John Josselyn

Who was John Josselyn?

John Josselyn was a seventeenth-century English traveler to New England who wrote with credulity about what he saw and heard during his sojourn there before returning to England. Yet his books give some of the earliest and most complete information on New England flora and fauna in colonial times, and his outlook was later praised by Henry Thoreau, among others. Little is known about his life.

Josselyn's years of birth and death are not known, but he was born early in the seventeenth century to Sir Thomas Josselyn of Kent. He first visited New England in July 1638 when he presented his respects to Governor John Winthrop and to the Rev. John Cotton, to whom he delivered from Francis Quarles a translation of several psalms into English. He stayed in New England for 15 months, then visited again 24 years later, in 1663. Returning to England in 1671, Josselyn published New England's Rarities, discovered in Birds, Beasts, Fishes, Serpents, and Plants of that Country.

The evidence gleaned from New England Rarities and An Account of Two Voyages indicates he was well educated and may have been trained as a surgeon and physician.