Final Years

espite his modest self-effacement and reclusive lifestyle, Bartram received many honors and distinctions during the quiet years after his return from the South. In 1782, he was asked to fill the chair of botany at the University of Pennsylvania.(56) This Bartram respectfully declined for reasons of health. Despite his lack of official title, Bartram was one of the most highly respected botanists in America and continued to serve as an unofficial teacher to many aspiring botanists. His garden was visited by many notable persons after the close of the war made travel to Philadelphia safe once again. During the Constitutional Convention of 1787, many of the delegates paid visits to the garden. Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Rutledge, and George Mason traveled to Kingsessing on one occasion and found William Bartram “barefooted, hoe in hand, chopping at weeds.”(57) George Washington, who visited the garden in June of that year, remarked in his diary of the “many curious plants, shrubs and trees” there. Although by Mt. Vernon’s formal standards, the future President found the garden “not laid off with much taste,” he did order a large number of trees from its proprietor.(58)

Thomas Jefferson, who shared many of Bartram’s interests, is known to have visited the naturalist frequently, especially in 1793 when he moved to Gray’s Ferry—within sight of Bartram’s garden—to escape a yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia.(59) The two men kept up a correspondence for many years thereafter.

With his respect and friendship for William Bartram, it is not surprising that in the fall of 1803, Jefferson, then President, asked Bartram to consider joining one of the western exploratory expeditions then being considered by the government. Since 1933, when N. B. Fagin first published evidence of this invitation (a letter to Bartram from Benjamin Smith Barton), it has been generally assumed, and frequently stated, that the expedition in question was the Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804–1806). Recent review of this subject, however, suggests that the trip Jefferson had in mind might well have been the Red River Survey of 1804 or the Pike Expedition of 1805.(60)

In any case, despite the encouragement of his younger friends, Bartram decided not to undertake such a grueling trip. The severe illness he had endured on his own exploring expedition was still in his memory. Since his affliction on the Gulf Coast, Bartram had almost entirely lost the sight in one eye. Moreover, he had recently been injured in a serious fall from a cypress tree while collecting seeds.(61) Such physical conditions made a long trip out of the question. For the same reasons, Bartram declined an invitation to explore the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers with ornithologist Alexander Wilson in 1806.

Footnotes

56. Joseph Ewan, William Bartram’s Botanical and Zoological Drawings 1756–1788, American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, 1968, p. 38. The date of his election was confirmed by Dr. Conway Zirkle of the University, who cited the original minutes of the meeting: “The Board then proceeded to the election of a professor of Botany and the ballots being taken and counted, it appeared that Dr. William Bartram was duly elected.” Ibid., p. 38.

57. William and Julia P. Cutler, Life Journals and Correspondence of Rev. Manasseh Cutler, Cincinnati, 1888, Vol. I, p. 258.

58. John C. Fitzpatrick, The Diaries of George Washington, 1749–1799, VoI. 3, Boston and New York, 1925; also see: Earnest, John and William Bartram, op. cit., pp. 162–163; and Kastner, A Species of Eternity, op. cit., p. 112.

59. Earnest, John and William Bartram, op. cit., p. 162; and Harper, Naturalist’s Edition, op. cit., p. xxix.

60. For a partial transcript of the letter from Benjamin Smith Barton to John Bartram extending this invitation on behalf of the President, see Fagin, William Bartram, Interpreter, op. cit., p. 12; and Earnest, John and William Bartram, op. cit., p. 169. The original letter is in the Bartram collection of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. The number of exploratory expeditions being planned at this time for the newly acquired Louisiana Territory makes it extremely difficult to pinpoint which one Bartram was invited to join. Additional research on this subject is needed to clarify the confusion.

61. Robert Elman, First in the Field; America’s Pioneering Naturalists, New York, 1977, p.46.