Martha Daniell Logan

Martha Daniell Logan (December 29, 1704-June 28, 1779) was an American-born horticulturalist, educator, and writer in Charleston, South Carolina. She operated a business importing and exporting seeds and nursery plants, and wrote the first American treatise on gardening.

History

Financial necessity most likely compelled Martha Daniell Logan to pursue commercial opportunities unusual for a woman of her social station. Her father, Robert Daniell (1646-1718), a British merchant engaged in maritime trade with Barbados and Bermuda, had immigrated to the Carolinas in 1679. Granted the status of Landgrave, he became one of the largest landowners in the colony and served in prominent military and political roles, including deputy governor. Evidently concerned with the education of Martha and her siblings, he made provisions in a will of 1709 for their “schooling, and all other things necessary for [their] education.” A year after Daniell’s death in May 1718, his widow married the planter Col. George Logan, Sr. (1669-1721), and in July 1719 fourteen-year-old Martha married her stepbrother, George Logan, Jr. (1695-1764). They lived on the Wando River, ten miles from Charleston, where both the Daniell and the Logan families owned extensive property. For reasons that remain unclear, Martha Daniell Logan began the first of several moneymaking enterprises a few years after the birth of her eighth child in 1738. On March 20, 1742, she advertised her services as a teacher of reading, writing, and embroidery for "Any Persons desirous to board their Children." She then relocated to the city of Charleston, where on March 6, 1750 she advertised plans to open a boarding school at her house on the green near Trotts Point.

In Charleston Logan distinguished herself as an authority on horticulture. Describing her as "a great florist, and uncommonly fond of a garden," the early Charleston historian David Ramsay recalled in 1809 that Logan and her friend Sarah Ward Hopton (b. 1715) had "cultivated extensive gardens" in the city. Local artist Charles Fraser likewise remembered Logan's garden for its size, noting that it "occupied a large space of ground on the north of Tradd-street" opposite "a vacant lot or green." She became a purveyor of botanical goods, selling seeds and plants at her house, initially under her son's name. In addition to native plants, she dealt in imported specimens. An advertisement published in The South Carolina Gazette on November 12, 1753 announced the availability of "a parcel of very good seeds, flower roots, and fruit stones of several kinds” which were “just imported from London.”(view text). Logan's principal customers were Charleston neighbors, such as Ann Manigault, who recorded in her diary on November 25, 1763 “went to Mrs. Logan’s to buy roots.”

Logan's horizons expanded following a chance encounter with the Philadelphia botanist and nurseryman John Bartram, who toured her garden and many of her neighbors' during a brief visit to Charleston in 1760. For the next three years, Logan and Bartram eagerly engaged in a mutually beneficial exchange of seeds, plants, and information. “I was with her about five minutes, in much company,” Bartram informed his London agent, Peter Collinson, in 1762, “Yet we contracted such a mutual correspondence, that one silk bag of seed hath passed and repassed full of seeds three times since last fall.” Like Sarah Hopton, Logan sent Bartram items from her garden and collected rare and unusual specimens he had admired in the gardens of her neighbors, including Alexander Garden, Mary Wood Wragg [1716-1767), and Susannah Holmes Bee (1739-1771). She was particularly keen to send Bartram Carolina plants which "may be New to you" and "be an adision [addition] to yr Collection." In return, Logan anticipated that seeds and bulbs sent from Philadelphia would reach her far more quickly than if she ordered them from England, and that Bartram would be able to obtain plants that her London contacts had repeatedly failed to send her.

Logan is generally credited with writing the gardening section of John Tobler’s South Carolina Almanack, first advertised in the South Carolina Gazette on December 6, 1751 as a “Gardners Kalander [sic], done by a Lady of this Province, and esteemed a very good one.” It was reprinted several times, and appeared posthumously under her name in annual editions of the Palladium of Knowledge: or, The Carolina and Georgia Almanac (1796-1804). According to David Ramsay, Logan also wrote a treatise on gardening at the age of seventy. In that work, he claimed, she "reduced the knowledge she had acquired by long experience, and observation, to a regular system which...to this day regulates the practice of gardens in and around Charleston."

Texts

• South Carolina Gazette, November 12, 1753 (quoted in Manigault and Webber, July 1919, 205, n.9) back up to History

”Just imported from London and to be sold by Daniel Logan, at his Mother’s house on the Green, near Trotts point, a parcel of very good seeds, flower roots, and fruit stones of several kinds.”

• Bartram, John to Peter Collinson, May 7 1761 (Bartram, 1992, 517)

"fine bearing trees which I hope to have by ye favour of an elderly widow Lady which spared no pains or cost to oblige me[.] her garden is her delight & she hath a fine [one.] I was with her about 5 minits in much company yet we contracted much mutual Correspondence that one silk bag hath past & repast full of seeds several times last fall...."

• Logan, Martha, February 15, 1768, describing in the South Carolina Gazette a sale in Charleston, S.C. (quoted in Spruill, 1972: 278)

”Just imported in Capt. Lloyd from London and to be sold very reasonably by Martha Logan at her house in Meeting-street, three doors without the gate:

“A fresh assortment of very good garden seeds and flower roots, also many other sorts of flower shrubs and box for edging beds, now growing in her garden.”