Early American Agriculture


were exported from the United States in 1792, but the invention
of the cotton gin in 1795 made it possible to use the upland or
short staple cotton commercially. The upland cotton (Gossypium
hirsutum) is of Mexican origin. The seed of the variety, Gossy-
pium barbadense, usually regarded as native to the West Indies,
received its commercial name because it thrived in the Sea
Islands and the coastal region of the Southeast. (1)

 CONTRIBUTIONS OF INDIVIDUALS
 John Bartram is credited with starting the first botanical garden
 in America, on the banks of the Schuylkill River three miles
 above Philadelphia, in 1730. A diligent collector, Bartram trav-
 eled widely, studying American plants and selling seeds and
 plants to finance his work. During his lifetime, several other
 well-known private gardens were developed in eastern Pennsyl-
 vania. (4) In 1728, Bartram began the exchange of trees and
 plants with distinguished friends abroad. His son, William,
 continued his father's botanical work.6 In an extensive tour of
 the South he recorded evidence indicating the early importation
 of many common fruits by early colonists in the deep South.
 George Robbins of Easton, Maryland, imported the seeds of
 the peach and the pear in 1735. The Linnean Botanic Garden
 at Flushing, Long Island, founded about 1730, tried to procure
 foreign and native plants, especially grapes. As a commercial
 firm under the Prince family in the early nineteenth century,
 this same garden did much to introduce and popularize various
 new plants.
 Henry Laurens imported to Charleston in 1755, olives, capers,
limes, ginger, Guinea grass, the Alpine strawberry, red rasp-
berries, and blue grapes. From southern France, Laurens im-
ported apples, pears, plums, and white Chasselas grapes. The
notable garden of Charles Drayton, containing many foreign
plants, also was located in Charleston. At St. Paul's, William
Williamson tended a garden planted with native and foreign
flowering trees and shrubs. Many of the well-known gardens of
 SAt Charleston, South Carolina, he found large plantations of European mul-
berry. In Savannah, William Bartram found fruit trees and flowering shrubs. On
the site of Frederika, the first English town in Georgia, he saw peach, fig, pome-
granate, and other plants growing among the ruins. Near the St. John's River in
Florida orange groves were found flourishing from trees brought by the early Spanish
settlers. Alabama had apple trees planted by the French. On Pearl Island near New
Orleans he found peaches, figs, grapes, plums and other fruits; and near Baton
Rouge, William Bartram saw a garden with many curious exotics.