American naturalist and horticulturalist famous for his four-year exploration of South Carolina, Georgia and Florida and for the accompanying publication brought out in 1791. William Bartram travelled alone on a sort of natural pilgrimage, his enlightened philosophies revealed in his writing which, due to its romantic style, became famous in Europe and inspired several well known British poets.

The son of one of the first great American naturalists, John Bartram, William's upbringing was very different to that of his father. A self made man, John had little formal education, but was a field naturalist of the highest order. Billy (as he was known) was educated at the Philadelphia Academy as his father had become closely associated with Benjamin Franklin. He grew up on John Bartram's estate at Kingsessing, just outside Philadelphia on the Schuylkill River, whose botanical garden was often visited by local and foreign academics wishing to learn more about the region's flora and fauna. As a child Billy Bartram was keen on botany and drawing, his father allowed him to sketch at the weekends and even showed them to his correspondent and patron, Peter Collinson (botanist and horticulturalist in England), who was so impressed that he used them in some of his publications.

On graduating from the academy in 1757, it was decided that the young Bartram would enter commerce and he was apprenticed to a merchant in Cape Fear. Moving there in 1761 he set up a trading store but his business soon failed and William, who had fallen into unrequited love with his cousin, chose to accompany his father on a botanical trip to the south in 1763. Journeying together through Georgia they entered Florida and were the first to ascend St. Johns River to its source. The son so liked Florida that he decided to stay on alone and set up an indigo and rice plantation, although this venture was even more of a failure than his trading business had been and he soon found himself destitute. After returning to Philadelphia he made one more attempt at making money in Cape Fear in 1771, but quickly ran into debt and had to be bailed out by his father.

Finally in 1772 Billy Bartram's luck changed. Another patron of his father's in Britain, John Fothergill, had purchased occasional paintings of his over the years and agreed to pay William 50 pounds a year to fund another expedition south. This was the trip that eventually won him lasting recognition as a naturalist. Leaving for Charleston in 1773 he quickly moved on to explore Georgia and early the following year left by sea for the St. Johns River, where he collected and observed nature for most of the year. By the end of 1774 he was back in Charleston and set out west to Cherokee country, exploring much of North Carolina, west Florida, southern Alabama and Mississippi over the following two years.

Although he journeyed with just one companion, a young trader, he was often in the company of travelling settlers or Native American tribes with whom he partook in religious ceremonies and celebrations. It must be remembered that he passed through centres of considerable conflict, involving the British and French military and various Indian groups, but his presence was so familiar and his attitude so innocent and sincere that he was welcomed by all parties and allowed to continue his collections and observations in peace. The Seminoles even gave him the name 'Puc Puggy', the Flower Hunter, and regarded him as a worthy and brave warrior.

As a naturalist Bartram tirelessly recorded the plants and animals he encountered and described and illustrated numerous new species. One such description which is particularly well known is that of the American alligator, a species with which he had numerous dangerous encounters and even witnessed a mass congregation on St. Johns River where hundreds of the creatures gathered to catch oncoming fish. Although acutely aware of the violence and struggles in nature, William Bartram had a Rousseau-esque philosophy of a holistic and uncorrupted nature. In the account of his journey, Travels through North and South Carolina, Georgia and Florida, he describes the beauty of nature in his characteristic romantic style, a trait which awarded him fame in Europe, but which his fellow Americans criticised as an exaggerated and unrealistic view of their wilderness. His Travels went through numerous editions in English, Dutch, French and German and directly inspired much of S.T. Coleridge and William Wordsworth's poetry.

On his return to Kingsessing, Bartram would spend the remaining 46 years of his life working for his brother John on the estate he had inherited from their father, as well as maintaining the botanical garden. Even when he was offered the first professorship of botany at the University of Pennsylvania he declined it to remain at the farm. Billy Bartram soon became the first port-of-call (as his father had been) for any naturalist wishing to explore the areas riches. Shunning personal ambition in his philosophy, Bartram took years to publish his account and would only coyly show visitors his wealth of data and illustrations. Later he published a few of his observations, including a work for Benjamin Smith Barton on the Creek and Cherokee Indians, and produced illustrations for Barton's Elements of Botany (1803). Devoted to the botanic garden until the end it was here that he died suddenly aged 84, outside the house in which he was born.

Sources:
W.J. Bell, 1970, "Bartram, William", Dictionary of Scientific Biography, 1: 488-490
I.J. Merritt, 1978, "William Bartram in America's Eden", History Today, November 1978: 712-721
T.P. Slaughter, 1975, " The Nature of William Bartram", Pennsylvania History, 62(4): 429-451.