Darwin-L Message Log 8:22 (April 1994)

Academic Discussion on the History and Theory of the Historical Sciences

This is one message from the Archives of Darwin-L (1993–1997), a professional discussion group on the history and theory of the historical sciences.

Note: Additional publications on evolution and the historical sciences by the Darwin-L list owner are available on SSRN.

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<8:22>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu  Sat Apr  9 13:27:55 1994

Date: Sat, 09 Apr 1994 15:27:46 -0500 (EST)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: April 9 -- Today in the Historical Sciences
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro

APRIL 9 -- TODAY IN THE HISTORICAL SCIENCES

1739: WILLIAM BARTRAM, son of Ann Mendenhall and the botanist John Bartram, is
born at Kingsessing, Pennsylvania.  As a young man Bartram will accompany his
father on his botanical travels through the Catskill Mountains and Connecticut
in the early 1750s, and he will become a skillful natural history illustrator.
His drawings will be sent to Peter Collinson in London, the elder Bartram's
scientific patron, and Collinson and the British naturalist George Edwards
will commission Bartram to produce some of the illustrations for Edwards's
_Gleanings of Natural History_.  After a series of unsuccessful business
ventures, the elder and younger Bartrams will travel to Florida in 1765, and
William will remain there to try his hand, unsuccessfully again, at farming.
A new London patron, the physician John Fothergill, will offer to support
Bartram on a collecting expedition across southeastern America, and the report
of this trip, _Travels Through North & South Carolina, Georgia, East & West
Florida, the Cherokee Counntry, the Extensive Territories of the Muscogluges
or Creek Confederacy, and the Country of the Chactaws_ (Philadelphia, 1791),
will be soon reprinted in London and translated into French, German, and
Dutch, and will win Bartram fame throughout Europe.  Bartram's vivid and
graceful descriptions of American natural history in the _Travels_, as well as
his accounts of the native peoples of the region, will influence the European
Romantic writers of the early 1800s, and he will act as a teacher to a whole
generation of American naturalists including Thomas Nuttall, Thomas Say, and
Alexander Wilson.

Today in the Historical Sciences is a feature of Darwin-L, an international
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