Benjamin Smith Barton
Benjamin Smith Barton (1766–1815) was a Philadelphia physician, botanist, and professor at the University of Pennsylvania who tutored Meriwether Lewis in natural history and botanical classification before the expedition. He lent Lewis reference books, including his own "Elements of Botany" (1803), the first American botany textbook, and instructed him in methods for preserving and describing plant specimens. Many of Lewis's detailed botanical descriptions during the expedition reflect Barton's training.
Portrait: Public Domain
Cross-Narrator Analyses
Analyses that cite or discuss Benjamin Smith Barton — showing 3 of the most recent matches.
Stolen Elk and Studied Firs: Three Voices at Fort Clatsop
The journal entries of February 6, 1806 offer an unusually clear window into how the Lewis and Clark expedition divided its narrative…
The Sweet Thistle Root: Parallel Botany at Fort Clatsop
The journal entries for January 21, 1806, open with routine fort business: the hunters Shannon and Labiche return with three elk, a…
Two Botanists at Fort Clatsop: Ferns, Licorice, and the Limits of Shared Authorship
The journal entries for January 22, 1806 at Fort Clatsop offer one of the clearest demonstrations in the expedition record of how…
From the Heacock Memorial Archive
1 lewis-clark.org articles that mention Benjamin Smith Barton, preserved here for Robert Heacock’s photography. The articles were written by that site’s contributing authors.
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