Florida Sketches

FLORIDA SKETCHES: William Baldwin Follows Bartram’s Tracks is a collection of poetry based on letters written during Baldwin’s travels (1813–1817) along William Bartram’s Florida trails.

William Bartram (1739–1823)—the revered botanist and early American explorer of Florida—and his Travels (1791) are introduced to the reader in the frontispiece with a poem and a photograph of his classic work. The poems in the prologue set the scene in Florida, describe Bartram’s explorations and introduce William Baldwin (1779–1819) and William Darlington (1782–1863). These men were the two primary correspondents in this book’s saga of Baldwin’s journeys to verify the botanical discoveries in Bartram’s Travels. Darlington encouraged Baldwin to collect his Florida botanical letters into a publication. Alas, the death of Baldwin left the project unfinished. 

Baldwin and his botanical exploration of Florida have been discussed in scholarly articles and books on botany and its history. Baldwin—like many explorers who visited Florida—was following in the footsteps of Bartram’s Travels, intent on extending Bartram’s studies of Florida’s exotic flora. 

Baldwin’s travels and botanical studies in Florida are best known through his plant collections and specimens now curated in many natural history museums, as well as his letters to fellow botanists. While he published few botany articles, his letters, manuscripts, and specimens continue to be mined for information. During Baldwin’s time, a number of scientists questioned the veracity of some of the observations Bartram recorded in Travels. Many botanists urged Baldwin, who was living in Georgia and exploring Florida, to confirm Bartram’s observations, if possible. The narrative of this poetry collection focuses on Baldwin’s journey along Bartram’s tracks in Spanish East Florida.