John Fraser (October 14, 1750 Kiltarlity, Invernesshire (baptism) - April 26, 1811 Chelsea), Scottish botanist ("Fraser"). He established the American Nursery in King's Road in the 1780s (succeeded by his son James Thomas until 1817), and collected plants in Newfoundland (1780-1783), America (1785-1800), from where he introduced about 220 North American species to England. He issued nursery catalogues in 1790 and 1796 and had a herbarium. Together with his brother James Fraser, he established in 1791 a nursery in Charleston, SC.
[From Journal of botany, British and foreign, Vol. 37, November 1899, p. 482:] we have in the volume containing Walter's Herbarium (now preserved in the British Museum) a printed "list of seeds collected by [John Fraser] and brought home under his own care, and now in a very high state of perfection" which has many features in common with that reprinted by Prof. Greene : it bears no date, but was probably printed in the last decade of the last century. Fortunately the novelties indicated are not described, but it is by no means improbable that other of Fraser's lists may be accidentally preserved, and may contain material which has not hitherto been taken up by botanists. It was brought out by the original John Fraser, who died in 1811, and who therefore could have had no hand in the catalogue reprinted by Prof. Greene. This latter was issued by his two sons, John and James Thomas, who succeeded their father in the business ; and the catalogue should be cited as *' Frasers' "—not '' Fraser's," as is done by Prof. Greene and other American writers.
[From Journal of botany, British and foreign, Vol. 45, June 1907, p. 255:] The General Secretary exhibited, on behalf of the owner, two portraits of John Fraser by John Hoppner and Sir George Raeburn — the latter being the unacknowledged source of the lithographed portrait in Hooker's Companion to the Botanical Magazine, ii. p. 300 (1836). A note accompanying the exhibit stated that Fraser's herbarium was presented in 1849 to the Linnean Society, of which he was a Fellow, by his son, but was disposed of in 1863. This, however, apparently refers, not to Fraser's own herbarium, of which nothing is known, although (see Comp. Bot. Mag. ii. 302) he evidently had one, but to the important herbarium of Thomas Walter, which was presented to Fraser by Walter, and was acquired by the Trustees of the British Museum for the National Herbarium at the sale of certain of the Linnean Society's collections in 1863
[From Noisette Roses, 19th century Charleston's gift to the world, 2009, p. 13:] John Fraser, one of the most colorful botanist-explorers of the day. Born in Scotland and trained at Kew, Fraser arrived in South Carolina in 1786 and by 1787 had published Flora Caroliniana the first extensive study of the state's flora and a landmark in American botanical writing. Fraser started a nursery on the Stono River near where Maybank Highway crosses onto John's Island. Only a few miles separated it from Champneys' plantation on the Wallace River, a tributary of the Stono
