The Last Tree in Georgia — John Bartram
Along the Altamaha River in southeastern Georgia, October 1765, there is a small grove of trees that does not appear in any botanical text. The flowers are white, five-petaled, lightly fragrant, and they are blooming in October when almost nothing else blooms. The leaves around the flowers are turning orange and red and purple at the same time. A sixty-six-year-old Quaker farmer in a broad-brimmed black hat kneels in the red clay and cups one of the blossoms in both hands and does not recognize it, which means no European or American scientist has ever described it, which means he has to decide whether to take it home.
He takes it home.
It is 1765.
He does not just tend a garden. He buys a farm on the Schuylkill River in 1728 and turns five acres of it into the first botanical garden in North America, teaching himself Latin as an adult farmer because he cannot read Linnaeus without it, and filling the beds with North American species that no European has yet cultivated.
He does not just collect. He packs seeds in paper twists and living cuttings in barely-damp moss and waxed cloth and ships them in wooden boxes across the Atlantic to the merchant Peter Collinson in London, who distributes them to British and European gardens and correspondents, and they correspond for thirty-five years and never once meet in person.
He does not just supply plants. He supplies two hundred and more North American species to British and European botany over three decades, builds a transatlantic network of naturalists from his farm on the Schuylkill, co-founds the American Philosophical Society with Benjamin Franklin in 1743, and in 1765 receives the appointment of Royal Botanist for North America at fifty pounds per year from King George III.
He does not just discover the tree. He and his son find a grove of perhaps two or three acres along the Altamaha and bring cuttings back to the garden in Philadelphia, and his son returns alone in 1773 to collect seed for cultivation, and from that seed every Franklinia alive today descends, because the grove in Georgia was never seen again after 1803.
His Spark of Liberty was the conviction that what grew here mattered and that someone had to be the one who kept it.
The tree is extinct in the wild. Every specimen in every garden in the world is a descendant of what he carried home from a two-acre grove in Georgia, because he knelt in the red clay and decided not to leave empty-handed.
Now, “Where History Comes to Life.”
Born in Marlborough Township, Pennsylvania, on March 23, 1699, he was a Quaker farmer with no university education who taught himself Latin to read the European botanists and built what became the oldest surviving botanical garden in North America on a farm he purchased in 1728. He began his correspondence with the London merchant Peter Collinson in 1733, shipping boxes of seeds and plant material across the Atlantic for thirty-five years. He co-founded the American Philosophical Society with Benjamin Franklin in 1743. In 1765 King George III appointed him Royal Botanist for North America. That same year, on the Altamaha River in Georgia, he and his son encountered a small flowering tree not recorded in any botanical text. His son named it Franklinia alatamaha in honor of their family friend. His son returned in 1773 and collected seed for cultivation at the garden. The last confirmed wild sighting of the Franklinia was in 1803. He died on September 22, 1777, on his farm at Kingsessing, as the British army approached Philadelphia.
His name was John Bartram.
Now We Know Em
by Christopher B. Gordon
The Speedwell’s Confession, Book One of the Sparks of Liberty series, is live on Amazon Kindle and free with Kindle Unlimited.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GZ5QH7L8
#NowWeKnowEm #SparksOfLiberty #TurningPointPress #QuietHands #NaturalHistory #AmericanHistory
