Moses Bartram (46)

Moses Bartram (25 August 1732–25 December 1809) was an apothecary and naturalist and a member of the Young Junto, elected c. 1766. The son of founding APS member John Bartram, he was born on the family farm at Kingsessing near Philadelphia. After taking to sea as a common sailor in 1751, he found himself stranded in London where his father’s correspondent and Royal Society Fellow Peter Collinson paid his passage back to Philadelphia. Following a voyage to the Mediterranean, he settled down to run an apothecary shop with his half-brother and fellow Young Junto member Isaac Bartram. At the meetings of Young Junto—renamed the American Society shortly after his election—he submitted queries on somnambulism, on the influence of lakes on adjacent climates, and on the Mediterranean’s salinity and currents. He continued to correspond with Collinson, informing him about the experiments he conducted with an American species of locust. He also presented an influential paper on silkworm cultivation to the American Society that informed the creation of the Silk Society (of which he became a manager). When the American Society and American Philosophical Society united in 1769, he served on the former’s unification committee. During the American Revolution, Bartram held bureaucratic and active service roles. In 1776, he was disowned by his local Friend’s Meeting for this affront to Quaker pacifism and played an active role thereafter in founding a new meeting, the Society of Free Quakers, with other disowned Friends. He was also a member of the Humane Society and the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture, a donor to the Pennsylvania Hospital, and a street commissioner. In addition to his father and half-brother Isaac, his brother William Bartram was also a member of the American Society. (PI)