The Old Country
1773
William Bartram
Ten years into the British control the British had done little to increase their presence in Florida leaving most of the interior of Florida seldom traveled. With a few trading posts mostly along the navigable rivers, only a few trappers and traders ventured into the interior. There were few roads, which could barely be called wagon trails, at the time leading into the interior of Florida, mostly there were Indian paths. One well-known Indian path being the Alachua Trail which followed a sandy ridge leading from Georgia southwards to the Seminole Indian settlement called Cuscowilla on the south side Alachua Savana which was used as grazing grounds for the Seminole’s cattle. One significant accomplishment under British control was the construction of the King's Road connecting St. Augustine to Georgia following an old Indian trail, crossing the St. Johns River at a narrow point called Wacca Pilatka, or as it was commonly known, "Cow Ford", as it was where cattle were brought across the river, later becoming Jacksonville. The British, occupied with the colonies to the north, did little to further colonize Florida, and mostly left the Native Indians alone.
It was an age of enlightenment, of invention, of a nation being formed, of founding fathers, of scientific discoveries. American was a land to be discovered and there was a strong interest by the “Nobility and Gentry” of England in the natural discoveries being found in America. It was common of the time for the very wealthy upper class in Britian to devote part of their estate to botanical gardens, it some ways it seemed a game of who could out do the other, something that persists today in suburbia America. Anything novel or new was desired, sought after, and with many such discoveries to be made in America, the Nobility and Gentry employed knowledgeable persons in America to collect specimens and send them to England, seeds, plants, preserved birds, and other such things, or when the specimen couldn’t be obtained, drawings.[1] It was his drawings that as a young boy that brought first attention to William Bartram.
In 1773 the thirty-four year old William Bartram, a botanist and naturalist, set out from his home in Philadelphia on an expedition to collect natural specimens. William was somewhat of a disappointment to his father John Bartram who described young William as being “indolent in business and farming”. William’s father, a respected naturalist himself, was employed by Peter Collinson of England to collect specimens and send them to England and in 1765, John Bartram was made the King’s Botanist. John, possibly not wanting his son to follow in his footsteps, contacted his friend Benjamin Franklin who offered to teach William the printing and engraving business, but William did not accept.
One positive attribute of William was at an early age he showed considerable talent for drawing and studying nature, which not only impressed his father but others as well. John had involved his son William in his own collecting expeditions, including a trip to eastern Florida when William was seventeen. His father, recognizing his son’s lack of success in business and farming and, through Peter Collinson, connected William with Dr. John Fothergill who had one the largest private botanical gardens in England at the time.