author
Cadwallader Colden
1688–1776
A doctor, scientist, and colonial leader, he brought restless curiosity to everything from medicine and botany to the politics of early New York. His life offers a vivid glimpse of an eighteenth-century mind moving between public office and serious study.
2 Audiobooks
Papers Relating to an Act of the Assembly of the Province of New-York For encouragement of the Indian trade, &c. and for prohibiting the selling of Indian goods to the French, viz. of Canada
by Cadwallader Colden, Great Britain. Board of Trade, Great Britain. Privy Council, New York (Colony). Council
About the author
Born in 1688, Cadwallader Colden was educated in Scotland and trained in medicine before building his life in colonial America. He became one of the most learned public figures in New York, known not only as a physician and political leader but also as a serious student of science and natural history.
Colden served for many years in the government of colonial New York and at times acted as the colony’s governor. Alongside his political work, he wrote on botany, philosophy, and other subjects, earning a reputation as one of early America’s notable intellectuals. Accounts of his life regularly emphasize how unusual it was for one person to be so active in both government and scientific inquiry.
He died in 1776, just as the American Revolution was reshaping the world he had known. Today he is remembered as a complicated colonial figure whose career connected medicine, science, and public service in the decades before independence.