46 THE BOTANISTS OF PHILADELPHIA. 



Dr. Witt, besides being an excellent botanist, was an 

 ingenious mechanic, constructing the first clocks made in 

 Pennsylvania, if not in America. He was an artist and 

 musician. He possessed a large pipe organ, said to have 

 been made by his own hands. The scholarly Doctor also 

 practiced horoscopy and would cast nativities, using the 

 hazel rod in his divination. 



When the Doctor was eighty years old his eyesight 

 failed him, resulting finally in blindness. His slave, Robert, 

 carefully looked after his wants until his death in the latter 

 part of January, 1765, aged ninety years. Thus died Doctor 

 Christopher Witt, the last of the Rosicrucian Mystics of 

 Germantown. 



He was buried in the Warmer burial-ground, in 

 Germantown. This spot became known as Spook Hill.* 

 Tales were told which have survived to. the present time, 

 how, upon the night following the burial of the old mystic, 

 spectral flames were seen dancing around his grave. 



JOHN BARTRAM. 



John Bartram, founder of the celebrated Botanical 

 Garden, was born near the village of Darby, in Delaware 

 (then Chester) County, Pennsylvania, on the 23rd 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. 



* It is located on the high ground within the square bounded by High and 

 Haines Streets, and Morton and Hancock Streets, and is reached either by the old lane 

 leading from Haines Street into Mechanic Street, now Colwell Street, or by the path 

 between St. Michael's Church and the parsonage. 



