March 13, 2026
Provided Image/Bartram's Garden
Bartram’s Garden in 2024 set up Harvey’s Memorial Garden, which is dedicated to a free Black man who lived and worked on the property in the 18th century.
In a quiet corner of Bartram's Garden that overlooks the Schuylkill River, there'a a small memorial named after Harvey, a free Black man who lived, worked and was buried on the grounds in the 18th century. The exhibit consists of a handmade bench that's dedicated to all “Black people, free and enslaved, whose names and hard work have been forgotten in time.”
Over the past nine years, the public park has commissioned researchers to look into the life and labor of Black workers as well as little-known connections between the Bartram family and slave traders. In light of the Trump administration's push to remove slavery exhibits at the President’s House in Independence National Historical Park, Bartram's Garden's Director of Development Caroline Winschel said the efforts to preserve these often overlooked stories are the “bare minimum” a historic site can offer.
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Most of the chronicling of the National Historic Landmark in Southwest Philadelphia centers around John Bartram, a Quaker and self-taught botanist who became known during the 1700s for his internationally renowned horticultural collection. But Winschell said Bartram's Garden wanted to know more about the history of the farm, and in 2017, it began working with New Jersey-based historian Sharece Blakney, whose research focuses on the lives of enslaved people in early America.
“There are a lot of people and ecosystems that are left out of the popular version of history,” Winschel said. “Here’s this one brilliant white man who is learning from all these landscapes, getting rich and famous from them. There’s just a lot that is unsaid and there is a lot that is unrecorded.”
Historical records about the Bartram family have repeatedly referred to Harvey, but “we don’t know anything about him,” Winschel said.
“You’re telling me that this was a cherished member of the family, but all we have is this one name and you’re saying the great honor of his life was that he got to sit at John Bartram's dinner table? Something’s missing here. … It may have been a concocted story.”
Blakney found that the story likely comes from a widely held belief in the early-19th century that members of the Bartram family were abolitionists who often spoke out against slavery. While some members signed manumission documents to free enslaved people, the family was also involved in trafficking across the East Coast.
In the mid-18th century, John Bartram made arrangements to send his son six enslaved people who he had purchased to assist on a rice plantation in Florida. Census records and bills of sale have found evidence that other Black people were living in the Bartram house, but it's unknown in what capacity.
Pennsylvania abolished slavery in 1780, but not in a way that immediately freed many slaves. The law phased out slavery gradually; by 1840, there were still 64 slaves in the state.
“For Sharece to have found this very clear documentation that we know that the Bartram's participated in enslaving people, that has to be part of the story we tell,” Winschel said.
Former assistant gardener Yasir Hall, above, designed the Harvey Memorial Garden in 2024.
In 2024, Bartram’s Garden commissioned former assistant gardener Yasir Hall to design the Harvey Memorial Garden.
“It’s a lovely and contemplative area, and it kind of gives an opportunity to recognize that there are people who worked this land and walked these paths that we might never know who they are,” Winschel said. “But they were here and those memories matter to those of us who are still here and who are able to point to the absence of a story as a way of telling that story.”
Blakney’s research, and that of the late historian Joel Fry, on the subject of Black history at Bartram’s Garden is available in a short booklet titled “Stories We Know,” which can be viewed online and purchased in the Welcome Center.
Blakney declined a request for an interview, deferring to her published research on the site's history, which she called "a labor of love."
During a time when the federal government is targeting mentions of slavery at national parks and museums, Winschel stressed the importance of retelling stories of American history from varying perspectives. Last month, the National Park Service removed exhibits in Philadelphia that depicted the lives of nine people who were enslaved at George Washington’s house. The Trump administration classified the site as one that “disparages” American history. A federal judge later ordered the displays to be restored to their original condition, but the federal government plans to challenge that ruling.
Winschel said Bartram's Garden has found that by acknowledging the pain, complications and harm that is embedded in historic places, it has become easier to connect with their visitors.
“I think to tell the truth about what has happened in a space, and to be open that sometimes beautiful places have fraught legacies, that is part of making a space feel safe,” she said. “... That is the bare minimum of storytelling that a historic place owes to its past, to its neighbors and visitors. To say, here’s who was here and here’s how we are keeping their memories alive.”
