John Fraser, FLS, F.R.H.S., (14 October 1750 – 26 April 1811) was a Scottish botanist who collected plant specimens around the world, from North America and the West Indies to Russia and points between, with his primary career activity from 1780 to 1810. Fraser was a commissioned plant collector for Catherine, Czar of Russia in 1795, Paul I of Russia in 1798, and for the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna in 1806; he issued nursery catalogues c. 1790 - 1796 and had an important herbarium that was eventually sold to the Linnean Society.
Early life Fraser was born during the Age of Enlightenment at Tomnacross, the Aird, Inverness-shire on 14 October 1750. His father was Donald Fraser, (a.k.a. Donald Down, a patronymic descriptive of hair colour traditional amongst the Scots Highlanders); his mother was Mary McLean, and his siblings included a brother James (b. 16 March 1753) and sister Christiana (b. 5 December 1756). In 1770, five years before the American War of Independence and coincident with Captain James Cook's discovery of the eastern Australian coast, Fraser arrived in London as a young man to make his way in the city, at first following the trade of a hosier (a draper working with linen). He soon came to know the Chelsea Physic Garden, and it was through his visits there that he became inspired with a desire to advance horticulture in England. He married Frances Shaw on 21 June 1778 and settled down in a small shop in Paradise Bow, Chelsea.
Starting out
Not long content with life in London, Fraser soon began to quit the mercantile counter as often as he could to watch the gardeners at work. He befriended William Forsyth, who at that time had charge of the Apothecaries' Garden; Through that acquaintance he would have become familiar with his predecessor Mark Catesby's travels, as some of Catesby's specimens from his travels were housed at the Chelsea Physic Garden, and Catesby's writings and engravings on the flora of the Americas were also published by the time Fraser moved to London. Fraser took up botanical collecting and departed England for Newfoundland in 1780 with Admiral Campbell. Upon returning to England, he sailed again in 1783 to explore the New World with his eldest son John Jr. Fraser's early expeditions were financed by Forsyth, William Aiton of Kew Gardens, and James Edward Smith of the Linnean Society. In the 1780s, Fraser established the American Nursery at Sloane Square, King's Road. The nursery was on the east side of the Royal Military School and extended over 12 acres.
Travels
As the 18th century came to a close, botanists who hunted plants afar were adventurers and explorers, John Fraser among them, fielding shipwrecks, sieges, slavery, pirates, escaped convicts and hostile natives. Fraser travelled extensively, from Scotland to England, the Americas, the West Indies, Russia, and points between. He began by collecting in Newfoundland from 1780 to 1783 or 1784, and then moved on to the Appalachian Mountains in eastern North America, all without the benefit of railroads or well-established highways. By the time he completed his journeys, Fraser had introduced about 220 distinct species of plants from the Americas to Europe and beyond.
Appalachia and the Alleghenies Fraser made his first trip to the American South, and specifically to Charleston, South Carolina, in 1783 or 1784, sending home consignments of plants to Frank Thorburn of Old Brompton. Returning to England in 1785 with the expectation of recompense for his labour and risk, he was astonished to learn that all the valuable plants he had forwarded were dead, and the survivors, which were common, could not be disposed of. Vexed, Fraser subsequently entered into a lawsuit over the matter, a suit long and very expensive to both parties, but he sailed again for South Carolina in the autumn nonetheless. On his return trip that autumn, he made his way north through Berkeley County to the Santee River, befriending Thomas Walter along the way. He continued on to the Piedmont region of the Appalachians, discovering Phlox stolonifera (Creeping Phlox) in Georgia along the southeastern edge of the Blue Ridge Mountains, and in 1787, he arrived in Pickens County near Chickamauga Cherokee land during the Cherokee–American wars. There, he collected what became known later as Magnolia fraseri. Fraser gave his contemporary William Bartram his original specimen of M. fraseri; the specimen is housed in the Walter Herbarium in the British Museum of Natural History collection. The Hortus Kewensis recorded 16 new plants as having been introduced by Fraser in 1786, and five more in 1787.
Fraser trekked the Allegheny Mountains in 1789 when trans-Allegheny travel was limited to indigenous peoples' trails and one military trail, Braddock Road, built in 1751 and too far north of his journeys to be of help. He travelled with François André Michaux, and on the summit of the Great Roan was the first European to discover the Rhododendron catawbiense, now cultivated in many varieties. Of the rhododendrons he wrote "We supplied ourselves with living plants, which were transmitted to England, all of which grew, and were sold for five guineas each."
John's brother, James, was actively involved with the American side of Fraser's plant export-import business, and from at least 1791, they jointly leased some land in Charleston until May 1800. In 1796, the brothers mortgaged 406 acres on Johns Island along the marshy edge of Stono River, originally a part of the Fenwick Hall estate. The brothers had difficulties with their land deals though, and in 1798, they fell behind in their payment obligations to the extent that their creditors instituted litigation to collect past due sums. Despite their problems with lawsuits, leases, mortgages, and land too marshy to be suited to their enterprise, in 1810, large numbers of rhododendrons, magnolias, and other native plants were still being shipped from the Fraser brothers' Charleston nursery by their agents there.
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