinson and others. In his celebrated garden he began some work with hybrid plants which, though not systematic, stimulated interest. The garden itself and Bartram's home became a focal point for botanical activity in the Colonies.
  
  Bartram`s achievements were greatly recognized by the Royal Academy of Sciences of Sweden, which made him a member in 1769. In 1772 “A Society of Gentlemen in Edinburgh” who were interested in propagating arts and sciences, awarded him a gold medal for his services. Before he died, his fellow citizens and European friends of America had ranked Bartram with Franklin and David Rittenhouse as one of the country’s authentic natural geniuses.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Travels on the St. Johns River

    (John and William Bartram explored the St. Johns River Val...)

    1765
  • Bartram's Garden 1777
  • Park Life: The Memoirs of a Royal Parks Gamekeeper 1770
  • Observations on the Inhabitants, Climate, Soil, Rivers, Productions, Animals, and Other Matters Worthy of Notice. Made by Mr. John Bartram, in His ... Oswego and the Lake Ontario, in Canada 1751
  • A description of East-Florida, with a journal, kept by John Bartram of Philadelphia, botanist to His Majesty for the Floridas 1767
  • A journey from Pennsylvania to Onondaga 1743
  • Reproductions of specimens letters and drawings by John and William Bartram deposited in the Botanical Department of South Kensington Museum London 1742
  • John and William Bartram's America: Selections from the Writings of the Philadelphia Naturalists
  • Seven letters from John Bartram to Dr. Fothergill 1764

Religion

Bartram’s religious views were deeply influenced by his studies of nature. He was contemptuous of ecclesiastical formalities and theological points; he was scornful of Quaker pacifism, which he believed made men hypocrites, “for they can’t banish freedom of thought”; and, unlike his coreligionists, he judged that the only way to establish lasting peace with the Indians was to “bang them stoutly.” He was, in fact, a deist, and when he persisted in expressions of disbelief in the divinity of Jesus, the Friends disowned him in 1757.

He continued to attend Quaker meetings, however - and to express his unorthodox views. “My head runs all upon the works of God, in nature,” he wrote in 1762. “It is through that telescope I see God in the sky.” Over the window of his house in 1770 he carved the words, “Tis God alone, Almighty Lord,/The Holy One, by me adored.”

Membership

Bartram was a dedicated member of the American Philosophical Society from 1743. Bartram was also a member of the Royal Academy of Sciences of Sweden from 1769.

• 

  American Philosophical Society , United States

  1743 - 1777

Personality

Single-minded and untiring in pursuit of natural history, Bartram grumbled and complained when anything impeded his work. On the other hand, he was friendly and open to those who shared his devotion. Kalm gratefully acknowledged that he owed Bartram much, “for he possessed that great quality of communicating everything he knew.” Everyone who knew him was impressed with Bartram’s industry, his capacity for accurate observation and recall, and his independence.

Physical Characteristics: John Bartram, in William’s words, was “rather above the middle size, and upright,” with a long face and an expression that was at once dignified, animated, and sensitive. A painting by John Wollaston in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington is thought to be a portrait of Bartram.

Quotes from others about the person

• Dr. Alexander Garden of Charleston wrote of a visit to Bartram in 1754: "His garden is a perfect portraiture of himself, here you meet with a row of rare plants almost covered over with weeds, here with a Beautifull Shrub, even Luxuriant Amongst Briars, and in another corner an Elegant & Lofty tree lost in common thicket. On our way from town to his house, he carried me to several rocks & Dens where he showed me some of his rare plants, which he had brought from the Mountains &e. In a word, he disclaims to have a garden less than Pensylvania & Every' den is an Arbour, Every run of water, a Canal, & every small level Spot a Parterre, where he nurses up some of his Idol Flowers & cultivates his darling productions. He had many plants whose names he did not know, most or all of which I had seen and knew them. On the other hand, he had several I had not seen and some I never heard of."

Connections

Bartram was married twice: in 1723 to Mary Maris of Chester Monthly Meeting, by whom he had two sons; and in 1729 to Ann Mendenhall, of Concord Monthly Meeting, who bore him five sons and four daughters. His sons Isaac and Moses became apothecaries, John inherited the farm and famous garden, and William achieved lasting fame as a botanical traveler, artist, and author.

Father:

William Bartram

Mother:

Elizabeth Hunt

late wife:

Mary Maris

Wife:

Ann Mendenhall

Son:

Isaac Bartram

Son:

Moses Bartram

Son:

William Bartram

Friend:

Peter Collinson

Peter Collinson, 1694 – 1768, was a Fellow of the Royal Society, an avid gardener, and the middleman for an international exchange of scientific ideas in mid-18th century London. He is best known for his horticultural friendship with John Bartram and his correspondence with Benjamin Franklin about electricity.

References

• The Life and Travels of John Bartram: From Lake Ontario to the River St. John
  1990
• The Natures of John and William Bartram The nature of early America as seen through the eyes of a father and son, two 18th-century botanical explorers and their natures as men is explored thoroughly throughout the pages of this book.
  1996
• The Brother Gardeners: A Generation of Gentlemen Naturalists and the Birth of an Obsession From the bestselling author of The Invention of Nature, a fascinating look at the men who made Britain teh center of the botanical world. Bringing to life the science and adventure of eighteenth-century plant collecting, The Brother Gardeners is the story of how six men created the modern garden and changed the horticultural world in the process. It is a story of a garden revolution that began in America.
  2010
• John and William Bartram: Travelers in Early America A juvenile biography of father and son, John and William Bartram, naturalists who lived in the late 18th and early 19th centuries in America. The Bartrams were America's first native botanists, father and son travelers, plant hunters, and master gardeners. They traveled the east coast and observed and wrote about the nature they found. Their story is full of adventure and curiosity. Their interests took them on wide travels, including through Flo
  2015
• The Correspondence of John Bartram, 1734-1777
  1992
• The Natures of John and William Bartram: Two Pioneering Naturalists, Father and Son, in the Wilderness of Eighteenth-Cen tury America
  1997
• John and William Bartram, William Byrd II, and St. John de Crèvecoeur: A reference guide
  1976
• Memorials of John Bartram and Humphry Marshall
  2018
• The Poetics of Natural History: From John Bartram to William James
  1999
• A Celebration of John and William Bartram: In Philadelphia and Florida eBook: Thomas Peter Bennett: Gateway
  1999
• John And William Bartram's America
  1957
• John Bartram (1699-1777): His Garden and His House; William Bartram (1739-1823)
  1953