February 22, 1957–March 21, 2023

Acclaimed historian Joel T. Fry, the long-time curator at Bartram’s Garden, died at Pennsylvania Hospital on March 21, 2023, shortly after a diagnosis of lung cancer. He is survived by his siblings, James (Hai-Ping Cheng) of Florida, David (Lisa) of Illinois, and Ann (Kara Shannon) of Massachusetts, as well as his brother David’s children, David, Jared, and Marrah, and grandchildren, Dylan, Jordan, and Cora.

Beyond his family, his memory is cherished by the dozens of gardeners, historians, archaeologists, scientists, and colleagues, both here in Philadelphia and worldwide, who relied on Joel as an inexhaustible source of scholarly expertise, dry wit, and constant inspiration.

Raised in Berwyn, Pennsylvania, Joel was first introduced to archaeology, ecology, and historic research as a teenager, when he participated in an archaeological training course for high school students led by Jeff Kenyon, then the director of the education department at what is now known as the Penn Museum. The thrill of seeking and connecting with history, especially Philadelphia history, became a life-long vocation. Joel received degrees in Anthropology and American Civilization at the University of Pennsylvania, spending his summers on field research, archival cataloguing, and conservation for the Penn Museum and the Fairmount Water Works.

One stint for the Penn Museum in the early 1980s saw Joel supervising students in archaeological technique at Bartram’s Garden, then an underutilized public park and historic site on the banks of the Tidal Schuylkill River in Southwest Philadelphia. The Garden’s varied layers and kinds of history appealed to Joel’s limitless curiosity: the country’s oldest surviving botanical garden, its 18^th-century house, outbuildings, and gardens had been designated a National Historic Landmark, but at the time the organization had limited capacity for historic research. Joel’s initial archaeological and archival research sparked his interest in the Garden, and after a short career as an archaeological and historical consultant for clients throughout Pennsylvania, he joined the staff of Bartram’s Garden in 1992 as curator and historian.

Through more than 30 years of scholarship, mentoring, and research, Joel was a beloved and revered resource for wide networks of historians, scientists, and garden enthusiasts. In his own work, he was especially known for his definitive writings and ongoing research on the botanical history and ecology of the Bartram’s Garden plant catalogue, particularly the Franklinia alatamaha, sometimes called the Franklin tree or just Franklinia, a large, summer-blooming shrub with showy, fragrant white flowers. Because the plant was apparently extinct in its native Georgia shortly after the Bartram family first collected its seeds in the 1770s, all current living Franklinia are descended from those once cultivated at Bartram’s Garden. Joel was particularly proud of a recent essay, “Bartram’s Tree: Franklinia alatamaha,” featured in The Attention of a Traveller (2022), examining the influence and legacy of William Bartram’s eighteenth-century account of his travels through what is now the southern U.S., including his first encounter with Franklinia. In addition to Joel’s Franklinia research, he extensively explored and documented the entirety of the historic Bartram plant collection, assembling a complete catalogue of the Garden’s plant holdings as of 1783.

Joel was also an in-demand lecturer, tour guide, panelist, and essayist on a wide range of topics connected to Philadelphia history, botany and garden history, archaeology and geology, and colonial history. In 2018, Joel was honored with the role of formally opening the Peter Collinson Heritage Garden at Mill Hill School in London. Other recent appearances and partnerships include conference presentations at the Bartram Trail Conference (2022 and 2019) and the McNeil Center for Early American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania (2014) as well as partnership with The Center for Art in Wood for the Bartram’s Boxes Remix exhibit (2014). As an outgrowth of his care for the John Bowman Bartram Special Collections Library at Bartram’s Garden, he also maintained sustained and detailed correspondence with noted scholars, writers, and historians, advising on such best sellers as Elizabeth Gilbert’s The Signature of All Things and Andrea Wulf’s The Brother Gardeners as well as on specialist works in many fields, including the history and ecology of daffodils, one of his favorite subjects.

Between these many marquee engagements were countless interactions when Joel tirelessly and meticulously shared his vast knowledge. He regularly led guided tours and offered lectures at Bartram’s Garden and nearby historic sites like Eden Cemetery and the Woodlands for everyone from local garden clubs to international tourists to curious neighbors, and he provided generous mentorship and guidance for undergraduate and graduate students focused on history, botany, and archival research. As the Garden’s public programming and capacity for historic interpretation expanded beginning in the 2010s, Joel was also a deft and thoughtful advisor on new research into the area’s Black history, led by historian Sharece Blakney, and initial forays into incorporating Traditional Ecological Knowledge, guided by Indigenous practices, into the site’s ecosystems management practices.

Perhaps most significant was Joel’s impact on the many colleagues and friends of Bartram’s Garden who relied upon him during his three-decade tenure. When Joel was first hospitalized in March 2023, notes, visits, and memories poured in from colleagues around the world and throughout the mid-Atlantic, representing such venerable institutions as the Yale Center for British Art, the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, the Painshill Park Trust in the United Kingdom, the international Society for the History of Natural History, and the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia at Drexel University. Nearly to a person, Joel’s networks recount extraordinary, wide-ranging conversations with their thoughtful colleague, often leap-frogging between topics for hours with seemingly no limit to Joel’s insight, learning, or interests.

In his final days, Joel continued to share his vital curiosity and keen wisdom with loved ones, offering book recommendations, urging on long-term plans, and providing pragmatic advice. In conversation with a cherished long-time horticulturist colleague, Joel described his vision for an ideal memorial garden, planted with conifers and lilies. True to form, his learning and sly humor entered the exchange, and he offered some final guidance familiar to all garden lovers: “Plant two of everything, because one will die.”

A remembrance of Joel T. Fry will be planned at Bartram’s Garden at a later date. Many of his writings and publications can be accessed here.

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Ailanthus altissima is native to Taiwan and central China but was introduced to Europe by way of a Jesuit Priest named Pierre Nicolas d’Incarville, who sent seeds to Paris from Beijing in 1743. A few years later Peter Collinson, the English botanist and close correspondent of John Bartram, acquired some seeds from France that he grew in his garden in London. Although it is difficult to imagine given its noxious qualities today, eighteenth century botanists held Ailanthus in high regard, admiring its foliage, its perceived exoticism, and its toleration of urban environments. By the 1780s, it was a favorite in gardens across Europe and was widely planted in London and Paris, and it remained heavily used in urban landscaping through the nineteenth century.[2]

Foliage of Ailanthus altissima, the Tree-of-Heaven. Credit: Wikimedia commons.

Most sources credit Ailanthus’s introduction to America to William Hamilton, who maintained a botanical garden just about a mile up the Schuylkill of the Bartrams, at The Woodlands. Hamilton reportedly had Ailanthus seeds sent to his garden around 1784. But twenty years earlier, in 1764, John Bartram writes a letter to Peter Collinson where he describes the growth of a certain sumac species in his greenhouse:

“last summer there came up in my greenhouse from east India seed formerly sowed there an odd kind of Sumach (as I take it to be)   it growed in A few months near 4 foot high & continued green & growing all winter & this spring I planted it out to take its chance   it shoots vigorously & allmost as red as crimson”[3]

Most signs point to this plant being Ailanthus. The tree’s fast growth, hardiness in the winter, and red shoots are all characteristic of Ailanthus. The species is still sometimes referred to today as a sumac, although taxonomically it is no longer a member of the sumac genus. At the time the sumac genus, Rhus, included many different trees and shrubs with alternate compound leaves, like Ailanthus does. John Bartram would have been aware of all of the American sumac species, so if he is correct in recalling that he planted this from seeds brought from Asia (East India), then this very well could be the earliest recorded instance of Ailanthus in the Americas.

Peter Collinson, who was one of the first in Britain to receive Ailanthus via France, certainly thought that John Bartram had one in his greenhouse. He replied, describing his own plant:

“I have from China a Tree of surprising growth that much resembles a Sumach which is the Admiration of all that see it  Phaps thine may be the same—It Endours all our Winters   Thou Sayes thine came from the East but mentions not what Country: We call ours the Varnish Tree”[4]

The name “Varnish tree” refers to at least four different species of tree from Asia, and the 1750s saw intense taxonomical debate within the pages of the Royal Society of London’s Philosophical Transactions attempting to distinguish the different plants referred to by that name. English botanists were fixated on the so-called varnish tree because some species, like the Chinese Lacquer Tree or Japanese Wax Tree, had sap that could be turned into lacquer, a highly valuable substance that could be used for coating wooden furniture or artwork.[5]

Ailanthus is similar to these species and became caught up in the craze over Varnish trees, and d’Incarville may have originally sent seeds of it back to Europe because he mistook it for one of those species. Upon receiving the seeds, English botanists quickly realized that they had several different species. John Ellis published a paper in Philosophical Transactions that distinguished a “Varnish tree” specimen found growing at two botanical gardens in London from other Rhus species, including a diagram that is the earliest botanical sketch of the plant.[6] To the dismay of botanists, this species did not have useful sap, although it was well-regarded aesthetically. Phillip Miller gives it the name “altissimum” in his Gardener’s Dictionary in 1768, and the tree was finally defined in its own genus, Ailanthus, by the French botanist René Louiche Desfontaine in 1788.[7]

The English botanist John Ellis used this drawing to argue that the “Chinese Varnish Tree” (figure 5) should be its own species. That plant later became Ailanthus altissima. Credit: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London.

But at the time John Bartram and Peter Collinson were looking at this curious tree from China, botanists still would have thought of Ailanthus as a type of Varnish Tree belonging to the sumac (Rhus) genus. Collinson described his Varnish tree as a “stately tree sent over raised from seed sent over from Nankin in China, in 1751, sent over by Father d’Incarville, my correspondent in China.”[8] This account lines up perfectly with John Ellis’s description of his new Rhus species, which modern botanists consider to be a description of Ailanthus.

Identifying plants from the historical record is never a straightforward task, and we cannot say for sure that Bartram’s tree was an Ailanthus without having a more detailed description or drawing of it. We can only speculate. Genetic research has suggested, however, that Ailanthus was indeed first introduced to North America through the Philadelphia area at the end of the eighteenth century, making either Hamilton or Bartram possible candidates for its introduction.[9] Bartram does not mention this plant again, so perhaps it died at some point and has no relation to the Ailanthus trees that are now widespread across the area. But given the tree’s propensity to spread and take root in even extreme conditions, it is not out of the question that it escaped Bartram’s greenhouse and later became naturalized in the region.

We have a few more references to Ailanthus from the years that Robert Carr was proprietor of the garden. Ailanthus appears in Robert Carr’s catalogue from 1828 as an exotic tree, priced at $1 compared to the 25¢ or 50¢ that most trees sold for.[10] In 1844, one of Robert Carr’s correspondents recalls an Ailanthus tree that was apparently given to Ann Bartram Carr as a wedding present in 1809. That tree was supposedly procured from Hamilton’s garden at The Woodlands and was still preserved at Bartram’s in 1844.[11] Both references point to Ailanthus not being widespread in Philadelphia in the early 19^th century, but they do not rule out an earlier introduction during John Bartram’s lifetime.

Perhaps John Bartram, not William Hamilton, deserves the dubious designation of being the first to introduce Ailanthus to the Americas. We can only imagine what John Bartram would think if he saw what the little plant he found in his greenhouse in 1764 was up to today.

Notes

Cover image: Sketch of Ailanthus leaves by John Ellis, published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London in 1758.

[1] Patricia J. Wynne, “Ailanthus altissima”, Columbia Introduced Species Project, December 9, 2002.

[2] Shiu Ying Hu, “Ailanthus”, Arnoldia, 1979, 39(2): 29-50.

[3] John Bartram, Letter to Peter Collinson, May 1^st, 1764; in The Correspondence of John Bartram, 1734-1777, ed. Edmund Berkeley and Dorothy Smith Berkeley (University of Florida Press, 1992).

[4] Peter Collinson, Letter to John Bartram, June 1^st, 1764; in The Correspondence, ed. Berkeley & Berkeley.

[5] The Chinese Lacquer Tree is now Toxicodendron vernicifluum while the Japanese Wax Tree is now Toxicodendron succedaneum. Each of these species were considered part of the Rhus (sumac) genus at the time.

[6] John Ellis, “CXII. A letter from Mr. John Ellis, F. R. S. to Philip Carteret Webb, Esq; F. R. S. attempting to ascertain the tree that yields the common varnish used in China and Japan; to promote Its propagation in our American Colonies; and to set right some mistakes botanists appear to have entertained concerning It,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Vol. 49, (1755), pp. 866-876.

[7] Walter T. Swingle, “The early European history and the botanical name of the Tree of Heaven, Ailanthus altissima,” Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences, Vol. 6, No. 14 (1916), pp. 490-498

[8] Peter Collinson, published in Hortus Collinsonianus: An account of the plants cultivated by the late Peter Collinson, compiled by Lewis Weston Dillwyn in 1843. Not published, printed in Swansea by W. C. Murray and D. Rees. Dillwyn believed that what Collinson thought was the Chinese Varnish Tree was actually Ellis’s new species, and cites his article in the Philosophical Transactions to support this.

[9] Preston R. Aldrich, Joseph S. Briguglio, Shyam N. Kapadia, Minesh U. Morker, Ankit Rawal, Preeti Kalra, Cynthia D. Huebner, and Gary K. Greer, “Genetic Structure of the Invasive Tree Ailanthus altissima in Eastern United States Cities,” Journal of Botany, vol. 2010.

[10] Robert Carr, Periodical Catalogue of Fruit and Ornamental Trees and Shrubs, Green House Plants, &c. Cultivated and for Sale at Bartram’s Botanic Garden, Kingsessing, Near Gray’s Ferry—Four miles from Philadelphia. Russell and Martien, Philadelphia, 1828, p. 21

[11] Dr. Steph. Browne to Col. Robert Carr, September 19, 1844, Society Misc. Coll, Box 7-B, Of644, 1842K, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

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The Seven Years’ War (1756–63) was an international conflict fought between long-standing rivals, Great Britain and France, for global superiority. The French and Indian War (1754–63) was the North American theater of the conflict and was named after the significant role Native Americans played on both sides. The two European powers had developed into major economic and political players on the continent, and the war gave Native Americans the chance to fight for the side they felt held their best interests. Although the British had Native allies, France’s better indigenous diplomacy and less manipulative past made them the more attractive ally for many nations.^[1]

This Francophile tendency was especially evident in Pennsylvania among indigenous nations, where the British had consistently exploited and distanced the region’s Lenape (Delaware), Shawnee, and other nations. These groups fought alongside the French in battles and raided the Pennsylvania frontier, stealing supplies and killing the region’s poorly defended white settlers. The Natives eventually agreed to a separate peace, under the Treaty of Easton in 1758, on the condition that the British would not expand further west into the indigenous lands of western Pennsylvania and Ohio. When the British quickly disregarded this requirement, indigenous raids of the Pennsylvanian frontier began again under Pontiac’s War (1763–64).^[2]

“The Indians delivering up the English captives to Colonel Bouquet… in Novr. 1764,” engraving by Pierre Charles Canot, 1766 (Library of Congress). This exchange occurred near the end of the Pontiac’s War and was a coerced requirement for peace (see the bayonets behind the colonists). While many captives were happy to be returned, others had been adopted as members of Native communities and had lived there happily for a long time. Both sets of individuals were returned in Sir William Johnson’s attempt to restore peace and reduce the region’s Native population.

Bartram’s response was like that of many Pennsylvania colonists. In February 1756, he wrote to Collinson in London with anger and fervent racism, expressing that “O: Pensilvania thou that was the most flourishing & peaceable province in North America is now scourged by the most barbarous creatures in the universe…. The barbarous inhuman ungrateful natives [are] weekly murdering our back inhabitants…. If our captains pursue them if in the level woods thay skip from tree to tree like monkies….” In the early years of the Seven Years’ War, Collinson seemed to agree with Bartram, responding how, “Wee here are greatly Effected at the Ravages and cruelties Exercised by your ungrateful perfidious Indians.” The raids were undeniably brutal, but both Bartram and Collinson failed to consider the Natives’ motives. They viewed the raiders as deceitful and “barbarous,” focusing solely on their actions rather than recognizing that they were fighting the British colonial system’s own treacheries and incursions onto their land, which threatened their very way of life.^[3]

By the time of Pontiac’s War, the decades-long friends and business partners had become polarized over these very viewpoints. Bartram continued to see his raiders in a similar light, expressing that the “only method to establish a lasting peace with the barbarous Indians is to bang them stoutly,” and that, “the Indians must be subdued or drove above 1000 miles back.” Collinson, on the other hand, began to consider the indigenous perspective more critically. He responded to John’s callous letters with criticism, stating:

“My dear John, thou does not consider the law of right, and doing to others as would be done unto. We, every manner of way, trick, cheat, and abuse these Indians…. Lett a person of Power come & take 5 or 10 Acres of my Friend Johns Land from Him… How Easy & resigned he would be… but if an Indian resents it, in his way… nothing but Fire and Fagot will do with my Friend John…” ^[4]

We may never know what led to Collinson’s change in perspective, but the backgrounds of both individuals provide potential avenues to understand why their views differed. Collinson was a Quaker, and as such, he likely believed in the core Quaker principle of the “inner light.” The inner light held that God resided universally within all humans, making their bodies, and not the church, his temple. George Fox, the founder of Quakerism, preached that this light could be realized and lit within anyone, and he embodied this teaching by acting towards the equality of all – including women and Native Americans. The open-minded nature of this tenet made many Quakers pacifists and generally friendly towards Native Americans. It also formed the foundation behind Pennsylvania’s “Holy Experiment.” Although Bartram was also a Quaker, many of his beliefs strayed from Quaker orthodoxy, resulting in his disownment in 1758. Bartram’s exact views on the inner light are unknown, but his predilection towards war and his prejudice towards Native Americans suggest that he did not view innate equality as highly as other Quakers.^[5]

It is also important to consider how Bartram and Collinson lived in entirely different settings. Collinson lived in London, where he could look at the colonial raids from far outside of the situation, while Bartram lived in Pennsylvania and was affected by indigenous raids throughout his entire life. When he was still a child, John Bartram’s father was killed, and his stepmother and step siblings temporarily kidnapped, during the raids of the larger Tuscarora War (1711–1715) in North Carolina. As an adult, Bartram’s annual botanic expeditions across the colonies were sporadically halted by Native raids that made the frontiers unsafe, which limited his business. When raids erupted in Pennsylvania throughout the 1750s and 60s, it is possible that he knew some of the people who were affected, and it is likely that his opinions were also further influenced by the reactions of white settlers around him. While these developments do not excuse his prejudice and ignorance of the Natives’ true motives, it shows how Bartram was affected by the larger events around him, and how his views may have been shaped differently from Collinson’s over time.^[6]

________________________________________________________________________________________________

Notes

^[1] Gregory Evans Dowd, War Under Heaven: Pontiac, the Indian Nations, and the British Empire (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2004): 22-89.

^[2] Ibid.

^[3] John Bartram to Peter Collinson, February 21, 1756, in The Correspondence of John Bartram: 1734-1777, edited by Edmund Berkeley and Dorothy Smith Berkeley (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1992): 400-401; Peter Collinson to John Bartram, June 8, 1756, in Ibid, 405.

^[4] John Bartram to Peter Collinson, September 30, 1763, in Ibid, 609; John Bartram to Peter Collinson, October 23, 1763, in Ibid, 612; Peter Collinson to John Bartram, December 6, 1763, in Ibid, 615-616.

^[5] George Fox. “Boyhood: A Seeker,” “First Years of Ministry,” and “Two Years in America,” in An Autobiography. Originally written 1694. (Whitefish: Literary Licensing LLC, 2014). Street Corner Society. https://web.archive.org/web/20070612033233/http://www.strecorsoc.org/gfox/title.html; Henry Joel Cadbury, “The Disownment of John Bartram,” Bulletin of Friends’ Historical Association Vol. 17, No. 1 (Spring 1928): 16-22.

^[6] Joel T. Fry, “Historic American Landscapes Survey, John Bartram House and Garden (Bartram’s Garden), HALS No. PA-1, History Report,” MS report, U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, HABS/HAER/HALS/CRGIS Division, Washington, DC, 18.

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From the start, medicine in the colonies was markedly different from practices in Europe. Formally trained physicians already had a dubious reputation in Europe and were only scarcer and more expensive in the Americas, and their imported medicines were constantly in short supply. Medical science was, at best, imprecise, and at worst actively harmful to patients who came down with sickness. Most care was instead outsourced to apothecaries, who stocked their shelves with plants not native to the Americas and concocted recipes used to treat all sorts of ailments, from common colds to venereal diseases to tropical diseases like yellow fever. And without any knowledge of the strange and new plants they encountered in the region, apothecaries and commoners alike often turned to Indigenous people for care or otherwise sought cures from their medical botanicals.[1]

Needless to say, the often-improvised reality of medical treatment in America did not conform to the theories of the country’s most-remembered physicians. Two prominent Philadelphia physicians, Dr. Benjamin Rush and Dr. Benjamin Smith Barton, wrote treatises that attempted to organize this rudimentary system of medical treatment, but generally excluded the original context that the remedies they described were discovered within. Those physicians had an economic incentive to appropriate Indigenous remedies while simultaneously disavowing their usage by Indigenous healers, since they would have competed directly with them for patients.[2] As a result, the contributions that Indigenous botanical knowledge made to early American medicine is usually underemphasized, but the writings of William Bartram preserve some of that history.[3]

Recent scholarship has suggested we should understand early American medicine as part of a distinctive “Atlantic World medical complex” which “melded people, plants, and knowledges” from Indigenous, African, and European sources.[4] Cures from Europe were widely used in this context, but so too were remedies that had their roots in the medical systems of the Lenape or Cherokee, and remedies that reached Euro-Americans through the African diaspora.[5] By tracing references William Bartram makes to Indigenous medical botany in his writings, we can reconstruct the Indigenous roots of early American medicine that have been left out of the record by authors like Barton and Rush. Bartram’s journey across the lands of the Creek and Cherokee in the southeastern part of the country, published in his literary classic Travels and other correspondences, offers a rich look into the medicinal world of those groups:

Indigenous Medical Botanicals described by William Bartram [6]

* Indicates a plant that was included in Bartram’s 1807 catalogue of plants at the garden.

Unlike other writers, Bartram’s ethnographic interest in Indigenous societies led him to record the cultural context that many of these remedies were used in. Euro-American physicians sometimes shared an interest in the specific properties of plants, but Bartram’s commitment to describing the rituals associated with medicine reveals the contours of Indigenous medical systems.[7] The Creek and Cherokee did not confine their treatments to remedies alone, for instance, but usually combined them with “regimen and a rigid abstinence with respect to eating and drinking, as well as the gratification of other passions & appetites.”[8] Sometimes, Bartram describes the preparation of different plants, for example how the China Brier and Sassafras root were combined with cuttings from the Bignonia crucigera vine and boiled to produce what he calls a “Diet Drink.”[9] An infusion of the tops of Collinsonia was “ordinarily drunk at breakfast” and unlike most medicines, this one was of “exceeding pleasant taste and flavor.”

Elsewhere, he recounts the processes the Creek and Cherokee underwent to turn plants into medicines. Podophyllum peltatum, the May-Apple, which Bartram described as “the most effectual and safe emetic and cathartic,” was prepared through digging up the roots in Autumn, drying them in a loft, and reducing them into a “fine sieved powder” that could then be used as medicine.[10]

William Bartram’s illustration of Collinsonia canadensis, horse-balm, ca. 1801-1802. Both John and William Bartram held Collinsonia in high regard as a febrifuge. [Courtesy of the American Philosophical Society.]

At the time the town was fasting, taking medicine, and I think I may say praying, to avert a grievous calamity of sickness, which had lately afflicted them, and laid in the grave abundance of their citizens; they fast seven or eight days, during which time they eat or drink nothing but a meagre gruel, made of a little corn-flour and water; taking at the same time by way of medicine or physic, a strong decoction of the roots of the Iris versicolor, which is a powerful cathartic; they hold this root in high estimation, every town cultivates a little plantation of it, having a large artificial pond, just without the town, planted and almost overgrown with it, where they usually dig clay for pottery, and mortar and plaster for buildings, and I observed where they had lately been digging up this root.[11]

Medical texts might list Iris versicolor as a cathartic, but they would not list its role as part of a complex procedure for staving off sickness that Bartram describes. We cannot determine from this description if this medical ritual was replicated across the region, but the fact that “every town” would “cultivate a little plantation of it” indicates that it was among the most important medicinal plants to the Creek and likely carried strong symbolic significance.

The transfer of medicinal knowledge was not always a frictionless process. Indigenous people were acutely aware of the dangers posed by Euro-American settlers in this period, and in one case Bartram recalls the Cherokee nation withholding medicinal information from him:

The Cherokees use the Lobelia siphilitica & another plant of still greater power and efficacy, which the traders told me of, but would not undertake to show it to me under Thirty Guineas Reward for fear of the Indians who endeavor to conceal the knowledge of it from the whites lest its great virtues should excite their researches for it, to its expiration.[12]

Still, William Bartram lists at least four remedies that became widespread among white settlers after being described to them by the Indigenous inhabitants of the region, and as mentioned earlier, white settlers often turned to Indigenous doctors for care.

Two plants that Bartram held in particularly high regard were the Swamp Lily (Saururus cernuus) and the mayapple, (Podophyllum peltatum), the latter of which he attributed to preserving “the lives of many thousands of people of the Southern states.”[13] Bartram himself wrote that he had been treated with it and attested to its “almost infallible good effects”. The mayapple, known as highly toxic both to Europeans and Lenape people in the Northeast, was used by the Cherokee and Creek to expel worms, and as an emetic (to induce vomiting), and a cathartic (a laxative).[14] Swamp Lily could be used to treat wounds or fight fevers. The virtues of both plants, Bartram recounts, “were communicated to the White inhabitants by the Indians.”[15] Etoposide, a chemical derived from Podophyllum peltatum, remains a widely used medicine in chemotherapy treatments today.[16]

William Bartram’s drawings medical botanicals were renowned for their accuracy and beauty. Members of the American Philosophical Society commissioned drawings of his plants for their research. This drawing is of Podophyllum peltatum, the mayapple, ca. 1801-1803. [Courtesy of the American Philosophical Society.]

William Bartram’s writings contributed to both the preservation and appropriation of Indigenous medical knowledge. In a very direct sense, the Bartrams commodified and perhaps profited off of the Indigenous cures they encountered. But William Bartram’s writings also preserved the Indigenous roots of early American medicine, when other sources have obscured or willfully suppressed them. William’s expeditions and careful observations of Indigenous medicine made Bartram’s Garden into an important node in the transatlantic exchange of medicinal knowledge and reveal the global and contested roots of modern medical science.

Notes

Cover image: William Bartram’s drawing of Silphium terebinthinaceum, rosinweed, engraved for publication in B. S. Barton’s Elements of Botany,  Philadelphia: 1803.

[1] Ray, Laura E. “Podophyllum peltatum and observations on the Creek and Cherokee Indians: William Bartram’s preservation of Native American pharmacology.” The Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine. vol. 82,1 (2009), 31.

[2] McCulla, Theresa. “Medicine in Colonial North America,” Colonial North America at Harvard Library Project, 2017.

[3] Ray, “Podophyllum peltatum,” 29. Ray has shown how Barton’s writings borrowed or even plagiarized many of William Bartram’s observations on medicine in his Collections for an Essay towards a Materia Medica of the United-States, omitting reference to the Indigenous context that Bartram found his plants in. Rush openly dismissed the idea that Indigenous sources could offer anything to Euro-American physicians, writing that “we have no discoveries in the materia medica to hope for from the Indians in North-America” (Cited in Robinson, “New Worlds, New Medicines”).

[4] Schiebinger, Londa L. Secret Cures of Slaves: People, Plants, and Medicine in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World, (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2017), 3.

[5] See our blog post on Cleome gynandra, an African plant that William Bartram found in Louisiana.

[6] This table compiles descriptions from four sources:

Bartram, William. “Observations on the Creek and Cherokee Indians.” In William Bartram on the Southeastern Indians, ed. Gregory A Waselkov and Kathryn E. Holland Braund, (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995),161-164.

—The Travels of William Bartram, Naturalists Edition, annotated by Francis Harper, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1958), 207-288.

—Travels in Georgia and Florida, 1773-1774: A Report to Dr. John Fothergill, annotated by Francis Harper, (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1943).

— “William Bartram’s ‘Remarks’ descriptive specimens he sent to Dr. Fothergill and Mr. Barclay,” 1774, in William Bartram: Botanical and Zoological Drawings, 1756-1788, ed. Joseph Ewan (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1968), 154-168.

[7] Robinson, Martha. “New Worlds, New Medicines: Indian Remedies and English Medicine in Early America,” Early American Studies, vol. 3,1 (2005), 97.

[8] Bartram, Observations, 162.

[9] Bartram, Observations, 163.

[10] Ibid., 163. [Podophyllum or mayapple can be fatally poisonous, do not try this at home.]

[11] Bartram, Travels, 276.

[12] Bartram, Observations, 163.

[13] Ibid., 163.

[14] The Pennsylvania Moravian missionary John Heckewelder (1743-1823), who spent years writing about the Lenape, includes the May-Apple on his list of their medical botanicals, but only references its toxicity. John Gottlieb E. Heckewelder, Names of various trees, shrubs & plants in the language of the Lenape. (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1815)

[15] Ibid., 164.

[16] The American Society of Health-System Pharmacists, “Etoposide”. Reviewed on Jun 29, 2021. Drugs.com, https://www.drugs.com/monograph/etoposide.html.

[17] Many of these plants are still cultivated at the garden today. These include Angelica atropurpurea, Bignonia capreolata, Collinsonia canadensis, Erigeron pulchellus, Ilex vomitoria, Iris versicolor, Panax quinquefolius, Persea borbonia, Saururus cernuus, Silphium terebinthinaceum, and Spigelia marilandica.

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Weiser’s July expedition was on behalf of Virginia’s governor to officially restore peace between the two sovereignties. For Bartram, the opportunity to travel to Onondaga was exciting. Not only did the journey provide him with the chance to collect new assortments of plants for personal and commercial purposes, but according to a letter he sent a week before his departure, it served to “afford us A fine opportunity of many Curious observations,” likely also referring to the region’s picturesque landscapes and sparsely documented Iroquois.^[2]

The party departed from Philadelphia on July 3, 1743, first traveling west, then up the Susquehanna River to the town of Shamokin. There, they met with an Iroquois leader, Shickellamy and his son, whose company guaranteed their safe passage. Subsequently, they traveled north along various rivers and valleys, eventually reaching Onondaga on July 21. While Weiser began negotiations with the Iroquois, Bartram and Evans traveled further north to Oswego on Lake Ontario to explore and obtain provisions for their way home. They returned to Onondaga on the 27th, in time to witness the final days of the proceedings, which concluded in peace. The party then returned home on approximately the same route by which they came, reaching Philadelphia on August 19.^[3]

John Bartram’s Route to Onondaga, 1743, in Nancy E. Hoffmann and John C. Van Horne, eds., America’s Curious Botanist: A Tercentennial Reappraisal of John Bartram 1699-1777 (Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society, 2004).

Bartram kept a journal during his journey and sent a copy of it to his English business partner, Peter Collinson, who later had it published in London in 1751. Bartram did not plan for the account to be publicized, so its response was met with mixed reviews.

Those interested in the region’s botany and Bartram’s expertise on the subject were left fairly disappointed. While he does briefly mention finding a massive magnolia tree [Magnolia acuminata] and various other specimens, his account of the region’s flora is surprisingly sparse. The Swedish botanist Peter Kalm criticizes him on this, asserting that “he is to be blamed for his negligence…. He has not filled it with a thousandth part of the great knowledge which he has acquired in natural philosophy.” One private letter written by Bartram during the trip provides a potential insight into the absence. It states, “I have been taken off from viewing the agreable Phenomina of the beautiful varieties in Nature to the Disagreable phenomina of mens perverse Actions,” making it possible that the negotiations fully occupied his mind.^[4]

Nevertheless, for readers interested in an adventure story about indigenous lands and cultures, Bartram’s account was just as captivating and insightful then as it is today. Bartram’s description of Onondaga is considered by scholars to be one of the best sources detailing the capital during the mid-eighteenth century. The Iroquois were well known for their communal longhouses, where large numbers of families collectively resided, but after decades of war and disease outbreaks, Bartram painted a very different picture. He described the town as “2 or 3 miles long, yet the scattered cabins on both sides [of] the water are not above 40 in number,” many of them holding two families at most. Although Bartram and his party resided in a longhouse “80 feet long,” it seems it may have been one of the only ones left in the town, with its use being reserved for ceremonial and diplomatic purposes. European colonization efforts had clearly altered portions of the Iroquois’ communities. ^[5]

Bartram also recorded a number of Iroquois customs and legends on his journey, including a sweat lodge ceremony and the use of tobacco as an offering to appease the spirits of animals after a hunt. This kind of information would have been fairly novel and exciting to people reading in Bartram’s time, but for modern readers, it also provides a glimpse into Bartram’s perspectives towards indigenous populations. While Bartram expressed his gratitude on a number of occasions, he considered Native Americans to be very “superstitious” people, with their legends merely being “silly stories”. More condemning was his view on land ownership. While he described the Iroquois as the Great Lakes’ “original inhabitants,” he contended that the indigenous and French failure to properly cultivate the land “must entitle the crown of Great Britain to all North America.”^[6]

As a typical Enlightenment thinker, Bartram’s fascination with the Iroquois was, unfortunately, one of marveling at a lesser “curiosity” rather than an interest in an equal people. It is likely that his prejudiced views were influenced by the Tuscaroras in 1711, who killed his father during their larger war in North Carolina, but such close-minded views were also not uncommon amongst colonists. It is worth considering how the language barrier may have affected his ability to directly amend his views, but Bartram, nevertheless, exemplified the same mindset as the white expansionists who pushed Native Americans westward. It was the same indigenous peoples who, he wrote, had little right to the land that, simultaneously, guided, protected, and hunted for his travel party. Ironically, it is also the Iroquois who retain a portion of their original territory today.^[7]

Featured Image: John Bartram’s Sketch of an Onondaga Longhouse (top) and Oswego (bottom), in John Bartram, “Observations of the Inhabitants, Climate, Soil, Rivers, Productions, Animals, and other matters worthy of Notice” (London: J. Whiston and B. White, 1751): 9, https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/196084#page/9/mode/1up.

________________________________________________________________________________________________

Notes

^[1] James Patton to William Gooch, Dec. 23, 1742, in B. Scott Crawford “A Frontier of Fear: Terrorism and Social Tension along Virginia’s Western Waters, 1742-1775.” West Virginia History 2, No. 2 (Fall 2008): 1-29; Warren R. Hofstra, The Planting of New Virginia: Settlement and Landscape in the Shenandoah Valley (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 2004): 14-49.

^[2] Whitfield J. Bell Jr., introduction to A Journey from Pennsylvania to Onondaga in 1743, by John Bartram, Lewis Evans, and Conrad Weiser. (Barre: Imprint Society, 1973): 7-18; John Bartram to Cadwallader Colden, June 26, 1743, in The Correspondence of John Bartram: 1734-1777, edited by Edmund Berkeley and Dorothy Smith Berkeley (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1992): 218-219.

^[3] Bartram, A Journey, 10-11.

^[4]  Bartram, A Journey, 10-15, 81.

^[5] Ibid, 56-59; Daniel K. Richter, The Ordeal of the Longhouse: The Peoples of the Iroquois League in the Era of European Colonization (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992): 257-262.

^[6]  Bartram, A Journey, 43-51, 54, 67-68.

^[7] “Historic American Landscapes Survey, John Bartram House and Garden (Bartram’s Garden), HALS No. PA-1, History Report,” MS report, U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, HABS/HAER/HALS/CRGIS Division, Washington, DC, 18.

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Silk’s importance to the early modern economy cannot be understated. Elites in Europe had long preferred silk garb, leading Britain and France to develop highly profitable silk weaving industries by the early 1700s.[1] Gathering raw silk from silkworms, however, proved much more difficult. Growers in Spain and Italy had some success raising silkworms, but most raw silk used in Britain and its colonies was imported from Asia, which along with tea and porcelain, formed the bulk of the East India Company’s lucrative China trade.[2]

The British were fascinated by the possibility of producing raw silk domestically. King James I developed a plan for growing silk in the Virginia colony as early as 1609. [3] They imported Morus alba trees in pursuit of this project, but the trees quickly escaped cultivation, becoming widespread in the countryside and hybridizing with native red and black mulberry trees. John Bartram reported M. alba growing wild in local forests by the 1750s.[4] The American silk industry never took off as tobacco and cotton were far more lucrative for most farmers. Still, the idea would continue to circulate in the colonies throughout the eighteenth century.

An illustration of the white mulberry tree (Morus alba).

The Bartrams were aware of these experiments in raising silkworms. In 1743, John Bartram received word from the naturalist and politician from New York, Cadwallader Colden, about the governor of Connecticut who was “cloathed in a good handsom Silk of his own making” and had plans to produce one hundred more yards of silk later in the year. Bartram replied and informed Colden of a previous misadventure in silkworm production:

Severall in our province made an attempt to raise Silk about 16 or 18 year ago but the trouble in raising the worms & winding the silk Soon discouraged them & the persons that was the most eager to promote it hath since found a greater profit in raising Hemp & Tobaco so that now we have no inclination to try any farther experiments of the Silk worms notwithstanding our plantations is full of mulberry trees… But if our Neibouring colonys should Succeed its very Likely Some would make another tryall[5]

Despite the failure described by Bartram, the allure of silkworms remained and further trials were indeed attempted. Bartram recognized that the “mighty Monarchs of China” became “so rich and their Princes So Powerfull” through raising silkworms.[6] Silk production would continue in Connecticut over the next few decades, and in the 1760s it piqued the interest of Benjamin Franklin, who organized the immigration of silk workers from England to Pennsylvania. Soon, Pennsylvania and its neighboring states had fledgling silk industries.[7]

The Bartrams enter the story of American silk production again a few years later. John’s son, Moses Bartram, evidently took an interest in collecting silk from native silkworms and experimented with raising them himself. He prepared his observations and delivered them to the American Philosophical Society in 1768. In his remarks, Moses describes capturing five cocoons from local moths in 1766, which gradually hatched and produced moths that laid some three hundred eggs.[8]

The following spring, Moses set to work raising the silkworms. He placed them in glass bottles, put the bottles in the shade to shield the worms from the heat, and filled the bottles with water and vegetables. Moses tried feeding them mulberry leaves, which his native worms apparently did not appreciate, instead preferring to graze on local vegetables (especially apple tree leaves). He wrote down his observations on the worms every week, recording their habits—they crawled down from their perches to “drink heartily two or three times a day”—and their life cycle. By August 10th, they were all wrapped up in cocoons again, where they would wait to emerge next year.

Moses did not report trying to extract silk from the cocoons. He likely did not know how or did not have the instruments to do so. But he hoped that his experiments would reveal how silkworms could be “raised to advantage, and perhaps, in time, become no contemptible branch of commerce,” and compared his worms favorably to those from the East.

Moses Bartram likely raised polyphemus moths, (Antheraea polyphemus) which can still be found at the garden today, like this one spotted a few years ago.

The Bartrams’ experiments with silk production were not over. In spring 1771, we have evidence that Elizabeth Bartram, daughter of John, younger sister of Moses, and William Bartram’s twin, was raising silkworms at their home. John writes to Franklin to inform him of this development, saying that she “hath saved several thousands of eggs of silkworms which she expects will hatch in A few days… she intends to give them A fair tryal this spring.” Franklin was delighted to hear this and replied, wishing her success, adding that “nothing is wanting to our country for the produce of silk, but skill; which will be obtained by persevering till we are instructed by experience.”[9] We know little of what happened to Elizabeth’s experiment in raising silkworms, but they may have been grown in bins in a room attached to the kitchen at the Bartram home in Kingsessing.

Why did silk production not take off in America despite many colonists’ best efforts? Franklin was right that acquiring the skill to grow silkworms was a major obstacle to building a silk industry in America, but there was an even bigger barrier: labor. Raising silkworms was notoriously labor-intensive. Silkworms have to feed for weeks. Once they spin their cocoons, the silkworms are boiled, their cocoons extracted, and then wound on a reel to produce usable fiber. More than two thousand silkworms are required to produce just one pound of silk.

In the American colonies, which were sparsely populated compared to Europe, to say nothing of China and India, finding enough labor to produce a competitive silk industry was a challenge that proved impossible to overcome. Pehr Kalm, a Swedish botanist and traveler who worked under Linnaeus and visited John Bartram, recognized this issue. In his treatise on North American mulberry trees, he commented that “the country was so sparsely inhabited,” that it would be “utterly useless to engage in silkworm culture and the additional work of spinning the silk.”[10] Countless other crops turned a far greater profit, and flax, hemp, and cotton could produce any fibers the colonists needed with far less effort.

Experiments with silk would continue. Around the Revolution, a “silk craze” and swept over the nation as people “gave themselves over completely to the cultivating of silk.”[11] That craze was evident during William Bartram’s travels across the southeastern states, where he describes encountering “a large orchard of the European Mulberry trees (Morus alba), some of which were grafted on stocks of the native Mulberry (Morus rubra) these trees were cultivated for the purpose of feeding silk-worms (phalaena bombyca).[12]

Growers were caught up in a similar craze in the 1830s, when thousands scrambled to buy the recently introduced “Chinese Mulberry” (Morus multicaulis).[13] Like previous experiments, these attempts at raising silkworms domestically could not produce silk efficiently enough and did not amount to much, except a bubble and bust in the nursery trade. Eventually, however, the refining of raw silk became a major industry in the United States. By the end of the nineteenth century silk mills (usually relying on imported raw silk from Japan) popped up all over the country, and in 1920 the silk industry had become the largest industry in Pennsylvania. Silk was a dominant industry in the Eastern states until World War II, when wartime interruptions on imported silk and new synthetic fibers gradually made it obsolete.

White mulberry trees still grow at Bartram’s Garden today, like this one growing just in front of the Bartram house. Photograph by Gabriel Morbeck.

White mulberries remained in the Bartram catalogue for years after their attempts at raising silkworms. In the 1828 catalogue, mulberries are listed available as “small trees of the white Italian or Persian Mulberry, for Silk-worms.”[14] Robert Carr, then the proprietor of the garden, took out an advertisement for the garden’s stock of M. muticaulis in a Delaware County newspaper in 1838. These sales would have undoubtedly enticed the countless ordinary people who hitched their fortunes (and their labor) to dreams of silk cultivation.  White mulberries remain widespread around Philadelphia, a reminder of this intriguing piece of our region’s history.

Notes

Cover image: title page from Moses Bartram’s article in the Transactions of the APS.

[1]  Leanna Lee-Whitman, “The Silk Trade: Chinese Silks and the British East India Company,” Winterthur Portfolio, Vol. 17, No. 1 (Spring, 1982), pp. 21-41

[2] Ronald C. Po, “Tea, Porcelain, and Silk: Chinese Exports to the West in the Early Modern Period,” in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History. (Oxford University Press: 2018).

[3] Cora E. Lutz, “Ezra Stiles and the Culture of Silk in Connecticut,” The Yale University Library Gazette, Vol. 58, No. 3/4 (April 1984), pp. 143-149

[4] Esther Louise Larsen and Pehr Kalm. “Pehr Kalm’s Description of the North American Mulberry Tree.” Agricultural History Vol. 24, No. 4 (Oct., 1950), pp. 221-227

[5] John Bartram, Letter to Cadwallader Colden, September 17^th, 1743; in The Correspondence of John Bartram, 1734-1777, ed. Edmund Berkeley and Dorothy Smith Berkeley (University of Florida Press, 1992), p. 222.

[6] John Bartram, Letter to Colden.

[7] Lutz, “Ezra Stiles and the Culture of Silk in Connecticut”, 144.

[8] The domesticated silk moth, Bombyx mori, has not existed outside of human care for thousands of years, but dozens of its relatives are referred to as “silk moths” and make similar cocoons. Moses described the moth that hatched as a “large brown fly”, which could have been one of the Giant Silk Moths from the family Saturniidae, perhaps Antheraea polyphemus, the polyphemus moth.

[9] John Bartram, Letter to Benjamin Franklin, April 29th, 1771; and Franklin to Bartram, July 17, 1771; in The Correspondence of John Bartram. p. 739, 744. Elizabeth Bartram married William Wright, August 12, 1771 and moved to Conestoga on the Susquehanna in Lancaster County.

[10] Pehr Kalm, “Pehr Kalm’s Description of the North American Mulberry Tree.”

[11] Elizabeth Hall, “If Looms Could Speak: The Story of Pennsylvania’s Silk Industry,” Pennsylvania Heritage, Summer 2006.

[12] William Bartram, The Travels of William Bartram, Naturalists Edition, annotated by Francis Harper, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1958), p. 308.

[13] David Landry. “History of Silk Production,” Mansfield Historical Society, May 6, 2013. Botanists now consider M. multicaulis a variety of M. alba.

[14] Robert Carr, Periodical Catalogue of Frit and Ornamental Trees and Shrubs, Green House Plants &c. Cultivated and For Sale at Bartram’s Botanic Garden, Kingsessing, 1828. Provided through the Library of the New York Botanical Garden.

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The earliest known archaeological evidence of a Native American presence in the region can be traced back to an 8600 BCE Shawnee-Mineski site found near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The Lenape’s ancestors likely settled in the Lenapehoking region shortly thereafter, though the date of their ethnogenesis is debated. Archaeological surveys at Bartram’s Garden reveal that the site was likely used as a seasonal hunting and gathering ground by Native Americans, potentially Lenape, sometime between 3000 BCE and 1500 CE. Much of the site remains unsurveyed, however, so it is possible that there is more to be found that can add to its indigenous story.^[2]

By the time Dutch and Swedish colonists began establishing settlements in Lenapehoking in the 1620s and 1630s, the Lenape’s population is estimated to have been between 8,000 and 12,000. This number is certainly lower than their pre-European contact population, as foreign diseases from earlier European traders and fishermen, such as smallpox and influenza, quickly wreaked havoc amongst Native American populations. As these viruses swept across the continent, historians estimate that most indigenous nations faced a casualty rate of between 75% and 90%. The Lenape’s population decline was likely also compounded by their roughly decade-long war with the Susquehannocks over control of trading rights with the Dutch at New Amsterdam.^[3]

Despite their reduced numbers, the Lenape served as the dominant power in the region throughout most of the seventeenth century. Although they were generally welcoming to the waves of Dutch, Swedish, and Finnish settlers, granting them land and resources, they controlled where the colonists could settle and only authorized it in return for continued European trade goods. Conflict briefly arose in 1631, when investors under the Dutch West Indies Company attempted to start a large-scale plantation named Swanendael near present day Lewes, Delaware. The region’s Lenape, the Sickoneysincks, interpreted the plantation as a sign that the Dutch were transitioning their economic focus from trade to agriculture, a practice they found synonymous with the British colonial system’s pattern of exploitation and expansion. They subsequently raided the plantation, killing its thirty-two inhabitants. The scale of violence at Swanendael served as a precedent in the minds of early colonists of Lenape authority and the necessity of continuing a commerce-focused relationship.^[4]

“Nova Suecia, eller the Swenska Revier [now Delaware River] in India Occidentalis,” map by Peter Mårtensson Lindeström, 1655 (Digital Public Library of America). The cropped map depicts the colony of New Sweden along the Delaware River. “Passayung” (Passyunk) can be seen on the right, while the Z is labeled as “Kinsessing”.

Many of the colony’s freedmen lived in Kingsessing, which today has maintained its name and a similar location along the southwest bank of the Schuylkill River. The settlement’s Swedish and Finnish colonists coexisted and traded with the Armewamese Lenape, who lived east of Kingsessing across the Schuylkill in Passyunk. Directly above Kingsessing was a roughly 1100-acre tract of land named “Aronameck,” very similar to the southern Unami word for “the greater stream.” Aronameck was settled by Peter Jochimson in 1648, and 102 acres of the property were eventually purchased by John Bartram in 1728. Today, this property is Bartram’s Garden.^[5]

Detail: “A Map of the Improved Part of the Province of Penna. 1686-1687.” Thomas Holme and Francis Lamb. [Craig: “Kingsessing MS.”] Peter Yoccmb (Yocum) eventually subdivided his land; a portion of it later became Bartram’s Garden.

Featured Image: The Philadelphia City Planning Commission, Philadelphia Region When Known as Coaquannock Map, 1934. The map depicts the approximate location of believed Lenni Lenape settlements at the time of European arrival.

_________________________________

Notes

^[1] Jean R. Soderlund, Lenape Country: Delaware Valley Society Before William Penn (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015): 6-24; Chief Quiet Thunder and Greg Vizzi. The Original People: The Ancient Culture and Wisdom of the Lenni-Lenape People. (Sweetwater: Nature’s Wisdom Press, 2020): 28-56.

^[2] John L. Cotter, Daniel G. Roberts, and Michael Parrington, The Buried Past: An Archaeological History of Philadelphia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992): 11; “Phase II Archaeological Excavation at 36PH13 South Meadow Area of Historic Bartram’s Garden Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,” (March 2014) prepared by Matthew D. Harris, RPA, for the City of Philadelphia Division of Aviation, 8-24; “Historic American Landscapes Survey, John Bartram House and Garden (Bartram’s Garden), HALS No. PA-1, History Report,” MS report, U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, HABS/HAER/HALS/CRGIS Division, Washington, DC, 9-18.

^[3] Soderlund, Lenape Country, 17, 35, 44.

^[4] Ibid, 35-48.

^[5] Peter Stebbins Craig and Henry Wesley Yocum, “The Yocums of Aronameck in Philadelphia, 1648-1702,” National Genealogical Society Quarterly 71 (Dec. 1983).

^[6] Soderlund, Lenape Country, 184-195.

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“Here are few habitations, and some fields cleared and cultivated; but the inhabitants neglect agriculture; and generally employ themselves in hunting, and fishing; we however furnished ourselves here with a sufficiency of excellent Batatas. I observed no new vegetable productions, except a species of Cleome, (Cleome lupinifolia) this plant possesses a very strong scent, somewhat like Gum Assafetida, notwithstanding which the inhabitants give it a place in soups and sauces.” [1]

William never mentions the plant again, but he must have taken some seeds of it back with him to grow at Bartram’s Garden, because the plant re-emerges in an illustration that he made for the book Elements of Botany in 1803. That illustration can clearly be identified as cat’s whiskers (modern name Cleome gynandra), which at the time Bartram named Cleome lupinifolia but later corrected to Cleome pentaphylla owing to its foliage that came in leaflets of five. The plant was still in cultivation at the Garden for some years after that, appearing in catalogues William Bartram compiled for interested botanists in 1807 and 1819, before it disappears from the historical record.

Unlike most other plants Bartram found during his expeditions, however, cat’s whiskers was not recorded anywhere else in the Southeastern United States, nor was it native to the region. Cat’s whiskers is actually native to the Old World. In many areas in Asia, locals treat it as a weed. But in many parts of Africa, especially eastern and southern Africa, the cultivation of cat’s whiskers as a leafy vegetable was (and remains) widespread.[2] At the time there was no evidence of anyone growing cat’s whiskers within thousands of miles of Louisiana.

How could William Bartram have found it on the shores of Lake Pontchartrain in 1775? Answering this question requires looking closely at the context he provides and at social histories of the region. Doing so gives a look into a lost piece of Louisiana cuisine and horticultural practice. Cleome gynandra shows that plants carry with them a social story that deserves careful investigation, filling in the gaps left by written records of the past.

We suspect that Bartram may have encountered a community that included free people of African descent who knew how to cultivate cat’s whiskers. Although Bartram does not give any more details on this community, we can infer that they probably were not of wholly European origin. Robert Hastings, in his The Lakes of Pontchartrain, speculates that the dwellings described by Bartram here were “apparently of European settlement.”[3] This was likely not the case, as the presence of Cleome gynandra would indicate.

When Bartram encountered European settlers, he usually identified their name and country of origin, as in the case of the “English Gentleman” named James Rumsey who Bartram had stayed with earlier that week. We know that Rumsey was deeply involved in the West Floridian slave trade. A fact that Bartram often tried to obscure in his writings, possibly owing to his own failed experience starting a plantation in Florida in 1766. Perhaps this is why no enslaved people are mentioned during his time at Rumsey’s.[4] But he does explicitly refer to Rumsey’s settlement (and other sites he visits) as a “plantation.” The settlement where he encounters cat’s whiskers is described with entirely different terminology, as “a few habitations” in a “fertile and delightful region.”

William Bartram journeyed along the northern shore of Lake Pontchartrain, eventually stopping at a fort along the Iberville River. Bartram found Cleome gynandra somewhere near the mouth of the Tangiapahoa river. Credit: Brad Sanders of the Bartram Trail Conference.

This part of Louisiana, which oscillated between British and Spanish colonial control, has been described by historian Frances Kolb as a “borderland” where all sorts of people sought to survive on the porous boundary between empires.[5] Indigenous Acolapissa and Choctaw people, many of whom were displaced by conflict with Britain during the Seven Years’ War, still lived on the north shores of Lake Pontchartrain and traded with colonial settlements.  While Louisiana was under Spanish control, French Acadians and Canary Islanders flocked to the region. The period of British control brought a flood of European planters, who frequently brought with them enslaved African people, usually originating from West Africa.[6] And most importantly, the Louisiana borderlands were home to freed African Americans and Black Creoles, who sought whatever escape they could from a rapidly expanding slave system, sometimes even forming self-sustaining Maroon communities who lived on the outskirts of plantation society.[7]

The boundaries between these groups were blurred, since they intermarried throughout the eighteenth century.[8] Research on Louisiana Folklife by local historians has shown that so-called “swamp communities” on the northwestern side of the Lake persisted through the 20^th century, where creolized families of mixed European, African and Native descent live fishing and hunting “virtually as did the Choctaw.”[9] That description lines up with evidence describing eighteenth century makeup of this part of Louisiana.

If Africans did indeed live at the settlement Bartram encountered, they could have brought with them the knowledge of how to cultivate and prepare Cleome gynandra. People in West Africa sometimes ate cat’s whiskers, especially during times of famine when they would foraged it naturally in disturbed or unsown fields. There, it may have been referred to as “boanga” or “mugole.”[10] Although most of the enslaved people in Louisiana came from Senegambia, which was not known to cultivate cat’s whiskers, there is evidence of the Birifor people of Burkina Faso preparing the leaves in sauces and soups, which matches William Bartram’s description.[11] Some enslaved people sold on the Gold Coast and transported to the Americas through the Middle Passage could have originated from that region.[12] They also could have come from another part of West Africa such as Nigeria, Ghana, or Benin where Cleome gynandra cultivation has been documented.

Photograph of  wild cat’s whiskers growing in Tanzania. Credit: Dick Culbert, Wikimedia Commons

Cat’s whiskers would certainly not be the only plant to make its way from West Africa into the cuisine of Louisiana, where close contact between people of vastly different ethnic backgrounds led to a high degree of cultural diffusion. Enslaved people from West Africa would have found a climate and ecosystem suitable to growing many of the vegetables they grew at home. Okra, for instance, was brought to the region by people of African descent via the West Indies and became an important part of the region’s distinctive gumbo, while knowledge of rice cultivation came via the slave trade at the beginning of the eighteenth century and was quickly taken up across the region.[13] Perhaps Cleome gynandra is a forgotten part of this story of transcontinental cultural exchanges.

Slavery and settler colonialism cast a long shadow over early American plant science, and historians have documented how the labor of enslaved people and dispossession of Indigenous lands contributed to producing the profits that made empirical botanical research from people like the Bartrams possible.[14] William Bartram’s encounter with Cleome gynandra highlights an underappreciated part of this story, one that centers the contribution and agency of free Black Creoles in disseminating botanical knowledge.

Notes

Cover image: William Bartram’s engraving of Cleome gynandra for Elements of Botany in 1803.

Thanks to Joel Fry, whose research on Cleome gynandra made this article possible; and Brad Sanders, who created the map used here.

[1] Bartram, William. The Travels of William Bartram, Naturalists Edition, annotated by Francis Harper, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1958), 269.   

[2] Chweya, James A. and Nameus A. Mnzava. “Cat’s whiskers. Cleome gynandra L. Promoting the conservation and use of underutilized and neglected crops,” Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research, Gatersleben / International Plant Genetic Resources Institute, Rome, Italy, 11. Chweya and Mnzava list nearly 40 countries that C. gynandra is likely native to.

[3] Hastings, Robert W. The Lakes of Pontchartrain: Their History and Environments, (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2009), 45

[4] McGaughy, Taylor. “Bartram’s Westerly Wanderings: Economic Transitions in Travels”. In The Attention of a Traveller: Essays on William Bartram’s Travels and Legacy, ed. Kathryn H. Braund. (University of Alabama Press, 2022), p. 17. See Sharece Blakney’s blog post titled “Six Likely Negroes: John Bartram and the East Florida Plantation” to read more about William’s past with slavery.

[5] Kolb, Frances. “Profitable Transgressions: International Borders and British Atlantic Trade Networks in the Lower Mississippi Valley, 1763-1783,” in Atlantic Environments and the American South, ed. Thomas Blake Earle and D. Andrew Johnson (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2020), 135-54.

[6] Usner, Daniel H. “‘A Prospect of the Grand Sublime’: An Atlantic World Borderland Seen and Unseen by William Bartram,” in The Attention of a Traveller: Essays on William Bartram’s Travels and Legacy, ed. Kathryn H. Braund. (University of Alabama Press, 2022), 22.

[7] Reeves, William D. Historic Louisiana: An Illustrated History. (San Antonio: Historical Publishing Network, 2003), 11-12.

[8] Gardner, Joel. “The Florida Parishes: An Overview,” In Folklife in the Florida Parishes. (New Orleans: Louisiana Division of the Arts, 1988).

[9] Gregory, H.F. “Indians and Folklife in the Florida Parishes of Louisiana,” in Folklife in the Florida Parishes. (New Orleans: Louisiana Division of the Arts, 1988).

[10] Chweya, James A. and Nameus A. Mnzava. “Cat’s whiskers,” 10.

[11] Freedman, Bob. “Cleome gynandra.” Purdue University Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture’s Famine Foods Project. https://www.purdue.edu/hla/sites/famine-foods/famine_food/cleome-gynandra/. Accessed 6-2-2022.

[12] Slavery and Remembrance Project, 2022. “Slave Trade Routes”. Published by The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation and UNESCO’s Slave Route Project.

[13] Brasseaux, Carl A. The Founding of New Acadia, (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1987).

[14] McGaughy, Taylor. “Bartram’s Westerly Wanderings: Economic Transitions in Travels”. In The Attention of a Traveller: Essays on William Bartram’s Travels and Legacy, ed. Kathryn H. Braund. (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2022), p. 18.

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Following Torbert’s journey through archival documents shows that the trajectory of his life took several turns despite being relatively brief. After he left school at age 16, archival documents placed him in the reception records of Eastern State Penitentiary in 1862. At 23, Ganges was arrested for rioting before serving in the Union Army during the Civil War. On February 26, 1864, 25-year-old Torbert Ganges enlisted with the 32^nd Regiment Infantry, U.S. Colored Troops, Company H.[4] The 32^nd was organized at Camp William Penn in Philadelphia before they were ordered to South Carolina where they fought in the Battle of Honey Hill.[5] The 32^nd Regiment Infantry lost a total of 150 men throughout the war. A pair of officers and 35 enlisted men were mortally wounded or killed, while 113 died of disease. Torbert Ganges and the remaining soldiers of the 32^nd Infantry were mustered out in August of 1865.[6] Ganges returned to Bucks County and was arrested for robbery and receiving stolen goods. He served two terms in Eastern State Penitentiary in 1876 and 1879.

In 1893, Torbert made the local paper after he helped apprehend an accused murderer. According to Ganges, a man came to his home and offered to pay him for food. He gave the man a loaf of bread but refused to take any money. A short time later, the man returned, asking to purchase tobacco from Ganges. After giving the man tobacco and refusing money, Ganges went into town and alerted authorities that he had seen a man fitting the description of Wallace Burt. Burt was wanted for the murder of a local elderly couple.[7] Torbert Ganges was awarded $448 of the $1,000 reward offered by the county following Burt’s conviction.[8]

In December of 1895, Ganges appeared in newspapers again when he was arrested for robbery. Torbert and Samuel Crusen from New Jersey were accused of stealing poultry and produce.[9] As a result, James Bunting’s poultry house was missing chickens, and William Vandegrift was robbed of food he kept at a boardinghouse for farm laborers he employed. In addition, Charles Pope was robbed of 30 bushels of wheat, 20 bushels of apples, 25 bushels of potatoes, and buckwheat flour. The irony of the crime is that Torbert and Crusen borrowed a cart from Charles Pope to carry the load of stolen produce.[10] The pair were caught after a resident of the boardinghouse tipped off the local farmers. According to the Allentown Leader, “Old Torbert Ganges has an old black horse with a crooked hind leg, that twists when he walks, making a peculiar hood-print on the ground. Detective Wharton traced this hoof-print seven miles between a house that had been robbed and Ganges’ hut.”[11] Ganges pleaded guilty to burglary and was sentenced to six years and six months at the local prison. Before handing down the hefty sentence, the judge reminded the 56-year-old Ganges that he had already sentenced him to prison twice.[12]

Ganges served a few months of his sentence before he was transferred to the almshouse for treatment, where he died on July 16, 1897. The article that announced Torbert’s death did not include details on his illness, but it did note that he was sent to the almshouse on the recommendation of an appointed court commission.[13] Torbert Ganges’ final appearance in the historical record is on a “Burial of Indigent Soldiers” list in 1899.[14]

Image: Torbert Ganges’ Gravestone, located at Slate Hill Burial Ground, Yardley, Pennsylvania. “Torbut Ganges,” taken by Stan Doremus, Findagrave.com, Memorial ID:8148456

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Notes

[1] 1850 United States Federal Census [database online], Census Place: Lower Makefield, Bucks County, Pennsylvania; Roll M432_758, Page 19A, Image 44.

[2] Ibid. While it is possible that Sampson Ganges was Torbert’s father, it is speculative since the 1850 federal census does not list a relationship to head of household.

[3] Materials on the U.S.S. Ganges, the indentured contracts, and documents from the court case can be found in Collection 0490, Pennsylvania Abolition Society Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Also see, Sharece Blakney, Stories We Know: Recording the Black History of Bartram’s Garden and Southwest Philadelphia, edited by Aislinn Pentecost-Farren (published by the John Bartram Association and Mural Arts Philadelphia, 2017).

[4] Compiled Military Service Records of Volunteer Union Soldiers Who Served with the United States Colored Troops; Infantry Organizations, 31^st through 35^th; Microfilm Serial: M1992; Microfilm Roll:22

[5] Samuel Bates, History of Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861-5; Prepared in Compliance with Acts of the Legislature, 1871. Page 1061 – – On the same page listing Torbert, there is a Peter Ganges, also 32^nd USCT and page 1060 shows a William Ganges, 32^nd USCT as a Corporal. The 1850 Federal Census shows an 18-year-old William Ganges living in the same household as Sampson and Torbert.

[6]Frederick Henry Dyer, A Compendium of the War of the Rebellion (The Dyer Publishing Company, 1908), 1729.

[7] The Central News (Perkasie, Pennsylvania), Thursday, October 5, 1893; Page 3. The article describes Wallace Burt as an “Indian half-breed”, other papers running the story described him as a half-breed Cherokee and a negro looking half-breed Indian. Torbert Ganges is referred to as a colored man in some newspapers or an old negro.

[8] The Allentown Leader (Allentown, Pennsylvania), Friday, December 13, 1895; Page 1.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ibid

[11] Ibid.

[12] The Allentown Leader (Allentown, Pennsylvania), Thursday, December 19, 1895; Page 1.

[13] The Columbian (Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania), Thursday, July 22, 1897. Page 6

[14] The Central News (Perkasie, Pennsylvania), Thursday, February 17, 1898; Page 4. – – The Bucks County Gazette (Bristol, Pennsylvania), Thursday, February 16, 1899. He appears on this list twice. Once for his burial in 1898 and then when his headstone is placed in 1899.

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Both Elliot and the PAS used laws to support their arguments for freedom or bondage.  As required by Pennsylvania’s Gradual Abolition Act of 1780, children born in Pennsylvania to enslaved mothers after March 1^st of that year were free after a period of indentured servitude. The Act also required slaveowners to register those remaining enslaved with the court clerk by November 1^st. Those who failed to register the people annually held in bondage forfeited their rights to the enslaved person who was manumitted. Elliott claimed that the children belonged to him because their mothers were enslaved when the children were born. However, the PAS argued that the women’s legal status was altered when their previous owners died and their wills enforced. In short, the children were born free because their mothers were indentured, not enslaved. Elliott had sold four of the children to farmers in Chester County and registered the other five as slaves.

After 17 months, lawyers for the PAS resolved the case. Elliott was forced to free the women and three of the older children. Six of the remaining nine children were signed into indentured servant contracts with the permission of their parents. Due to the timeframe of Willing’s manumission document and the work of the PAS, there is a possibility that Dinah was one of the several women inherited by Elliott. Abraham Willing purchased the freedom of his wife and son for 30 pounds.[1]

[1] July 29, 1793, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Abolition Society Papers. Collection 0490, Box 2, folder 8.; Nash, Gary B. Forging Freedom: The Formation of Philadelphia’s Black Community, 1720-1840. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988.; Paul Finkelman, “The Kidnapping of John Davis and the Adoption of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1793”, The Journal of Southern History, Vol. 56, No. 3 (1990): 400.

Image: 1781 deed of emancipation for Dinah Willing and Abraham Willing Jr. Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Abolition Society Papers. Collection 0490, Box 2, folder 8.

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