Present Locations of Bartram’s Specimens

any of William Bartram’s botanical specimens sent to Dr. Fothergill in England from the four year southern trip are preserved today in six separate stitched “books” acquired by Joseph Banks along with the drawings in 1780. A seventh “book” contains 38 duplicate specimens sent by Bartram to Robert Barclay in 1788. All seven are now in the collection of the British Museum (Natural History). An inventory of specimens with Bartram’s own descriptions of each has been published by the American Philosophical Society (Ewan: William Bartram; Botanical and Zoological Drawings, 1756–1788).

Unfortunately, the present whereabouts of his herpetological, malacological, entomological, and ornithological specimens (if any have survived) are not known.

The only William Bartram specimen so far located in a United States collection is a nodding trillium in Benjamin Smith Barton’s herbarium “book” now at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia.(283)

Footnotes

283. Although only one specimen in the Academy’s herbarium is directly attributed to Bartram, there are several others beside which Barton has written Bartram’s name. It is quite likely these too were collected by William, but we cannot be certain that Barton did not collect them at Bartram’s garden. For the inventory of Bartram–related specimens, see Supplement 3. For this information the Bartram Trail Conference is indebted to Dr. Alfred E. Schuyler, Associate Curator of the Department of Botany at the Academy of Natural Sciences who compiled the inventory. The specimens in question are on permanent loan to the Academy from the American Philosophical Society.