William Bartram

Dates

February 9, 1739 - July 22, 1823

Alabama Connection

Selected Works

• Bartram, William. Travels through North & South Carolina, Georgia, East & West Florida, the Cherokee Country, the Extensive Territories of the Muscogulges, or Creek Confederacy, and the Country of the Chactaws; Containing An Account of the Soil and Natural Productions of Those Regions, Together with Observations on the Manners of the Indians.Philadelphia: James and Johnson, 1791. Rpt. as Travels, and Other Writings. New York: Library of America, 1996. An online version of Travels is available from Documenting the American South.

Biographical Information

William Bartram was born near Philadelphia, the son of John Bartram, who was one of America's first professional botanists. Bartram grew up on his father's estate, a botanical garden and experimental farm. He was educated classically and had a talent for drawing and painting. As a youth, he accompanied his father on several plant-hunting expeditions, drawing the plants they encountered. After several failures at business, Bartram persuaded one of his father's professional contacts in England to finance his own expedition in Florida to search for interesting plant specimens to send to Europe.

Bartram's trip lasted four years (1773-1777) and eventually included most of the Southeast. He developed an eye ailment while in Mobile, which probably contributed to his concluding the trip and returning home to Pennsylvania. His Travels, the story of his expedition, was first published in 1791, fourteen years after his return. Bartram spent the rest of his life at his father's (later his brother's) estate, working with plants. Pleading ill health, he turned down the offer of a botany professorship at the college that later became the University of Pennsylvania. At age sixty-six, he turned down an offer by President Thomas Jefferson to join what we now call the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Bartram died at age eighty-four while working in the garden.

Interests and Themes

Although Bartram's Travels didn't have much of an impact in the United States, it sold well in Europe. Bartram was one of the first to introduce the American southeastern "wilderness" to a European audience. Bartram's work was also a bridge between the rationalism of the Enlightenment and the emotionalism of the Romantic Movement and inspired several of the English Romantic poets, including Coleridge and Wordsworth.

For More Information

Please check your local library for these materials. If items are not available locally, your librarian can help you borrow them through the InterLibrary Loan program. Your librarian can also help you find other information about this author.

There may be more information available through the databases in the Alabama Virtual Library. If you are an Alabama citizen, AVL can be used at your public library or school library media center. You can also get a username and password from your librarian to use AVL at home.

Reference Articles

• Brannon, Peter A. "Through the Years: The Route of William Bartram" Montgomery Advertiser 25 June. 1939: n. pag.
• Hall, John C. "William Bartram: First Scientist of Alabama" Alabama Heritage 72 (2004):24-33.

Reference Web Sites

• "William Bartram". Florida Naturalists. 2009. Florida Museum of Natural History. http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/naturalists/bartramw01.htm
• Cashin, Edward J. "William Bartram (1739-1823)". New Georgia Encyclopedia. 2004. Georgia Humanities Council and University of Georgia Press. http://www.newgeorgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-2179
• Hallock, Thomas. "William Bartram". The Encyclopedia of Alabama. 2008. Alabama Humanities Foundation and Auburn University. http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/face/Article.jsp?id=h-1141
• Sanders, Brad, Margaret Bellamy, and Chuck Spornick. The Travels of William Bartram. 2006. The Bartram Trail Conference, Inc. http://www.bartramtrail.org/

Location of Papers

• Historical Society of Pennsylvania

Photo courtesy of the Independence National Historical Park Collection.

Last updated on Apr 30, 2009.