Bartram, John (1699–1777), botanist, father of William (1739–1823)

Bartram, John (1699–1777), botanist, father of William (1739–1823), naturalist.Born on a farm near Darby, Pennsylvania, John Bartram spent most of his adult life on his farm at Kingsessing, four miles from Philadelphia. By 1730 his interest in botany had attracted the attention of Philadelphia's scientific community, through which he met Peter Collinson, a London merchant and naturalist who became his mentor and patron. Collinson and other British plant enthusiasts purchased seeds and plants from Bartram, thereby helping finance his botanical exploration of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Virginia, and Delaware. He returned with specimens and observations valued by the European scientific community. Named king's botanist ( George III) in 1765, Bartram used his stipend to finance an expedition to South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida.

William Bartram, the son of John and his second wife, Ann Mendenhall, while still a teenager accompanied his father on botanical collecting trips. After failing as a planter and a merchant, William followed his father's footsteps by spending four years (1773–1777) exploring the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida with the financial support of John Fothergill, a London physician. His account of his travels, Travels through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West Florida (1791), influenced English romantic writers such as William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In 1778 he returned to the family farm at Kingsessing, now owned by his brother John, where he provided encouragement and training to the succeeding generation of American naturalists, including Thomas Say and Alexander Wilson. The careers of the Bartrams, father and son, demonstrate the importance of European patronage for American science during the Colonial Era.

Bibliography

Edmund Berkeley and and Dorothy Smith Berkeley , The Life and Travels of John Bartram: From Lake Ontario to the River St. John, 1982.
Thomas P. Slaughter , The Natures of John and William Bartram, 1996.

Marc Rothenberg