Vol. 7 No. 2 



TORREYA 



February, 1907 

 JANE GOLDEN, AN EARLY NEW YORK BOTANIST 



By Anna Murray Vail 



A few years ago Mr. James Britten published in the Jo7ir)ial 

 of Botany (33 : 12. 1895) a sketch of the Hfe of Miss Jane Col- 

 den, with a description of her MS. Flora of New York, which is 

 preserved in the Department of Botany of the British Museum. 

 This sketch was compiled from the numerous, but all too frag- 

 mentary, references to Miss Golden that are scattered through 

 her father's correspondence and elsewhere in biographies of the 

 period, and is most entertaining reading. 



It is with the object of adding a few more facts to those col- 

 lected by Mr. Britten, as well as to make known something 

 about the first botanist of her sex in the state, that these notes 

 are offered to the Glub. 



Jane, the second daughter of Lieutenant-Governor Cadwallader 

 Golden, was born in New York, March 27th, 1724. Her father 

 was the son of the Rev. Alexander Golden, minister of Dunse, 

 in the Merse Berwickshire, Scotland. He received his education 

 at the University of Edinburgh, with a view to entering the 

 Ghurch of Scotland, but, his tastes turning in other directions, 

 he devoted himself to the study of medicine. Owing to limited 

 means, his father was unable to assist him in starting a career at 

 home, so he came to this country in 17 10 to try his fortune in 

 America, as he himself puts it in a letter to Kalm. Here he 

 settled in Philadelphia, residing with a widowed sister of his 

 mother's, who had established herself there, and began the prac- 

 tice of his profession. That his affairs did not prosper to his 

 satisfaction or that he had a taste for adventure is evinced by the 

 fact that we hear of him as trading in the colonies and in the 

 West Indies. 

 [No. I, Vol. 7, of ToRREYA, comprising pages 1-20, was issued February 7, 1907.] 



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