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Difference between revisions of "Elizabeth Pitts Lamboll and Thomas Lamboll"

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'''Elizabeth Pitt Lamboll''' (1725-1770) and '''Thomas Lamboll''' ( ) developed an important garden in Charleston, South Carolina, and contributed to the expansion of the [[Bartram Botanic Garden and Nursery]] through the exchange of seeds and information with the Philadelphia botanist and explorer [[John Bartram]].
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'''Elizabeth Pitts Lamboll''' (1725&ndash;October 11, 1770)<ref>For her death date, see “Records Kept by Colonel Isaac Hayne,” ''South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine'', 10 (July 1909): 159, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/55N69PFK view on Zotero].</ref> and '''Thomas Lamboll''' (August 1694&ndash;October 29, 1774) developed one of the earliest [[botanic garden]]s in Charleston, South Carolina. They exchanged seeds, plants, and information with botanists and gardeners in America and Europe.
  
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==History==
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[[File:2010_detail.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 1, Antoine de Sartine, comte d’Alby, ''Plan de la barre et du havre de Charles-Town d’après un plan anglois levé en 1776'' [detail], 1778.]]
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Following a series of fiery sermons preached in her native Boston by the English evangelist George Whitefield (1714&ndash;1770), fourteen-year-old Elizabeth Pitts journeyed to Savannah, Georgia, and entered Whitefield’s [[Bethesda Orphan House]] on December 13, 1740.<ref>George White, ''Historical Collections of Georgia: Containing the Most Interesting Facts, Traditions, Biographical Sketches, Anecdotes, Etc.'' (New York: Pudney & Russell, 1854), 335, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/P8GER2ZN view on Zotero].</ref> She was one of a handful of girls who were not orphans, but merely “poor,” with one or more parent still living.<ref> White 1854, 335, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/P8GER2ZN view on Zotero]. Significantly, Whitefield’s Boston sermon of October 8, 1740, had instructed children, “If your parents will not come to Christ, you [should] come and go to heaven without them.” See Thomas S. Kidd, ''George Whitefield: America’s Spiritual Founding Father'' (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014), 126, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/BGQW367X view on Zotero]. For the letter Elizabeth wrote to Whitefield describing herself as “the worst, the ungratefullest of all Sinners upon Earth,” see Sarah Gober Temple and Kenneth L. Coleman, ''Georgia Journeys: Being an Account of the Lives of Georgia’s Original Settlers and Many Other Early Settlers'' (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2010), 233, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/FEGTP4P4 view on Zotero].</ref> At the [[Bethesda Orphan House]], she received instruction in religion, Latin, arithmetic, writing, and reading. She also learned household skills intended to make her “serviceable,” such as sewing, spinning, and “housewifery.”<ref>George Whitefield, “An Account of the Money Received and Disbursed for the Orphan House in Georgia” (December 23, 1740) in Eric McCoy North, ''Early Methodist Philanthropy'' (New York: The author, 1914), 157, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/X6DK3MWE view on Zotero]; Lilla Mills Hawes, “A Description of Whitefield’s Bethesda: Samuel Fayrweather to Thomas Prince and Thomas Foxcroft,” ''Georgia Historical Quarterly'' 45 (December 1961): 366, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/X57X7QZ2 view on Zotero]; George Whitefield, ''The Works of the Reverend George Whitefield, M.A., . . . to Which Is Prefixed, an Account of His Life, Compiled from His Original Papers and Letters'', 6 vols. (London: Edward and Charles Dilly, 1771), 3:466, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/4R3DI39I view on Zotero]. See also Kidd 2014, 118, 141, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/BGQW367X view on Zotero].</ref> The seeds of her later fascination with gardening may have been planted at Bethesda. According to the English writer Edward Kimber (1719&ndash;1769), who visited the [[Bethesda Orphan House]] in 1743, the girls’ “vacant Hours were employ’d in Garden and [[Plantation]]-Work.” Kimber described the garden as “a very extensive one, and well kept up, . . . one of the best I ever saw in ''America''.”<ref>The “Plantation-Work” evidently included picking cotton. See Edward Kimber, ''Itinerant Observations in America'', ed. Kevin J. Hayes (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1998), 34, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/9GJAF44R view on Zotero].</ref>
  
==History==
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After leaving the orphanage in June 1742, Elizabeth probably went into service in Charleston.<ref>She is presumably the child Whitefield referenced in his “Continuation of the Account and Progress, &c. of the Orphan-House” (March 21, 1746): “One that I brought from ''New-England'' is handsomely settled in ''Carolina''”; see Whitefield, 1771, 3:466, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/4R3DI39I view on Zotero]. She left Bethesda prior to the evacuation of the orphan home on July 10, 1742, when the children took refuge at the Charleston plantations of Jonathan Bryan (1708&ndash;1788), his brother Hugh (1699&ndash;1753), and their brother-in-law Stephen Bull (d.1770). See Whitefield, 1771, 3:455&ndash;59, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/4R3DI39I view on Zotero]; Alan Gallay, ''The Formation of a Planter Elite: Jonathan Bryan and the Southern Colonial Frontier'' (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2007), 41, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/JTTIJZSK view on Zotero].</ref> There, on November 29, 1744, she married Thomas Lamboll, a wealthy, well-educated merchant whose second wife had died the previous year.<ref>Lamboll had married Mary Detmar (1710&ndash;September 15, 1743) on September 21, 1742. At the time of his marriage to Elizabeth Pitts, he had a three-year-old son by his first wife. See Alexander Samuel Salley Jr., ''Register of St. Philip’s Parish Charles Town, South Carolina, 1720&ndash;1758'' (Charleston: Walker, Evans & Cogswell, 1904), 94, 177, 180, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/QP5VZSFS view on Zotero]; Mabel L. Webber, “Inscriptions from the Independent or Congregational (Circular) Church Yard Charleston, S.C. (Continued),” ''South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine'' 29 (April 1928): 143, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/HTEJK4ZF view on Zotero].</ref> Lamboll was a prominent public figure, having served for many years as justice of the peace and clerk of the Congregational Church.<ref>Walter B. Edgar and N. Louise Bailey, ''Biographical Directory of the South Carolina House of Representatives'', 5 vols. (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1977), 387&ndash;88, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/G89DVTV3 view on Zotero]; Elise Pinckney, ''Thomas and Elizabeth Lamboll: Early Charleston Gardeners'', Charleston Museum Leaflet, No. 28 (Charleston, SC: Charleston Museum, 1969), 4&ndash;9, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/DU97BPKV view on Zotero].</ref> He also owned extensive property in and around Charleston, including a rice [[plantation]] across the Ashley River on James Island, acquired by his father in 1696.<ref>John Bartram and Francis Harper, “Diary of a Journey through the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida from July 1, 1765, to April 10, 1766,” ''Transactions of the American Philosophical Society'' 33 (December 1942): 57, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/NZ6AE93V view on Zotero]; Pinckney 1969, 4, 6&ndash;7, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/DU97BPKV view on Zotero]; Preservation Consultants, Inc., ''James Island and Johns Island Historical Survey'' (Charleston: South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Summer 1989), 8, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/9PKNXN2J view on Zotero].</ref> A French map of 1776 represents [[avenue]]s of trees leading to a two-story house on the property [Fig. 1].
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[[File:2011_detail.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 2, “G. H.” (probably George Hunter, Surveyor-General of Carolina), ''The Ichnography of Charles-Town at High Water'' [detail], 1739. On the land mass at the confluence of the the two rivers, the pentagonal wall and building denote Broughtons Battery. This site was near where Thomas Lamboll's plantation house was built.]]
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Around the time of Lamboll’s first marriage in 1737 to Margaret Edgar (1711&ndash;1742), he had commissioned the architect Thomas Lee (1710&ndash;1769) to build a house in Charleston on property he owned at the southernmost point of the city, bounded on the west by the Ashley River and on the east by the Cooper River [Fig. 2].<ref>The house is extant at 19 King Street in Charleston (Pinckney 1969, 6&ndash;7, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/DU97BPKV view on Zotero]).</ref> Lamboll may have laid out gardens as well, for he began importing plants, such as the Pride of India, or Chinaberry (''melia azedarach''), which he is credited with introducing to North America.<ref>David Ramsay, ''The History of South-Carolina: From Its First Settlement in 1670, to the Year 1808'', 2 vols. (Charleston: David Longworth, 1809), 2:346, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/D9NEJJM8 view on Zotero].</ref> By the early 1740s he was corresponding with the English merchant [[Peter Collinson]], to whom he sent Carolina plants in exchange for exotic specimens imported from Europe.<ref>For Collinson’s letter of May 1762 to John Bartram in which he notes, “It may be 20 years agon since I gave the White Broom to our Frd Lamboll which was sent me from Portugal,” and Collinson’s letter of July 25, 1762, describing a plant Lamboll sent to him “many years agon,” see John Bartram, ''The Correspondence of John Bartram, 1734–1777'', ed. Edmund Berkeley and Dorothy Smith Berkeley (Gainsville: University Press of Florida, 1992), 561, 566, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/NZGMIACI view on Zotero].</ref> Reflecting on the many additions to his garden that came through Lamboll, [[Peter Collinson|Collinson]] observed in a letter of 1764 to [[Cadwallader Colden]], “How Fragrant that Allspice, how Charming the Red flowered Acacia, Great Laurel Leafed Magnolia & Umbrella Magnolia & Loblolly Bay&mdash;these Charming Trees are the Glory of my Garden & the Trofies of that Friendship that subsists between Mee & my very obligeing Friend T. Lambol Esq of South Carolina.”<ref>Peter Collinson to Cadwallader Colden, February 25, 1767, in ''“Forget Not Mee & My Garden”: Selected Letters 1725&ndash;1768 of Peter Collinson, F.R.S.'', ed. Alan W. Armstrong (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2002), 257, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/Q49SCPA4 view on Zotero].</ref>
  
During the autumn of 1740 the English evangelist George Whitefield (1714-1770) gave several fiery sermons in Boston, commanding children on one occasion, “If your parents will not come to Christ, you [should] come and go to heaven without them.”<ref> Thomas S. Kidd, George Whitefield: America’s Spiritual Founding Father (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/BGQW367X view on Zotero].</ref> Heeding his call, fifteen-year-old Elizabeth Pitts left Boston, registering at Whitefield’s Bethesda Home for orphans near Savannah, Georgia, on December 13, 1740 where she was among a handful of girls categorized as "poor," with one or more parent still living.<ref>George White, Historical Collections of Georgia: Containing the Most Interesting Facts, Traditions, Biographical Sketches, Anecdotes, Etc., Relating to Its History and Antiquities, from Its First Settlement to the Present Time; Compiled from Original Records and Official Documents; Illustrated by Nearly One Hundred Engravings (New York: Pudney & Russell, 1854), 335 [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/P8GER2ZN view on Zotero].</ref> At Bethesda, she received religious instruction, picked cotton, and practiced skills intended to make her “serviceable," such as sewing, spinning, knitting, washing, house cleaning, and “housewifery.<ref> George Whitefield, “An Account of the Money Received and Disbursed for the Orphan House in Georgia” (December 23, 1741), quoted in Eric McCoy North, Early Methodist Philanthropy (New York: The Author, 1914), 157, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/X6DK3MWE view on Zotero].</ref> During her first months at the orphanage, Whitefield erected new accommodations for the children&mdash;  a brick “great house” with “a [[piazza]] of ten feet wide…all around it, which will be wonderfully convenient in the heat of summer.”<ref> George Whitefield, “An Account of the Money Received and Disbursed for the Orphan House in Georgia” (December 23, 1741), quoted in Eric McCoy North, Early Methodist Philanthropy (New York: The Author, 1914), 158, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/X6DK3MWE view on Zotero].</ref> Twenty acres of land was cleared around the house, some of it dedicated to a garden.
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Elizabeth Lamboll shared her husband’s interest in horticulture and botany. According to the historian and botanist David Ramsay, she developed a [[kitchen garden]] as well as a [[botanic garden]] within a few years of her marriage. He recalled her as the first of those “persons who cultivated gardens on a large scale both for use and pleasure,” adding “Before the middle of the 18th century, [she] improved the south west extremity of King-street, in a garden which was richly stored with flowers and other curiosities of nature in addition to all the common vegetables for family use.”<ref>Ramsay 1809, 2:227, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/D9NEJJM8 view on Zotero].</ref> The garden extended directly south from the Lambolls’ house to the water’s edge.<ref>Pinckney, 1969, 25, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/DU97BPKV view on Zotero].</ref> The Lambolls also reportedly created a large rose garden on White Point, a narrow strip of land separated by marshes from their mainland Charleston property and accessible only by boat.
 
Elizabeth left Bethesda in June 1742,.<ref>Elizabeth Pitts left Bethesda prior to the evacuation of the orphan home on July 10, 1742, when the children took refuge in the Charleston plantations of Jonathan Bryan (1708-1788), his brother Hugh (1699-1753), and their brother-in-law Stephen Bull (  ). See George Whitefield, The Works of the Reverend George Whitefield, M.A., Late of Pembroke-College, Oxford, and Chaplain to the Rt. Hon. the Countess of Huntingdon Containing All His Sermons and Tracts Which Have Been Already Published; with a Select Collection of Letters ... to Which Is Prefixed, an Account of His Life, Compiled from His Original Papers and Letters, 6 vols. (London: Edward and Charles Dilly, 1771), 3:  455-59, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/4R3DI39I view on Zotero];  Alan Gallay, The Formation of a Planter Elite: Jonathan Bryan and the Southern Colonial Frontier (Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia Press, 2007), 41, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/JTTIJZSK view on Zotero].</ref> most likely to go into service in Charleston, where on November 19, 1743 she married the widower Thomas Lamboll, whose second wife had died two months earlier. Lamboll was a justice of the peace and ___. His properties included a James Island plantation acquired by his father in 1696.<ref>Preservation Constultants, Inc., ''James Island and Johns Island Historical Survey'' (Charleston, S.C.: South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Summer 1989), 8, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/9PKNXN2J view on Zotero].</ref> Around the time of his first marriage in 1737 to Margaret Edgar (1711-1742), he had commissioned the architect Thomas Lee to build a large house on property Lamboll had purchased in 1722. The property extended east and west to the Cooper and Ashley rivers.  Elizabeth Pitts Lamboll's interest in horticulture revealed itself soon after her marriage. Among those "persons who cultivated gardens on a large scale both for use and pleasure," the early nineteenth-century Charleston historian David Ramsay recalled Elizabeth Lamboll as "the first that can be recollected...before the middle of the 18th century, [she] improved the south west extremity of King-street, in a garden which was richly stored with flowers and other curiosities of nature in addition to all the common vegetables for family use."
 
  
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The Lambolls initiated a lengthy correspondence with [[John Bartram]] following his visit to Charleston in 1760. Elizabeth prepared and packed seeds, bulbs, and plants to send him from her garden, and Thomas conveyed her instructions, requests, and information in letters and lists. The “noble cargoes” sent from the Lambolls’ garden contained a treasure trove of exotic specimens, including pancratium amaryllis, belladonna lilies, umbrella trees.<ref>Quotation is from Bartram to Collinson, May 10, 1762, in Bartram 1992, 559; see also 504&ndash;5, 511, 549, 575, 614, 620, 637&ndash;38, 648, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/NZGMIACI view on Zotero].</ref> After describing some of the Lambolls’ recent offerings in a letter to [[Peter Collinson|Collinson]], Bartram exclaimed, “Oh Carolina Carolina A ravishing place for a curious Botanist.”<ref>John Bartram to Peter Collinson, May 10, 1762, in Bartram 1992, 558, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/NZGMIACI view on Zotero].</ref> The Lambolls sent seeds and plants to a few gardeners other than [[John Bartram|Bartram]] (such as James Alexander at [[Springettsbury]] in Philadelphia), and in May 1765 [[Peter Collinson|Collinson]] even broached the idea that “by the aid of our Friend Lamboll seeds & specimens may be sent directly to Mee for the King.”<ref>Peter Collinson to John Bartram, April 9, 1765, in Bartram 1992, 644; see also 505, 634&ndash;35, 676&ndash;77,[https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/NZGMIACI view on Zotero].</ref> [[John Bartram|Bartram]] did not actually meet Elizabeth Lamboll until his second visit to Charleston in 1765, en route to Florida, when the two of them “rambled in the Intense Heat of a Mid Day sun.”<ref>Peter Collinson to John Bartram, September 19, 1765, in Bartram 1992, 654; see also 656, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/NZGMIACI view on Zotero].</ref> When Thomas Lamboll lagged in sending some coveted berries from a shrub that grew on James Island, [[Peter Collinson|Collinson]] urged [[John Bartram|Bartram]] to ask Elizabeth for them instead, for “the Women Deny the[e] Nothing[;] thou hath such a[n] Art of wriggling into their Good Graces to Drag specimens in Flower & then in Fruit.”<ref>Peter Collinson to John Bartram, December 25, 1767, Bartram 1992, 695; see also 686, 688, 694, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/NZGMIACI view on Zotero].</ref>
  
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—''Robyn Asleson''
  
--''Robyn Asleson''
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<hr>
  
 
==Texts==
 
==Texts==
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*Lamboll, Thomas, February 16, 1761, describing his wife’s gardening methods to [[John Bartram]] (Bartram 1992: 504–5)<ref>Bartram 1992, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/NZGMIACI view on Zotero].</ref>
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:“The manner Mrs. Lamboll managers her Ranunculas & Anemonies every Year, is thus: She prepares [[Bed]]s of good Rich Mould at least Two Months before she takes up the Flower Roots; that the Earth may be well settled by Rain. Wherever the Ground is low, she raised the Flower [[Bed]]s, at least a foot in heighth, and where high flattens them. In Summer time, the leaves of the Flower Roots being thoroughly dry, immediately after a Shower of Rain happens, she takes up the said Roots, divides & cleanses them (but not by washing) from Insects, then makes slight holes with the Fingers on the Tops of the prepared [[Bed]]s, places the Roots about four inches asunder and covers them over with Dirt, Scrap’d from the Paths, about half an Inch deep; strewing it over with the Fingers. And if the Rain fails she afterwards causes the [[Bed]]s of Flower Roots to be Watered gently, such Water having first stood a Convenient time in the Sun. In Cold Weather she causes the Flower [[Bed]]s to be Cover’d and Shelter’d; especially when they have begun to Sprout.”
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*[[John Bartram|Bartram, John]], July 11, 1765, diary entry while traveling through South Carolina (1942: 14)<ref name="Bartram and Harper_1942">Bartram and Harper 1942.</ref>
  
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:“I have Just been on James island with Thomas Lambol & his lady to his countrey [[seat]] oposit to Charlstown. . .This day I spent in writeing letters & observing ye fine improvements of ye town & ye adjacent countrey [[seat]]s.”
  
* Lamboll, Thomas to John Bartram, February __,1761 (Bartram, 1992: 504-05)<ref>John Bartram, ''The Correspondence of John Bartram, 1734-1777'', ed. Edmund Berkeley and Dorothy Smith Berkeley (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1992), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/NZGMIACI view on Zotero].</ref>
 
: "The manner Mrs. Lamboll managers her Ranunculas & Anemonies every Year, is thus: She prepares [[Bed]]s of good Rich Mould at least Two Months before she takes up the Flower Roots; that the Earth may be well settled by Rain. Wherever the Ground is low, she raised the Flower [[Bed]]s, at least a foot in heighth, and where high flattens them. In Summer time, the leaves of the Flower Roots being thoroughly dry, immediately after a Shower of Rain happens, she takes up the said Roots, divides & cleanses them (but not by washing) from Insects, then makes slight holes with the Fingers on the Tops of the prepared [[Bed]]s, places the Roots about four inches asunder and covers them over with Dirt, Scrap’d from the Paths, about half an Inch deep; strewing it over with the Fingers. And if the Rain fails she afterwards causes the [[Bed]]s of Flower Roots to be Watered gently, such Water having first stood a Convenient time in the Sun. In Cold Weather she causes the Flower [[Bed]]s to be Cover’d and Shelter’d; especially when they have begun to Sprout."
 
  
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*[[John Bartram|Bartram, John]], August 15, 1765, diary entry while traveling through South Carolina (1942: 19)<ref name="Bartram and Harper_1942"/> Bartram and Harper, 1942. [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/NZ6AE93V view on Zotero].
  
* [[John Bartram|Bartram, John]], July 11, 1765, diary entry while traveling through South Carolina (1942: 14)<ref> John Bartram and Francis Harper, "Diary of a Journey through the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida from July 1, 1765, to April 10, 1766,' ''Transactions of the American Philosophical Society'', 33 (1942), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/NZ6AE93V view on Zotero].</ref>
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:“We observed many good farms & gentlemens [[seat]]s. . . Landed at Charlstown. . . & walked to our friend Lambols where we was accommodated in ye most civil & best manner. in A large chamber. one side fronting ye street with a large window & balcony with A [[prospect]] down ye bay [;] ye south side fronting ye garden & orange [[walk]]s over which A lovely [[prospect]] apeared of James island over Ashley river[,] two mile broad[,] from two large windows[.] ye farther end of his garden reaches to within A few yards of ye rivers bank; ye north front hath A fine [[prospect]] of ye town through two large windows.
: "I have Just been on James island with Thomas Lambol & his lady to his countrey [[seat]] oposit to Charlstown....This day I spent in writeing letters & observing ye fine improvements of ye town & ye adjacent countrey [[seats]]."
 
  
  
* [[John Bartram|Bartram, John]], August 15, 1765, diary entry while traveling through South Carolina (1942: 19)<ref> John Bartram and Francis Harper, "Diary of a Journey through the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida from July 1, 1765, to April 10, 1766,' ''Transactions of the American Philosophical Society'', 33 (1942), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/NZ6AE93V view on Zotero].</ref>
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*Shecut, John Linnaeus Edward Whitridge, 1819, describing the city of Charleston (1819: 42)<ref>John Linnaeus Edward Whitridge Shecut, ''Shecut’s Medical and Philosophical Essays . . . The Whole of Which Are Designed as Illustrative of the Domestic Origin of the Yellow Fever of Charleston; And, as Conducing to the Formation of a Medical History of the State of South-Carolina'' (Charleston: A. E. Miller, 1819), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/R6UHSW44 view on Zotero.]</ref>
: "We observed many good farms & gentlemens [[seats]].... Landed at Charlstown...& walked to our friend Lambols where we was accommodated in ye most civil & best manner. in A large chamber. one side fronting ye street with a large window & balcony with A [[prospect]] down ye bay [;] ye south side fronting ye garden & orange [[walks]] over which A lovely [[prospect]] apeared of James island over Ashley river[,] two mile broad[,] from two large windows[.] ye farther end of his garden reaches to within A few yards of ye rivers bank; ye north front hath A fine [[prospect]] of ye town through two large windows."
 
  
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:“Sometime about the year 1750, Mrs. Lamboll excited great interest in the science of horticulture and gardening, by planting a large and handsome [[flower garden|flower]] and [[kitchen garden]], upon the European plan. It was the first of the kind in Charleston, and occupied the site, corner of King and Lamboll-streets.”
  
* Shecut, John Linnaeus Edward Whitridge, 1819, describing the city of Charleston(1819: 42) <ref>John Linnaeus Edward Whitridge Shecut, ''Shecut’s Medical and Philosophical Essays...The Whole of Which Are Designed as Illustrative of the Domestic Origin of the Yellow Fever of Charleston; And, as Conducing to the Formation of a Medical History of the State of South-Carolina'' (Charleston: A. E. Miller, 1819), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/R6UHSW44 view on Zotero]</ref>
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<hr>
: "Sometime about the year 1750, Mrs. Lamboll excited great interest in the science of horticulture and gardening, by planting a large and handsome [[flower garden|flower]] and [[kitchen garden]], upon the European plan. It was the first of the kind in Charleston, and occupied the site, corner of King and Lamboll-streets."
 
  
 
==Images==
 
==Images==
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<gallery widths="170px" heights="170px" perrow="7">
  
<gallery widths="170px" heights="170px" perrow="7">
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Image:2011.jpg|“G. H.” (probably George Hunter, Surveyor-General of Carolina), ''The Ichnography of Charles-Town at High Water'', 1739.
  
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Image:2010.jpg|Antoine de Sartine, comte d’Alby, ''Plan de la barre et du havre de Charles-Town d’après un plan anglois levé en 1776'', 1778.
 
</gallery>
 
</gallery>
  
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<hr>
  
==References==
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==Other Resources==
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[http://jcb.lunaimaging.com/luna/servlet/detail/JCBMAPS~1~1~2833~101286:The-ichnography-of-Charles-Town-at- ''The Ichnography of Charles-Town at High Water'' (1739) interactive map, John Carter Brown Library]
  
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[http://www.loc.gov/resource/g3914c.ar154900/ ''Plan de la barre et du havre de Charles-Town d'après un plan anglois levé en 1776'' (1776) interactive map, Library of Congress]
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<hr>
  
 
==Notes==
 
==Notes==
 
<references/>
 
<references/>
  
[[Category:People|Last name, First name]]
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<hr>
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[[Category:People|Lamboll, Thomas and Elizabeth Pitts]]

Revision as of 17:15, August 5, 2020

Elizabeth Pitts Lamboll (1725–October 11, 1770)[1] and Thomas Lamboll (August 1694–October 29, 1774) developed one of the earliest botanic gardens in Charleston, South Carolina. They exchanged seeds, plants, and information with botanists and gardeners in America and Europe.

History

Fig. 1, Antoine de Sartine, comte d’Alby, Plan de la barre et du havre de Charles-Town d’après un plan anglois levé en 1776 [detail], 1778.

Following a series of fiery sermons preached in her native Boston by the English evangelist George Whitefield (1714–1770), fourteen-year-old Elizabeth Pitts journeyed to Savannah, Georgia, and entered Whitefield’s Bethesda Orphan House on December 13, 1740.[2] She was one of a handful of girls who were not orphans, but merely “poor,” with one or more parent still living.[3] At the Bethesda Orphan House, she received instruction in religion, Latin, arithmetic, writing, and reading. She also learned household skills intended to make her “serviceable,” such as sewing, spinning, and “housewifery.”[4] The seeds of her later fascination with gardening may have been planted at Bethesda. According to the English writer Edward Kimber (1719–1769), who visited the Bethesda Orphan House in 1743, the girls’ “vacant Hours were employ’d in Garden and Plantation-Work.” Kimber described the garden as “a very extensive one, and well kept up, . . . one of the best I ever saw in America.”[5]

After leaving the orphanage in June 1742, Elizabeth probably went into service in Charleston.[6] There, on November 29, 1744, she married Thomas Lamboll, a wealthy, well-educated merchant whose second wife had died the previous year.[7] Lamboll was a prominent public figure, having served for many years as justice of the peace and clerk of the Congregational Church.[8] He also owned extensive property in and around Charleston, including a rice plantation across the Ashley River on James Island, acquired by his father in 1696.[9] A French map of 1776 represents avenues of trees leading to a two-story house on the property [Fig. 1].

Fig. 2, “G. H.” (probably George Hunter, Surveyor-General of Carolina), The Ichnography of Charles-Town at High Water [detail], 1739. On the land mass at the confluence of the the two rivers, the pentagonal wall and building denote Broughtons Battery. This site was near where Thomas Lamboll's plantation house was built.

Around the time of Lamboll’s first marriage in 1737 to Margaret Edgar (1711–1742), he had commissioned the architect Thomas Lee (1710–1769) to build a house in Charleston on property he owned at the southernmost point of the city, bounded on the west by the Ashley River and on the east by the Cooper River [Fig. 2].[10] Lamboll may have laid out gardens as well, for he began importing plants, such as the Pride of India, or Chinaberry (melia azedarach), which he is credited with introducing to North America.[11] By the early 1740s he was corresponding with the English merchant Peter Collinson, to whom he sent Carolina plants in exchange for exotic specimens imported from Europe.[12] Reflecting on the many additions to his garden that came through Lamboll, Collinson observed in a letter of 1764 to Cadwallader Colden, “How Fragrant that Allspice, how Charming the Red flowered Acacia, Great Laurel Leafed Magnolia & Umbrella Magnolia & Loblolly Bay—these Charming Trees are the Glory of my Garden & the Trofies of that Friendship that subsists between Mee & my very obligeing Friend T. Lambol Esq of South Carolina.”[13]

Elizabeth Lamboll shared her husband’s interest in horticulture and botany. According to the historian and botanist David Ramsay, she developed a kitchen garden as well as a botanic garden within a few years of her marriage. He recalled her as the first of those “persons who cultivated gardens on a large scale both for use and pleasure,” adding “Before the middle of the 18th century, [she] improved the south west extremity of King-street, in a garden which was richly stored with flowers and other curiosities of nature in addition to all the common vegetables for family use.”[14] The garden extended directly south from the Lambolls’ house to the water’s edge.[15] The Lambolls also reportedly created a large rose garden on White Point, a narrow strip of land separated by marshes from their mainland Charleston property and accessible only by boat.

The Lambolls initiated a lengthy correspondence with John Bartram following his visit to Charleston in 1760. Elizabeth prepared and packed seeds, bulbs, and plants to send him from her garden, and Thomas conveyed her instructions, requests, and information in letters and lists. The “noble cargoes” sent from the Lambolls’ garden contained a treasure trove of exotic specimens, including pancratium amaryllis, belladonna lilies, umbrella trees.[16] After describing some of the Lambolls’ recent offerings in a letter to Collinson, Bartram exclaimed, “Oh Carolina Carolina A ravishing place for a curious Botanist.”[17] The Lambolls sent seeds and plants to a few gardeners other than Bartram (such as James Alexander at Springettsbury in Philadelphia), and in May 1765 Collinson even broached the idea that “by the aid of our Friend Lamboll seeds & specimens may be sent directly to Mee for the King.”[18] Bartram did not actually meet Elizabeth Lamboll until his second visit to Charleston in 1765, en route to Florida, when the two of them “rambled in the Intense Heat of a Mid Day sun.”[19] When Thomas Lamboll lagged in sending some coveted berries from a shrub that grew on James Island, Collinson urged Bartram to ask Elizabeth for them instead, for “the Women Deny the[e] Nothing[;] thou hath such a[n] Art of wriggling into their Good Graces to Drag specimens in Flower & then in Fruit.”[20]

Robyn Asleson


Texts

  • Lamboll, Thomas, February 16, 1761, describing his wife’s gardening methods to John Bartram (Bartram 1992: 504–5)[21]
“The manner Mrs. Lamboll managers her Ranunculas & Anemonies every Year, is thus: She prepares Beds of good Rich Mould at least Two Months before she takes up the Flower Roots; that the Earth may be well settled by Rain. Wherever the Ground is low, she raised the Flower Beds, at least a foot in heighth, and where high flattens them. In Summer time, the leaves of the Flower Roots being thoroughly dry, immediately after a Shower of Rain happens, she takes up the said Roots, divides & cleanses them (but not by washing) from Insects, then makes slight holes with the Fingers on the Tops of the prepared Beds, places the Roots about four inches asunder and covers them over with Dirt, Scrap’d from the Paths, about half an Inch deep; strewing it over with the Fingers. And if the Rain fails she afterwards causes the Beds of Flower Roots to be Watered gently, such Water having first stood a Convenient time in the Sun. In Cold Weather she causes the Flower Beds to be Cover’d and Shelter’d; especially when they have begun to Sprout.”


  • Bartram, John, July 11, 1765, diary entry while traveling through South Carolina (1942: 14)[22]
“I have Just been on James island with Thomas Lambol & his lady to his countrey seat oposit to Charlstown. . .This day I spent in writeing letters & observing ye fine improvements of ye town & ye adjacent countrey seats.”


“We observed many good farms & gentlemens seats. . . Landed at Charlstown. . . & walked to our friend Lambols where we was accommodated in ye most civil & best manner. in A large chamber. one side fronting ye street with a large window & balcony with A prospect down ye bay [;] ye south side fronting ye garden & orange walks over which A lovely prospect apeared of James island over Ashley river[,] two mile broad[,] from two large windows[.] ye farther end of his garden reaches to within A few yards of ye rivers bank; ye north front hath A fine prospect of ye town through two large windows.”


  • Shecut, John Linnaeus Edward Whitridge, 1819, describing the city of Charleston (1819: 42)[23]
“Sometime about the year 1750, Mrs. Lamboll excited great interest in the science of horticulture and gardening, by planting a large and handsome flower and kitchen garden, upon the European plan. It was the first of the kind in Charleston, and occupied the site, corner of King and Lamboll-streets.”

Images


Other Resources

The Ichnography of Charles-Town at High Water (1739) interactive map, John Carter Brown Library

Plan de la barre et du havre de Charles-Town d'après un plan anglois levé en 1776 (1776) interactive map, Library of Congress


Notes

  1. For her death date, see “Records Kept by Colonel Isaac Hayne,” South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine, 10 (July 1909): 159, view on Zotero.
  2. George White, Historical Collections of Georgia: Containing the Most Interesting Facts, Traditions, Biographical Sketches, Anecdotes, Etc. (New York: Pudney & Russell, 1854), 335, view on Zotero.
  3. White 1854, 335, view on Zotero. Significantly, Whitefield’s Boston sermon of October 8, 1740, had instructed children, “If your parents will not come to Christ, you [should] come and go to heaven without them.” See Thomas S. Kidd, George Whitefield: America’s Spiritual Founding Father (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014), 126, view on Zotero. For the letter Elizabeth wrote to Whitefield describing herself as “the worst, the ungratefullest of all Sinners upon Earth,” see Sarah Gober Temple and Kenneth L. Coleman, Georgia Journeys: Being an Account of the Lives of Georgia’s Original Settlers and Many Other Early Settlers (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2010), 233, view on Zotero.
  4. George Whitefield, “An Account of the Money Received and Disbursed for the Orphan House in Georgia” (December 23, 1740) in Eric McCoy North, Early Methodist Philanthropy (New York: The author, 1914), 157, view on Zotero; Lilla Mills Hawes, “A Description of Whitefield’s Bethesda: Samuel Fayrweather to Thomas Prince and Thomas Foxcroft,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 45 (December 1961): 366, view on Zotero; George Whitefield, The Works of the Reverend George Whitefield, M.A., . . . to Which Is Prefixed, an Account of His Life, Compiled from His Original Papers and Letters, 6 vols. (London: Edward and Charles Dilly, 1771), 3:466, view on Zotero. See also Kidd 2014, 118, 141, view on Zotero.
  5. The “Plantation-Work” evidently included picking cotton. See Edward Kimber, Itinerant Observations in America, ed. Kevin J. Hayes (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1998), 34, view on Zotero.
  6. She is presumably the child Whitefield referenced in his “Continuation of the Account and Progress, &c. of the Orphan-House” (March 21, 1746): “One that I brought from New-England is handsomely settled in Carolina”; see Whitefield, 1771, 3:466, view on Zotero. She left Bethesda prior to the evacuation of the orphan home on July 10, 1742, when the children took refuge at the Charleston plantations of Jonathan Bryan (1708–1788), his brother Hugh (1699–1753), and their brother-in-law Stephen Bull (d.1770). See Whitefield, 1771, 3:455–59, view on Zotero; Alan Gallay, The Formation of a Planter Elite: Jonathan Bryan and the Southern Colonial Frontier (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2007), 41, view on Zotero.
  7. Lamboll had married Mary Detmar (1710–September 15, 1743) on September 21, 1742. At the time of his marriage to Elizabeth Pitts, he had a three-year-old son by his first wife. See Alexander Samuel Salley Jr., Register of St. Philip’s Parish Charles Town, South Carolina, 1720–1758 (Charleston: Walker, Evans & Cogswell, 1904), 94, 177, 180, view on Zotero; Mabel L. Webber, “Inscriptions from the Independent or Congregational (Circular) Church Yard Charleston, S.C. (Continued),” South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 29 (April 1928): 143, view on Zotero.
  8. Walter B. Edgar and N. Louise Bailey, Biographical Directory of the South Carolina House of Representatives, 5 vols. (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1977), 387–88, view on Zotero; Elise Pinckney, Thomas and Elizabeth Lamboll: Early Charleston Gardeners, Charleston Museum Leaflet, No. 28 (Charleston, SC: Charleston Museum, 1969), 4–9, view on Zotero.
  9. John Bartram and Francis Harper, “Diary of a Journey through the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida from July 1, 1765, to April 10, 1766,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 33 (December 1942): 57, view on Zotero; Pinckney 1969, 4, 6–7, view on Zotero; Preservation Consultants, Inc., James Island and Johns Island Historical Survey (Charleston: South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Summer 1989), 8, view on Zotero.
  10. The house is extant at 19 King Street in Charleston (Pinckney 1969, 6–7, view on Zotero).
  11. David Ramsay, The History of South-Carolina: From Its First Settlement in 1670, to the Year 1808, 2 vols. (Charleston: David Longworth, 1809), 2:346, view on Zotero.
  12. For Collinson’s letter of May 1762 to John Bartram in which he notes, “It may be 20 years agon since I gave the White Broom to our Frd Lamboll which was sent me from Portugal,” and Collinson’s letter of July 25, 1762, describing a plant Lamboll sent to him “many years agon,” see John Bartram, The Correspondence of John Bartram, 1734–1777, ed. Edmund Berkeley and Dorothy Smith Berkeley (Gainsville: University Press of Florida, 1992), 561, 566, view on Zotero.
  13. Peter Collinson to Cadwallader Colden, February 25, 1767, in “Forget Not Mee & My Garden”: Selected Letters 1725–1768 of Peter Collinson, F.R.S., ed. Alan W. Armstrong (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2002), 257, view on Zotero.
  14. Ramsay 1809, 2:227, view on Zotero.
  15. Pinckney, 1969, 25, view on Zotero.
  16. Quotation is from Bartram to Collinson, May 10, 1762, in Bartram 1992, 559; see also 504–5, 511, 549, 575, 614, 620, 637–38, 648, view on Zotero.
  17. John Bartram to Peter Collinson, May 10, 1762, in Bartram 1992, 558, view on Zotero.
  18. Peter Collinson to John Bartram, April 9, 1765, in Bartram 1992, 644; see also 505, 634–35, 676–77,view on Zotero.
  19. Peter Collinson to John Bartram, September 19, 1765, in Bartram 1992, 654; see also 656, view on Zotero.
  20. Peter Collinson to John Bartram, December 25, 1767, Bartram 1992, 695; see also 686, 688, 694, view on Zotero.
  21. Bartram 1992, view on Zotero.
  22. 22.0 22.1 Bartram and Harper 1942.
  23. John Linnaeus Edward Whitridge Shecut, Shecut’s Medical and Philosophical Essays . . . The Whole of Which Are Designed as Illustrative of the Domestic Origin of the Yellow Fever of Charleston; And, as Conducing to the Formation of a Medical History of the State of South-Carolina (Charleston: A. E. Miller, 1819), view on Zotero.

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