GARDEN FALL 2018 CITINGS FOUNDED BY THE CHEROKEE GARDEN CLUB IN 1975 A LIBRARY OF THE KENAN RESEARCH CENTER AT THE ATLANTA HISTORY CENTER 1 FALL GARDEN CITINGS 2018 04 AMERICAN EDEN: DAVID HOSACK, BOTANY, AND MEDICINE IN THE GARDEN OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC 08 CHEROKEE GARDEN CLUB CELEBRATES 90 YEARS DIRECTOR & EDITOR 12 Staci L. Catron THE WELL-PLACED WEED: THE BOUNTIFUL LIFE OF RYAN GAINEY ASSOCIATE EDITORS Louise S. Gunn 14 Jo Ann McCracken-Redding Jennie Oldfield THE ORIGINAL SOUTHERN PEANUT GROWN ON THE SMITH FAMILY FARM FOUNDING PRESIDENT Anne Coppedge Carr 16 (1917–2005) SEEKING EDEN LECTURE, BOOK, AND EXHIBITION LAUNCH CHAIR Jane Robinson Whitaker 20 THE ELEGANT MR. ABBOTT COMES TO THE LIBRARY 22 REAL MEN GROW DAHLIAS: CONRAD FAUST AND THE DAHLIA SOCIETY ADVISORY BOARD Andrew D. Kohr 24 Hilton Hines Ball Molly Yellowlees Lanier C. Duncan Beard Richard H. Lee CLERMONT LEE GARDEN AT SAVANNAH’S GIRL SCOUT BIRTHPLACE UNDER THREAT Jeanne Johnson Bowden Tracy Gray Monk Carolyn Carr Caye Johnson Oglesby Sharon Jones Cole Nancy Roberts Patterson Lane Beebe Courts Elizabeth King Prickett Mary Wayne Dixon Betsy Wilkins Robinson 26 Laura Rains Draper Muriel Foster Schelke A BLOOMING PARTNERSHIP: NORTH GEORGIA CAMELIA SOCIETY AND THE ATLANTA HISTORY CENTER Lee C. Dunn Claire McCants Schwahn Kinsey Appleby Harper T. Blake Segars Chris Hastings Yvonne Wade Susan L. Hitchcock Jane Robinson Whitaker 29 John Howard Zach Young GIFTS & TRIBUTES TO THE CHEROKEE GARDEN LIBRARY ANNUAL FUND 32 BOOK, MANUSCRIPT & VISUAL ARTS DONATIONS FALL GARDEN CITINGS 2018 AMERICAN EDEN: David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic On a clear morning in July 1804, Born in New York City, he “Where others saw real estate Alexander Hamilton stepped was educated in Europe and and power, Hosack saw the onto a boat at the edge of the returned to America inspired landscape as a pharmacopeia Hudson River. He was bound by his newfound knowledge. able to bring medicine into the for a New Jersey dueling ground He assembled a plant collection modern age” (Eric W. Sanderson, to settle his bitter dispute so spectacular and diverse author of Mannahatta). Today with Aaron Burr. Hamilton that it amazes botanists today, what remains of America’s took just two men with him: conducted some of the first first botanical garden lies in his “second” for the duel and pharmaceutical research in the the heart of midtown, buried Dr. David Hosack. United States, and introduced beneath Rockefeller Center. new surgeries to America. As historian Victoria Johnson His tireless work championing Whether collecting specimens reveals in her groundbreaking public health and science along the banks of the Hudson biography, Hosack was one earned him national fame and River, lecturing before a class of the few points the duelists praise from the likes of Thomas of rapt medical students, or did agree on. Summoned that Jefferson, James Madison, breaking the fever of a young morning because of his role as Alexander von Humboldt, Philip Hamilton, David Hosack the beloved Hamilton family and the Marquis de Lafayette. was an American visionary who doctor, he was also a close friend has been too long forgotten. of Burr. A brilliant surgeon One goal drove Hosack above all Alongside other towering figures and a world-class botanist, others: to build the Republic’s of the post-Revolutionary Hosack—who until now has been first botanical garden. Despite generation, he took the reins lost in the fog of history—was a innumerable obstacles and of a nation. In unearthing pioneering thinker who shaped near-constant resistance, the dramatic story of his life, a young nation. Hosack triumphed when, by Johnson offers a lush depiction 1810, his Elgin Botanic Garden of the man who gave a new at last crowned twenty acres voice to the powers and perils of Manhattan farmland. of nature. 04 FALL GARDEN CITINGS 2018 ASHLEY WRIGHT MCINTYRE LECTURE “[A] captivating biography… Along the way, ABOUT THE AUTHOR [Victoria Johnson] restores this attractive Victoria Johnson loves history, gardens, and polymath who today is mainly remembered, opera. She holds an undergraduate degree 2018 thanks to a small role in a certain hip-hop in philosophy from Yale and a doctorate in musical, as the doctor-in-attendance at the sociology from Columbia University. A former 1804 duel between two of his patients, Aaron Cullman Fellow, Johnson currently works Burr and Alexander Hamilton to his rightful as an associate professor of urban policy and place in American history. The rescue from planning at Hunter College in New York City, oblivion is long overdue…. Johnson, an associate where she teaches the history of philanthropy SAVE THE DATE professor of urban planning at Hunter College and the history of New York City. Johnson is and an authority on botanic gardens, never the author of Backstage at the Revolution: How allows her subject’s many achievements to the Royal Paris Opera Survived the End of the weigh down her narrative. She writes trippingly, Old Regime (University of Chicago Press, 2009) ASHLEY WRIGHT MCINTYRE LECTURE with engaging fluency and wit. She has a lovely and American Eden: David Hosack, Botany, and way of conjuring up early New York and its Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic denizens the workers calling out as they unload THE REVIEWS ARE IN (Liveright, 2018). cargo at the docks; the gentlemen crowding into the Tontine Coffee House for the news of What is the best thing about being a writer? Victoria the day. The book’s botany-related passages are “Following my characters through one archive particularly vivid. The author writes of plants after another like an obsessed detective and delightedly, precisely as Hosack himself might WEDNESDAY then conjuring up a whole lost world from have done.” Johnson’s their surviving written words. It’s an intense, Penelope Rowlands, The Wall Street Journal joyful feat requiring both historical fidelity and APRIL 10, 2019, 7:00 PM emotional imagination.” American “You’ve listened to Hamilton, you devoured Victoria Johnson, Goodreads the Alexander Hamilton biography. But you might not have read up on David Hosack, Where did you get the idea for your most Eden the American botanist, and doctor who recent book? accompanied Hamilton and Burr on their AMERICAN EDEN: “I grew up in a house filled with maps of New fateful duel. While he wasn’t paid in advance, York City from every century because my father he was treated with civility, and in American is a Hit! is a retired professor of urban planning who Eden: David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in specializes in the history of the city. On family DAVID HOSACK, BOTANY, AND MEDICINE IN THE GARDEN OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC the Garden of the Early Republic, you can read trips, both my parents loved to walk us kids “If Rockefeller Center is haunted, a likely more about his life as a pioneering botanist, around cities and show us the layers of the past THE UNTOLD STORY OF HAMILTON’S—AND BURR’S—PERSONAL PHYSICIAN, WHOSE DREAM TO BUILD candidate for the ghost is David Hosack, the pharmacologist, and surgeon.” doctor-botanist who assembled a major plant that were still visible in the present--and how AMERICA’S FIRST BOTANICAL GARDEN INSPIRED THE YOUNG REPUBLIC. Mary Beth Griggs, Popular Science to detect traces of what had vanished. I was collection on the site starting in 1801... Victoria thunderstruck the first time I heard that one of Johnson’s American Eden unearths Hosack, “American Eden is one of those rare books… the most iconic urban spaces in the world today who was lauded in his lifetime but largely it surprises by its originality, it impresses was once the leafy, rural site of the nation’s first forgotten since. Hosack’s Columbia lectures with its deep scholarship and it seduces with LECTURE FOLLOWED MCELREATH HALL botanical garden. In American Eden, I try to VICTORIA were, as one student said, “as good as the its beautiful writing. Victoria Johnson has BY AUTHOR’S BOOK ATLANTA theater,” and so is Johnson’s storytelling. whisk readers back to that world completely.” the gift of a storyteller and the tenacity of a SIGNING & RECEPTION HISTORY CENTER She weaves his biography with threads of detective…her descriptions of medicine, botany, Victoria Johnson, Goodreads JOHNSON history —political, medical and scientific — and politics in the early Republic are not only and the tale of an up-and-coming New York compelling but also exquisitely researched.” City. An innovative medical practitioner, he was Andrea Wulf, author of The Invention of Nature: the friend and doctor Hamilton and Burr had Alexander von Humboldt’s New World in attendance on that July morning along the Weehawken cliffs for their ill-starred duel. Did “Lucky is the biographer who can resurrect a Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton leave you with $25 PER TICKET forgotten figure and retrieve a major reputation an appetite for more? American Eden will not lost to the passage of time. In this captivating disappoint... In her ambitious and entertaining and intensely readable book, Victoria Johnson book, Johnson connects past to present. David rescues the remarkable life of Dr. David Hosack, RESERVATIONS: 404.814.4150 ATLANTAHISTORYCENTER.COM/LECTURES Hosack’s garden may have been short-lived, but physician and botanist extraordinaire and a in our parks, gardens, medical practices, and towering benefactor of New York and the early pharmacology, his efforts continue to bear fruit.” pictured above left Victoria Johnson, Author republic. A welcome achievement.” of American Eden: David Hosack, Botany, and ALL LECTURE TICKET PURCHASES ARE NONREFUNDABLE Marta McDowell, New York Times Book Review Ron Chernow, author of Grant and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic.