Charleston, South Carolina, was at the beginning of the Nineteenth Century the southern center of horticultural activities and the European plum was widely distributed from here at this time. Of the several botanic gardens, really nurseries, in Charleston, one was conducted by André Michaux who was sent by the French Government in 1786 to collect American plants. Another was owned by John Champneys at St. Pauls, near Charleston, and was managed by a Mr. Williamson who grew all of the species of trees, fruits and shrubs, native and foreign, which could be procured.[18] The third of these gardens was owned by Charles Drayton at St. Andrews in which not only exotic fruits were grown but those of the region as well. The plum trees frequently mentioned in the records of the time as growing in this region came from these nurseries. In Florida, as has been stated, the peach was introduced by the Spanish explorers, but if the plum were also planted by the Spaniards it quickly passed out with the cessation of cultivation. But later there are records[19] of this and nearly all of the fruits of temperate and sub-tropic climates having been grown at St. Augustine and Pensacola. In the remarkable colony[20] founded by Dr. Andrew Turnbull at New Smyrna, Florida, in 1763, the plum was one of the fruits cultivated. It is not probable, however, that the culture of this fruit was ever extensive in Florida as it does not thrive there. William Bartram, son of John Bartram the founder of the Bartram Botanic Garden, set out on a botanical expedition through the Southern States in 1773, which lasted five years. He records[21] numerous observations on the horticulture of both the colonists and the Indians. At Savannah, Georgia, he found gardens furnished with all the cultivated fruit trees and flowers in variety. One of the earliest settlements made by the English in Georgia was Frederica, and here he found the peach, fig, pomegranate and other trees and shrubs growing about the ruins; though not specifically mentioned, the plum had probably been planted here with the other fruits. At the junction of the Coose and Tallapoosa rivers in Alabama, there were thriving apple trees, which had been set by the French at Pearl Island in the last named state. Between Mobile and New Orleans, Bartram found peaches, figs, grapes, plums and other fruits growing to a high degree of perfection and such also was the case on a plantation on the Mississippi in Louisiana near Baton Rouge.