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John Bartram: Naturalist of the New World
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13654 |
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Section : |
NATURAL SCIENCE
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5 / 1995 |
2,544 Words |
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L. Wilbur Zimmerman
L. Wilbur Zimmerman is a writer, photographer, and amateur
horticulturist. |
John Bartram (1699-1777), a colonial botanist, farmer, and avid and eclectic reader, was the first native-born American of European parentage to receive international recognition as a scientist.
Among the pioneer naturalists of America, Bartram stands out as the epitome of egalitarianism. Benjamin Franklin, a great friend of his, is another example of a man born in humble circumstances who rose to distinction and honor. Bartram achieved this nine years before Franklin when an invited paper of his, describing a cross between red and white forms of the then-common garden flower rose campion, was read before the Scientific Society of Leiden in 1739. Bartram was not the first successful hybridizer, but he was the first to make a deliberate experiment and to describe it, in Latin, so accurately that it could be replicated. It took American ingenuity to prove the theory of sexuality in plants that Europeans had argued about for years.
Roots
Bartram's grandparents moved from Derbyshire, England, to William Penn's new colony slightly before Philadelphia was established in 1682. They landed on the banks of the Delaware River near present-day Darby, which is just a few miles southwest of Philadelphia. John was born in 1699, and his mother died when he was two years old. After two years John's father remarried and moved near Cape Fear, North Carolina, leaving John in the care of his grandmother. His father, against the advice of local settlers, moved beyond the more-established areas and was killed by Indians.
John grew up on his grandmother's farm, attending the
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