BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 



OF 



JOHN BARTRAM 



John Bartram, the earliest native American Botanist, and the 

 founder of the first Botanical Garden on this continent, was born 

 near the village of Darby, in Delaware (then Chester) County, 

 Pennsylvania, on the 23d day of March, 1699. 



His great-grandfather, Richard Bartram, lived and died in 

 Derbyshire, England. Richard had one son, named John, who 

 married in Derby (England), and, with his wife, was settled for 

 some years in the town of Ashborn, where they had three sons and 

 one daughter. 



With this family, John (following the fortunes of William 

 Penn) removed to Pennsylvania in 1682, the year in which the 

 city of Philadelphia was founded and settled in what is now 

 Delaware County, near Darby.* He died on the first of Sep- 

 tember, 1697. 



The names of the three sons who accompanied him to this 

 Western World, were John, Isaac, and William. John and 

 Isaac both died unmarried, the former on the 14th of June, 1692, 

 and the latter on the 10th of January, 1708. 



William Bartram, the third son, was married to Elizabeth, 



* In Proud's History of Pennsylvania (vol. i. p. 218), the following passage 

 occurs in a note: "In the year 1682 they had a religious meeting regularly fixed 

 at Darby. Among the first and early settlers of the Society, at or near this place, 

 are mentioned, John Blunston, Michael Blunston, George Wood, Joshua Kearn, 

 Henry Gibbons, Samuel Sellers, Richard Bonsall, Edmund Cartledge, Thomas 

 Hood, John Bartram, Robert Naylor, and Adam Rhoads ; who all came from 

 Derbyshire, in England." 



