by Eric Rutkow
This new land of promise would soon rely on trees to help bridge its many gaps.
2
The Fruits of Union
Seeds of American Science and Exploration
IN THE MID-EIGHTEENTH CENTURY Peter Collinson, a London merchant, Quaker, and an avid gardener, found himself at the center of a thriving intercolonial plant trade. Of the many specimens available from the numerous British colonies, the ones most in demand were American trees. Because of America’s similar latitude, its trees thrived in Europe more than those from other, less temperate territories. Aristocrats coveted these “exotics” for their ornamental gardens, nobility wanted them for their palaces and forests, and botanists sought New World discoveries for study and classification. Prices were high, and the financial and scientific potential of this trade was phenomenal. Unfortunately, reliable suppliers were difficult, if not impossible, to locate. By the 1720s, the prosperous and savvy Collinson was desperately trying to find a botanist in America who traded in trees and could fill the orders that piled up.
Collinson’s supply dilemma arose largely because the American colonies lagged behind Europe in all matters scientific. Most colonists were more preoccupied with taming the forested landscape than with assimilating the ideas of the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution, those twin engines of progress in Europe. Eighteenth-century America possessed few centers of learned discourse, no significant libraries, and only a handful of colleges, nothing to rival the centuries-old traditions of England or elsewhere on the Continent. The absence of an aristocracy or royalty exacerbated this deficiency, as their patronage traditionally financed full-time scientists in Europe. Even the rare educated colonist with income and a predisposition toward science still lacked both adequate tools, which were manufactured abroad, and ways to communicate and discuss his findings. In such a poor scientific environment, few men could develop the skills necessary for a trading partner in trees: botanical expertise; funds to support collecting trips; and a commercial nursery.
One potential solution to this problem was to send a European botanist. However, the cost of maintaining an overseas infrastructure made this prohibitively expensive for any significant length of time. The most useful partner, at least from Collinson’s perspective, had to be a permanent colonist who somehow overcame the obstacles of American life.
John Bartram, the man who would soon fill this role, was a Quaker born in Pennsylvania in 1699. He was of average height, with an upright posture and a face long yet dignified. He was hardworking and resilient, but possessed a demeanor that was gentle and good-natured. His earliest biography, written by one of his sons, noted that Bartram was also an abolitionist who “zealously testified against slavery.”
Growing up in William Penn’s newly settled colony, Bartram had limited access to formal schooling, but he was inclined toward self-education and managed to learn basic Latin, a necessity for scientists. According to his son, “[h]e seemed to have been designed for the study and contemplation of nature, and the culture of philosophy.” The industrious Bartram initially showed an interest in medicine, but shifted toward botany in his twenties. The reason for this, his son speculated, was that “most of his medicines were derived from the vegetable kingdom.” Many colonial physicians indeed doubled as botanists, including famous early Americans like Cadwallader Colden, Benjamin Smith Barton, David Hosack, and Caspar Wistar, for whom the plant genus Wisteria is named. But Bartram was unique. He alone devoted himself exclusively to the study of plants.
In September 1728, Bartram purchased a plot of land off the Schuylkill River near Philadelphia and turned it into an eight-acre botanical garden, the first of its kind in America. He began to travel the surrounding countryside at his own expense, searching for new trees, shrubs, and other plants. This was difficult work. Trips lasted for days or weeks, as it was slow going to reach the remotest specimens. Most exploration was done on horseback along rivercourses. The densest forests and swamps, however, could only be traversed on foot. Such circumstances meant that Bartram was able to carry few provisions in and precious few specimens out. The forests were also dangerous, home to disease-carrying insects, wild animals, hostile Indians, and treacherous terrain. One early botanist in the colonies actually fell to his death while climbing over rocks during a 1680 excursion. Bartram nearly met a similar fate at least once, writing:
I was on top of the tree, when the top that I had hold of and the branch I stood on, broke—and I fell to the ground . . . . [M]y pain was grevious; afterwards very sick; then in a wet sweat, in a dark thicket, no house near, and a very cold, sharp wind, and above twenty miles to ride home.
Bartram’s curious botanical garden, full of exotic American specimens, quickly attracted the visits and notice of “many virtuous and ingenious persons,” as described by his son. These men “encouraged [him] to persist in his labours,” but like most Americans, Bartram was disconnected from the vibrant scientific networks of Europe. To remedy this, the Pennsylvania botanist began communicating his discoveries “to the curious in Europe, and elsewhere, for the benefit of science, commerce, and the useful arts.”
In 1730, one of Bartram’s correspondents brought his work to the attention of Collinson. The Londoner, excited to discover a true botanist living within the colonies, began writing with requests for American specimens. To his delight, Bartram proved a reliable and faithful supplier. The two men gradually developed a partnership that blossomed into a friendship and mentorship. Collinson and his cohort became de facto patrons of the American Quaker, financing his travels and supplying him with European texts. Collinson also integrated Bartram into a dynamic European intellectual circle devoted to natural history. Soon the Pennsylvania botanist was routinely corresponding with men of science and letters across Europe, including Carl Linnaeus, the great Swedish botanist whose work had introduced the modern system of taxonomy.
The Bartram/Collinson relationship, while sustained through amity and a mutual love for learning, was, in many respects, a by-product of the international commercial and scientific tree trade. Rarely did a letter arrive or depart during their voluminous correspondence without addressing Bartram’s activities gathering specimens. Sometimes Collinson’s missives read like little more than work orders, as with this 1735 example:
Thee need not collect any more Tulip cones, Swamp Laurel cones, Hickory, Black Walnut, Sassafras, nor Dogwood, Sweet Gum, White Oak acorns, Swamp Spanish Oak, nor Red Cedar berries; but all other sorts of acorns, Firs, Pines, Black Gum, or Black Haw, Judas tree, Persimmon, Cherries, Plums, Services, Hop tree, Benjamin, or Allspice; all the sorts of Ash, Sugar tree, Wild Roses, Black Beech, or Hornbeam; all sorts of flowering and berry-bearing shrubs, Honey Locust, Lime tree, Arrow-wood, a particular Locust, Guelder Rose: not anything can come amiss to thy friends, and in particular to thy true friend, P. Collinson.
The always-polite Londoner sometimes discouraged Bartram from “exert[ing] thyself out of reason to serve us,” but such courtesy made the extensive requirements no less real.
European demand for American trees was simply insatiable. Partly this was driven by a growing interest in natural history in general, but the real impetus behind the trade was a landscape gardening fad that swept the landed classes of Europe, especially England, during the eighteenth century. The preferred style favored naturalistic environments that incorporated diverse trees—one of the most popular guides, Batty Langley’s 1728 New Principles of Gardening, stated, “There is nothing more agreeable in a Garden than good Shade, and without it a Garden is nothing.” Englishmen, often using Collinson as their go-between, fanatically pursued America’s most fashionable resource. One collector, Lord Petre, “planted out about ten thousand Americans,” according to Collinson. Both the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Richmond likely died due to their passion. About this, Collinson wrote Bartram:
[They] are suspected both to have lost their lives by it, by being out in their gardens, to see the work forwarded, in very bad weather.
The Prince of Wales . . . manifestly lost his life by this means. He contracted a cold, by standing in the wet to see some trees planted . . . which brought on a pleurisy, that he died of, lately.
Parliament eventually passed legislation to punish anyone caught stealing American plants by “transport[ing] the rogues,” fittingly, to America. Mark Catesby, a British botanist, when reflecting on the situation years later, noted: America had, “within less than half a century, furnished England with a greater variety of trees than [had] been procured from all the other parts of the world for more than a thousand years past.”
Aided by this booming tree trade, Bartram developed as a botanist and explorer. And the more his knowledge grew, the more he longed for the scientific sophistication of Europe. America, he felt, needed a formal organization, like the Royal Society of London, where colonists could exchange ideas, encourage one another, and finance promising research. In 1739 he suggested this to Collinson in a letter that has since been lost. Collinson wrote back:
As to the Society that thee hints at, . . . to draw learned strangers to you, to teach sciences, requires salaries and good encouragement; and this will require public, as well as proprietary assistance,—which can’t be at present complied with—considering the infancy of your colony.
Such was the sorry state of American science, disorganized and utterly dependent on Europe. Bartram was a true outlier, far ahead of his time.
Although his initial proposal went no farther than Collinson, Bartram persevered. The Pennsylvania Quaker next enlisted the help of Benjamin Franklin, a printer who soon developed a reputation as America’s greatest scientist. On March 17, 1742, Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette published “A Copy of the Subscription Paper, for the Encouragement of Mr. John Bartram.” It called for an annual contribution to support Bartram, arguing:
And as the Wildernesses, Mountains and Swamps in America, abound with Variety of Simples [herbal medicines] and Trees, whose Virtues and proper Uses are yet unknown to Physicians and curious Persons both here and in Europe; it should be esteem’d fortunate, and a general Benefit, if a Man could be found sufficiently skilful and hardy, who would undertake, as far as in his Power, a compleat Discovery of such Herbs, Roots, Shrubs and Trees, as are of the Native Growth of America.
This announcement was one of the first colonial efforts to promote coordinated science. And it came as no surprise that this appeal originated with the tree trade and botany—natural history, after all, was the only branch of eighteenth-century science where America had an advantage over Europe thanks to the abundant and largely unexplored forests that served as one giant laboratory.
Franklin’s appeal on behalf of Bartram, however, fell flat. The Pennsylvania botanist lamented that the “Americans have not zeal enough to encourage any discoveries . . . at their expense.”
But the request for funding had not been entirely in vain. Less than six months later, on May 14, 1743, Franklin issued a formal proposal requesting that “one Society be formed of virtuosi or ingenious men, residing in the several colonies, to be called The American Philosophical Society.” Of the enumerated topics for discussion, the first was “all new-discovered plants, herbs, trees, roots, their virtues, uses, &c.” This time, the subscription idea finally took hold, and Franklin’s American Philosophical Society (APS) became the first organization of its kind in the colonies, an intellectual space where men of science could learn from one another and discuss their work. Bartram, the first to call for this idea, was one of nine founding members and the official botanist. According to a historian of the society, “nearly the whole load was carried by Franklin, with zealous but rather artless help from Bartram, and almost none from anybody else.” By the late 1760s a flourishing APS became the hub of American science, with Franklin at the helm and Bartram by his side.
However, just as the APS was finding its footing the colonies plunged headlong into war with England. The Revolution upended life in America for almost a decade, and science was no exception. Many had to decide between their homeland and their home country. Bartram, who had gained the title of king’s botanist in 1765, chose his native flora over his British office, a sharp contrast to John Wentworth, the surveyor-general of His Majesty’s Woods, who had fled to Canada.
A wartime embargo with England temporarily crippled Bartram’s trade in American trees and plants. At one point, Franklin stepped in to resolve this challenge personally. In May 1777, he wrote to Bartram from Paris, where he was serving as secretary of state for the recently unified colonies:
The communication between Britain and North America being cut off, the French botanists cannot, in that channel, be supplied as formerly with American seeds, &c. . . . [Y]ou may, I believe, send the same number of boxes here . . . I will take care of the sale, and returns, for you.
Bartram, by this point, was old and in poor health. And he would not live long enough to see his tree trade fully restored. He died in 1777—Collinson, his dear friend, had passed on nine years earlier. It was a remarkable life for a Quaker farmer with no formal education. He had become a member, in addition to the APS, of the Royal Societies of London and Sweden. His botanical garden still exists on its original site. Though he published no seminal works, during the course of his career he had botanized across almost all of eastern North America, including Florida. In 1763 he had declared to Collinson that he knew “more of the North American plants than any others.” But perhaps this was being too modest. The incomparable Carl Linnaeus supposedly described Bartram as “the greatest natural botanist in the world.”
His death came just as a new age of American science was dawning. Men like Bartram and Franklin had paved the way for the next generation, ready to channel the energy of independence toward science, discovery, and exploration. Philadelphia, home of the APS, became the nation’s scientific, intellectual, and political center, second only to London among the English-speaking cities of the world. In the wake of the Revolution, Americans began making contributions in fields as diverse as astronomy, chemistry, zoology, and physical anthropology. Nonetheless, botany—and the European tree trade—remained central to American science in this period.
Bartram’s death had left a void in the scientific community, and no one person could replace him. The man who came closest was his protégé and cousin, Humphry Marshall. Like Bartram, he was a Quaker botanist with interests in almost all aspects of the natural world. His botanical garden, founded in 1773, was older and better-known than all others aside from his elder cousin’s. After Bartram’s death, he quickly became the nation’s leading seedman.
In 1785, Bartram’s protégé published a work that cemented both their legacies and put American botany officially on the map, Arbustrum Americanum: The American Grove, an alphabetical catalogue of native forest trees and shrubs. Though little remembered today, this was the first work on American botany published by an American and one of the earliest scientific texts published in the new nation. Marshall dedicated the manuscript to the APS, the organization that Bartram helped found, now the locus for all important scientific writing. The book contained a straightforward catalogue of the country’s roughly 350 known trees and shrubs, according to their classification under the taxonomic system that Linnaeus had devised. The emphasis on trees reflected the continued influence of the international commercial trade, which was still supporting botanists such as Marshall. At the back of the book appeared an advertisement that read: “Boxes of seeds, and growing plants, of the Forest Trees, Flowering Shrubs, &c. of the American United States; are made up in the best manner and at a reasonable rate by the Author.” Marshall’s book sold poorly in America but was popular abroad, with French and German translations appearing by 1788.
SHORTLY AFTER MARSHALL published his seminal work, André Michaux, a celebrated French botanist, appeared on the American scene. The king of France, Louis XVI, had sent him to America with instructions to “study the productions and collect with care for His Majesty the plants, seeds, and fruits of
all trees and shrubs.” France was interested in America’s trees for many reasons, particularly one similar to that of England nearly two centuries earlier—their navy depended on timber and, as most of their slow-growing domestic oaks had been felled, they sought faster-growing American varieties for reforestation. According to a French report from the period, France had only thirty-seven species of forest trees that reached thirty feet, while America possessed ninety species that grew past forty feet. Additionally, of the eighteen predominant French forest trees, only seven were suitable for naval and civil construction, while America boasted fifty-one suitable varieties.
Michaux reached New York in mid-November 1785, carrying letters of introduction. As both a man of science and a representative of America’s foremost ally during the Revolutionary War, he was quickly embraced by leading American politicians and scientists, including Franklin, George Washington, and Marshall.
Michaux’s approach to botany mirrored that of the American seedmen. A man of indefatigable industry and dedication, he spent months traveling through the forests of the various states and operated two botanical gardens for study and trade. The quantities he began sending back to France were massive. One shipment from March 1786 included 525 red maples, 190 magnolias, 260 hickories, 112 silver bell trees, 100 holly trees, and lesser quantities of innumerable other varieties. During the next ten years, he would ship more than 60,000 trees to his homeland.
Such an elaborate operation was, not surprisingly, expensive to maintain. Unlike that of the American botanists, Michaux’s work was primarily noncommercial—his specimens went directly to the royal gardeners in Paris—and depended entirely on French patronage. For the first several years, he received generous support, being funded to live “on a par with all . . . agents for France, public or private, under the protection and immediate safeguard of His Majesty.” Soon, however, the French Revolution changed the political scene. Support for Michaux dissipated and by 1792 his personal funds were running dangerously low. Like Bartram fifty years earlier, he wished to find other funding and support within the United States, both for the sake of scientific advancement and to fulfill his original mandate.