Note 117 — Chapter IV · SPECIES OF AMERICAN GRAPES.

John Bartram was born near the village of Darby in Delaware (then Chester) County, Pennsylvania, in 1699. Bartram is generally credited with having established the first botanical garden in America. This garden was founded about 1728, some four miles south of what was the town of Philadelphia and is now a part of the Park System of that city. He was bred a Quaker but owing to his liberal opinions was excluded from that Society in 1758. During his life he was in correspondence with many of the leading scientific men of Europe to whom he sent many specimens of plants and other things of scientific interest. He made many trips into various parts of the colonies, to Ontario, Lake George, the Carolinas, Florida and Georgia, in search of information. The last of these journeys, that to the southern states, was made after he was seventy years of age. Bartram is blamed by all of his contemporaries for not having published more than he did. His death occurred in 1777.

William Bartram, son of John Bartram, was born in 1739 and died in 1823. Much of his work was done in connection with his father under whom he received his botanical training. His best known work is his Travels in the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida (1791), in which he gives an interesting account of that region, including descriptions of a number of new southern plants. His article on grapes which is here quoted was published in the Domestic Encyclopedia, 1804, and also in the Medical Repository of the same year.