Remembering Botanist Thomas Meehan, his Brother Joseph, and Botanizing at Gettysburg

November 19, 1901

On this day, the British-American nurseryman, botanist, and author Thomas Meehan died.

Thomas was born in England to a gardener and his wife and raised on the Isle of Wight.

He trained at Kew and then immigrated to Philadelphia, where Thomas became known as the Dean of American horticulture.

Thomas's younger brother Joseph immigrated in 1853.

Both Thomas and Joseph lived in the city of brotherly love, and both of them inherited their father's love of plants.

With Joseph's help, Thomas opened up his nursery in Germantown.

In 2018, Drexel University shared a charming little story about Thomas when he was in his 40s. 

A curatorial assistant named Elana Benamy was digitizing plant images at Drexel when she came across a milkweed specimen.

What made her take a double-take was the date and location of the plant specimen.

The plant was labeled "Battlefield of Gettysburg, August 20, 1863."

The battle in Gettysburg had occurred during the first three days of July.

So, the specimen was gathered about seven weeks after the battle and five weeks after Frederick Law Olmsted had walked the field.

Elana asked,

"Can you imagine why on earth would someone be out plant collecting [there]?"

As it turns out, the reason made perfect sense.

The collector was Thomas Meehan.

During the Civil War, Thomas had worked for Andrew Eastwick, the owner of Bartrum‘s garden in Philadelphia.

Joseph Meehan had enlisted, fought, and was captured. 

With the army's defeat at Gettysburg, Joseph was given battlefield parole on July 4th.

Historians now speculate that Joseph might still have been at Gettysburg when the two brothers botanized around the battlefield.

In either case, 33 years later, Joseph wrote a fascinating account of the landscape around Gettysburg in an article for a gardening magazine called Battlefield Flowers: Floral Treasures of Gettysburg.