THE BRYOLOGIST. 



Vol. VI. September, 1903. No. 5. 



THOMAS POTTS JAMES. 



By Mary Isabella James Gozzaldi. 



A hundred years have passed since the birth of my father, and it seems 

 that the time has corhe to redeem a promise made years a^o to write a 

 sketch of his life for the readers of The Bryologist, who are so familiar with 

 his name and work. So far as I know he never kept any journal, and I have 

 had to depend on letters for the facts and dates given. In the Cryptogamic 

 Museum at Harvard are five large albums of letters written to him, together 

 with his rough copies of his answers, that may serve some day for his bio- 

 graphy. As I have not followed in the steps of my father my record must 

 necessarily be of the man and not the scientist. 



My father, Thomas Potts James, was born September i, 1803, in the old 

 James mansion house at Radnor, Pennsylvania, standing back from the 

 Lancaster Turnpike, a little way from Pyrn Mawr College. 



His parents were Isaac James, M.D., and his wife, Henrietta, daughter 

 of Col Thomas Potts, of Coventry, Pa. In the old house at Coventry she 

 had married Isaac James, in the first year of the new century, and on Jan. 

 16, 1802, John Fletcher James, their eldest child, had been born in this house, 

 and less than twenty months later the second son. Thomas Potts James. 



The ancestoi" of the family, David James, came to Pennsylvania from 

 New Radnor, Wales, purchasing in 1682 a large tract of land from William 

 Penn. Of my father's boyhood at Radnor I know nothing except that he 

 was a chubby blond, with delicate skin, fine thick fair hair and blue eyes. 

 When he was nine years old his father removed to near Trenton, where he 

 could have better schools for his children than in the country west of Phila- 

 delphia. Thomas and his elder brother, John, began to fit for Princeton Col- 

 lege, but their father, Dr. James, unfortunately lost so much money at this 

 time that a college education had to be given up, and they early began to 

 earn their own living. John and Thomas both studied Pharmacy 



It was probably while studying botany as used in the materia medica 

 that my father found his vocation. A congenial companion at this time was 

 a Mr. Laning, who devoted much time to long excursions after new plants. 

 My father was soon familiar with the principal flora of the neighborhood of 

 Philadelphia, and thinking that it had been determined and named he 

 turned his attention to the Cryptogams where there was a chance of original 

 research. 



In 1831 the brothers, John and Thomas, started in the drug business in 

 Philadelphia and continued for nearly forty years, but only as a means of 

 providing daily bread. In 1866 my father was able to dispose of his drug 

 store and free himself forever from business and could thus devote all his 



The July Bryologist was issued July ist, 1003. 



