Philadelphia contacts

Friday, August 22nd, 1823 - After waiting on E Collins, Esq., a friend of Dr Hosack, who is a botanist of distinction in that quarter, who recommended me to go to see the place of the venerable John Bartram, and Mr Lisle of Woodlands, Henry Pratt Esq and the principal nurseries. I called on Mr Will Dick, janitor of the university, who also used me kindly.  The garden he has established partly on his own account.  I am also in hopes that I shall obtain some seeds in the fall.

I made a journey to Mr McMahon, which is three miles north of the city. I did not find him at home; I looked round the garden and after a patient search found Maclura, two plants, height about seventeen feet, bushy and rugged. Then I called at Bartram’s old place but found no person at home.

 NB – I think this reference to E Collins is a transcription error. It is much more likely to be Zaccheus Collins, of whom we learn, from the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadeplphia:

Zaccheus Collins (1764-1831) was a plant collector and herbarium owner from Philadelphia. Collins was an esteemed botanist and was often consulted by a majority of botanical writers, though he never published anything himself. He was also an avid collector and his herbarium contained a nearly complete collection of the plants from the vicinity of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. His correspondents also sent him various specimens from their research in the southern states, particularly South Carolina and Georgia.

Collins, born in 1764, was a Quaker merchant and an active philanthropist. He was particularly interested in botany, and especially cryptogamic plants (organisms that do not produce seeds and include algae, fungi, mosses, and ferns). Throughout his career, he “accumulated a large herbarium primarily through his own collecting in New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania, by exchange and as gifts from other leading botanists of the day,” (Stuckey). 

Through his extensive network of prominent botanists, gifts of specimens arrived from South Carolina, Georgia, Arkansas, Missouri, the Mississippi River and westward.

He was highly esteemed by his contemporaries, and, according to, “the letters of the most eminent botanists of that time show how highly they valued his knowledge and how eagerly they sought his advice upon all doubtful questions in their science,” (Redfield). Thomas Nuttall honored him by naming Collinsia for him and is described “to have been a sort of lifetime achievement award,”

Here we see Douglas making contacts with the well-established Philadelphia network of botanists and nurserymen. John Bartram, the King’s Botanist, is a well-known figure in the history of botany in the USA and I’ll return to him in more detail when Douglas revisits Bartram’s garden in November 1823.

 Bernard McMahon,  the pre-eminent nurseryman and seedsman in Philadelphia, had emigrated from Ireland in 1796 and had published one of the earliest American works on horticulture – The American Gardener’s Calendar - in 1806. However, McMahon had died in 1816 so it’s unsurprising Douglas found him “not at home”, although it is perhaps surprising that news of his death hadn’t reached London, and therefore Douglas.
 

The genus name Mahonia (incuding the Oregon Grape Duglas would later encounter in the Pacific North West honors  McMahon, who introduced the plant from materials collected by the Lewis and Clark expedition. Wikipedia

Built by Andrew Hamilton, Woodlands was a Federal-style mansion on his 250-acre estate. During the Hamilton family’s glory days, the estate was a centre for elegance and gracious entertaining. By the 1840s, the property fell into disrepair and the grounds were turned into a cemetery, which remains to this day. Renowned for his work in horticulture, landscape design and botany, William Hamilton, Andrew’s grandson, was asked by Thomas Jefferson to plant some seeds harvested during Lewis and Clark’s expeditions. Eventually, the estate boasted more than 10,000 species of plants. Today, more than 720 historic trees and plants have survived and are scattered throughout the property.