Robert Child (agriculturalist) facts for kids

Robert Child (1613–1654) was an English doctor, farmer, and someone interested in alchemy. He had new ideas about farming and how countries could manage their money and resources.

Child's Early Life and Education

Robert Child was born in 1613 in Northfleet, Kent, England. He went to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge for his education. Later, he studied medicine at two famous universities in Europe: Leiden in the Netherlands and Padua in Italy. He earned his medical degree from Leiden in 1635 and another from Padua in 1638.

Adventures in New England

After finishing his studies, Robert Child did not immediately start working as a doctor. In 1638, he traveled to New England, which was a new colony at the time. He stayed there until 1641. During this time, he met John Winthrop the younger, who was working on a project to build ironworks. Child supported this idea.

While living in Watertown, Child joined a group called the Nashaway Company. This company was interested in finding iron ore to make iron. However, he soon returned to England.

From 1641, Child worked in England. He used his good connections to try and help New England become self-sufficient in making iron. He also traveled a lot in Europe, where he met an alchemist named Pierre Jean Fabre.

Child returned to New England in 1645. He became very active in running the Saugus ironworks. He also showed interest in the fur trade and looked for places to grow grapes for a vineyard. However, he soon became involved in local politics and religious arguments. This led to him being forced to leave in 1647 because he was a Presbyterian, which was a different religious group from the main one in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Child had joined a group that disagreed with the main religious leaders, who were called Independents (or Congregationalists). He became the leader of this group, which was called the Remonstrants. He wrote a document called the "Remonstrance and Humble Petition." People disagree about what this document aimed to do, but it included trying to get the English Parliament to have more control over the colonies.

Child's Interest in Alchemy

Robert Child, along with John Winthrop the younger and Richard Leader from the Saugus ironworks, was very interested in alchemy. Alchemy was an old practice that combined science, philosophy, and magic, often focused on turning metals into gold or finding a universal cure. Their interest in alchemy came from their work with iron.

Some writers in the 1600s thought that Child was a famous alchemist who used the fake name Eirenaeus Philalethes. However, this was incorrect. That name actually belonged to his friend George Starkey, who was also from the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Child also worked with Benjamin Worsley and was interested in the chemical work of Johann Glauber.

Child knew other people interested in chemistry, like John French, who wrote about distillation (a way to purify liquids). He knew Robert Boyle, a famous scientist, well enough to introduce Starkey to him in 1650. At that time, Child was also putting together a group of people, including Thomas Henshaw and Thomas Vaughan, to collect and translate old alchemical and chemical texts.

New Ideas for Farming

Robert Child believed in intensive cultivation, which means growing a lot of crops in a small area, rather than traditional agriculture. He wrote about his ideas in a book called The Defects and Remedies of English Husbandry (1652). His ideas were very different from what most people thought at the time, including Walter Blith, another farming expert. Today, many people think Child was ahead of his time.

This book was also known as Child's "Large Letter" and was part of a bigger work called Samuel Hartlib His Legacie (1651). Other people who contributed to this work included Cressy Dymock and Gabriel Plats. Child also wrote about using marl (a type of soil) for farming. He suggested that farmers should pay attention to what they could dig out of the ground to improve their land.

Child was part of a group called the Hartlib Circle, led by Samuel Hartlib. This group had many people who wrote letters to each other, sharing ideas. Child joined this group by 1645. Like others in the Circle, he supported enclosures, which meant fencing off land for farming. The book Ireland's Naturall History by Gerard and Arnold Boate also showed the Circle's interests and included Child's ideas about surveying "Metals, Minerals ..." in Ireland.

Child's Final Years

In 1651, Robert Child was invited by Arthur Hill to his large estate in Ulster, Ireland. Child stayed there for the rest of his life. He continued to study natural history and learn about the farming methods in that area. He passed away in 1654.