John Bartram

John Bartram (1699 to 1777) was an American botanist, horticulturist and explorer based in Philadelphia, whom Carl Linnaeus called the greatest natural botanist in the world. Born into a Quaker farming family at Darby, Pennsylvania, he had no formal education beyond the local school but read widely, had a lifelong interest in medicine and medicinal plants, and developed his hobby into a thriving business by corresponding with European botanists and gardeners. In 1728 he started Bartram's Garden at his farm in Kingsessing, now part of Philadelphia, considered the first botanic garden in the United States and a National Historic Landmark since 1960. He travelled widely through the eastern American colonies, including Virginia, the Shenandoah Valley, western New York, Lake Ontario and East Florida, collecting specimens and seeds for Peter Collinson and others in Europe. In 1743 he co-founded the American Philosophical Society with Benjamin Franklin, and in 1769 he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.