22 



In 171 5 he returned to England and "in pursuance of the 

 main object, probably, of his visit to his native land," he went to 

 Scotland, where, in November of the same year, he married Alice 

 Christy. The following year saw them both in Philadelphia, and 

 in 1 7 18, accepting the offer from Governor Hunter of a position 

 as master in chancery and surveyor-general. Dr. Golden fixed 

 his residence in New York. 



In 1 7 19 a patent for 2,oco acres of land situated in Ulster 

 Gounty was issued to him, and shortly after he procured another 

 thousand acres adjoining the first, and to this manor he gave the 

 name of " Goldengham," still known to-day as Goldenham, in the 

 town of Montgomery, Orange Gounty.* 



The details of his active life are too well known to be recounted 

 here. Suffice it to say that about this time Governor Hunter 

 offered him a small stipend for the compilation of a list of the 

 plants and animals of New York. This work was to be pursued 

 on his surveys, but, owing to extensive cutting down of expendi- 

 tures in the province, it was not carried out. As regards the 

 flora of the state as a whole, this was only accomplished nearly 

 a hundred years later with the publication in 18 14 by Jacob Green 

 of his " Catalogue of the Plants Indigenous to the State of New 

 York," and later by the more complete and detailed works of John 

 Torrey, published 1840-43. 



In 1728 Dr. Golden with his wife and six young children re- 

 moved to Goldengham, being led thereto among other reasons 

 "to secure in the — then wilderness abode that leisure for philo- 

 sophical study to which he was so much inclined." 



It was during his residence there for more than thirty years 

 that he maintained a most voluminous correspondence with a 

 number of learned men in P!^urope. In the intervals of political 

 and literary pursuits he devoted himself to the reclamation and 

 cultivation of his estate, and, with his accomplished wife, to the 

 education of their children. It was here that he wrote that first 

 of " local floras" of New York, the " Plantae Goldenghamiae," 

 eventually published by Linnaeus, with whom he had been in 



^ Purple, E. R. Genealogical Notes of the Golden Family in America. New 



York ; privately printed, 1873. 



