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  • From Seed Men to Bird Women: Pennsylvanians and the Environment
  • Stephen H. Cutcliffe (bio)

The more we search . . . works in nature, the more wisdom we discover whether we observe either the mineral, vegetable, or animal Kingdom.

—John Bartram

Instead of always trying to impose our will on Nature we should sometimes be quiet and listen to what she has to tell us.

—Rachel Carson

Many of us, academics and the general reading public alike, find biographies fascinating. I’d warrant that we all have them on our bookshelves, read them for entertainment, and find in them many illustrative examples for our teaching. I would further posit that well-researched, fully contextualized, and gracefully written biographies can be rich sources of historical understanding. Thus, I would like to argue that appropriately selected biographical snapshots can be readily integrated into classroom teaching at almost any level and would capture our students’ interests. The following set of individuals can be connected to important trends in environmental history and integrated nicely into several major periods of American history: colonial, early national, pre–Civil War industrialization, Progressive Era, 1920s and New Deal, and postwar modern America. [End Page 495]

John (1699–1777) and William (1739–1823) Bartram

The father-and-son team of botanical explorers, John and William Bartram, lived near the outskirts of Philadelphia on the Schuylkill River in a house with a garden (greatly altered) that survives as a historical site.1 John, the father, was a largely self-educated farmer who increasingly specialized in collecting and identifying rare and little-known plants. At a time when most colonists saw wild places in terms of land that could be cleared for cultivation, Bartram recognized the value of collecting and recording botanical specimens and effectively made himself into a naturalist at a time when such a profession was essentially unknown in this country. Bartram expanded his efforts and took collecting trips that ranged from New York and Connecticut southward through the Carolinas, Georgia, and ultimately Florida. He identified a very large percentage of the wild plants known in America and sent back to England numerous boxes of specimens by the middle of the eighteenth century. Well respected by prominent naturalists of the day, he received appointment as King’s Botanist in 1765 in recognition of his services and helped to found the American Philosophical Society in 1769. John also established a significant seed and rare plant garden at his home, which not only received considerable income from customers such as wealthy British gardeners, but also served as an important resource for the development of systematic botanical knowledge.

John’s son William, also a botanical naturalist, spent much of his youth on collecting trips with his father. A talented young artist, he often drew pictures of their specimen acquisitions. Left to his own devices, William would have preferred a career as a botanist/artist, but his father pressed him into more traditional fields. Lacking the desire and perhaps the ability, he failed in a North Carolina merchant venture and at starting an indigo plantation in Florida. Returning to Philadelphia, William found a willing British patron in John Fothergill, who sought to acquire William’s American plant drawings for his collection. This support allowed William to subsist as a naturalist, pay off his business debts, and undertake a four-year, 2,400-mile journey thought the southeast, which ultimately established his position in American natural history. Upon his return in early 1777, William began to write up his journal notes. He struggled mightily and did not publish the book, known in shorthand as his Travels, until 1786. William continued to work closely with many renowned naturalist [End Page 496] scientists, including Thomas Say, the entomologist and conchologist, and the ornithologist Alexander Wilson.


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Figure 1.

William Bartram, Franklinia alatamaha. First discovered by the Bartrams in 1765, this small tree named after Benjamin Franklin is now extinct in the wild and only survives from seeds propagated in the Bartrams’ Philadelphia garden. (Image courtesy of the American Philosophical Society.)

Viewed together, the Bartrams’ environmental legacy rests on their ability to recognize both the value and the interconnectedness of all life, an understanding...

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