William Bartram

William Bartram (born April 20 [April 9, Old Style], 1739, Kingsessing [now in Philadelphia], Pennsylvania [U.S.]—died July 22, 1823, Kingsessing, Pennsylvania, U.S.) was an American naturalist, botanist, writer, and artist. The son of naturalist John Bartram, he described the abundant river swamps of the southeastern United States in their primeval condition in his Travels Through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West Florida (1791), called Travels for short. The book was influential among the English and French Romantics. Bartram was also noted for his renderings of plants and animals.

Early life

Bartram was born to John Bartram and his second wife, Ann Mendenhall, at Kingsessing (now in Philadelphia)—the site of the oldest surviving botanical garden in North America, which was established by John Bartram in 1728. William Bartram, like his father, was a member of the Christian Society of Friends (Quakers) and an ardent naturalist. He was particularly gifted in drawing natural objects, and his talent was recognized by American inventor and diplomat Benjamin Franklin, who was also his father’s friend. Franklin suggested that the young Bartram become an engraver, but he was apprenticed to a merchant instead after completing his studies at the Academy of Philadelphia (now the University of Pennsylvania) in 1756. After finishing his apprenticeship in 1761, Bartram went into business but was unsuccessful. By the early 1770s he had given up his commercial ventures—which included a brief stint of running an indigo and rice plantation in Florida—to follow his true passions, botany and drawing.

Botanical expeditions

Bartram began accompanying his father on botanical expeditions in his mid-20s. Their longest joint expedition lasted from July 1765 to April 1766, during which John Bartram was appointed by King George III as the royal botanist to explore Florida, which had been ceded to Britain by Spain. Their journey took them from Charleston, South Carolina, to the Saint Johns River, Florida. Among the many species of plants and seeds that the father and son collected was a white-flowering shrub that they named franklinia in honor of Benjamin Franklin.

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Faces of Science

Sponsored by the English physician and plant collector John Fothergill, William Bartram went on a solo expedition in March 1773. He retraced parts of his journey with his father but also explored more regions of southeastern United States, visiting North and South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana. During the four years of his travels, which ended in January 1777 and covered more than 2,400 miles (3,860 km), Bartram collected, described, and drew hundreds of plants and animals, many of which were new to science. He recorded his observations from this expedition in a detailed report to Fothergill and in his magnum opus, Travels.

Contributions to science

After the expedition Bartram returned to his family home in Philadelphia and remained there until his death on July 22, 1823. He spent his time helping with his father’s garden, writing his book, and mentoring future naturalists. Travels is considered to be the first piece of environmental literature published in the United States and was much acclaimed in contemporary Europe, although it did not receive a warm reception in America. He combined scientific accuracy with romantic prose in his descriptions of the flora, fauna, and landscape that he encountered in his travels, which made his account popular with British poets and writers such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Thomas Carlyle, and William Wordsworth and French author François-Auguste-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand in addition to earning praise from the scientific community.

In Travels he described 358 species, at least 130 of which were then new to Western science—including the oakleaf hydrangea (Hydrangea quercifolia), the bottlebrush buckeye (Aesculus parviflora), and the fever tree, or Georgia bark (Pinckneya pubens). His illustrations—both in Travels and other writings—helped present an accurate image of American nature to Europeans. Many scholars argue that Bartram’s scientific descriptions and his art helped to establish the importance and independence of American science in the eyes of Europeans.

Bartram created illustrations throughout his life to accompany the scientific works of collaborators such as Benjamin Smith Barton—the author of Elements of Botany (1803), the first American botany textbook—although much of his art was used by many of his contemporaries without acknowledgment. Barton, along with other naturalists, such as Scottish-born American ornithologist Alexander Wilson and American naturalist Thomas Say, also benefited from Bartram’s guidance and instructions on natural history. Throughout Bartram’s life his garden as well as his knowledge of America’s nature and Indigenous peoples continued to delight, inform, and enlighten natural history enthusiasts such as the U.S. presidents Thomas Jefferson and George Washington. Bartram was observant of the practices of the Indigenous peoples and had a keen interest in their medicinal use of plants. He documented several indigenous medicinal botanical species, many of which continued to be listed in Pharmacopeia of the United States in the 19th and 20th centuries (see also pharmacopoeia). To Bartram, the Indigenous peoples of America were deserving of respectful treatment as virtuous, moral people who had no need to embrace European civilization.

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Honoring Bartram

Bartram’s Travels received late acclaim in America, not being reprinted until 1928. It is considered an American classic and continues to inform ecological restoration initiatives and inspire human interest in nature. A network of hiking trails in the southeastern United States that follows the route traveled by Bartram on his 1773–77 expedition—called the Bartram Trail—has been designated a national recreational trail. Wilson named the Bartram’s sandpiper (Bartramia longicauda), also called the upland sandpiper, in honor of his mentor, William Bartram.