Bartram, William

Bartram, William

(1739–1823) botanist; born in Kingsessing (Philadelphia), Pa. As a youth he showed a talent for drawing specimens collected by his father, John Bartram, America's first botanist, but he first worked as a merchant and trader (1757–61). In 1765 he accompanied his father on an expedition to Florida, and remained in the American south, drawing natural flora, gathering botanical specimens, becoming an accomplished ornithologist, and befriending both colonial planters and members of indigenous tribes. After his father's death (1777), he returned to Pennsylvania to become a partner with his brother John Bartram to care for his father's botanical garden (1777–1812). He declined a professorship of botany at the University of Pennsylvania (1782), preferring to write on natural history and his observations on Indians; his literary accounts of his travels greatly influenced the 19th-century romantic movement; Travels through North and South Carolina, Georgia etc. (1791) is regarded as his masterpiece. In 1786, William Bartram was elected to the American Philosophical Society. He remained active as a botanist, dying suddenly after writing a description of a plant.

The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, by John S. Bowman. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995. Reproduced with permission.