Floral Pressings & Legacies

Floral Pressings and Legacies. The Patapsco Female Institute. , A major part of the PFI curriculum under Principal Almira Hart Lincoln Phelps was the study of botany. Terraced gardens throughout the grounds provided the students with a living classroom to learn first-hand about the features of different plants and flowers. In 1844, student Mary Jerdone Coleman began keeping a journal of floral pressings collected on site. Coleman, the daughter of a prominent Virginia family, travelled over 100 miles from Louisa County, VA to be schooled at Patapsco. This journal, now within the collections of the Virginia Museum of History and Culture, offers an important insight into the ecological make up of the Institute's grounds during the era., The site's gardens were not only designed and maintained by Almira and PFI students, but also gardeners, such as Irish immigrant Stephen Leary, mentioned below in the 1850 census.,

"The author indulges the hope that this book....may serve to interest and quicken the dull intellects of some pupils, to arrest the fugitive attention of others, and to relax the minds of the over-studious, by leading them all into paths strewed with flowers…" , , Almira Hart Lincoln Phelps, Familiar Lectures on Botany, 1854

, [Captions:] , Jerdone Castle, on Lake Anna, in Louisiana County, Virginia was Coleman's childhood home. The plantation was originally built by Francis Jerdone in 1742., Coleman's journal includes pressings and notations of over 40 varieties of plants growing on the grounds during her time here as a student.