Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778), Pehr Kalm (1716-1779), & John Bartram (1699-1777)
Pehr Kalm (1716-1779), sometimes Peter Kalm, was the son of a Lutheran minister. He was born in Angermanland, Sweden, in 1716, & attended college in Finland before moving to Uppsala University in Sweden in 1740.
Here he studied under scientist Linnaeus (Carl von Linné), who became his friend as well as mentor. Linnaeus was most interested in organizing all plants & animals into a coherent system of names & relationships. The modern system of Latin binomials originated with his work.
As Europeans fanned out across Asia, Africa, & the Americas during the 18C, students & colleagues of Linneaus kept a steady stream of specimens flowing back to the great systematizer in Uppsala. As one of Linnaeus’ best students, Kalm was selected in 1747 to travel to North America to collect seeds of plants that might prove useful for agriculture & industry. After the trip to British Clonial America, Kalm devoted most of his remaining years to caring for, studying & lecturing about the American plants he brought home to Sweden.
Kalm arrived in Pennsylvania in 1748, & made his base of operations the Swedish ex-patriate communities in southern New Jersey, where he served as pastor of a local church & married in 1750. He made trips as far west as Niagara Falls & as far north as Quebec before returning to Sweden in 1751. Although botany was his main reason for traveling, Kalm trained his scientist's eye on all aspects of American culture & his careful, dispassionate observations show colonial settlement life in great detail. The following article is fascinating.
"Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778) sent several of his best students abroad to discover plants that might be brought back to enrich the Swedish kingdom, which then consisted of both Sweden & Finland. The northern British colonies in America & the French colony of Canada were particularly attractive because Linnaeus & others thought their climates were similar to Sweden’s, & North American plants were known to survive the cold Scandinavian winters. Linnaeus already knew about the great botanist John Bartram of Philadelphia, & as early as 1738, he had requested seeds from Bartram.
"One of Linnaeus’ favorite students at Uppsala University was Pehr (or Peter) Pehr Kalm (1716-1779), who had grown up in Finland & attended Åbo Akademi in Turku, Finland, before moving to Sweden. There Kalm supervised the gardens & plantation of his patron, Baron Sten Carl Bielke, Linnaeus’s close friend & a fellow founder of the Swedish Royal Academy of Science. Through the efforts of Linnaeus & Bielke, as well as other scientists, including Anders Celsius, the Swedish inventor of the centigrade thermometer, Kalm was groomed in preparation for a journey of exploration. He was appointed lecturer in natural history & economics at Åbo Akademi, & the stipend for that post plus contributions from Uppsala University & the Swedish government’s Department of Manufactures funded Kalm’s journey to North America (along with his faithful servant, Bielke’s gardener & handyman, Lars Jungström).
"The trip was supposed to last only 2 years, but it was almost 4 years from the time they left Uppsala in October 1747, until their return in June 1751. First, they were shipwrecked on the way to England & had to spend several months in Norway. Then, because of the war between England & France, they were unable to obtain passage for America until August of 1748. However, Kalm used his 6 months in England to improve his command of English, to meet many influential British botanists, & to learn much more about American plants.
"Kalm finally arrived in Philadelphia on September 15, 1748, & was met by Benjamin Franklin, to whom he had been recommended by several mutual acquaintances in England. Franklin introduced Kalm to many of his friends & Kalm wrote that Franklin gave him “all necessary instructions & showed [him] kindness on many occasions.” Kalm immediately set about learning as much as possible about American plants before the onset of winter. Kalm spent many hours in the company of John Bartram (1699-1777), who was most hospitable & helpful, teaching him to identify many American plants he had not seen before, & answering his numerous questions.
"Philadelphia impressed the young scientist, who wrote: "It will be easy to conceive why this city should rise so suddenly from nothing into such grandeur & perfection without any powerful monarch contributing to it, either by punishing the wicked or by giving great supplies of money. And yet its fine appearance, good regulations, agreeable location, natural advantages, trade, riches & power are by no means inferior to those of any, even of the most ancient, towns in Europe. It has not been necessary to force people to come & settle here; on the contrary foreigners of different languages have left their country, houses, property & relations & ventured over wide & stormy seas in order to come hither. Other countries, which have been peopled for a long space of time, complain of the small number of their inhabitants. But Pennsylvania which was no better than a wilderness in the year 1681, & contained hardly 1,500 people, now vies with several kingdoms in Europe in the number of inhabitants. It has received hosts of people which other countries, to their infinite loss, have either neglected, belittled or expelled." (Travels in North America, 1770; reprinted, New York: Dover Publications, 1937, p. 33).
"Kalm was also introduced to fellow Swedes, including the portrait painter, Gustav Hesselius. They soon took him across the Delaware to Raccoon (now Swedesboro) in New Jersey, where lived many of the descendants of the Swedish & Finnish settlers of New Sweden (1638-55). On his arrival at Raccoon, Kalm discovered that the Church of Sweden missionary to the congregation in Raccoon, Johan Sandin, had died the previous month. Kalm & Sandin had been friends & fellow students at the university in Uppsala, so Kalm stayed as a guest in Sandin’s home & attended with great care to his surviving family, a widow with a young daughter & a new-born infant.
"Kalm had originally studied theology, intending to follow in the footsteps of his father & become a minister. Therefore, he naturally stepped in as substitute preacher for the Raccoon congregation. During his stay in America, he spent 3 winters in Raccoon, preaching nearly every Sunday in the Raccoon Church & also delivering funeral sermons. His friendship & care for the widow Anna Margaretha Sjoman Sandin resulted in their marriage in Philadelphia in February of 1750.
"When weather permitted, Kalm left the Philadelphia area & traveled up the Hudson to Canada, where he stayed for some time in 1749, studying in the area around Quebec & Montreal as the guest of the French king. In the summer of 1750, he traveled to Niagara Falls; his description of that natural wonder was the first written by a trained scientist & was widely read. Kalm discovered many plants native to the St. Lawrence, Hudson, & Delaware valleys that were new to Europeans. He provided Linnaeus with more than 100 American plants for his herbarium.
"Kalm returned to Finland, where he was a popular teacher at Åbo Akademi for many years until his death in 1779. He died disappointed that he had not succeeded in growing any North American plants that added substantially to the economy of the Swedish kingdom. He wrote a 2-volume account of his travels that was later translated into German, French, & English, but was unable to find a publisher for the 3rd volume, which perished in a fire. He also wrote many articles about American plants & animals & supervised papers written by his students on American subjects. Kalm’s value to us, more than 250 years later, is primarily through the clear & objective descriptions he wrote of the people & places he saw during his journey. He also served to spread knowledge of & interest in Linnaeus’ system in the American colonies.
"Unfortunately, the impression that Kalm made on several of his acquaintances in Philadelphia was not a favorable one. They were not pleased with some of the conclusions that Kalm made in his Travels, when they were finally translated into English in 1770. An early 20C Philadelphia botanist, John Harshberger, wrote of Kalm, “he seems to have been remarkably credulous; &, moreover, it is alleged, took to himself the credit of some discoveries which rightfully belonged to John Bartram.” James Logan, then elderly & in poor health, was suspicious that Kalm was really a spy for the French. Bartram complained several times that he had received no letter of thanks or copies of Kalm’s publications. Franklin wrote of Kalm, “It is dangerous conversing with these Strangers that keep Journals.”
Kalm's journal of his travels was published in Stockholm, Sweden, as En Resa til Norra America published in 3 volumes between 1753 & 1761. Before that, his short account of his visit to Niagara Falls had been published in John Bartram's Observations... (London, 1751).
English Edition...Kalm, Peter. Travels into North America; Containing Its Natural History, & a Circumstantial Account of Its Plantations & Agriculture in General, with the Civil, Ecclesiastical & Commercial State of the Country, the Manners of the Inhabitants, & Several Curious & Important Remarks on Various Subjects. By Peter Kalm. Translated into English by John Reinhold Forster. Enriched with a Map, Several Cuts for the Illustration of Natural History, & Some Additional Notes. In Two Volumes. (London: Printed for T. Lowndes, 1771).
