William Famous Bartram

Possible alternate b. & d. information: Birth: Apr. 7, 1739 - Death: 1822 Philadelphia, Philadelphia Co., PA. Find A Grave Memorial # 8139879.

"During the summer of 1999, the U.S. Postal Service honored William Bartram -- and his botanist father John Bartram -- with a commemorative postage stamp adorned with the likeness of one of William's hand-colored engravings. The 33-cent stamp was dedicated on May 7, 1999, and marked the 300th anniversary of John's birth. The Bartram Nature Trail near Augusta, GA is named for William, whose artistic abilities began to flourish in the 1760s when he sent friends in England detailed illustrations of American flora and fauna. The commemorative stamp, with a likeness of the hand-colored engraving of the beautiful Franklinia alatamaha flower, honors some of the 200 native American plants first introduced by the Bartrams." http://chronicle.augusta.com/stories/1999/07/27/met_266514.shtml

To view more pictures, including one of this postage stamp, go to the Media section.

Wiliam was America's first native born naturalist-artist, botanist, painter, explorer, and the first author to write how he portrayed nature through personal experiences as well as scientific observation. From 1773 to 1776, his southern journey took him from the foothills of the Appalachian mountains to Florida, through the southeastern interior all the way to the Mississippi River, as well as to eight states: NC, SC, GA, FL, AL, MS, LA, and TN. This journey was published as an account of his adventures titled "Bartram's Travels" in 1791. Following in his father's footsteps, William carried on extensive travels and observations in the fields of botany and ornithology for as long as he possibly could, finally returning home to a quiet life. He was recognized as America's first ornithologist.

In 1752 he was sent to the Academy of Philadelphia; his studies there included Latin and French, but botany and drawing, his father wrote, were “his darling delight.” The father encouraged his son in these directions, taking him on botanizing trips to the Catskill Mountains in 1753 and to Connecticut in 1755, and letting him sketch on Saturday afternoons and Sundays, instead of working and going to meeting.

"Source: From DICTIONARY OF NORTH CAROLINA BIOGRAPHY edited by William S. Powell. Copyright (c) 1979-1996 by the University of North Carolina Press. Used by permission of the publisher. www.uncpress.unc.edu

William Bartram, naturalist, was born near Philadelphia, where his gifts as an artist brought him in his youth to the attention of Benjamin Franklin. Franklin proposed that William become an engraver, but he was apprenticed instead to a Philadelphia merchant in 1756. In 1761, his apprenticeship completed, William moved to Bladen County, where his uncle William had a large plantation and considerable property on the Cape Fear River. Here the nephew opened a store and spent the next four years alternately occupied with his business and investigating the flora and fauna of the Cape Fear region.

The Bartram family was established in the Cape Fear country by the early eighteenth century, when Bartram's grandfather, the first William Bartram, settled at Whitoc plantation. There he was attacked and killed by local Indians, and his wife and sons, William and John, were taken captive. Mrs. Bartram was subsequently able to return to Philadelphia with her sons. John remained in Philadelphia, but William later returned to North Carolina to resume control of their father's estate. He became a man of considerable influence as a colonel of militia and was for many years a representative in the colonial legislature of North Carolina. White Lake in Bladen County was known as Lake Bartram when he owned much land in the vicinity. Colonel Bartram also had a son named William, first cousin of the naturalist, and it was this household that the naturalist joined in 1761. The two cousins were often companions on botanical and zoological jaunts in the vicinity of Ashwood, Bartram's plantation.

The mercantile venture of William Bartram did not prosper in Bladen. John Bartram, newly appointed as botanist to King George III, stopped by Ashwood in 1765 on a mission to Florida; he took his son with him on the trip, and afterward the two returned to Philadelphia. William tried for three more years to find success as a merchant in Philadelphia, but by 1770 he was almost bankrupt and disillusioned with the effort. He returned to Ashwood, where, during the next two years, Colonel Bartram, his wife, and their son, Dr. William Bartram, all died. Leaving Ashwood in the latter part of 1772 and returning once more to Philadelphia, Bartram in the following spring set forth on his famous "travels," outlined in the volume Travels through North and South Carolina, Georgia, etc, which he brought out in 1791. Chiefly through the fine reception accorded to the book, Bartram became an established member of the international literary and scientific community and a member of many American and foreign learned societies. A Quaker by upbringing, Bartram became an ardent deist.

Bartram visited Ashwood, apparently for the last time, late in 1776. He always held Ashwood in affectionate regard as a place where he and his cousins had engaged in "pastimes . . . of the most Innocent and simple nature such as amuse Brothers, Sisters and Friends." At least one biographer has suggested that William had a brief love affair with one of Colonel Bartram's daughters, but the naturalist was never married.

William Bartram is buried at Bartram's Garden National Historic Landmark, Philadelphia, PA. The Gardens were founded by his father. The Historic Landmark encompasses the homestead of John Bartram, and today is America's oldest living botanical garden. The 45-acre site on the Schuylkill River in Southwest Philadelphia features Bartram's 18th century home and farm buildings, historic botanical garden, wildflower meadow, water garden, freshwater wetland, parkland, river trail and a museum shop. The house was named a National Historic Landmark in 1963.

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The fame of naturalist, nurseryman, artist, and author William Bartram (1739-1823) rests primarily on his one book, Travels through North and South Carolina, East and West Florida, the Cherokee Country, the Extensive Territories of the Muscolgulges, or Creek Confederacy, and the Country of the Chactaws [sic] (1791). This literary and scientific classic describes his journey through southeastern North America during the Revolutionary War era. It is an essential resource on the flora and fauna of the Southeast and includes detailed descriptions of his visits among the Indian peoples of the region, including what is now Alabama. Bartram's imagery inspired such poets as Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth, and Travels is recognized as the first classic of environmental literature written and published in the United States.

William Bartram and his twin sister Elizabeth were born on April 9, 1739, (although there is some confusion about this date) in Kingsessing (now within the city of Philadelphia), Pennsylvania, to world-renowned botanist John Bartram and his second wife, Anne Mendenhall. Bartram showed a talent for illustration early on and was raised among of his father's prominent intellectual friends and correspondents, including Benjamin Franklin and Carl von Linné (popularly known as Linnaeus). John included the teen-aged Billy, as he was known to the family, on plant-gathering expeditions and mailed his son's drawings to eminent naturalists in Europe. William attended Philadelphia Academy (later the University of Pennsylvania) for three years but failed to translate his education and talents into an income-yielding profession. After a three-year apprenticeship as a trader, Billy moved to the Cape Fear region of coastal North Carolina, where he lived with his uncle William Bartram and sought to establish himself in that profession.

Bartram's life changed in 1765 when his father, John, was appointed by King George III to explore the territory of Florida as an official botanist. In 1766, John returned to Philadelphia, but William remained in Florida and purchased a plantation near the St. Johns River near present-day Jacksonville. He was an utter failure as a planter and may have taken a position with British surveyor general William Gerard De Brahm, who was mapping the new Florida territory. After surviving a shipwreck off the Atlantic coast of Florida, Bartram returned to Philadelphia. Credit problems forced him to leave in 1770, however, and the following year, he moved to St. Augustine.

Although these were turbulent times for Bartram, he made artistic strides in depicting the native plants of his new home region, many of which remained unknown to Western science. William found an audience for his work among his father's connections in Europe. Drawings that he sent to London cloth merchant and botany enthusiast Peter Collinson in 1772 brought commissions from London physician John Fothergill (for whom the North American plant genus Fothergilla is named), as well as noted shell collector Margaret Harley Cavendish Bentinck, Duchess of Portland.

Fothergill hired Bartram to collect and sketch more plants, and Bartram departed for Charleston in March 1773, thus beginning what would become his famous travels. His path ranged through the Georgia and South Carolina Piedmont to the Atlantic barrier islands off Georgia to the upper waters of the St. Johns River and across the Florida peninsula. In late 1774, Bartram journeyed through Cherokee territory and then southwest through the Creek and Choctaw territories to the Mississippi River. During the 1775–76 leg of his journey, along what later became the Federal Road, Bartram passed through Alabama's present-day Russell and Macon counties to the future site of Montgomery and then turned southwest through what are now Lowndes, Butler, Conecuh, Escambia, and Baldwin counties. Bartram reached Mobile in July 1775 and sailed up the Tensaw and Tombigbee rivers on a route now called the Bartram Canoe Trail. At the Mobile Delta, Bartram saw his first evening primrose (Oenothera grandiflora), which he sketched and described as "the most brilliant shew [show] of any yet known to exist."

After a brief skirmish in the Revolutionary War, about which details are sparse, Bartram returned to Philadelphia on January 2, 1777. Friends had given him up for dead at least once. The trip made Bartram's reputation as an expert in natural history and Native American cultures, and it also helped the Bartram family's nursery business. John Bartram died in 1777, leaving the garden to son John Bartram Jr., and William joined his brother in running the operation, preparing orders for such important figures as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and author Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur. In 1786, Bartram fell from a cypress tree while gathering seeds, broke his leg, and may have spent his recuperation working on the manuscript for Travels. Because the book evolved slowly and was intended to serve many purposes, it can strike modern readers as uneven. It is perhaps best read in small sections or as a reference for specific flora, fauna, peoples, or locales. The introduction offers an excellent example of Enlightenment-era nature writing. Part one includes a detailed account of the 1773 Treaty of Augusta, in which the Cherokees suffered the "humiliating lash" of a Creek cession of their land taken in warfare. Part two contains the book's most memorable scenes, including a clash with "crocodiles" on the St. Johns River. Parts three and four (the latter presented in typical eighteenth-century ethnography form) include astute observations of Creek, Cherokee, and Choctaw customs and culture in remarkably unbiased accounts that historians continue to use.

Bartram published only a handful of essays after Travels but remained active in intellectual circles. He collaborated on several projects, most notably with University of Pennsylvania professor Benjamin Smith Barton on a project that eventually became the unpublished manuscript "Observations on the Creek and Cherokee Indians," Bartram's most in-depth piece on Native Americans, and Bartram created the illustrations for Barton's Elements of Botany (1803). Scottish-born ornithologist Alexander Wilson also sought Bartram's advice and with his help produced the nine-volume American Ornithology (1808–14). The set predated the work of John James Audubon and deserves credit as the first ornithology published in the United States. By guiding and training a new generation of naturalists, William Bartram built upon the legacy of Travels and helped to nurture an environmental tradition that flourishes to this day. Bartram died in his home on July 22, 1823, at the age of 84 and was buried on the family property. The gravesite now lies within the Bartram's Garden National Historic Landmark in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

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Other Sources: http://www.alectouk.com/Bartram/it020001.htm

http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/William_Bartram.aspx

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Bartram

https://www.ncpedia.org/biography/bartram-william

http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/William_Bartram.aspx

http://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/bartram/bio.html

Find A Grave Memorial # 8139879.

Explorer. He was America's first native born naturalist-artist and the first author to write how he portrayed nature through personal experiences as well as scientific observation. From 1773 to 1776, his southern journey took him from the foothills of the Appalachian mountains to Florida, through the southeastern interior all the way to the Mississippi River. Also to eight states to include North and South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Tennessee, which was published as an account of his adventures titled "Bartram's Travels" in 1791.* Reference: Find A Grave Memorial - SmartCopy: Jan 16 2024, 8:42:26 UTC