Cadwallader Colden

Cadwallader Colden (February 7, 1789 – September 20, 1776), a Scottish physician and natural scientist, cultivated a garden at his country seat in the foothills of the Catskill mountains, and conducted the first systematic and scientific documentation of plants native to the region. Through an extensive correspondence and botanical exchange with eminent European botanists, he disseminated information about hitherto unknown species and genera of North American plants.

History

Cadwallader Colden (February 7, 1789 – September 20, 1776), a Scottish physician and natural scientist, served as lieutenant governor of New York from 1761 until his death. He cultivated a garden at his country seat in the foothills of the Catskill mountains, and conducted the first systematic and scientific documentation of plants native to the region. Through an extensive correspondence and botanical exchange with eminent European botanists, he disseminated information about hitherto unknown species and genera of North American plants. While studying for the ministry at the University of Edinburgh from 1703 to 1705, Colden learned the rudiments of botany from Professor Charles Preston (1660-1711), Keeper of the Town’s Garden and the College Garden. He went on to study medicine in London, but finding little opportunity for employment in Great Britain, he decided “to try my fortune in America,” and in 1710 settled in Philadelphia, the home of his widowed aunt. As he later reported to the Swedish botanist Peter Kalm, he immediately became “very inquisitive into the American plants; but they were then so little known, and I had so little assistance from my books, that I was soon disappointed.” A chance encounter in 1718 with Robert Hunter (1664–1734), Governor of New York, resulted in Colden’s appointment in 1720 as Surveyor of Lands in New York, a position which involved extensive exploration of the province and honed Colden’s knowledge of the terrain. He evidently gathered botanical specimens as part of his work, producing in 1725 “An Account of some plants the seeds of which were sent to Brigadier [Robert] Hunter at his desire for the Earl of Islay.”

In 1722 Colden received a grant of 2,000 acres of land in the largely unsettled frontier territory that lay at the foot of the Catskill mountains. Initially intending the farm to serve only as a summer retreat, he hired an overseer and built a small house with a cellar, explaining in a letter of 1724, “My Design in this is that I may with some comfort be able three or four times a year to stay there a fortnight or three weeks & look after the Work that is done or direct what I may think proper.” According to his unpublished farm journal, Colden began farming the land in August 1727 by sowing Indian corn and rye in the fields, and spinach in his kitchen garden. In October he “pail’d in the Garden. The Posts 6 rails of Chestnut made of trees that had been kill’d about 3 or 4 years & the Clapboards or pails of white oak from trees fell’d about ye 10th of this month. The rails of ye 5th & 7th panels from ye Garden door next ye brook were of red oak rails that had been cut 6 or 7 years.” In addition to laying out the garden, Colden devoted his first five years at Coldengham to establishing a nursery and cultivating apples, cherries, pears, nectarines, and peaches in his orchard, which also served as a burying ground. Reflecting on what he had achieved in carving out his country seat, “Coldengham,” in the midst of a vast wilderness, Colden was proud to note, “I have made a small spot of the world, which, when I first entered upon it, was the habitation only of wolves and bears and other wild animals, now no unfit habitation for a civilized family; so that I may without vanity take the comfort of not having been entirely useless in my generation.” Initially, however, Colden’s neighbors criticized him for neglecting his plantation while residing in the city, and the expense of city life finally convinced him in 1739 to settle his family at Coldengham where he could indulge his “humour in philosophical amusements more than I could do while lived in town.” Botany figured foremost among these amusements, and Colden for a time contemplated the idea of documenting “the natural history of this province.” Inspired by the taxonomic system originated by the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus in Genera Plantarum ( 1737), Colden set out to use Linnaeus’s methodology to describe native plants growing in the vicinity of Coldengham, ultimately cataloguing 300 of them.

In 1740 Colden began a correspondence spanning nearly three decades with the English Quaker merchant and botanist Peter Collinson, with whom he exchanged seeds and specimens, as well as ideas concerning botany and other scientific subjects. “You have a Large Field before you which will afford you a Lasting Fund of Amusement,” Collinson remarked in a letter to Colden in 1744. “Where Ever you go, the Wasts[e]s & Wilds which to Others appear Dismal to one of your Tast[e] afford a Delightful Entertainm[en]t. You have a Secret to beguile a Lonesome Way and Shorten a Long Journey which only Botanists know.” In 1742 Colden sent his comprehensive Linnean documentation of the plants in his neighborhood Peter Collinson and the Dutch botanist Jan Frederik Gronovius (1686-1762) in Leyden, thereby initiating another lengthy botanical correspondence and exchange of seeds and specimens that expanded his contacts within the international community of botanists and his access to their works. In exchange for Colden’s description of North American plants, Gronovius sent him a collection of botanical texts, including his Flora Virginica (1739–43) and Index Supellectilis Lapideae (1740), as well as a new edition of Linnaeus’s Fundamenta Botanica (1736), and his Oratio de Telluris habitabilis incrementato Celsi Oratio (1744). Gronovius also encouraged Colden to send North American seeds to the Amsterdam merchant George Clifford (1685-1760), suggesting that in return he might receive a copy of the Hortus Cliffortianus (1737), the first scholarly classification of an English garden which Clifford had produced in collaboration with the botanists Carl Linnaus and George Dionysus Ehret. Gronovius also sent Colden’s document to Linnaeus himself, who oversaw its publication under the title ’Plantae Coldenghamiae” in the ‘’Acta’’ of the Royal Society of Science at Uppsala (published 1743-1751). Both Collinson and Gronovius facilitated communications between Linnaeus and Colden, passing on Colden’s critiques of Linneas’s descriptions of North American plants that the Swede knew only through dried specimens. At Collinson’s urging, Colden further assisted Linnaeus by sending him seeds and dried specimens. Comparing the ease of their own transatlantic exchanges with the geographic and climactic limitations that challenged Linnaeus in Sweden, Collinson observed in a letter of 1744 to Colden, “a Gentlemen [sic] of Your Benevolent Disposition may in Some Degree Soften the Severities of the North and Flora may in Some Little Disguise by your Assistance for once appear amidst Ice & Snow.” Colden and Linneaus were corresponding directly with one another by 1747, the year Linneaus published a plant named Coldenia in Colden’s honor in his Flora Zeylaniuca (1747). Colden was invited to join the American Philosophical Society as one of its original members in 1743, but his high hopes were frustrated when the group failed to gain traction. Though his correspondence connected him with the wider world, he craved closer companionship with like-minded men. He wrote to Collinson in 1744, “I have often wished to communicate some thoughts in natural philosophy, which have remained many years with me undigested; for we scarcely have a man in this country that takes any pleasure in such kind of speculations.” “We have scarcely a man in this country” 1743 one of original member of American Philosophical Society. Collinson actively encouraged Colden’s relationship with the Philadelphia nursery man and explorer John Bartram, whom he in 1741 as “an Ingenious Man and a great teacher unto Nature.” Colden met Bartram in the summer of 1742 on the first of several visits Bartram made to Coldengham while exploring the Hudson Valley region.The two men also carried out an extensive correspondence, exchanging information as well as seeds and specimens, and in 1744 Colden encouraged Bartram to “communicate your knowledge of our American plants to the publick” by publishing a monthly series of papers modeled on Gronovius’s Flora Virginica In correspondence with both Gronovius and Collinson, Colden emphasized his observation that “we have no species of plants in America precisely the same with those of Europe,” even though the differences might be too subtle to document through scientific description. “We, who are used to the woods, can distinguish the trees and their several species by the bark alone,” he observed to Gronovius in ___, “And yet I believe the most able botanist would be puzzled to describe either the grain of the several kinds of timber, or the differences of the superficies of the bark, so as to enable a stranger to distinguish them without further assistance.”

Despite Colden’s remote location, his fame as a botanist and natural scientist drew important visitors to Coldengham. While exploring New York, the Swedish botanist Peter Kalm visited Colden in 1748, bringing letters from Linneaus as well as Linnaeus’s Fauna Suecica and Flora Zeylanica. The Scottish physician Alexander Garden journeyed from Charleston to New York in 1754 and stayed several days at Coldengham, where he examined the unusual plants in Colden’s garden and discussed botany and other scientific subjects with his host, as well as his daughter, Jane Colden &mdash a distinguished botanist in her own right. Garden’s visit coincided with that of John Bartram, who stopped at Coldengham on his return from an expedition to the Blue Mountains. Colden often grumbled that his engagement in public affairs left little time for such visits and interfered with his indulgence in “botanical amusements.” While away on business, he entrusted the running of Coldengham to his wife, Alice Chrystie Colden (1690-1762) of Kelso, Scotland, who appears to have took particular interest in managing the flower garden. In a letter of September 1743, their daughter Jane mentioned collecting roots and seeds for her mother, adding, “I am very glad…that you have been imploy’d in improving your Garden, as I know the pleasure you take in it.” Following a visit from John Bartram the following year, the Coldens’ son David wrote his mother, “I suppose Mad[a]m, you will long to see how rich Mr. Bartram has made your Garden, but all's now under ground, & we must wait next Spring to produce the fine Tulips Snow drops &c &c &c you will be oblidged to turn a good deal of the useful things away to make roome for the Gaudy shew, which I expect you will have next Summer.

In 1755 Colden resolved “to retire from business, and to indulge the remainder of life in more agreeable pursuits.” In 1762 he acquired Spring Hill, a 120-acre estate in Flushing, a short distance from the city of New York, where he immediately built a new house and garden. Colden served as lieutenant governor of New York from 1761 until his death. As a royal official, Colden faced an increasing hostile and dangerous political climate with the rise of colonial opposition to British rule during the 1860s and ‘70s. Burned in effigy in 1765 during protests over the Stamp Act, he finally retreated to Spring Hill, where he died in 1776.

--Robyn Asleson

Texts

• Colden, Cadwallader, c. December 1744, letter to Gronovius, Colden, Cadwallader, The Letters and Papers of Cadwallader Colden, Collections of the New-York Historical Society for the Year 1919 (The John Watts DePeyster Publication Fund Series) , 52, 9 vols. (New York: The New York Historical Society, 1920), 3: 87-88

”This I have obser’vd in all the Species that I have had an opportunity to examin which are indeed so very few that I can rely no more upon them than to recommend it to your examination…. You who have the advantage of Botanical Gardens may soon be satisfied whether there be any real ground for my conjecture.”

• Hill, Elizabeth, September 28, 1726, letter from Philadelphia to Cadwallader Colden,

”I Conclude you take so much pleasure at your Country seat that you do not intend to build the Kitchin. if not I shall allow you to lay out £50 upon the Improvement of ye Plantation of my mon[e]y. which is all I can Spare at present.”

• Colden, Cadwallader November 13, 1742, letter from Coldengham to Peter Collinson, Colden, Cadwallader, The Letters and Papers of Cadwallader Colden, Collections of the New-York Historical Society for the Year 1918 (The John Watts DePeyster Publication Fund Series) , 51, 9 vols. (New York: The New York Historical Society, 1919), 2: 281

“You have a great deal S[i]r in your power[,] that of being useful to allmost one half of the world[,] to all America. We are very poor in Knowledge & very needy of assistance. Few in America have any taste of Botany & still fewer if any of these have ability to form & keep a Botanical Garden without which it is impracticable to give compleat Characters of Plants. In short I may positive assert that not one in America has both the power & the will for such a performance.”

• Colden, Cadwallader, 1745, letter from Coldingham, New York, to Dr. Johannes Fred Gronovius (1920: 96-97,

“Is a Domestic plant for tho’ it be very commonly found almost in every plantation in North America from Virginia to New York both included & perhaps farther & propagates it self without any kind of Culture yet I never observ’d it growing in the woods.”

Colden, Cadwallader, July 28, 1752 letter to Peter Collinson,

"I have met wt very Little new in the Botanic way unless Your acquaintance Bartram, who is what he is & whose acquaintance alone makes amends for other disappointments in that way.... One Day he Dragged me out of town & Entertain'd me so agreably with some Elevated Botanicall thoughts, on oaks, Firns, Rocks & c that I forgot I was hungry till we Landed in his house about four Miles from Town....

"His garden is a perfect portraiture of himself, here you meet wt a row of rare plants almost covered over wt weeds, here with a Beautiful Shrub, even Luxuriant Amongst Briars, and in another corner an Elegant & Lofty tree lost in common thicket — on our way from town to his house he carried me to severall rocks & Dens where he shewed me some of his rare plants, which he had brought from the Mountains &c. In a word he disdains to have a garden less than Pensylvania [sic] & Every den is an Arbour, Every run of water, a Canal, & every small level Spot a Parterre, where he nurses up some of his Idol Flowers & cultivates his darling productions. He had many plants whose names he did not know, most or all of which I had seen & knew them — On the other hand he had several I had not seen & some I never heard of."

Colden, Cadwallader, August 18, 1770, letter from New York to the Earl of Hillsborough, describing a statue of George III erected at the Bowling Green in New York <ref> The Colden Letter Books, Collections of the New-York Historical Society for the Year 1877, The John Watts DePeyster Publication Fund Series, (New York: The New York Historical Society, 1878), 10: 226

”An Equestrian gilt Statue of the King made by the direction and purchased by this Colony came over in one of the last Ships from London.

”On Thursday last it was opened to view, erect on its proper pedestal in a squarenear the fort, and fronting the principal Street of the City. …

”The whole company walked in procession from the fort round the statue while the spectators expressed their Joy by loud acclamations

References

Cadwallader Colden's Treatise

Coldengham Preservation & Historical Society