William Bartram

Colonel William Bartram (June 14, 1711 – October 24, 1770) was an American scientist and politician in the Province of North Carolina. He was a Quaker and the uncle of the naturalist of the same name.

Born in Darby in the Province of Pennsylvania three months before his father William Bartram was killed during the Tuscarora War in the Province of Carolina in 1711, he was captured by the Tuscarora with his family, and later returned to Pennsylvania after they were ransomed by relatives from Philadelphia. The younger William Bartram later returned to see to his father's estate, after Native Americans were removed from the area, and became a prominent planter, colonel of the militia, and long-time member of the colonial legislature.

Biography William Bartram was born on June 14, 1711, in Darby in the Province of Pennsylvania to William Bartram and his second wife Elizabeth (née Smith). After his father was killed during the Tuscarora War, he was taken captive by the Tuscarora with his family but eventually ransomed by relatives from Philadelphia. He lived in Pennsylvania for many years. and after Native Americans were removed from the area, he returned to North Carolina to see to his father's estate He received several grants for land from the Crown. On this land Bartram had a plantation known as Ashwood. Ashwood was located on the south Bartram represented Bladen County in the North Carolina House of Burgesses from 1739 to 1740, and from 1746 to 1768. In 1739 he introduced a bill to establish Wilmington, named after one of his patrons, Spencer Compton, Earl of Wilmington.

In addition to being a colonel of the militia and a scientist, he was also a justice of the peace of Bladen County and was on the local freeholders court which heard cases involving enslaved individuals. William Bartram, the naturalist, or Billy as his father John and mother Ann had called him, lived with the Bartrams at Ashwood for four years, from 1761 to 1765. Young Billy had arrived in Bladen County attempting to become a merchant after he completed his apprenticeship with a merchant in Philadelphia. His mercantile operation was never successful. Billy made one more attempt to profit in Cape Fear in 1771, but quickly ran out of money and was bailed out by his father. Billy left Ashwood in the latter part of 1772, by the time his uncle, his uncle's wife Elizabeth, and cousin William had all died.

Burial Colonel William Bartram died on October 24, 1770. Colonel William Bartram and his son Dr. William Bartram were buried at the family plot at the Carver's Creek Quaker (which later became Methodist) Church in Bladen County, North Carolina. The ghosts were of the fiancée of William's son William, who after he had died of yellow fever in Brunswick, despondently drowned herself in the Cape Fear River at a place still known today as Polly White's Leap, and Thomas Brown, who was a patriot leader of the Battle of Elizabethtown, the husband of William's daughter Sarah, and a widower who had lived in Ashwood and was forced to transfer it to William's daughter Mary by an act passed by the North Carolina General Assembly of 1777.

White Lake was formerly known as Bartram Lake. Bartram once owned the land near the lake.

The naturalist, his nephew, left a tribute to Bartram at Ashwood "beloved and esteemed for his patriotic Virtue in defending and supporting the Rights of Man, and particularly, the Poor, abandoned, and the Stranger. His House was open, and his Table free, to his neighbors, the oppressed, and the Stranger." sic