Pedagogue, historian and amateur botanist, Joseph Martindale concerned himself with collecting plants in the Philadelphia area. With his brother Isaac and brother-in-law, B. F. Saurman, he prepared the natural history for the work later published under Joseph C. Martindale's name, A History of the Townships of Byberry and Moreland... 1867. He maintained an exchange with Charles Eastwick Smith, sending various lists of plants, localities and general information about collecting in the area. The letters and lists were preserved with Smith's correspondence which was given to the Academy at his death in 1900 and archived to the Library in 1954.