John Bartram

John Bartram (June 3, 1699 – September 22, 1777) was an American botanist, horticulturist, and explorer, based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for most of his career. Swedish botanist and taxonomist Carl Linnaeus spoke of him as the "greatest natural botanist in the world." Bartram corresponded with and shared North American plants and seeds with a variety of scientists in England and Europe.

He started what is known as Bartram's Garden in 1728 at his farm in Kingsessing (now part of Philadelphia). It was considered the first botanic garden in the United States. His sons and descendants operated it until 1850. Still operating in a partnership between the city of Philadelphia and a non-profit foundation, it was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1960.

Bartram was born into a prominent Quaker political and farming family in Marple near Darby, Pennsylvania, on June 3, 1699. His parents were William Bartram and his first wife Elizabeth (née Hunt). His mother Elizabeth died in 1701. John Bartram and his brother James were left to be raised with their maternal grandfather James Hunt of Kingsessing. William Bartram, his father, was killed and his stepmother and half-siblings were captured during the Tuscarora War in 1711. Elizabeth (née Smith), John's stepmother, brought his half-siblings to Pennsylvania after the family was ransomed by relatives from Philadelphia. John remained in Pennsylvania, while one of his brothers, also named William, later went to North Carolina to take care of the estate of their father.

Bartram later wrote "all my younger years being subject to grip, grievous coughs, heartburn, acrimonious looseness, dizziness, and rheumatism." He was afflicted with a "slavish fear of lightning" that carried with him to adulthood. Bartram considered himself to be a plain farmer, with no formal education beyond the local school. He had a lifelong interest in medicine and medicinal plants, and read widely. He started his botanical career by devoting a small area of his farm to growing plants he found interesting. Later, he made contact with European botanists and gardeners interested in North American plants, and developed his hobby into a thriving business.

Bartram began to travel extensively in the eastern American colonies in order to study and collect plants.

Bartram maintained a friendship with Peter Collinson, Alexander Catcot, and others through letter writing between London and the colonies, and he regularly collected specimens for Collinson and others in Europe who were interested in obtaining unfamiliar species from the New World for their gardens and scientific study.

In 1737 Bartram travelled by horseback through modern day Delaware and the Eastern Shore of Maryland to Northampton County, Virginia. In the fall of 1738, he made another excursion from his home in Philadelphia through Virginia, visiting the Gover family in Anne Arundel County, to Port Tobacco on the Potomac. Cedar Point, Maryland, opposite Hooe's Ferry in King George County, Virginia, and then went to Fredericksburg. He proceeded to visit John Clayton in Gloucester County, Virginia, crossed the York River to visit John Custis in Williamsburg, Virginia, and then journeyed up the James River to visit William Byrd II's plantation at Westover. He continued westware to visit Isham Randolph's Dungeness estate, and then continued west to the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Shenandoah Valley.

In 1743, he visited western parts of New York and the northern shores of Lake Ontario, and wrote Observations on the Inhabitants, Climate, Soil, Rivers, Productions, Animals, and other Matters Worthy of Notice, made by Mr. John Bartram in his Travels from Pennsylvania to Onondaga, Oswego, and the Lake Ontario, in Canada (London, 1751). During the winter of 1765/66, he visited East Florida in the south, which was a British colony, and published an account of this trip with his journal (London, 1766). He also visited areas along the Ohio River west of the Appalachian Mountains. Many of his plant acquisitions were shipped to collectors in Europe. In return, they supplied him with books and apparatus.