2 WILLIAM BARTRAM 



The French element in his ancestry goes back to the Norman 

 Conquest when two Norman brothers followed William the 

 Conqueror to England. One settled in the north of England, 

 the other in Scotland. The Scottish branch of the family still 

 writes its name as " Bertram." ^ 



John Bartram was born at Marple, near Darby, Pennsylva- 

 nia, on March 23, 1699. He received a meagre country school 

 education and devoted himself to farming. His attainments, 

 however, were most uncommon for an ordinary farmer. Before 

 he died, in 1777, he was recognized as a scientist of importance 

 (the great botanist Linnaeus calling him " the greatest natural 

 botanist in the world " *) , he had established the first botanical 

 garden in America,^ had helped Benjamin Franklin to found 

 the American Philosophical Society (his name appearing sec- 

 ond to Franklin's on the list of founders), had been elected to 

 membership in the Royal Societies of London and Stockholm, 

 and had been in active correspondence with many of the princi- 

 pal scientists and philosophers in Europe and America. These 

 attainments naturally enough caused a great deal of confusion 

 in the minds of his contemporaries in their estimate of him. A 

 farmer with a scientist's curiosity, " whose keen eye . . . pierced 

 the husk of nature to the very kernel of life within," ^ is so ex- 

 ceptional as to bafBe classification. 



Concerning the manner in which this simple farmer trans- 

 formed himself into a world-famed naturalist there are many 



markedly from those given by other authorities, including Peattie himself. In 

 this study I have followed Morgan Bunting's Genealogical Chart of the Bartram 

 Family (Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania). 



' Letter from John Bartram to Archibald Bartram, in Memorials of John Bar- 

 tram and Humphrey Marshall, by W. Darlington. Philadelphia, 1849. 



''Charles F. Richardson, American Literature: 1607-1883. New York, 1887, 

 p. 512. 



" " The botanical gardens of the Rosicrucians and of Dr. Christopher Witt ante- 

 dated the Bartram Garden; but in the case of the former only medicinal herbs 

 were cultivated for the use of the brotherhood, whereas the latter garden had a 

 rather limited influence in the advancement of botanical knowledge. So that in 

 effect the current statement of the priority of the Bartram Garden is essentially 

 true." Dr. William Shainline Middleton, " John Bartram, Botanist." Scientific 

 Monthly, XXI (1925), 191. 



'Howard Pyle, "Bartram and his Garden," Harper's Magazine, LX, 321. 



