GO TO MASTER HISTORY OF QUAKERISM PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN: 1 FRIEND WILLIAM “PRIC-PUGGY” BARTRAM It appears to me to be within the reach or ability of a man to live in this world, and even in this depraved age and Nation to a good old age without greatly injuring himself or his neighbor and if one man can continue in a state of innocence as long as he lives why not all men? If they would unite seriously in the cause of righteousness we should gain upon the common enemy every day and in time it would be as easy and natural to do right as to do wrong. Is it not in the power of every one of us to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly before God? What a magnificent declaration the above bold epigraph paragraph is! William Bartram wrote this. However, he then deleted it, from his manuscript page 196, before publication of his book. Thomas P. Slaughter’s (Bartram’s biographer’s) comment about this curious elision is: “What a strong indictment of his country and countrymen, which it makes good sense to edit out after the war, during an era that celebrated independence and resented what was seen as Quakers’ closet Toryism, when he was looking for a sympathetic audience to read his book.” Slaughter points out that Bartram also stated the Quaker peace testimony in another passage, which he similarly elided: “I profess myself of the Christian sect of the people called 1. William Bartram was referred to as Pric-Puggy, “flower hunter,” by native Americans. HDT WHAT? INDEX PRIC-PUGGY FRIEND WILLIAM BARTRAM GO TO MASTER HISTORY OF QUAKERISM Quakers and consequently am against War and violence in any form or manner whatever.” Slaughter comments that it was lucky he deleted this as not only was it “too preachy” for his intended audience but also it was, unfortunately, a claim that “wasn’t even literally true.” The truth was that: William served, at least briefly, as a spy for Patriot forces in 1776 during his travels. He often said that Charles Thomson, his beloved college tutor and future secretary of the Continental Congress, had instilled “republican principles” in his mind. He also had family members who joined the “Free Quakers” — those who broke with the peace testimony to actively support the war in 1781; publicly praised some of the Revolution’s leaders — dedicating his book to one (Thomas Mifflin) after another (George Washington) turned him down; rejoiced in American independence; and supported a nephew-in- law’s application for an army commission later in life. No, this wasn’t the real William he deleted to enhance his standing with readers. It was the Quaker pilgrim persona that he brought closer in line with the man he was and remained. Like his father, William’s pacifism was contingent; there were, he believed, good reasons to fight, good causes to fight for, and bad people whom we have an obligation to kill. Such beliefs are not those of the Society of Friends, which makes no such exceptions, but a product of the Bartrams’ shared view that violence was natural, however regrettable; one of nature’s ways of balancing life. This study by Thomas P. Slaughter, THE NATURES OF JOHN AND WILLIAM BARTRAM, TWO PIONEERING NATURALISTS, FATHER AND SON, IN THE WILDERNESS OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY AMERICA (Vintage Books, 1997), appears to be attempting to demonstrate that Henry Thoreau does not deserve the reputation he has allegedly been garnering as the originary American naturalist or the originary American botanist, that distinction being reserved for Friend William “Pric-Puggy” Bartram (1739-1823) of Philadelphia. On page 248, for instance, we find Thoreau marked down as neither the original American naturalist nor the original American botanist but instead a mere “19th-Century heir to William Bartram’s naturalistic legacy.” This marking down seems strange to me, as (although of course I do suppose Thoreau to have been a world-class originating figure for the new science of Ecology even half a century before the name for that new science had been first coined, a distinction to which Friend Bartram can lay no claim) I had not myself been supposing Thoreau to have been any sort of originating figure either for American naturalism as such or for American botanizing as such.2 Hell, he wasn’t even the 1st in the small town of Concord, let alone the entire U.S. of A! Were such a claim to be made for any Concordian of the 19th Century, I would 2. Over and above everything else, it is passing strange to suppose that any white man would be the 1st at anything on a continent that had been inhabited by human beings for tens of millennia prior to white intrusion. Well, OK, 1st to make a phonecall perhaps, but 1st to be a botanist? Get serious! HDT WHAT? INDEX PRIC-PUGGY FRIEND WILLIAM BARTRAM PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN suppose that it might better be made in regard to Mrs. Sarah Alden Bradford Ripley (1793-1867), of whom Thoreau commented in 1843 that she had “spent one whole season studying the lichens on a stick of wood they were about to put on the fire,” rather than in regard to Thoreau himself. And, we know very well, Thoreau himself acknowledged his indebtedness to Friend Bartram’s 1791 book TRAVELS THROUGH NORTH AND SOUTH CAROLINA, GEORGIA, EAST AND WEST FLORIDA, THE CHEROKEE COUNTRY, THE EXTENSIVE TERRITORIES OF THE MUSCOGULGES, OR CREEK CONFEDERACY, AND THE COUNTRY OF THE CHACTAWS. I don’t just now recollect a claim being made in the writings of Dr. Brad Dean (who has been concerned with Thoreau’s ecologism), that Thoreau had been the initial American naturalist, or had been the initial American botanist, or being made in the writings of Professor Lawrence Buell (who has been concerned with Thoreau’s environmentalism). Precisely who, then, specifically what Thoreauvian, by name if you please, has it been, unnamed by this author Thomas P. Slaughter but referred to by him in this monograph, who has been making such an unsupportable claim on Thoreau’s behalf and now needs to be set straight? HDT WHAT? INDEX PRIC-PUGGY FRIEND WILLIAM BARTRAM GO TO MASTER HISTORY OF QUAKERISM WALDEN: The customs of some savage nations might, perchance be PEOPLE OF profitably imitated by us, for they at least go through the semblance of casting their slough annually; they have the idea of WALDEN the thing, whether they have the reality or not. Would it not be well if we were to celebrate such a “busk,” or “feast of first fruits,” as Bartram describes to have been the custom of the Mucclasse Indians? “When a town celebrates the busk,” says he, “having previously provided themselves with new clothes, new pots, pans, and other household utensils and furniture, they collect all their worn out clothes and other despicable things, sweep and cleanse their houses, squares, and the whole town, of their filth, which with all the remaining grain and other old provisions they cast together into one common heap, and consume it with fire. After having taken medicine, and fasted for three days, all the fire in town is extinguished. During this fast they abstain from the gratification of every appetite and passion whatever. A general amnesty is proclaimed; all malefactors may return to their town.–” “On the fourth morning, the high priest, by rubbing dry wood together, produces new fire in the public square, from whence every habitation in the town is supplied with the new and pure flame.” They then feast on the new corn and fruits and dance and sing for three days, “and the four following days they receive visits and rejoice with their friends from neighboring towns who have in like manner purified and prepared themselves.” The Mexicans also practised a similar purification at the end of every fifty-two years, in the belief that it was time for the world to come to an end. I have scarcely heard of a truer sacrament, that is, as the dictionary defines it, “outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace,” than this, and I have no doubt that they were originally inspired directly from Heaven to do thus, though they have no biblical record of the revelation. AUGUSTINE WILLIAM BARTRAM NOAH WEBSTER HDT WHAT? INDEX PRIC-PUGGY FRIEND WILLIAM BARTRAM PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN 1729 October 10, Friday (Old Style): Friend John Bartram got married with Friend Ann Medinghall (Mendenhall?). They would get themselves nine more children. One of his sons by this 2d marriage would be the William Bartram (named after his grandfather who had been killed by native Americans) who would become an explorer, naturalist, and man of letters. Over the course of the next two years John would be remodeling a small cabin from the days of the old Swedish colony. He had been teaching himself botany. His 1st wife had not been very supportive of this but his 2d wife would be more so. He seems to have started his garden about the time of his 2d marriage. He would expand his property holdings to 261 acres in all. The Joseph Breintnall of Philadelphia recommended Bartram to Peter Collinson, a wholesale wool merchant of London. Bartram would provide Collinson with boxes of seeds, to introduce several hundred species of plants to England. BOTANIZING HDT WHAT? INDEX PRIC-PUGGY FRIEND WILLIAM BARTRAM GO TO MASTER HISTORY OF QUAKERISM 1739 2 mo. 9: “William and Elizabeth the son and daughter of John Bartram and Ann his wife was born the 9 day of the 2d month.” (This date is commonly now read as April 9th, but by the Quaker calendar then in use it indicated instead April 9th, which by our modern calendar is April 20th.) Of the non-famous female fraternal twin born on this day at Kingsessing on the Shuylkill River, west of Philadelphia, Elizabeth, we know little besides the facts that she was born, that her father called her Betty, that she would get married with a William Wright in 1771, and that she would relocate to Lancaster County, dying there in 1824.