[2] He became a botanist at an early age, studied medicine, and graduated from the medical department of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia in 1804.

His published works include Mutual Influence of Habits and Disease (1804), Flora cestrica: an attempt to enumerate and describe the flowering and filicoid plants of Chester County in the state of Pennsylvania (1837) and Agricultural Botany (1847).

These included Thomas Potts James who wrote the section about mosses and liverworts[8] and Ezra Michner also contributed to this book.

[10] The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University preserves some botanical specimens that he collected — for example, of Talinum teretifolium (Phemeranthus teretifolius — the quill fameflower).

[12] He served as director and president of the National Bank of Chester County from 1830 to 1863, where his friend and fellow botanist David Townsend was chief cashier.