In Search of the Brittons
Posted in People, Science on November 17th, 2009 by Plant Talk – Be the first to commentStaffer Discovers Home, Resting Place of NYBG Founders on Staten Island
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Lisa Vargues is Curatorial Assistant of the Herbarium. |
In honor of the 150th birthday this year of Nathaniel Lord Britton (1859–1934), who with his wife, Elizabeth Gertrude Britton (1858–1934), founded The New York Botanical Garden, I set out to retrace some of his footsteps. My pursuit provided further insight into his life and brought some fascinating places to light.
This spark of nostalgic curiosity came over me ever since I started working on the Flora Borinqueña Digital Herbarium and Library, a project that makes available online the unpublished manuscript of the popular flora of Puerto Rico— along with images of related specimens—that Britton was working on at the time of his death.
After more than 70 years, Britton’s final manuscript emerged from storage, and in a Rip van Winkle moment has been resurrected in a brand new era of computers and digitization. Ironically, Britton was resistant to installing electricity (“an unnecessary luxury”) in the Garden’s Museum building (now the Library building), and instead frugally worked by gaslight, according to The New York Botanical Garden: An Illustrated Chronicle of Plants and People.
While transcribing some of Britton’s last written words in the Flora Borinqueña, including his shaky handwritten marginal notes, I wondered where the Brittons’ final resting place is and whether there are any remnants of their life here in New York, outside of the Garden.
And so my search began. read more »