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Difference between revisions of "William Bull II"

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'''William Bull II''' (1710-1791) was a prominent planter and politician in Charleston, South Carolina, as well as an amateur botanist. He laid out formal gardens at his family's plantation, [[Ashley Hall]].
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{{Person
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|Birth Date=1710
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|Death Present=No
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|Death Date=1791
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|Death HasEndDate=No
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|Keywords=Avenue; Obelisk; Orchard; Seat; Yard
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|Other resources={{ExternalLink
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|External link URL=http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n50045574.html
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|External link text=Library of Congress Authority File
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'''William Bull II''' (1710–1791), a prominent planter and politician in Charleston, South Carolina, was also an amateur botanist and horticulturist who laid out gardens at his family’s plantation, [[Ashley Hall]].
  
 
==History==
 
==History==
 +
[[File:0552.jpg|thumb|Fig. 1, Charles Fraser, ''Monument of Lieutenant Governor Bull'' (Ashley Hall), c. 1800.]]
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More extensively educated than most Americans of his generation, William Bull briefly attended Westminster school in London (1723) before continuing his study of Greek, Latin, and science with a Leiden-educated tutor in South Carolina. Bull later enrolled at Leiden in 1731, studying with the Dutch botanist and physician Herman Boerhave (1668&ndash;1738) and becoming, in 1735, the first native-born American to graduate with a Doctor of Medicine degree from the university there.<ref>Geraldine M. Meroney, ''Inseparable Loyalty: A Biography of William Bull'' (Norcross, GA: The Harrison Company, 1991) 16&ndash;17, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/ZDU4XXDA view on Zotero]; James Raven, ''London Booksellers and American Customers: Transatlantic Literary Community and the Charleston Library Society, 1748&ndash;1811'' (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2002), 172, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/V2XH7UDP view on Zotero].</ref> Although Bull practiced medicine only briefly, he remained keenly interested in science, assembling a substantial personal library of books on botany and natural history at his home, [[Ashley Hall]]. He also corresponded with the English merchant and amateur botanist [[Peter Collinson]], to whom he sent rare plant specimens, and with Thomas Penn, who was pursuing the study of natural history in Philadelphia.<ref>Walter B. Edgar and N. Louise Bailey, ''Biographical Directory of the South Carolina House of Representatives'', 5 vols. (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1977), 2:122&ndash;23, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/G89DVTV3 view on Zotero]; Meroney 1991, 122&ndash;23, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/ZDU4XXDA view on Zotero].</ref> When the Scottish physician and budding naturalist [[Alexander Garden|Dr. Alexander Garden]] arrived in Charleston in 1752, Bull lent him several foundational botanical texts, including Carl Linnaeus’s ''Fundamenta Botanica'' (1736) and ''Classes Plantarum'' (1738), and John Clayton’s ''Flora Virginica'' (1739). Bull also helped familiarize [[Alexander Garden|Garden]] with the native plants of South Carolina and provided him with a letter of introduction to [[Cadwallader Colden]], the Irish-born physician and botanist whom Bull had met in New York the previous year.<ref>Edmund Berkeley and Dorothy Smith Berkeley, ''Dr. Alexander Garden of Charles Town'' (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1969), 33, 35, 53, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/ZFR499TP view on Zotero]; Raven 2002, 223, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/V2XH7UDP view on Zotero]; Meroney 1991, 52, 56, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/ZDU4XXDA view on Zotero].</ref> Bull served as president of the Charles Town Library Society, a group notable for its enthusiasm for natural history as well as its extravagant purchases of rare and luxurious botanical folios.<ref>Raven 2002, 73, 169&ndash;70, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/V2XH7UDP view on Zotero].</ref> In 1773 Bull proposed the formation of a special Library committee “for collecting materials for promoting a Natural History of this Province,” which resulted in the establishment of the Charleston Museum, one of the earliest public museums in America.<ref>Albert E. Sanders and William Dewey Anderson Jr., ''Natural History Investigations in South Carolina: From Colonial Times to the Present'' (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1999), 18&ndash;19, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/JPZGUUSQ view on Zotero].</ref> Bull indulged his interest in plants and gardens at [[Ashley Hall]], where he laid out formal gardens in 1770.
  
Although he was born in America, William Bull maintained a lifelong allegiance to England. He received his early education at Westminster school in London, and went on to continue his studies in the early 1730s at Leiden with the Dutch botanist and physician Herman Boerhave (1668-1738). In 1735 he became the first native-born American to graduate with a medical degree from the university. <ref> James Raven, ''London Booksellers and American Customers: Transatlantic Literary Community and the Charleston Library Society, 1748-1811'' (Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 2002), 172, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/V2XH7UDP view on Zotero]. </ref> While living abroad, Bull developed a keen interest in botany. On his return to South Carolina, he corresponded with the English botanist and plant and seed merchant [[Peter Collinson]], and amassed a substantial personal library of books on botany and natural history. Bull introduced the works of [[Carolus Linnaeus]] to the Scottish physician Dr. [[Alexander Garden]] in 1752, lending him ''Classes plantarum'' and ''Fundamenta Botanica'', as well as John Clayton’s ''Flora Virginica''. Bull also helped familiarize [[Alexander Garden|Garden]] with the native plants of South Carolina. <ref> Edmund Berkeley and Dorothy Smith Berkeley, ''Dr. Alexander Garden of Charles Town'' (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1969), 35, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/ZFR499TP view on Zotero]; Raven, 2002, 73, 223, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/V2XH7UDP view on Zotero]. </ref> For many years Bull served as president of the Charles Town Library Society, a group notable for its enthusiasm for natural history as well as its extravagant purchases of rare and luxurious botanical folios. <ref> Raven, 2002, 73, 169-70,[https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/V2XH7UDP view on Zotero]. </ref> In 1773 Bull proposed the formation of a special Library committee "for collecting materials for promoting a Natural History of this Province," which resulted in the establishment of the Charleston Museum, one of the earliest public museums in America. <ref> Albert E. Sanders and William Dewey Anderson, Jr., ''Natural History Investigations in South Carolina: From Colonial Times to the Present'' (Columbia, S. C.: University of South Carolina Press, 1999), 18-19, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/JPZGUUSQ view on Zotero]. </ref> Bull also indulged his interest in plants and gardens at [[Ashley Hall]], where he laid out formal gardens in 1770.
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Through his sisters’ marriages to John Drayton and Henry Middleton and his co-guardianship of his neighbor [[Eliza Lucas Pinckney|Eliza Lucas Pinckney's]] three children, Bull was firmly entrenched among Charleston’s intimately networked social elite.<ref>Meroney 1991, 41&ndash;43, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/ZDU4XXDA view on Zotero].</ref> In addition to serving as lieutenant-governor of South Carolina from 1759 to 1775, Bull was acting governor on five separate occasions during that period.<ref>Edgar and Bailey 1977, 2:123&ndash;25, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/G89DVTV3 view on Zotero].</ref> An ardent Loyalist, he fled to England in 1777 following the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, and was still there two years later when rampaging British troops “plundered and greatly damaged” his [[plantation]] at [[Ashley Hall]], destroying a fish dam, tossing his private papers into the garden, and smashing china and glass. The greatest loss may have been Bull’s library, which he reported “was scattered and mostly carried away.<ref>Bull 1952, 63, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/SPT8JW7G view on Zotero]; Stephen Conway, ''A Short History of the American Revolutionary War'' (New York: I. B. Tauris, 2013), 126, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/HMAEMEM4 view on Zotero].</ref> Bull returned to America in February 1781, but when British troops evacuated Charleston in December of the following year, he accompanied them back to England, leaving John Julius Pringle to manage his affairs.<ref>Meroney 1991, 166&ndash;67, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/ZDU4XXDA view on Zotero].</ref> Bull died in London in 1791 and the following year his wife, Hannah Beale Bull, wrote to her late husband’s attorney and loyal friend, Nathaniel Russell, instructing him to erect a marble [[obelisk]] on the grounds of [[Ashley Hall]] to preserve Bull’s memory. The monument, which still stands, bears his portrait in relief and a commemorative plaque with a lengthy inscription reading in part: “This [[obelisk]] was erected, sacred to his virtues and her grief, with duty and affection by his disconsolate widow” [Fig. 1].<ref>Meroney 1991, 184 for Bull’s relationship with Russell, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/ZDU4XXDA view on Zotero]; Bull 1952, 66, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/SPT8JW7G view on Zotero].</ref>
  
[[File:0552.jpg|thumb|left|252px|Fig. 1, Charles Fraser, ''Monument of Lt. Gov. Bull'', 1803.]]
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''Robyn Asleson''
In addition to serving as lieutenant-governor of South Carolina from 1759 to 1775, Bull was acting governor on five separate occasions during that period. An ardent Loyalist, he fled to England in 1777 following the outbreak of the Revolutionary War and was still there two years later when rampaging British troops "plundered and greatly damaged" his [[plantation]] at [[Ashley Hall]], destroying a fish dam, tossing his private papers into the garden, and smashing china and glass. The greatest loss may have been Bull's library, which he reported "was scattered and mostly carried away."<ref> Bull, 1952: 63, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/SPT8JW7G view on Zotero]; Stephen Conway, ''A Short History of the American Revolutionary War'' (New York: I. B. Tauris, 2013), 126, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/HMAEMEM4 view on Zotero]. </ref> Bull returned to America in February 1781, but when British troops evacuated Charleston a year later, he accompanied them back to England. He died in London in 1791 and the following year his wife, Hannah Beale Bull, erected an [[obelisk]] honoring his memory on the grounds of [[Ashley Hall]]. The monument bears a portrait of the governor in relief and a commemorative plaque with a lengthy inscription reading in part: "This [[obelisk]] was erected, sacred to his virtues and her grief, with duty and affection by his disconsolate widow."<ref> Bull, 1952: 66, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/SPT8JW7G view on Zotero]. </ref> [Fig. 1]
 
  
 +
<hr>
  
--''Robyn Asleson''
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==Texts==
 +
* Wesley, John, April 15, 1737 (1909: 1:348)<ref> John Wesley, ''The Journal of the Rev. John Wesley, A.M., Sometime Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford'', ed. Nehemiah Curnock, 8 vols. (New York: Eaton & Mains, 1909), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/XGDQ7CPK view on Zotero].</ref>
 +
 
 +
: “I walked over to Ashley Ferry, twelve miles from Charlestown, and thence, . . . to Colonel Bull’s [[seat]], two miles farther. This is the pleasantest place I have yet seen in America; the [[orchard]] and garden being full of most of those sorts of trees and plants and flowers which are esteemed in England, but which the laziness of the Americans seldom suffers them to raise.”
 +
 
 +
 
 +
* [[Charles Fraser|Fraser, Charles]], 1853, ''Reminiscences of Charleston'' (1854: 68)<ref>Charles Fraser, ''Reminiscences of Charleston'' (Charleston, SC: J. Russell, 1854), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/VTRNRRX8 view on Zotero].</ref>
  
==Texts==
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: “[William Bull], the first Governor, had entertained [Mark] Catesby, the celebrated naturalist, at the family [[seat]], at Ashley river, where there is now a majestic [[avenue]] of oaks, said to have been planted by his hand.”
  
* [[Charles Fraser|Fraser, Charles]], ''Reminiscences of Charleston'', 1853 (1854: 68) <ref> Charles Fraser, Reminiscences of Charleston (Charleston, S.C.: J. Russell, 1854), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/VTRNRRX8 view on Zotero]. </ref>
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<hr>
: "[William Bull], the first Governor, had entertained [[Mark Catesby|Catesby]], the celebrated naturalist, at the family seat, at Ashley river, where there is now a majestic [[avenue]] of oaks, said to have been planted by his hand."
 
  
 
==Images==
 
==Images==
 +
<gallery widths="170px" heights="170px" perrow="7">
  
<gallery widths="170px" heights="170px" perrow="7">
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Image:0552.jpg|Charles Fraser, ''Monument of Lieutenant Governor Bull'' (Ashley Hall), c. 1800.
Image:0552.jpg|Charles Fraser, ''Monument of Lt. Gov. Bull'', 1803.
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 +
Image:2016.jpg|Henrietta Augusta Drayton, [[Ashley Hall|''Ashley Hall'']], river side with [[obelisk]] in [[yard]], c. 1820.
 
</gallery>
 
</gallery>
  
 +
<hr>
  
==References==
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==Other Resources==
 +
[http://south-carolina-plantations.com/charleston/ashley-hall.html South Carolina Plantations]
  
[http://south-carolina-plantations.com/charleston/ashley-hall.html South Carolina Plantations] <br/>
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[http://www.nationalregister.sc.gov/charleston/S10817710091/ South Carolina Department of Archives and History]
 
 
[http://www.nationalregister.sc.gov/charleston/S10817710091/ South Carolina Department of Archives and History] <br/>
 
  
 
[http://www.halseymap.com/Flash/gov-detail.asp?polID=97 Alfred O. Halsey Map Preservation Research Project, Preservation Society of Charleston]
 
[http://www.halseymap.com/Flash/gov-detail.asp?polID=97 Alfred O. Halsey Map Preservation Research Project, Preservation Society of Charleston]
  
[http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n50045574.html Library of Congress Name Authority File]
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<hr>
 
 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Bull_II Wikipedia]
 
  
 
==Notes==
 
==Notes==
 
<references/>
 
<references/>
  
[[Category:People|Last name, First name]]
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<hr>
 +
 
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[[Category:People|Bull, William]]

Latest revision as of 20:01, September 8, 2021

Overview

Birth Date: 1710

Death Date: 1791

Used Keywords: Avenue, Obelisk, Orchard, Seat, Yard

Other resources: Library of Congress Authority File;

Export as RDF

William Bull II (1710–1791), a prominent planter and politician in Charleston, South Carolina, was also an amateur botanist and horticulturist who laid out gardens at his family’s plantation, Ashley Hall.

History

Fig. 1, Charles Fraser, Monument of Lieutenant Governor Bull (Ashley Hall), c. 1800.

More extensively educated than most Americans of his generation, William Bull briefly attended Westminster school in London (1723) before continuing his study of Greek, Latin, and science with a Leiden-educated tutor in South Carolina. Bull later enrolled at Leiden in 1731, studying with the Dutch botanist and physician Herman Boerhave (1668–1738) and becoming, in 1735, the first native-born American to graduate with a Doctor of Medicine degree from the university there.[1] Although Bull practiced medicine only briefly, he remained keenly interested in science, assembling a substantial personal library of books on botany and natural history at his home, Ashley Hall. He also corresponded with the English merchant and amateur botanist Peter Collinson, to whom he sent rare plant specimens, and with Thomas Penn, who was pursuing the study of natural history in Philadelphia.[2] When the Scottish physician and budding naturalist Dr. Alexander Garden arrived in Charleston in 1752, Bull lent him several foundational botanical texts, including Carl Linnaeus’s Fundamenta Botanica (1736) and Classes Plantarum (1738), and John Clayton’s Flora Virginica (1739). Bull also helped familiarize Garden with the native plants of South Carolina and provided him with a letter of introduction to Cadwallader Colden, the Irish-born physician and botanist whom Bull had met in New York the previous year.[3] Bull served as president of the Charles Town Library Society, a group notable for its enthusiasm for natural history as well as its extravagant purchases of rare and luxurious botanical folios.[4] In 1773 Bull proposed the formation of a special Library committee “for collecting materials for promoting a Natural History of this Province,” which resulted in the establishment of the Charleston Museum, one of the earliest public museums in America.[5] Bull indulged his interest in plants and gardens at Ashley Hall, where he laid out formal gardens in 1770.

Through his sisters’ marriages to John Drayton and Henry Middleton and his co-guardianship of his neighbor Eliza Lucas Pinckney's three children, Bull was firmly entrenched among Charleston’s intimately networked social elite.[6] In addition to serving as lieutenant-governor of South Carolina from 1759 to 1775, Bull was acting governor on five separate occasions during that period.[7] An ardent Loyalist, he fled to England in 1777 following the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, and was still there two years later when rampaging British troops “plundered and greatly damaged” his plantation at Ashley Hall, destroying a fish dam, tossing his private papers into the garden, and smashing china and glass. The greatest loss may have been Bull’s library, which he reported “was scattered and mostly carried away.”[8] Bull returned to America in February 1781, but when British troops evacuated Charleston in December of the following year, he accompanied them back to England, leaving John Julius Pringle to manage his affairs.[9] Bull died in London in 1791 and the following year his wife, Hannah Beale Bull, wrote to her late husband’s attorney and loyal friend, Nathaniel Russell, instructing him to erect a marble obelisk on the grounds of Ashley Hall to preserve Bull’s memory. The monument, which still stands, bears his portrait in relief and a commemorative plaque with a lengthy inscription reading in part: “This obelisk was erected, sacred to his virtues and her grief, with duty and affection by his disconsolate widow” [Fig. 1].[10]

Robyn Asleson


Texts

  • Wesley, John, April 15, 1737 (1909: 1:348)[11]
“I walked over to Ashley Ferry, twelve miles from Charlestown, and thence, . . . to Colonel Bull’s seat, two miles farther. This is the pleasantest place I have yet seen in America; the orchard and garden being full of most of those sorts of trees and plants and flowers which are esteemed in England, but which the laziness of the Americans seldom suffers them to raise.”


“[William Bull], the first Governor, had entertained [Mark] Catesby, the celebrated naturalist, at the family seat, at Ashley river, where there is now a majestic avenue of oaks, said to have been planted by his hand.”

Images


Other Resources

South Carolina Plantations

South Carolina Department of Archives and History

Alfred O. Halsey Map Preservation Research Project, Preservation Society of Charleston


Notes

  1. Geraldine M. Meroney, Inseparable Loyalty: A Biography of William Bull (Norcross, GA: The Harrison Company, 1991) 16–17, view on Zotero; James Raven, London Booksellers and American Customers: Transatlantic Literary Community and the Charleston Library Society, 1748–1811 (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2002), 172, view on Zotero.
  2. Walter B. Edgar and N. Louise Bailey, Biographical Directory of the South Carolina House of Representatives, 5 vols. (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1977), 2:122–23, view on Zotero; Meroney 1991, 122–23, view on Zotero.
  3. Edmund Berkeley and Dorothy Smith Berkeley, Dr. Alexander Garden of Charles Town (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1969), 33, 35, 53, view on Zotero; Raven 2002, 223, view on Zotero; Meroney 1991, 52, 56, view on Zotero.
  4. Raven 2002, 73, 169–70, view on Zotero.
  5. Albert E. Sanders and William Dewey Anderson Jr., Natural History Investigations in South Carolina: From Colonial Times to the Present (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1999), 18–19, view on Zotero.
  6. Meroney 1991, 41–43, view on Zotero.
  7. Edgar and Bailey 1977, 2:123–25, view on Zotero.
  8. Bull 1952, 63, view on Zotero; Stephen Conway, A Short History of the American Revolutionary War (New York: I. B. Tauris, 2013), 126, view on Zotero.
  9. Meroney 1991, 166–67, view on Zotero.
  10. Meroney 1991, 184 for Bull’s relationship with Russell, view on Zotero; Bull 1952, 66, view on Zotero.
  11. John Wesley, The Journal of the Rev. John Wesley, A.M., Sometime Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford, ed. Nehemiah Curnock, 8 vols. (New York: Eaton & Mains, 1909), view on Zotero.
  12. Charles Fraser, Reminiscences of Charleston (Charleston, SC: J. Russell, 1854), view on Zotero.

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History of Early American Landscape Design contributors, "William Bull II," History of Early American Landscape Design, , https://heald.nga.gov/mediawiki/index.php?title=William_Bull_II&oldid=41918 (accessed March 28, 2024).

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