Charles Arnold
Charles Arnold was born in Bedfordshire, England, in 1818. In 1833 he removed to Paris, Ontario. He was an enthusiastic hybridizer in many lines, producing a white wheat,
the Ontario apple, and the American Wonder pea. In 1853 he established the Paris Nurseries. Of his numerous seedling grapes he gave names to
Autuchon, Brant, Canada,
Cornucopia and Othello.
He was for many years prominent in the agricultural and scientific associations of his adopted country.
His object in crossing grapes was to secure varieties sufficiently hardy and early for the Canadian climate.
In this he was in a measure successful but his crosses are so susceptible to mildew and rot that their culture has been generally abandoned in both Canada and the United States.
He died at his home in Paris, Canada, in 1883.
[From: The Grapes of New York, page 200.]
Liberty Hyde Bailey
Liberty Hyde Bailey was born in 1858 in South Haven, Michigan. He
graduated from the Michigan Agricultural College in 1882 and then
studied botany for two years with Asa Gray at Harvard University. He
became professor of horticulture at his Alma Mater in 1885 and resigned
in 1888 to accept the Chair of Horticulture in Cornell University, a
position which he filled until 1904 when he became Director of the
Cornell University Agricultural Experiment Station and Dean of the New
York State College of Agriculture. In 1907 he was given the degree of
Doctor of Laws by the University of Wisconsin. Dr. Bailey is known as a
teacher and experimenter but is better known for his horticultural and
botanical writings. He has published many popular books on agricultural
subjects. The best known of these are: The Nursery Book; The Rule Book;
Principles of Vegetable Gardening; Garden Making; The Pruning Book; The
Survival of the Unlike; The Evolution of Our Native Fruits. Besides
these popular, or semi-popular works he has published two cyclopedias: The Cyclopedia of American Horticulture and The Cyclopedia of American Agriculture. Dr. Bailey's position in American horticultural literature is unique in that he represents the botanical side of
horticulture. He has written monographs on several of our cultivated
fruits, notably grapes and plums, both appearing in The Evolution of Our Native Fruits.
[From: The Grapes of New York, page 142.]
A brief account of the life of Liberty Hyde Bailey appeared in The Grapes of New York (page 142), but his work with plums deserves further mention. The foundation of our present knowledge of the cultivated species and
races of American and Triflora plums was laid by the comprehensive study
of these fruits made by Bailey in the closing decade of the Nineteenth
Century. His examination of plums may be said to have begun in 1886
with the setting of an orchard of native plums―probably the first
general collection of these plums planted―on the grounds of the Michigan
Agricultural College, Lansing, Michigan. The results of his studies
have largely appeared in the publications of the Cornell Agricultural
Experiment Station, the first of which was The Cultivated Native Plums and Cherries published in 1892; The Japanese Plums, 1894; Revised Opinions of the Japanese Plums, 1896; Third Report upon Japanese Plums,
1897; Notes upon Plums, 1897. Beside these bulletins a monograph of the
native plums was published in The Evolution of our Native Fruits in
1898 and a brief but complete monograph of the Genus Prunus in the
Cyclopedia of American Horticulture in 1901. These are but the chief
titles under which his studies of plums have appeared, several minor
contributions having been printed from time to time in the
horticultural press. While Dr. Bailey has given especial attention to
all fruits grown in eastern America, it is probable that pomology is
most indebted to him for his long and painstaking work with the
difficult Genus Prunus with which he has done much to set the varieties
and species in order.
[From: The Plums of New York, p.64]
Patrick Barry
Patrick Barry, one of the founders of the firm of Ellwanger
and Barry, whose Mount Hope Nurseries at Rochester, New York, were long
of national and international reputation, was born in Belfast, Ireland,
in 1816 and died in Rochester, N. Y., in 1890. Besides contributing to
the fame of the nursery company he helped to found, Barry was for many
years one of the leading pomological editors and authors of the
country. New York, especially western New York, is greatly indebted to
George Ellwanger and Patrick Barry for the horticultural services of
their firm. It is not an exaggeration to say that they introduced
fruit-growing in western New York, a region now famous for its fruits.
So, also, the parks and home grounds of the many beautiful cities,
towns, and villages in western New York are adorned and enriched by
ornamental trees, shrubs and vines from the nurseries of Ellwanger and
Barry. Patrick Barry came to America in 1836 and with George Ellwanger
founded the Mount Hope Nurseries in 1840. Here for a half century he
devoted himself to the introduction and distribution of fruit and
out-of-door ornamental plants. In the early life of the nursery company
many importations were made from Europe and at a time when there were no railroads, telegraph wires, nor ocean steamboats. It
was during this early period that the Mount Hope Nurseries began the
importation of pears and soon built up one of the largest collections
in the country and one which was maintained long after the famous
collections farther east had disappeared. At one time or another over
1000 varieties of pears were tested on the grounds of this nursery. For
a half century, fruit-growers have studied with pleasure and profit the
exhibits of pears made by Ellwanger and Barry at the State and National
exhibitions of note. From 1844 to 1852, Patrick Barry edited The
Genesee Farmer, one of the best agricultural papers of its day and
succeeded A. J. Downing in the editorship of The Horticulturist which
he brought to Rochester in 1855 where it was published until 1887.
Barry's Treatise on the Fruit-Garden appeared in 1851 and at once
became one of the most popular books on pomology. In 1872 the "
Treatise " was rewritten and published as Barry's Fruit Garden. Another
notable work of which he was author was The Catalogue of Fruits of the
American Pomological Society which was compiled by him. Patrick Barry
was one of the founders of the Western New York Horticultural Society,
for many years the leading horticultural organization of the continent,
and of which he was president for more than thirty years. Patrick Barry
ranks with Coxe, Kenrick, the Downings, Warder, Eliot, and Thomas as a
great leader in pomology of the time in which he lived.
William Crawford Barry, son of Patrick Barry of the preceding sketch, was born in Rochester, New York, in 1847. As a boy he attended parochial schools at Rochester and at Seton Hall, South Orange, New Jersey. As a young man he studied in Berlin, Heidelberg, and the University of Louvain in Belgium. Upon returning to America he took a position in a seed house in New York that he might have practical knowledge of the seed business to bring to the firm of Ellwanger and Barry of which he was soon to become a member. After serving an apprenticeship in the seed business he returned to Rochester to enter the firm which his father and George Ellwanger had founded. From the time of entrance in this company he took a prominent part in its affairs, and for many years before his death, December 12, 1916, he was president of the corporation. Of his horticultural activities, he may be said to have been an organizer and promoter one of the captains in the industry. For twenty-six years he was president of the Western New York Horticultural Society, having succeeded his father to this office. He was the first president of the American Rose Society, and in 1882 was president of the Eastern Nurserymen's Association. For three years he was president of the Board of Control of the New York Agricultural Experiment Station. He helped to establish and took a leader's part in developing the parks of Rochester which have made that city famous among lovers of landscapes. Highland Park was almost a creation of the firm of Ellwanger and Barry. In 1888 the firm gave the city twenty acres of land adjoining the Highland reservoir as the first step in establishing a park system for Rochester. Mr. Barry was chairman of the committee of the park board having in charge Highland Park from the creation of the board until the year before his death when it passed out of existence. Besides these horticultural activities, Mr. Barry was either president or an officer in six banks and trust companies in Rochester. His was a commanding figure in the horticulture of New York. No one attending the meetings of the Western New York Horticultural Society during the twenty-six years he was president can forget Mr. Barry. His knowledge in every division of horticulture, his devotion to grape and pear culture, his genial manner and pleasant greeting to all members, and his force and tact as a presiding officer fitted him so preeminently well for the place that he was unopposed for the presidency during twenty-six terms following the death of his father and until his death.
John Bartram
John Bartram was born near the village of Darby in Delaware (then Chester) County, Pennsylvania, in 1699. Bartram is generally credited
with having established the first botanical garden in America. This garden was founded about 1728, some four miles south of what was the town of Philadelphia and is now a part of the Park System of that city. He was bred a Quaker but owing to his liberal opinions was excluded from that Society in 1758. During his life he was in correspondence with many of the leading scientific men of Europe to whom he sent many
specimens of plants and other things of scientific interest. He made many trips into various parts of the colonies, to Ontario, Lake George,
the Carolinas, Florida and Georgia, in search of information. The last of these journeys, that to the southern states, was made after he was seventy years of age. Bartram is blamed by all of his contemporaries
for not having published more than he did. His death occurred in 1777.
William Bartram
William Bartram, son of John Bartram, was born in 1739 and died in 1823. Much of his work was done in connection with his father under whom he received his botanical training. His best known work is his Travels in the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida (1791), in which he gives an interesting account of that region, including descriptions of a
number of new southern plants. His article on grapes which is here
quoted was published in the Domestic Encyclopedia, 1804, and also in
the Medical Repository of the same year.
[The brief biographies of the Bartrams was originally from: The Grapes of New York, page 97.]
George Bentham
George Bentham was born near Plymouth,
England, in 1800. His father was a man of considerable wealth and the
son was privately educated. Early in life he showed an inclination
toward botany, writing a book on The Plants of the Pyrenees and Lower
Languedoc which was published when he was only twenty-six years old.
For a time he studied law in which he showed considerable talent and
where his original views attracted some attention. Later, however, he
gave his attention to botany almost exclusively, joined the London Horticultural Society and the Linnaean Society, and was more or less
closely connected with the workers at Kew. In connection with J. D. Hooker he wrote the Genera Plantarum. Others of his well-known works
are Flora Australiensis and Handbook of the British Flora. Bentham died
in 1884.
[From: The Grapes of New York, page 135.]
Prosper Julius A. Berckmans
Prosper Julius A. Berckmans was one of the noted horticulturists and
pomologists of the generation just passing. He was born at Aerschat,
near Antwerp, Belgium, October 13, 1830, his father being Dr. Louis Edouard Berckmans, author of the splendid
pomological work, Album de Pomologie, and as noted in Europe as was the
son in America, in horticulture and pomology. The younger Berckmans was
educated in Tours, Belgium and Paris, attaining distinction as a
student in botany. In 1850 father and son came to America and the
following year settled at Plainfield, New Jersey. Six years later the
son moved to Augusta, Georgia, and established near that place a
horticultural plantation, which he called "Fruitlands," the nursery of
which has become famous throughout the world. Soon after locating in
Georgia, Mr. Berckmans became interested in horticultural organizations
and later his activities were extended to the promotion of horticulture
in the Nation. In 1859 he became a member of the first horticultural
society in Georgia. In 1876 he helped to organize and was the first
president of the Georgia State Horticultural Society, a position which
he held until his death. In 1860 he became a member of the American Pomological Society and was at once intrusted with important committee
work in that organization. His work here was done so well that in 1887
he was elected president of the society and later was four times
re-elected. Mr. Berckmans was a member of a number of state and
national horticultural and scientific organizations other than those
named and was an honorary member of many similar societies in Europe. In 1893 he was chosen to make the opening address of the Horticultural Congress held at the World's Fair in Chicago that year. Mr. Berckmans
was eminent in entomology as well as in botany and horticulture and was
interested in all the sciences. Through much reading, study and travel
he became versed in literature and art as well as science. Mr. Berckmans' fellow-workers in horticulture, his business associates and
the patrons of his nursery, justly esteemed him for his amiability,
integrity and public spiritedness. At his death, November 8, 1910, a
well spent life was ended.
[from pages 159-160 in The Plums of New York]
Jean Louis Berlandier
Jean Louis Berlandier was a Belgian pupil of the great De Candolle, but left
Europe about 1828 for America and became a druggist in Matamoras,
Mexico. He was one of the first botanists to explore northern Mexico
and Texas. In attempting to cross one of the small streams south of the
Rio Grande in 1851, he was drowned. Many of his papers, plants and some
paintings are preserved in the herbarium of Harvard University and his
services to botany are commemorated by the genus Berlandiera, dedicated
to him by De Candolle, and the species Vitis berlandieri here described.
[From: The Grapes of New York, page 131.]
Dr. William Draper Brincklé
Dr. William Draper Brincklé, originator of many red raspberries,
strawberries, and of two pears, was one of the most prominent American
pomologists in the middle of the last century. He was born in Delaware
in 1799, and following in his father's footsteps began the practice of
medicine at the early age of twenty-one in Wilmington, but to find a
larger field for his profession moved to Philadelphia in 1825, where he
lived the remainder of a busy life in the vocation of medicine and the
avocation of pomology. During his last few years a physical affliction
made him an invalid and cut short his life; he died in 1863 in his
sixty-fourth year. Dr. Brincklé's most important work in pomology was
the amelioration of the strawberry and the red raspberry. Beginning
with the strawberry, which he hybridized in a little room in his
Philadelphia home, he bred and introduced several fine varieties, of
which, perhaps, Cushing was the most notable. Turning his attention
next to red raspberries, he produced the Col. Wilder, Cope,
Cushing,
and Orange, as his finest sorts, of which for many years Orange was a
standard commercial variety and is still the acme in quality.
Wilmington and Catherine Gardette pears were his chief contributions to
the tree fruits. For a quarter of a century, Dr. Brincklé was a leader
in American pomology, during which time he served terms as president
and vice-president of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society and as
vice-president of the American Pomological Society. In 1860 he was
editor of Hoffy's North American Pomologist, a most admirable
pomological periodical with colored plates. His life was an eminently
useful one in medicine and pomology, besides which he was distinguished
as a man of great culture and refinement and was beloved by a wide
circle of friends in private life, medicine, and pomology.
A.L. Bruce
A. L. Bruce, whose name appears so frequently in the pages of The Plums of New York
as a breeder of native plums, is of Scotch descent. His father,
however, came from Illinois to Texas, settling at Basin Springs,
Grayson County, in 1845, where he planted the first orchard in that
part of Texas. The son, subject of this sketch, was born October 6,
1861, and was educated in the common schools at Basin Springs, Texas. His
work in growing and breeding trees began in his youth, for in 1877 he
established himself as a grower and collector of native plums to which
he added many of the Triflora varieties that were soon after introduced
from Japan. Mr. Bruce's first definite problem in breeding plums was to
find extra early and extra late sorts for Texas; his Six Weeks, Red May, Dayton and several other plums were the results of these efforts.
In 1902 Mr. Bruce moved to Donley County in the Panhandle of Texas from
which place he has sent out and continues to send out Triflora, native
and hybrid plums of unusual merit. Beside working with plums Mr. Bruce
is a breeder of peaches, pears, raspberries, dewberries and apples, to
all of which fruits he has made more or less notable contributions. Mr.
Bruce is still in the prime of life, has many plant-breeding problems
projected and his work promises much for horticulture in the Southwest
and in the country at large.
[He was also the president and manager of Clarendon Nurseries in Donley County, Texas.
Mostly From: The Plums of New York, pp. 527-528. -ASC]
Samuel Botsford Buckley
Samuel Botsford Buckley was born in 1809, in Yates County, New York,
and was educated at Wesleyan University, where he graduated in 1836. In
1866 he was appointed State Geologist of Texas where he resided until
he died in 1884. Buckley traveled extensively in connection with his
work, explored the southwestern region of the Appalachian Mountains, as
well as the southwestern portion of the United States. He was at great
disadvantage in his publications in that they were prepared without the
benefit of a library. His articles on grapes were published in the
Proceedings of the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences for 1861,
and in the United States Patent Office Report for the same year.
[From: The Grapes of New York, page 116.]
Joseph Lancaster Budd
Professor Joseph Lancaster Budd was
a native of New York, having been born July 3, 1835, at Peekskill,
Westchester County. On his father's side he was of French ancestry, but
his mother was of English descent, a member of the Lancaster family,
early settlers on the Hudson River. He was educated in the public
schools of Monticello, Monticello Academy and at Hiram College, though
he did not finish at the last named institution because of financial
distress at home. In 1857 the young man moved west and for a year
taught in an academy at Rockford, Illinois, and in the Wheaton schools
of the same state. In 1858 he moved to Benton County, Iowa, where he
established the Benton County Orchards and Nurseries. He soon became
identified with horticulture in Iowa, especially through its State
Horticultural Society, an organization of which he was secretary from
1873 to 1885 and from 1892 to 1895, serving in all seventeen years. In
1876 he was elected to the chair of Horticulture and Forestry in the
Iowa Agricultural College, a position which he held until 1899, when he
retired as professor emeritus, having spent twenty-two years in pioneer
work in this college. In 1882 Professor Budd visited Russia to study
the hardy plants of that country and imported from there many varieties
of fruit, as well as other plants, which he thought suited to the
climate of the Northwest. After his return his work was largely given
up to originating and testing varieties which he thought would prove of
value to the States of the Plains. He was preeminent in America for his
work with Russian fruits and was one of the first to see the
possibilities of our native plums. The frequency with which his name is
mentioned in this book as a breeder of hardy fruits indicates his
interest in securing plums adapted to the region in which he lived. The
horticultural library of Charles Downing, by the wish of the owner, was
given to the Iowa Agricultural College with the expectation that
Professor Budd would revise Downing's famous Fruits and Trees of
America. Ill health prevented the accomplishment of this task,
although as senior author he published, in 1902, the American Horticultural Manual in two volumes. During the greater part of his
active life he was a constant correspondent of the horticultural
press-Professor Budd was a teacher as well as a pomologist and did much
for American pomology in imparting to the men who came in contact with
him both knowledge and enthusiasm. He died in Phoenix, Arizona,
December 26, 1904.
[From: The Plums of New York, page 145]
Ephraim Bull
Ephraim W. Bull was born in Concord, Massachusetts, in 1805 and died in 1895. He will long be remembered by grape-growers as the originator and introducer of the Concord grape, the history of which is given in the above account of that variety. Bull grew many other seedlings, none of which attained a reputation among growers unless it be Cottage. Ephraim Bull's ninety years were spent in the quiet of his Concord home and he would have remained unknown by others than his neighbors, who honored and loved him, had it not been for his fortunate discovery of the Concord grape, which must always give him a place in the history of American grape culture.
The grape which has added immensely to the wealth of a nation, brought its originator scarcely a year's competence.
As a partial recompense for his great service to horticulture and to the nation, the memory of Ephraim W. Bull should live long.
[From: The Grapes of New York, page 221]
Luther Burbank
Luther Burbank, known the world over for his work in bringing into being new plant forms, was born in Lancaster, Massachusetts, March 7, 1849. He was educated in the common schools and in the local academy, his school-training being supplemented by much reading in the well-stocked library of which every New England town boasts. After leaving school, some time was spent in a factory in Worcester, Massachusetts, but, following a strong natural inclination to work with plants, he left the factory to grow vegetables and seeds. It was while so engaged that he grew the Burbank potato, most widely known and most valuable, if gauged by the monetary value of the crops produced, of all of his new plants. In 1875 Mr. Burbank went to California and a few years later began in a small way the plant-breeding nursery at Santa Rosa in which most of his work has since been done. The years preceding this beginning and several following it constitute a time of hard
labor, sickness and of financial distress through which only a man of remarkable strength of character could have lived and kept the desire to continue his work. Following a decade, more or less, of difficulties after the start at Santa Rosa, Mr. Burbank's career as a world-wide figure in plant-breeding may be said to have begun. One cannot briefly catalog the new forms of plants that have gone forth from his private place in California; they must number well into the hundreds; his biographer, in 1905, said that Mr. Burbank has worked with over two thousand five hundred distinct species (Harwood, W. S., New Creations in Plant Life 1. 1905). Among these have been practically all of the species of plums now under cultivation, from which have been obtained, according to Mr. Burbank, hundreds of thousands of plum-seedlings of which the breeder has selected a score or more of very distinct sorts, all interesting and a few of them very
valuable. The many other fruits, flowers and forage plants which Mr. Burbank has sent out, each involving the handling of countless seedlings, cannot be mentioned here. Nor can his methods and results be discussed, except to say that in them he is a unique figure in plant-breeding and that they have been such that he has exercised a powerful influence toward the improvement of plants. The practical results of Mr. Burbank's work have been as great or greater than those secured by any other person in plant-breeding, yet they have been magnified out of all bounds in the popular press and his work has been caricatured by calling the man a wizard and ascribing to him occult knowledge. Of the plants introduced by Mr. Burbank the proportion of really valuable commercial ones seems now to be small, but what he has done cannot be measured by money values; he has awakened universal interest in plant-breeding; has demonstrated that things unheard of before his time can be done with plants; and, all in all, his contributions in new forms of plants to horticulture and agriculture, in their intrinsic and educational value, make him the master worker of the times in improving plants.
[From The Plums of New York, pp. 170-171]
John Burr
John Burr was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, in 1800. In early life he removed to Ohio, where, although he was engaged in mercantile pursuits, he passed his leisure time in
experimenting with strawberries. In this work he was quite successful, producing Burr's Pine and Burr's Seedling, once popular sorts. In 1858 Burr moved to Kansas and soon after began breeding grapes. For this work he was a believer in natural pollination and planted the varieties which he desired to use as parents
in close proximity that they might pollinate each other. Burr at first used Concord, Hartford, Isabella, and other grapes of this class as parents, but later he destroyed all of the
seedlings of these and used Delaware, Goethe, Salem, Catawba, and other Vinifera hybrids. He did not take trouble to note from which variety the seed came but mixed and planted all together. The records of the parentage of his productions are consequently usually unsatisfactory. Most of his grape productions were introduced to the public by Stayman & Black, a nearby nursery firm. Of Burr's many seedlings he gave names to the following: Cochee, Early Victor, Eclipse, Evaline, Ideal, Iola, Jewel, Magnate, Matchless, Mendota, Omega, Osage, Osee, Paragon, Peola, Primate,
Pulasky [Pulaski], Seneca, Superior, Standard, Supreme, and White Jewel. Burr died at his home in Leavenworth, Kansas, in 1892.
[From: The Grapes of New York, page 251]
Isadore Bush
Isadore Bush was born at Prague,
Bohemia, in 1822. Bush was one of those Germans who, taking part in the
troubles of the Fatherland in 1848, found it necessary to seek a home
in the New World. He went to Missouri upon his arrival in the country
and there spent the remainder of his life. During the Civil War he was
secretary to General Fremont and at various times occupied many other
positions of trust. He established the Bushberg nursery which for many
years was the leading grape nursery of this country. With the aid of
Engelmann and others he wrote the Bushberg Catalogue and Grape Manual,
a work which has passed through many editions and has probably been
more popular and useful than any other book on American grapes
published in the English language. Bush died in St. Louis in 1898,
having been a citizen of that place for forty-nine years.
[From: The Grapes of New York, page 119]
Creighton Lee Calhoun, Jr.
As I write this on Christmas Day 2022, I offer these words as a tiny gift to the memory of Lee Calhoun, Jim Lawson, Gary Couvillon and other great contemporary pomologists whom I was not so fortunate to meet in person and as an offering of gratitude to their ancestors who brought these dedicated and decent people to us. I recognize that my words will never come close to adequately thanking them for the service they have done for those of us who remain in pomology and those who just appreciate life.
After moving to North Carolina and finally getting a plot of land where I could plant trees, I began looking around for local sources of good apple trees to plant. My family's farm in Georgia had been sold, along with my orchard, so I couldn't collect scionwood from there. I was beside myself with a feeling of good fortune when I learned that Lee Calhoun, the admired author of Old Southern Apples lived in our little town of Pittsboro! I reached out to him to custom graft a few trees for me. To my delight, when it was time to pick them up, he invited us in to chat. He and his wife Edith were relaxed and gracious hosts, showing me around their wonderful Japanese-inspired home and taking time to talk with me at length about heritage Southern apples. The world of Southern apples owes him a great debt. His book, Old Southern Apples, which he updated and revised in 2010 (ISBN 978-1-60358-294-0) is a comprehensive compendium equal to Beach's The Apples of New York and other pomological classics. Lee was also an avid apple hunter and personally rescued several old cultivars from extinction, including 'Bevan's Favorite' and 'Fall Orange'.
George W. Campbell
George W. Campbell was born in Cortlandville, New York, in 1817. The family moved to Ohio in 1821. In early life Campbell was a printer and editor, as his father had been before him.
In 1849 he moved from Sandusky, Ohio, to Delaware in the same State and it was in the latter place that his attention was first turned to horticulture as a livelihood,
although he had been interested in it as an amateur much earlier. He was a continuous member of the American Pomological Society from the time of its organization in 1850 until his death. He raised thousands of seedling grapes, of which the following were given names: Campbell Early, Concord Chasselas, Concord Muscat, Juno, Lady, Purity, Triumph, White Delaware. All of these are practically obsolete in the North except Campbell Early and Lady.
Campbell died at his home in Delaware, Ohio, in 1898. For many years before his death he had been the leading writer and speaker in the North on the culture of the grape and on grape-breeding,
and his work had a marked influence on the improvement of viticulture.
[From: The Grapes of New York, page 198]
M. Cibot, a French missionary, writing
nearly a century and a half ago in his memoirs concerning the Chinese
(11:280-293. 1784), gives the following account of peaches with which
he was familiar in China at that time:
"Peaches are distinguished by size and color, the shape and earliness of their
fruit. There are some whose flesh is white, some greenish, some a
delicate yellow, some a yellow orange and some marble; some are round,
some oval, some lengthened to a point like a crow's beak. Peaches are
heard of weighing two pounds or even more. The largest ones I have seen
were scarcely three and a half inches in length and diameter; as to
earliness, in the middle provinces there are peaches almost as soon as
cherries. It is still more astonishing that some varieties do not ripen
here till October, and that there is a secret by which they can be kept
till January, just as fresh, just as beautiful, and just as delicious
as if right off the tree."
Dr. Gary A. Couvillon
Gary Couvillon, or Dr. Couvillon, as I insisted on calling him because I'm old-fashioned was an innovative, pioneering pomologist, whose contributions to pomology are too numerous to list. Among his many published accomplishments included defining the parameters for successful implementation of peach meadow orchards and his collaborations on rest/dormancy/chilling research in fruit crops via his collaborations with Dr. Amon Erez, Dr. Fishman and others at the Volcani Institute and other researchers. His own lab and field studies were based at the University of Georgia, where he started his faculty career after completing his Master's degree (he, of course earned his Ph.D. soon thereafter). He was a fantastic teacher as well as an accomplished researcher. I remember him handing back an essay-format exam where most students had done poorly on. When students grumbled about the format, he defended it with his usual good humor, saying, "Hey, when you get jobs and are talking to farmers, the farmer isn't going to say, 'What's wrong with my plants, A, B, or C?'" I was honored to earn my Master's degree in his laboratory and he was open-minded enough to encourage me to pursue my interest in the molecular basis of rest release, even though the technique I was using wasn't even known by its current name yet (proteomics). He also used to tease me, good-naturedly about my hobby of growing pears, saying it was impossible to grow good quality pears in the Southeast. I didn't downplay the difficulty, especially during the 1980's before many good blight-resistant pears were released, but I believed that some of cultivars, like 'Ayres' and 'Mericourt' were quite good and hoped that they would be blight-resistant enough. When I brought a basket of these pears to his office one day, he chuckled happily. Now THAT'S a SCIENTIST, I thought to myself― someone who is HAPPY to be proven wrong. I was deeply saddened to hear of his passing, before I got around to thanking him for all he did for me and for pomology.
William Coxe
Fruit Trees, published in 1817 by William Coxe, is the first American
pomology. Though written by an amateur, during most of his life a
merchant, his work was done with so much care and exhibits such nice
discrimination in selecting, describing and discussing varieties of
fruits that until the later and more complete work of Andrew Jackson
Downing and Charles Downing, Coxe's Fruit Trees, competing with several
other manuals, was the standard pomological work of America. William
Coxe was born in Philadelphia, May 3, 1762, and died near Burlington,
New Jersey, February 25, 1831. He seems to have inherited wealth and
with it scholarly habits and such refinement and charm of personality
that in Philadelphia and later in Burlington, to which place he removed
in early manhood, he was one of the leaders, in literary, scientific
and social circles. His tastes early led him to the cultivation of
fruit and he began to grow the varieties then to be had in America and
to import sorts from England and France so that by 1817 he was able to
say that he had been " for many years actively engaged in the rearing,
planting and cultivating fruit trees on a scale more extensive than has
been attempted by any other individual in this country." Previous to
this for some years, how long cannot be said, he was the moneyed
partner with one Daniel Smith in what, for the
times, was an extensive fruit-tree and ornamental nursery. Demands for
information became so frequent that he determined to put his knowledge
in print and his Fruit Trees was the result. The objects he sought to
obtain in writing are well set forth in the title page as follows: "A
VIEW of the CULTIVATION of FRUIT TREES, and the Management of Orchards
and Cider; with Accurate Descriptions of the Most Estimable Varieties
of NATIVE AND FOREIGN APPLES, PEARS, PEACHES, PLUMS, AND CHERRIES,
Cultivated in the Middle States of America; Illustrated by Cuts of two
hundred kinds of Fruits of the natural size; Intended to Explain Some
of the errors which exist relative to the origin, popular names, and
character of many of our fruits; to identify them by accurate
descriptions of their properties, and correct delineations of the full
size and natural formation of each variety; and to exhibit a system of
practice adapted to our climate, in the Successive Stages of A NURSERY,
ORCHARD, AND CIDER ESTABLISHMENT." He was at one time a member of the
State Legislature and later a Congressman intimately associated with
Daniel Webster. He was, also, an honorary member of the Horticultural
Society of London to which during many years he was a faithful
correspondent. It was Coxe's privilege to see the very beginnings of
commercial peach-growing in America and through his nursery, his
orchard and his book he contributed much to American peach-culture. [From The Peaches
of New York, page 254.]
Henry Dearborn
General Henry Alexander Scammell Dearborn, who followed the
vocation of a soldier, statesman, and author, chose as his avocation
horticulture and in several of its fields became eminent. A native of
New England (1783-1851), son of General Henry Dearborn of
Revolutionary fame, he was early educated to the profession of law and
pursued that vocation until the war with Great Britain in 1812.
Services in this war brought him the rank and title of general. After
the war he served as Collector of the Port of Boston, in Congress, and
as Mayor of Roxbury, Massachusetts, which office he held at the time of
his death. But it is as a patron, friend, and lover of horticulture
that the life and work of General Dearborn interest pomologists. He was
one of the charter members in the Massachusetts Horticultural Society
and a prime mover in its organization. He was elected its first
president March 17, 1829. In the history of the Society published in
1880, of all the famous members of this truly remarkable organization,
General first president of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society. In
1831, General Dearborn first exhibited fruit of the variety at the
Massachusetts Horticultural Society where it was named Dearborn's
Seedling in honor of the originator. This variety should not be
confused with a pear raised by Van Mons of Belgium and named by him
Dearborn. The Dearborn of Van Mons is larger and ripens later than the
American Dearborn, and was long since taken from lists of pears
recommended for cultivation in America. Dearborn was included in the
American Pomological Society's first fruit-catalog in 1848, where it
was called Dearborn's Seedling. In 1883, the Society shortened the name
to Dearborn. Since 1891, the name has failed to appear in the catalogs
of this Society.
Dearborn's portrait was chosen for the frontispiece. He was
early interested in experimental gardens and rural cemeteries. The
plans for experimental gardens advocated by him were never fully
carried out, but no doubt his enthusiasm for such gardens, with his own
garden as a model, did much to stimulate the planting in America in the
early half of the nineteenth century of the many famous gardens which
adorned and enriched every center of culture along the Atlantic
seaboard. He helped to establish the Mount Auburn and Forest Hills
cemeteries, famous among Boston cemeteries, and the first of rural
cemeteries in this country. His life-long devotion to rural art as
exemplified in gardens and cemeteries knew no bounds. On these subjects
and on pomology he contributed many articles to the agricultural and
horticultural papers of his time. Few men, it can be said, could better
concentrate their thoughts and feelings on paper than he seems to have
done. Besides the many papers from his own pen he published several
translated treatises from the French, chief of which was a monograph on
the Camellia in 1838 and another on Morus multicaulis in 1830, the "
Mulberry Craze " being in full swing at this time. General Dearborn was
an ardent pear-grower and helped to test the hundreds of seedlings then
being brought from Belgium and France and grew as well considerable
numbers from his own seed-beds. Of all his seedlings, however, only
Dearborn survives.
Augustin and Alphonse De Candolle
Augustin Pyramus De Candolle
was born at Geneva, Switzerland, 1778, and died at Turin, Italy, in
1841. He came of an ancient French family which had been driven out of
Provence in the middle of the sixteenth century owing to their
religion. He began his scientific studies at the College of Geneva, but
later removed to Paris where he attended courses of lectures on natural
science under the greatest scientists of that day. His best known works
are: Historia plantarum Succulentarum; Synopsis plantarum in flora Gallica descriptarum; and Prodromus Systematis regni vegetabilis (1824―), this last being only about two-thirds completed at the time of his death.
Alphonse Louis Pierre Pyrame De Candolle was
born in Paris, France, in 1806. Like his father, whose life is sketched
above, he became a noted botanist. His most important works have been
translated into English and are as follows: Geographical Botany, 1855;
Origin of Cultivated Plants, 1883; and the Memoirs of his father, 1862.
He died in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1893.
[The brief biographies of the De Candolles were taken from: The Grapes of New York, page 146.]
Andrew Jackson Downing
Andrew Jackson Downing was born in Newburgh
on the Hudson, the town in which he always lived and which he loved, October
30, 1815. He perished while trying to save other passengers in the burning
of the steamer Henry Clay on the Hudson River, July 28, 1852, at the age
of 37. Andrew Downing's education was largely acquired from self instruction
although he attended the schools of his native town and the academy in
the adjoining village of Montgomery. His father, a nurseryman, whose work
was mentioned in the sketch of Charles Downing, elder brother of Andrew,
gave the younger son every opportunity to cultivate an early developed
taste for horticulture, botany and the natural sciences. When but a youth
he joined his brother Charles as partner in a nursery firm, a relationship
maintained for but a few years and which he severed to begin a career as
a writer on landscape gardening and pomological subjects. His first publication
was a Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening adapted
to North America, with a view to the Improvement of Country Residences,
with Remarks on Rural Architecture, a book published in 1841, the author
being but 26 years of age. The work passed into instant popularity and
is the word of authority which has told thousands of Americans what to
do to make their grounds beautiful. Within a few months so great was the
success of the first venture that in response to the demand he published
his Cottage Residences, a companion book which was received with
equal favor, thus giving Andrew Downing first rank as an authority on rural
art. In 1845 theFruits and Fruit
Trees of America, then and now the chief pomological authority
of this continent, was printed simultaneously in London and New York, a
second edition coming out in 1850. In 1846 Andrew Downing became the founder
and editor of the Horticulturist, which he continued to publish until
his death. In 1849 he wrote Additional Notes and Hints about Building
in the Country, published in Wightwick's
Hints to Young Architects.
The summer of 1850 was spent in England in the study of landscape gardening
and rural architecture from the result of which came his Architecture
of Country Houses. His last work was the editing of Mrs. Loudon's Landscape
Gardening for Ladies though
Rural Essaysappeared after his death
as a collection of his writings with a memoir by George William Curtis
and a Letter to his Friends by Frederika Bremer. He was employed
in planting the public grounds of the Capitol, the White House and the
Smithsonian Institution at Washington when he met his untimely death. Downing
is the creator of American landscape gardening and shares with his brother
Charles the honor of being the most distinguished
pomologist of the country. In the epoch-making Fruits and Fruit Trees of
America Andrew Downing was the real genius, Charles Downing the conscientious
and painstaking student who worked out the details.
Charles Downing
Charles Downing, whose likeness we show in the frontispiece, was born
at Newburgh, New York, July 9, 1802. He spent his life in the place
of his birth, dying January 18, 1885. His parents were natives of
Lexington, Massachusetts, who shortly before the birth of Charles Downing,
the eldest son, came to Newburgh, the father establishing a shop for the
manufacture of wagons, a business which he soon abandoned to become a nurseryman.
Here, in the first successful nursery established in the region, were trained
Charles and Andrew Downing, receiving under the careful guidance of the
father a knowledge of the business and of fruits which with later self
instruction made them the most distinguished pomologists of their day.
With the death of the father in 1822, before Charles had obtained his majority,
the responsibiIity of conducting the business and the support of the family
devolved upon him. Andrew J., the younger brother, in 1834, at the
age of 19, united with Charles in the management of the nursery business
under the firm name of C. & A.J. Downing, a partnership which lasted
only until 1839. Charles continued in the nursery business for rnany
years during which time he became the foremost pomologist in the United
States and eventually, about 1850, sold his holdings to devote himself
to the study of varieties of fruits and the revision of the Fruits and
Fruit Trees of America. This great pomological book was projected
and published by Andrew but most of the work of the book as it is now known
was done by Charles in revising the original and adding to its many editions.
It is and has long been, as all know, the highest authority on American
fruits. Naturally of an inquiring turn of mind Charles Downing studied
closely the qualities of the varieties that came under his observation
and seldom described without the fruit in hand. His variety orchard
is said to have contained at one time 1,800 varieties of apples and 1,000
pears with lesser numbers of the other fruits. A few trees of this
wonderful collection still stand. Charles Downing was one of the
most modest and retiring of men, in his younger days delighting in the
things of which his brother wrote and seldom putting pen to paper until
after his brother's death when he became a regular contributor to horticultural
publications over the signature "C. D." He was never known to make
a public speech. He earned his high distinction in American pomology
by his accurate and conscientious descriptions and discussions of varieties
of fruits.
John James Dufour
John James Dufour, born in the canton of Vaud, Switzerland,
in 1763, came to America in 1796 to engage in grape-growing and wine-making. An
account of his work is given in the text. In 1826 Dufour published the
Vine Dresser's Guide, which became the authority on the culture of this
fruit at that time. Dufour must be remembered for this book, for the
dissemination of the Cape or Alexander grape, and as one of the pioneer
vineyardists and wine-makers of the New World.
[From: The Grapes of New York, page 17.]
Henry Edwards
Henry Waggoman Edwards, at one time Governor of Connecticut,
was a pioneer American pear breeder credited with making the first
systematic attempt to grow new pears in this country. He was a
grandson of the eminent theologian, Jonathan Edwards, was born at New
Haven, Conn., in 1779, graduated at Princeton College in 1797, studied
law at the Litchfield School and almost immediately entered into public
life shortly to become prominent and famous in state and nation. He
served Connecticut with honors as its Governor, and in the nation he
distinguished himself as Representative in the House from Connecticut,
Speaker of the House and as Senator. But it is as a pomologist that his
career is of concern to the reader. Always interested in pomology, and
no doubt especially interested in pears through the spectacular work of
Van Mons, he planted pear seeds in the fall of 1817 with the aim of
obtaining new and superior varieties of this fruit. Great success did
not attend his attempts at pear breeding, but Governor Edwards made a start in work which
Manning, Wilder and a score of others were to carry forward with more
striking results. Out of many seedlings, at least five were named and
were grown for a longer or shorter time by the pear-growers of a
century ago. These are Elizabeth,
Calhoun, Dallas, Henrietta and
Citron, all described among the minor varieties of this text. While
hardly to be considered among the foremost pomologists of the country,
Governor Edwards is in the front rank of the lesser men whose combined
work has done so much to give weight and impulse to American pomology.
Elliott's American Fruit Growers Guide, published in 1858 and dedicated to Professor Jared P.Kirtland, was one of the notable pomological books of its day. Cherry growers, in particular, owe Elliott a debt of gratitude for the publicity that he gave to Kirtland's cherries, having described in his book 20 of the sorts originated by Professor Kirtland. Beside his fruit book he published Popular Deciduous and Evergreen Trees (1868), Handbook for Fruit-growers(1876) and Handbook of Practicing Landscape Gardening (1877). He also served pomologists well for many years, at various times, from 1850 to 1873, as the secretary of the American Pomological Society. Franklin Reuben Elliott was born in Guilford, Connecticut, April 27, 1817. We know, from complimentary speeches, accepted by Elliott, that he was a descendant of John Eliot, "The Apostle of the Indians."As a young man he engaged with a brother in New York as an importer of dry goods, the first being rated at half a million dollars. Financial ruin came through a disastrous fire and, in 1836, Elliott went to Newburgh and was employed by A.J. Downing from whom he imbibed his knowledge and much of his love for pomology and horticulture. A roving disposition and dissipated habits led him to leave Downing for a position with a relative near Cincinnati who was a market-gardener. A ready pen seems from this time on to have been his chief means of livelihood for we find him successively in Cleveland, Ohio, and St. Louis, Missouri, in newspaper work; after a few years in each place he wandered to Washington where he was employed in the Agricultural Department of the Patent Office illustrating American fruits. From his hand in the Patent Office reports and from his fruit book, came one of the most accurate and beautiful representations of the fruits of this continent. It is probable that while in Washington he began work on his Fruit Growers Guide, the time for which, he tells us in his preface, took ten years. Social infirmities seem to have cost him his position in Washington and his last employment was with the Cleveland Herald, after which comes the record of his death and burial in a pauper's grave January 10, 1878. One of the most brilliant pomologists of his time, his career seems again and again to have been checked by the weaknesses of his life; even so, he rendered horticulture valuable sources for which we must give him gratitude and honor.
George Ellwanger
George Ellwanger, one of the founders and thereafter until his
death one of the partners in the Mount Hope Nurseries, Rochester, New
York, was born in Germany in 1816 and died in Rochester, New York, in
1906. He came to the United States in 1835, having been educated as a
horticulturist in Stuttgart, although possibly the training he received
throughout his youth from his father, a grower of grapes and fruits,
taught him most, for Ellwanger often said that it was from his father
that he acquired his love of horticulture and was by him persuaded to
devote his life to the vocation of nurseryman. Ellwanger settled in
Rochester in 1839, and the next year joined with Patrick Barry in
forming the nursery and seed firm of Ellwanger and Barry, calling their
place of business " Mount Hope Nurseries/' Ellwanger was one of the
founders of the American Pomological Society, and of the Western New
York Horticultural Society and throughout his life took an active
interest in both organizations. Mr. Ellwanger had large business
interests in Rochester and western New York and helped most materially
to develop the city and the country about. His chief contributions to
horticulture were made through the Mount Hope Nurseries, the influence
of which is briefly set forth in the sketch of the life of Patrick
Barry.
George Engelmann
George Engelmann was born at Frankfurt-on-the-Main in 1809. He was
educated at the Universities of Heidelberg, Berlin and Wurzburg,
receiving a doctor's degree in medicine from the latter institution. In
1832 Dr. Engelmann sailed for America and spent some months in exploring the forests of the Mississippi
Valley studying the plants of the region, having become deeply absorbed
in botany. He soon after began the practice of medicine in St. Louis
where he spent the remainder of his life, dying in 1884. Engelmann was
one of the most patient and devoted students of natural history of his
time. He mastered several difficult genera of plants, doing his work so
well that his monographs will long remain, not only authorities on the
plants described, but models for the systematic botanist. Among the
genera to which he devoted his time was Vitis, upon which he published
several monographs. These appeared in various publications,
particularly the Proceedings of the Academy of Science of St. Louis in 1860, the American Naturalist for 1868, Riley's reports as entomologist
of Missouri for 1872 and 1874, and the third and all later editions of
the Bushberg Catalogue.
[From: The Grapes of New York, pages 131-132.]
Elijah Fay
Elijah Fay was born in Southborough, Massachusetts, in 1781.
He moved
to Brocton, Chautauqua County, New York, in the fall of 1811. The early
history of not only the viticulture but of the horticulture of the
Chautauqua region is interwritten with that of the Fay family. Elijah
Fay's children and grandchildren inherited a love of horticulture from
their ancestor and several of them, as mentioned in the text, have been
noted for their horticultural work in this region. Lincoln Fay, a
nephew of Elijah Fay, one of the first men to grow and sell grape vines
in the region, originated the Fay currant which was afterwards
introduced by him and his son Elijah H. Fay. Of the Fay family, noted
in the annals of grape-growing in this region, only G. E. Ryckman and
L. R. Ryckman, grandchild and great-grandchild of Elijah Fay, are now
living. Elijah Fay lived to the ripe age of eighty, dying in 1860. His
memory should be long cherished as one of the founders of the
viticulture of New York.
Andrew S. Fuller
Andrew S. Fuller, pomologist, scientist, and pomological writer, was
born in Utica, New York, August 3, 1828, and died May 4, 1896, at
Ridgewood, New Jersey. Fuller began work at an early age as a carpenter
and builder of greenhouses. In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, he built a small
greenhouse on a city lot and in it began the work which soon brought
him to the attention of lovers of plants and fruits, with such renown
that William R. Prince, Flushing, Long Island, then a leading
nurseryman in America, offered him the management of his greenhouse.
This position he accepted in 1855, but remained with Prince only two
years, leaving to engage for himself in small fruit culture at
Brooklyn, New York. He soon specialized in breeding strawberries, and
out of thousands of seedlings selected some dozen or more which he
named. The best one of these was Col. Ellsworth, an excellent sort,
plants of which to the number of 300,000 were sent out by the New York
Tribune as premiums to subscribers. His first book, written at about
this time, was the Strawberry Culturist. In the early sixties he moved
to Ridgewood, New Jersey, where he planned and planted home grounds
that soon became a botanical garden as he grew almost every species and
variety of ornamental trees, shrubs, small fruits, and nuts which could
be made to grow in New Jersey.
Soon after Strawberry Culturist appeared, he published Grape Culturist,
this in turn to be followed by Small Fruit Culturist, Practical
Forestry, Propagation of Plants, and the Nut Culturist. Of his several
pomological books, Small Fruit Culturist is probably the best and
certainly served more materially in building up a great industry than
any of his other works. Besides these books he was a constant
correspondent to the American Agriculturist, Rural New-Yorker, of
which he was part owner for a time, the New York Sun, of which he was
agricultural editor for twenty-six years, and of American Gardening. He
was also editor of the Record of Horticulture which appeared in 1867
and 1868. Besides his interest in pomology he gave attention to
entomology, mineralogy and archeology, and collections in these
sciences gave him renown in all of them. He was active in all
pomological societies of his state and the country during his active
lifetime. Probably no other American has labored longer or more
devotedly for pomology and horticulture, in both of which he set high
ideals in all he did.
Emmett Stull Goff
Emmett Stull Goff was born
at Elmira, New York, Sept. 3, 1852. He was educated in the public
schools and in the Elmira Free Academy, graduating from the last named
place in 1869. The following years were spent on his father's farm
until in 1880 he became Associate Editor of an agricultural paper, but
finding the work uncongenial he returned to the farm for a short time
leaving again to accept in 1882 a position at the New York Agricultural Experiment Station which had just been established. Here for seven
years Professor Goff gave his attention to vegetables. His
classification of a number of vegetables, the pea, tomato, cabbage and
onion in particular, are still standard in American vegetable culture. During his work at this Station he did much pioneer work in spraying plants and invented a device for mixing
kerosene and water. In 1889 Professor Goff moved to Madison, Wisconsin,
where he became professor of horticulture in the University of
Wisconsin and horticulturist of the Wisconsin Experiment Station. Here
for fourteen years he gave his attention to various phases of
fruit-growing and vegetable-growing. His bulletin 87 on "Native Plums" is the outcome of several years' experiments in testing and breeding
plums of such of our native species as will grow in Wisconsin. His work
with plums is particularly valuable, as he was able, in his location,
to do much to ascertain the degree of hardiness of many varieties of
the species of cultivated plums. From his work with sterility and
fertility of varieties came valuable recommendations regarding the
cross-pollination of such varieties as are self-sterile. He is the
author of Principles of Plant Culture and Lessons on Fruit-growing,
text books much used in high schools and agricultural colleges. Professor Goff was a modest and retiring man but singularly independent
of view in all things regarding his work and all things that concerned
men a serene, lofty-minded, unselfish man. His death occurred at
Madison, June 6th, 1903.
[from pp. 355-6 of The Plums of New York. -ASC]
Dr. C.W. Grant
Dr. C. W. Grant was born in Litchneld, Connecticut, in 1810. Early in life he became a Doctor of Medicine but soon became dissatisfied with that profession as it was then practiced,
and entered dentistry. He settled in Newburgh, New York, where he built up a very large dental practice. Dr. Grant was an enthusiastic amateur horticulturist and numbered among his friends
such men of national note as A. J. and Charles Downing, Horace Greeley, Henry Ward Beecher, W.C. Bryant, Donald G. Mitchell and others like these who were interested in rural pursuits. He bought Iona Island in the Hudson River and planted thereon a commercial vineyard. On the death of his wife in 1856 he gave up his dental practice and took up his residence on Iona Island. Here for twelve years he grew grapes and conducted a grape nursery. Unfortunately Dr. Grant's business experience was not such as to enable him to make a success of a commercial nursery. In 1868 he retired from active pursuits and returned to his old home at Litchfield, where he died in 1881. Dr. Grant's chief interest to grape-growers lies in the fact that he was the originator of Iona and Israella and the introducer of Anna and Eumelan. He was one of the first and a most ardent grape-breeder, working especially toward improving the quality of commercial varieties of grapes.
[From: The Grapes of New York, pages 304.]
Oregon has given to pomology two notable breeders of cherries, Seth Lewelling and C.E. Hoskins, the subject of this sketch. Cyrus Edwin Hoskins was born on a farm in Clinton County, Ohio. July 3, 1842, and there he grew to manhood. Almost at the first call for men to defend the Union in the Civil War, Mr. Hoskins responded and joined the 13th Ohio regiment, serving until the close of the war. Returning to Ohio, he gave attention to fruit culture, testing many varieties of several fruits and producing some new grapes and berries. In 1877 Mr. Hoskins moved to Newberg, Yamhill County, Oregon, settling on new land and thus becoming a pioneer in the Northwest. His first pomological venture in Oregon was in growing prunes, his orchard of this fruit being one of the first, and he is credited with having built one of the first evaporators for the curing of prunes in America. For some years he maintained his prune ranch and evaporator, developing a product that gave him the highest reputation in prune markets and made him one of the leading authorities on this fruit in the United States. Early in his orchard work in Oregon Mr. Hoskins began to produce new varieties of cherries and soon offered for sale a number of promising seedlings of which Vesta, Lake, Occident, Stryker and Hoskins were most worthy. Unfortunately, ill health in the family compelled Mr. Hoskins to move from Yamhill County, to which place, after having spent several years in Jackson County, Oregon, and in the Hawaiian Islands, he returned with the expectation of taking up his work in breeding cherries and prunes, but his death, August 18,1908, occurred before his work had been again well begun. The Pacific Northwest owes a debt of gratitude to Mr. Hoskins for the spendid part he played in developing the fruit industry of that region and pomologists the country over owe Mr. Hoskins much for his labors in breeding cherries.
Charles Mason Hovey
Charles Mason Hovey was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, October 26, 1810, and
died in the city of his birth September 2, 1887. His work is noteworthy
to small fruit growers in the United States, and The Small Fruits of New York is dedicated to him by publishing his portrait as the
frontispiece, by reason of his work with strawberries. Hovey's greatest
contribution to horticulture was the Hovey strawberry, originated by
him and first fruited in 1836. But he is known to horticulture also
because of his great collection of pears, apples, plums, grapes and
ornamental plants on his grounds at Cambridge. He was throughout a long
and busy life one of America's best authorities on varieties of fruits
about which he wrote two sumptuous volumes, issued in parts from 1852
to 1856, in which he described the varieties of tree and small fruits
cultivated in the United States. The volumes are handsomely printed and
contain more than one hundred colored plates of the varieties which he
described. He was best known in his lifetime as the editor of The
Magazine of Horticulture, founded in 1835 and published until 1868,
between which dates it had an uninterrupted period of prosperity, with
a longer life than any other American horticultural magazine. The
journal was founded as The American Gardener's Magazine by Hovey and
his brother, Phineas Brown Hovey, but in 1837 the name was changed to
The Magazine of Horticulture, with Charles M. Hovey, editor. Hovey was
also a prominent and reliable nurseryman and seed dealer, and through
his establishment many new plants came to America. He was an active
member throughout his life of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society
and was for a time its president. His writings are characterized by
conservatism and accuracy, and he is now, as he was in his lifetime,
one of America's great authorities on pomology and horticulture.
[From: The Small Fruits of New York, page 367]
Peter Kalm is so often mentioned in the fruit-books published by this Station that readers are entitled to know something about him. Kalm was a Swede, born in 1715, died in 1779, who was sent by the Swedish government to travel in North America. He landed in 1748 and spent the next three years in travel in the settled parts of the New World devoting himself to the study of the plant and animal life, the natural phenomena, resources and agriculture of the Middle and Northern States and Canada. On his return to Sweden, Kalm published an account of his travels in America which was afterward translated into German and then into English. To him we are indebted for much valuable information in regard to the beginnings of agriculture and horticulture in the middle of the Eighteenth Century in America. Kalm was a student of Linnaeus and the great botanist perpetuated his memory by naming our beautiful mountain laurel, Kalmia.
John Kenrick, one of the pioneer nurserymen
on American soil, began his business career by raising peach-seedlings. His nursery was
situated in the towns of Newton and Brighton, Massachusetts, and was
founded in 1790. As we have stated in the text, he early acquired the
art of budding and possibly was the first, or at least one of the
first, nurserymen to offer budded peach-trees for sale. In 1823, he
advertised in the New England Farmer thirty varieties of budded peaches
five to eight feet high at thirty-three and one-third cents each. These
thirty varieties must have included practically all of the named sorts then grown in America. It is interesting to note
that he states in the advertisement that the trees were packed with clay and mats. It
was in this year that William Kenrick, son of John Kenrick, became a
partner of his father. Beside growing peaches, the Kenrick nurseries
offered for sale other trees, vine and bush-fruits and ornamentals as
well. The Kenricks were also extensive growers of currants from which
they made currant-wine, their output in
1824 being 1700 gallons; in 1825, 3000 gallons and in 1826, 3600
gallons. The date and place of John Kenrick's birth cannot be learned. His death occurred in 1833 in the Kenrick mansion, built in 1720,
standing near the nurseries. New England, and peach-growers everywhere,
owe him a debt of gratitude for his services in horticulture.
William Kenrick, son of John, of whom we have just written, was born in 1795 in the family mansion on Nonantum Hill in the town of Newton, Massachusetts. He was trained by his father as a nurseryman and in 1823 became a partner in the Kenrick nurseries, of which he soon after appears to have assumed control. The Kenrick nurseries, at this time, were probably the most extensive and the best known of any in New England. Besides growing the fruit-bearing plants of the time and such ornamentals as were then to be found in America, the Kenricks seem to have taken an enthusiastic part in the craze for the Lombardy Poplar which was then raging in America. The elder Kenrick must have been one of the early growers of this popular plant for in 1797 two acres of his nursery was appropriated to the Lombardy Poplar. The son, in his turn an enthusiast, succumbed to the silk-culture fad and seems in 1835 to have been one of the leading growers of the mulberry, Morus multicaulus, for feeding silkworms. In this year Mr. Kenrick published the American Silk Growers Guide, which is, in essence, a treatise on mulberry-culture. William Kenrick's most notable pomological achievement, however, was the publication of the New American Orchardist which appeared in 1833. While not the best of the pomological manuals of the time, it is a valuable contribution to American pomology because of its full descriptions of the fruits of that date. Beginning with his father in 1823, William Kenrick continued in the nursery business for twenty-seven years, probably growing, importing and disposing of more fruit and ornamental trees than any other nurseryman in New England during this time. He died in February, 1872, at the ripe age of 77 having lived to see the orchards planted from his nursery come to full fruition and every part of New England made more beautiful by the ornamental trees and shrubs grown under his care.
J. W. Kerr
J. W. Kerr, one of the best informed and most
enthusiastic cultivators of native and Triflora plums, was born in
York County, Pennsylvania, January 23, 1842. He is of Scotch-Irish
lineage paternally and of English ancestors maternally. His education
at the village school was supplemented by several years teaching and
much reading and study in horticultural literature, fondness for which
seems to have been inborn. In his early manhood Mr. Kerr engaged in
growing trees for sale, a business with which he soon combined a fruit
plantation in which he collected and tested all the plums that could be
grown in his climate, comprising the great majority of the varieties of
American species and of the Oriental plums. This work began in 1870,
since which time no man has done more to popularize and improve native
plums than Mr. Kerr. His most valuable work has been in testing
varieties, where his knowledge of this fruit, his judgment and his
sense of discrimination have made his opinion, as set forth in his
nursery catalog and in the reports of horticultural societies,
authoritative. He has, too, done considerable work in breeding plums,
Choptank, Sophie and Maryland probably representing the best of his endeavors in originating new plums. It is a duty and a pleasure to
acknowledge here the great services rendered by Mr. Kerr in the
preparation of The Plums of New York.
[From: The Plums of New York, pp. 349-350.]
Jim Lawson
I became acquainted with Jim Lawson by buying trees from his Ball Ground Nursery in Ball Ground, GA. Though he didn't have any fancy university degrees, Jim was a wealth of knowledge about apples, pears and other heritage fruits. His nursery was near enough to us, that we always picked up our trees directly at the nursery. He usually would take a few minutes to talk with us, making every customer feel at ease, even during his hectic fall digging, sorting and sales time of year. He was soft-spoken and yet was a powerful positive force in his community, helping folks where he could in his gracious and unassuming manner. I bought a couple of grafting knives from an ex-con who handmade them and sold them through Jim's nursery. They were good knives, including one that fit my hand perfectly (but was subsequently lost), but the main benefit was Jim did his part so that this fellow could earn some dignified money from his craft. I was honored to donate a few sticks of 'Caville Blanc d'Hiver', which despite the hundreds of rare heritage trees he kept, he said he hadn't managed to find that one. To be able to give back a tiny bit to him was yet another great gift to me. He sold trees all over the United States, was an avid apple hunter who re-discovered a number of old Southern cultivars and shared what he knew as well as interesting stories of life in Appalachia
Lawson, John History of Carolina, 181-183. 1714. Reprinted at Raleigh, 1860. Lawson's History of Carolina contains the best description of the natural resources of the southern Atlantic seaboard published in colonial times. It is a book of nature rather than of history and one of fascinating interest which cannot be read without admiring and loving the author and mourning his sad fate. Poor Lawson was burned at the stake by the Indians in 1711. We cannot refrain from quoting his description of North Carolina as printed on page 79 of his history: "A delicious country, being placed in that girdle of the world which affords wine, oil, fruit, grain, and silk, with other rich commodities, besides a sweet air, moderate climate, and fertile soil. These are the blessings, under Heaven's protection, that spin out the thread of life to its utmost extent, and crown our days with the sweets of health and plenty, which, when joined with content, render the possessors the happiest race of men upon earth."
Peter Legaux
Of Legaux's life, little is known, other than that he was a French vine-grower with an experimental vineyard, as he says in the above article, at "Spring Mill, 13 miles N. N. W. from Philadelphia." Johnson speaks of Legaux as a philanthropist; McMahon calls him a "gentleman of Worth and Science"; while Rafinesque accuses him of fraud and
deception in the matter of calling the native grapes Bland and
Alexander, Madeira and Cape.
Judging the man from his
article in The True American and from the words of his contemporaries,
he was a capable, enthusiastic and intelligent grape-grower. His
philanthropy is more doubtful. It is true that he distributed many
grape plants but as he himself says to "fellow citizens possessing
pecuniary means." That he practiced deceit in the matter of the
introduction of the Alexander as the Cape is probable. However, his
deceit, if such it were, may be forgotten and he should be remembered
as the chief disseminator of the Alexander, the first distinctive
American variety of commercial value.
[From: The Grapes of New York, page 16.]
John Eaton Le Conte
John Eaton Le Conte was born near Shrewsbury, New Jersey, in 1784 and
died at Philadelphia in 1860. In 1817 he entered the army as a
topographical engineer, and in 1831 was retired with the grade of
major. Le Conte early became interested in natural history and his
military expeditions gave him ample opportunity for studying the flora
and fauna of eastern America. He published a number of important
botanical papers, one of which was The Vines of North America published
in 1854-55. His contributions to the genus Vitis will be found under
that head.
[From: The Grapes of New York, page 144]
Seth and Henderson Lewelling
Little is known of the early life of Seth and Henderson
Lewelling. They were of Welsh ancestry and both were born in Salem, North
Carolina, Henderson on the 25th of April, 1809, and Seth on the 6th day
of March, 1819. Henderson died in California December 28th, 1878, while
Seth died in Milwaukee, Oregon, Febuary 21st, 1897. When the boys were
still very young their parents moved from North Carolina to Ohio and founded
the town of Salem in Ross County; later they moved to Indiana where their
father established a nursery and became one of the pioneer fruit-growers
of what was then the West and here again they founded a town of Salem.
We next hear of Henderson Lewelling in Salem, Henry County, Iowa, the town
of his naming, with the statement that in 1837 he planted a small nursery
of 35 varieties of apples and some peach, plum and cherry trees.
The history of the Lewellings now becomes more definite for we have it from Seth Lewelling1 (we spell the name as does he and not "Luelling "as do many in writing of him) that in March, 1847, Henderson Lewelling planted an assortment of apples, pears, peaches, plums and cherries and loaded them into two wagons and started to Oregon. This traveling nursery was on the road from March to November and one can imagine the labor of watering and caring for the trees in this trip across mountains and plains. Henderson Lewelling formed a partnership with William Meek under the firm name of Meek & Lewelling, Milwaukee, Oregon. Seth joined his brother in the fall of 1850 bringing with him from the East a considerable quantity of fruit seed. For the next few years the nursery operations were on a large scale, over 100,000 grafts being planted in 1853. From time to time they made new importations of plants and fruit seeds from the East. Seth says that his brother quit the business and moved to California in 1853 and we hear no more of him until his death in 1878. In 1857, the partnership between Meek and Seth Lewelling was dissolved leaving the latter the owner of the Milwaukee nurseries. It was in 1860 that Seth Lewelling raised his first seedling cherry, the Republican, called by him Black Republican, which was sold to George Walling of Oswego and Mr. Hanson of East Portland, the proceeds bringing Lewelling $500. Mr. Lewelling counts the Republican and Bing cherryes and the Golden Prune as his most notable contributions to pomology. [ 'Lambert' turned out to be a lasting introduction as well... A.S.C.]
The Lewellings are types of fruit-breeders who have done
noble work for pomology in the settlement of all our statesmen of indominable
courage and will who have bred and grown fruits throughout their lives
in spite of every adversity. Few other men labored longer and more devotedly
to improve the cherry than Seth Lewelling.
1 Oregon St. Bd. Hort. An. Rpt. 2:242.
1893.
Carl von Linne
Carl von Linne, better
known in the Latin form of Carolus Linnaeus, was born in 1707 at
Rashult in the province of Smäland, Sweden. His father, a minister,
endeavored to educate his son to follow the same profession. In this he
failed, as Linnaeus from his earliest years took no interest in the classical
studies then taught. His father was finally induced to educate young
Linnaeus as a physician. Linnaeus was the greatest systematist in the
history of botany. His general system, though much modified, is still
in use. Although he named many species of plants, it was not as a
traveler and explorer but as a recipient of the results of travels of
others that the specimens were secured from which the descriptions were
made. Linnaeus died at Upsala, Sweden, in 1778. His herbarium after his
death was sold and finally became the property of the Linnaean Society of London, where the specimens are frequently used by botanists from
various parts of the world for purposes of comparison.
[From: The Grapes of New York, page 149-150.]
Nicholas Longworth
Nicholas Longworth, known as the "father of American grape culture", was born in 1783, in Newark, New Jersey. At an early age he went
West making his home in Cincinnati where he became a lawyer, banker,
and a man of large business affairs in what was then the far frontier.
From his boyhood Longworth was interested in horticulture and as a
young man became greatly interested in native grapes. He was one of the
men to whom John Adlum sent the Catawba and he became its disseminator
and a promoter for the region in which he lived, making this grape the
first great American grape and Cincinnati the center of the foremost
grape-growing region of the Continent. He was the first vineyardist to
make wine on a large scale and perfected methods of making wine from
the native grapes so that the product was comparable to that from the
best wine cellars of Europe. Longworth introduced the first cultivated
variety of the wild black raspberry, Rubus occidentalis, under the name
of the Ohio Everbearing. His interest in the strawberry was second only
to that in the grape and he not only did much to encourage its
cultivation in America but also, after a long controversy with horticulturists
and botanists, fully established the fact that many varieties of this
fruit are infertile with themselves and that under cultivation
infertile varieties must have sorts planted near them capable of
cross-pollinating them. Longworth took a deep interest in horticulture
generally and gathered about him a group of pioneer horticulturists who
did much for American fruit-growing in the middle of the nineteenth
century, in many respects molding and guiding the horticulture of that
time in this country. Longworth wrote much for the contemporary
horticultural magazines and published two small books, "The Cultivation
of the Grape and Manufacture of Wine" and "Character and Habits of
the Strawberry Plant." He died in 1863, aged 80, at Cincinnati, one of
the most distinguished, enterprising and wealthy citizens of his State.
For further discussion of his life see Bailey's Evolution of Our Native
Fruits: 61-65. 1898.
Orville Morell Lord was born in China, Wyoming County, New York,
April 20, 1826. When he was eleven years of age the Lord family moved
to Lapeer, Michigan, where the subject of this sketch attended the
district school and then for a time was in a private school at Pontiac,
Michigan. In 1852 Mr. Lord moved to Winona County, Minnesota, where he
built a saw mill, and for some years owned and managed a lumber yard. It was only after middle life that he became interested in horticulture
and he then chose the native plums as fruits with which to work. He was
not a breeder of plums and the Rollingstone, brought in from the wild
and sent out by him in 1882, is the only addition to pomology, in the
way of a new variety, made by him. The work with this fruit which has
given him a name as a plum specialist was in testing hardy varieties. He tried thoroughly all the native plums to be obtained, and much of
the present information as to the hardiness of plums for the cold
northwest is due to knowledge gained from Mr. Lord's experimental
orchard. He became a member of the Minnesota State Horticultural Society in 1884 [2 years before they were founded, according to their website on 2022-01-31! -ASC] and in 1889 was made an honorary life member of this
organization. For some years he was a Farmers' Institute lecturer on
horticulture and was for a time horticultural editor of Farm, Stock and Home. He was not only known in the Northwest as a plum specialist but
carried on correspondence with plum growers throughout the whole
country giving much valuable information regarding this fruit. Beside
giving attention to plums he tested many apples for his region and was
the originator of one or two varieties now very generally grown in his
State. During his life he filled several places of public trust, being
a member of the Territorial Legislature in 1853-4 and of the State
Legislature in 1873-4. He also served at various times in minor offices
in his County and in his State being at the time of his death a member
of the Forest Reserve Board of Minnesota. With Peter Gideon he was one
of the pioneer fruit-growers in the Northwest and while he has left few
fruits of his own breeding and few records in print of the work he did,
yet his long and faithful service in developing fruit-growing in the
Northwest makes him one of the men of note in American pomology. Mr.
Lord died July 21, 1906.
[from page 331 of The Plums of New York. -ASC]
Humphrey Marshall
Humphrey Marshall was born in the town of West
Bradford, Pennsylvania, in 1722, of Quaker parents. He was a cousin of
John Bartram, their mothers being sisters. Like Bartram, he had few
opportunities for education, not going to school after he was twelve
years of age. He was a stonemason by trade, studying botany in his
leisure moments. In 1773 he started a botanic garden at Marshallton. In
1785 he published Arbustrum Americanum, The American Grove, or An Alphabetical Catalog of Forest Trees and Shrubs, Natives of the American United States. This work had been in preparation about five
years previous to its publication. It is said to be the first botanical
work of a native American. Marshall died in 1801.
[From: The Grapes of New York, page 96.]
Dr. James Mease
But little is known of Dr. James Mease other than that he was one of the editors of The Domestic Encyclopedia, a Fellow of the American Philosophical Society and Vice-President of the Philadelphia Agricultural Society. That he was a student of American grapes is shown in his letter of transmissal of Bartram's paper to the Medical Repository in which he says: "It is my present intention to publish the description of one species of vine every year in Latin and English, with a coloured plate, and I had made arrangements for the publication of the first fascicle last
year; but the very unfavourable season, which had prevented the ripening of the species (Bland's Grape) I had resolved first to describe, obliging me to defer the task until the present year, when I hope the weather will prove more favourable. Medical gentlemen, and others fond of natural history, and anxious to have the description of American vines and their classification completed, will have it much in their power to assist my undertaking. I have taken measures to have the Bull or Bullet grape of Carolina and Georgia sent me; but I shall nevertheless be much indebted for any specimens of the plant that may be transmitted.
[From: The Grapes of New York, pp. 42-43.]
Andre & F. Andre Michaux
André Michaux was a
French botanist, born at Satory, Versailles, in 1746. He took up the
study of botany and made many trips to foreign lands in behalf of the
French Government. One of these was an expedition to North America
where he remained from 1785 to 1796 exploring the country and gathering
many botanical specimens through Canada, Nova Scotia and the United
States as far west as the Mississippi. His chief works are Histoire des chenes de l'Amerique Septentrionale (History of the Oaks of North
America), 1801; and Flora Boreali Americana, 1803. He described and
named Vitis rotundifolia, V. aestivalis, V. cordifolia, V. riparia, and
V. rubra, as well as giving much information on other species. Michaux
died on the Island of Madagascar in 1802.
F. André Michaux was born at Versailles in 1770 and died at Vaureal in 1855. He
was a son of André Michaux and also a botanist, and like his father
employed by the French Government to explore North America with a view
of introducing valuable plants into France. He published in 1810-13 a
Histoire des Arbres Forestieres de l'Amerique Septentrionale which was
later translated into English under the name North American Sylva. He
also published A Voyage a l-ouest des Monts Alleghanys, 1804.
[These brief biographies of the Michaux's were taken from: The Grapes of New York, page 108]
Jacob Moore
Jacob Moore was born in Brighton, New York, in 1835. He early engaged in the nursery-business and about 1860 began to experiment in hybridizing grapes, his first production of note being
Diana Hamburg which proved too tender to be of value in New York. In 1873 he sold the Brighton to its introducer, the grape having come from a union of Diana Hamburg and Concord.
In 1882 Moore's third grape of note, the Diamond, was introduced, its parents being Concord, fertilized by Iona.
One other grape completes his list of varieties of this fruit the Geneva, a Vinifera-Labrusca hybrid from seed planted in the spring of 1874. Beside these grapes,
Moore was the originator of the Ruby, Red Cross and Diploma currants and the Bar-seckel pear. Jacob Moore died in January, 1908, having devoted a life to the improvement of fruits and having spent a patrimony of no small amount and all of his earnings in carrying on experiments in horticulture. It saddens one to know that after having devoted a half century to the enrichment of
agriculture, poor Moore should have passed his last years in comparative poverty, and that they were embittered with the thought that, unlike the inventor, the producer of new fruits can in no
way protect the products of his originality, even though they added millions to the wealth of the country as have his fruits.
[From The Grapes of New York, page 192. -ASC]
Thomas Volney Munson
Thomas Volney Munson, the well-known nurseryman, viticulturist, and
plant-breeder, was born near Astoria, Illinois, September 26, 1843. He
graduated from Kentucky University, Lexington, Kentucky, in 1870. His
nursery has for thirty-one years been located in Dennison, Texas. Munson
has introduced more hybrid grapes than any other man in America and probably in the world. He has paid great attention to grape botany, particularly to the southwestern species. Monographs on grapes, from his hand, have appeared in the proceedings of various horticultural societies and in horticultural journals. Bulletins written by him have been issued by the United States Department of Agriculture and the Texas Experiment Station. He as at present a book ready for publication entitled Foundations of American Grape Culture. The varieties produced by Munson are particularly successful in the Southwest where conditions are such that most of our northern varieties fail. The most valuable of those that have been thoroughly tested are Brilliant, America, Carman,
Gold Coin and Rommel.
[From: The Grapes of New York, page 122]
[And from: The Plums of New York, pp. 88-89...]
Thomas Volney Munson, after whom it has
been a pleasure to name this species [Prunus munsoniana -ASC], though best known as a
viticulturist, has also rendered invaluable service to plum-culture. A
sketch of his life appeared in The Grapes of New York (page 122) in
which his services to viticulture were briefly mentioned. While
his name is not commonly connected with the study of plums, it is not
too much to say that without his aid the publications of those who have
written during the last quarter century on native plums would have
lacked much of the information they contain in regard to the species of
the Southwest. He has an intimate knowledge of the wild plums of Texas
and has freely given of it to all who have asked, often supplementing
information with herbarium specimens or plants. The authors of The Plums of New York
wish to give him credit for much of the information, furnished directly
or indirectly, in regard to the wild and cultivated plums of the region
in which he lives, in recognition of which his name is given to one of
the most important species of native plums. Mr. Munson has grown and
introduced a number of hybrid plums of note, chief of those of his own
growing being Nimon, Minco and Burford. Many of his experiments in
hybridizing plums, though unproductive of new varieties, are of much
value as a guide to other workers with this fruit.
Joseph L. Normand
Joseph L. Normand was born at Marksville, Louisiana, January 14, 1853. He was
educated in the public schools of the parish in which he lived. After
leaving school he followed the vocation of a printer for a number of
years, though from childhood horticulture had been an avocation with
him. Before middle life he gave up office work to begin actively the
growing of nursery and fruit trees. His work in horticulture early
developed into plant-breeding and towards the close of his life all of
his energies were devoted to the production of new types of plants. In
his plant-breeding Mr. Normand became noted as a hybridizer and a great
majority of the fruits and ornamentals sent out by him were hybrids. Among these may be named the Carnegie Orange, a hybrid more or less
frost resistant, which he obtained by crossing the Louisiana Sweet Orange with Citrus trifoliata. Mr. Normand also devoted much time to
the testing of figs and sent out the New French Fig, selected from some
seventy varieties which he had grown. Pears, apples and plums received
his attention and in all these fruits he developed original types by
hybridization. Possibly his most meritorious work with the plum has
been in testing Triflora and native varieties, although he has sent out
not a few hybrids of this fruit most of which, however, do not thrive
in northern climates. Mr. Normand did for his region what Kerr, Munson,
Terry, Lord and Williams have done in other parts of North America in
testing plums. All who knew Mr. Normand say that in this day of
commercialism he worked almost wholly for the love of plants to improve
them for his fellow fruit-growers regardless of the money to be made in
his calling. He lived and worked in a region where his achievements
were at first little known and little understood, quite content to work
for his work's sake, but in the end he gained distinction among the
fruit-growers of his State and attracted the attention of
plant-breeders all over the United States. Mr. Normand died in the town
of his birth, April 17, 1910.
[From: The Plums of New York, page 506.]
Thomas Nuttall
Thomas Nuttall was born in Settle in Yorkshire, England, in 1786. He migrated to the United States in 1807,
making his home in Philadelphia where he became acquainted with William Bartram and Dr. Barton. It was largely owing to the influence of these
men that he turned his attention to botany. Nuttall was an extensive
traveler and made botanical expeditions into many parts of the country.
He explored the Middle West up to the Rocky Mountains and made a trip
around the Horn to California. From 1825 to 1834 he was connected with
Harvard College. In 1842 he was called to England by a bequest from an
uncle left to him conditional on his residing for nine months of each
year in England; compliance with this request caused a cessation of his
botanical work in America. He died at Nutgrove, Lancashire, in 1859.
Nuttall's first and probably greatest work was his Genera of North American Plants and Catalogue of the Species, published in 1818.
Besides various accounts of his expeditions he made an addition of
three volumes to Michaux's Sylva bringing that work up to six volumes.
[From: The Grapes of New York, page 98.]
Gilbert Onderdonk
Gilbert Onderdonk was born in Sharon, New York, September 30, 1829. As a boy he showed a taste for horticulture and while a lad planted
seeds of potatoes, made selections and developed several varieties more or less widely grown in the middle of the last century. Mr. Onderdonk
was educated in the Cortland Academy at Cortland, N. Y., and in the State Normal College at Albany, After having taught in the district
schools of New York for a few years, he found it necessary to go to a warmer climate because of bronchial trouble and in 1851 moved to Texas,
where he became a cowboy, a rancher and finally a fruit-grower. In the region in which he had settled there were wild grapes and wild plums in
abundance. The luxuriance of growth and the number of these fruits so impressed him with the possibilities of fruit culture in southwestern Texas that he began planting fruit trees. Of necessity these came from the north and for most part failed. Not to be discouraged, Mr. Onderdonk began the improvement of the wild varieties about his home. From 1855 to the present time his work has been the testing for the
region in which he lives, of every variety of fruit to be had in Europe and America, and the improvement of the wild fruits growing about him. The plum, in particular, has received attention from Mr. Onderdonk, and
his chief work with this fruit has been the hybridization of Triflora and Munsoniana varieties from the crossing of which he has grown some
valuable plums. In 1887, the United States Department of Agriculture employed Mr. Onderdonk to work with plums, grapes and peaches in the
southwest, the results of which are to be found in the reports of the Department immediately following the year mentioned. He has also done
considerable work for the French in sending resistant vines to France. Mr. Onderdonk is one of several workers in horticulture who have
unremittingly served Texas and the southwest in the production of new varieties of fruits and in testing varieties from other regions. The
value of the foundation these men have laid for horticulture in the southwest cannot now be estimated.
[Originally from The Plums of New York, page 392.]
Jules Emile Planchon
Jules Emile Planchon,
a French systematic and horticultural botanist, was born in Ganges
(Herault) in 1823, and died at Montpellier in 1888. Planchon was a
writer of many valuable monographs on botanical subjects and in
combination with F. Sahut and J. Bazille discovered that the cause of a
mysterious and serious malady which had been affecting the French
vineyards for some years, was due to an insect on the roots, the
phylloxera. Later, he and C. V. Riley determined that this insect was a
native of America. Planchon was one of the first to suggest, and always
urged, the reconstitution of French vineyards by the use of American
stocks. During the later years of his life he was professor of botany
in the School at Montpellier. His most noted contribution to grape
literature is his monograph of the grape vine and other plants of the
Ampelopsis family which appeared as the second half of the fifth volume
of the continuation of De Candolle's Prodromus Systematis Naturalis.
[From: The Grapes of New York, page 124.]
William Prince [the first -ASC]
William Prince, born in 1725, was the second proprietor of the famous Prince nursery at Flushing, Long Island, a nursery established by his father, Robert Prince, about 1730. The first of the American Princes was one of the Huguenots who settled at New Rochelle and on the north, shore of Long Island, bringing with them a great number of French fruits and the love
of the French, people for horticulture. The nursery, one of the first,
and certainly the most important one in America at this time, grew
rapidly until the Revolutionary War. The establishment was of such
public importance that during a part of the war the British placed a
guard over it to protect it from depredation. With the establishment of
peace came an increased trade and the nursery soon attained even
greater prominence than before the war. An effort was made by William Prince, then in charge, to import all of the valuable European fruits
beside which he grew many seedlings, selecting carefully from them new varieties. Thus in 1790 twenty-five quarts of Reine Claude plum pits
were planted from which came Yellow Gage, Imperial Gage and probably the Washington plum. Prince died in 1802, his business having been
divided between two sons; Benjamin Prince keeping the original place
under the name The Old American Nursery and William Prince occupying a
new place called the Linnean Botanic Garden and Nursery. William Prince
seems not to have had the inclination to write as did his son and
grandson but had, even more than they, business energy. His European
exportations and importations made his name famous in horticulture
abroad as well as at home. To him Americans owe the introduction of
many varieties of foreign fruits and ornamental plants; his was the
first of the great nurseries of the country, soon to be followed by
others, to import and exchange plants with foreign countries; his is
the first recorded attempt to breed fruits in America on an extensive
scale and the fact that the three plums sent out by him are still
valuable varieties indicates his judgment as to worth in fruits. The
reputation made by his son, William Prince, the second, and by William Robert Prince, a grandson, as writers on horticultural subjects, is in
large measure due to the information acquired for them and the training
given them by the William Prince of this sketch.
[from page 389 of The Plums of New York
William Prince
William Prince, second of the name in American pomology
and third proprietor of the celebrated Prince nurseries at Flushing, Long Island,
was born November 10, 1766, and died April 9, 1842. His grandfather, a
French Huguenot, was the founder of the establishment of which he
became owner, and which he made his reputation. Under his father, the
first William Prince, the nursery at Flushing developed into a great commercial
nursery, a private experiment station, a testing ground for American
and foreign fruits and a botanic garden of American plants. The mantle
dropped by William Prince, the father, at his death in 1802, fell upon
the shoulders of William Prince, subject of this sketch, then just
reaching the prime of life and one of the most brilliant and versatile
pomologists the country has known. William Prince continued most
successfully the work of his father in breeding new varieties,
domesticating native plants and importing foreign fruits and
ornamentals. During his supervision the Prince Nursery reached the
height of its fame. It was conducted less for money than for love of
the work. An attempt was made to grow every American and European
plant-species having horticultural value. The catalogs published from
the nursery by William Prince are among the best horticultural and
botanical contributions of the first half of the Nineteenth Century.
Besides these, William Prince is the author of the Treatise on Horticulture, published in 1828, and gave assistance to his son,
William Robert Prince, in preparing his Pomological Manual published in
1832. In the description of varieties in this text it will be found
that many varieties of peaches were originated, introduced, imported or
first described by William Prince.
Constantino Samuel Rafinesque was born in Galata, a suburb of
Constantinople in European Turkey, in 1783. He was of French-German
descent, his father being a French merchant of Marseilles, and his
mother of Saxon parentage. In 1802 he came to Philadelphia. While here
he was busied with mercantile pursuits, occupying a position as clerk,
but studied botany out of office hours for amusement. In 1805 he went
to Sicily where he spent the next ten years. Here he commenced the
extensive series of publications which have made his name so well known
to scientists. In 1815 he returned to the United States, traveling
about from place to place for some time and finally settling in
Lexington, Kentucky, where he became a professor in Transylvania
University. He left Lexington in 1825, removing to Philadelphia, where
he spent the remainder of his life, dying in poverty in 1840. Rafinesque's biographer gives 420 differently titled articles on nearly
all scientific subjects as the product of his pen. His monograph on grapes, entitled American Manual of the Grape Vine and The Art of Making Wines, etc., was published in Philadelphia in 1830.
[From: The Grapes of New York, page 99.]
James H. Ricketts was born in Oldbridge, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, in 1830, the family moving to Indiana while Ricketts was still a child. When a young man Ricketts learned the trade of bookbinding in Cincinnati and later practiced this art in New York City. In 1857 he established a bookbinding business at Newburgh, New York; here he became interested in raising fruit, devoting to it such time as could be be spared from his business. In 1861 he started his work in grape improvement, reading all the books then published on this subject in order to prepare himself to carry on the work intelligently. His first production was Raritan which he says he thought not much improvement. In 1862, he built a glass house in order that he might have Vinifera vines for crossing with natives outside. His first production of foreign cross-breeds was the Charles Downing, now known as Downing.
Ricketts produced many hundred seedlings, and for ten or twelve years exhibited them at various fairs, horticultural society meetings and other places, where their magnificent appearance and
fine flavor attracted universal and favorable attention and made him the recipient of many medals and prizes. Unfortunately Ricketts, like many other American grape-breeders, fell into financial difficulties, and in 1877 lost his vineyard and home by foreclosure. In 1888, he moved to Washington. D. C. to work at his trade but has again started to improve grapes and is now growing a number of new varieties which will probably be shown to the public in the near future.
Ricketts' seedlings are characterized by a large size of bunch and berry, and by high quality. Unfortunately it has been the experience of growers in nearly all
grape regions that the vine characters of his varieties are not equal to those of the fruit, the vines being subject to mildew and other Vinifera weaknesses.
However, Ricketts produced magnificent specimens of his grapes, year after year, under conditions which every one admits were less favorable than those of the average grape-grower. The secret of his success seems never to have been discovered. This anomaly is so striking that Campbell did not hesitate to suggest that the fault was with the American grape-grower rather than with Ricketts' grapes or the location of the vineyard. The best known of his varieties are: Advance, Bacchus, Don Juan, Downing, Eldorado, Empire State, Highland, Jefferson,
Lady Washington and Secretary. Besides these he produced many others, some of which were named but many of which were known only under numbers.
[From: The Grapes of New York, page 318-319.]
Edward Staniford Rogers was born in the old family mansion on Essex Street, Salem, Massachusetts, June 28, 1826, and died in Peabody, Massachusetts, March 29, 1899,
He was the son of Nathaniel Leverett Rogers, an old-time Salem merchant, who, with his brothers John and Richard, was engaged in the maritime trade. Edward Rogers was educated in Master Ira Cheever's school, a famous Salem school of the day, and, later, he made several voyages in his father's ships as clerk and supercargo and, finally, passed a number of years in the counting-room of the firm in Salem. After his father's death, Mr. Rogers lived in the old family home with his brother and their mother, and in the garden back of the house, quite large for a city lot, he indulged his natural taste for horticulture and conducted his experiments in grape hybridization.
By temperament Mr. Rogers was quiet and retiring and so generous that he gained practically no profit from his horticultural productions, for he freely gave cuttings and rooted plants of the hybrids he raised to friends and visitors before his own stock was by any means large. Mr. Rogers possessed literary ability and was an extensive reader, but could rarely be drawn into conversation excepting among his most intimate friends who were wont to "drop in" at his long, low greenhouse in the garden or at his office, extemporized in the old colonial barn at the rear of the house. After the death of his mother the old house was sold and the brothers removed to another house in Salem and some years later,
after the death of his brother, Mr. Rogers bought the place, his last home, in Peabody, Massachusetts, where he cultivated trees and flowers for pleasure and experiment. An accident which resulted in a permanent lameness prevented much physical labor during his last years and probably in a measure hastened his death.
[From: The Grapes of New York, page 390.]
Jacob Rommel was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1837. The family moved to Hermann, Missouri, in 1838 where his father, Jacob Rommel, Sr.,
engaged in the nursery business and became interested in grape-growing and wine-making. In 1860 the younger Rommel removed to Morrison where he entered into partnership with
H. Sobbe to grow nursery stock and cultivate grapes. At this time much dissatisfaction was felt among the grape-growers of the Middle West with the standard varieties then grown,
most of which were table grapes secured from the East, and were poorly adapted to wine-making and to Missouri conditions. To remedy this defect Rommel originated many new varieties,
using Taylor chiefly as a parent. Among others he produced Amber, Beauty, Black Delaware, Elvira, Etta, Faith, Montefiore, Pearl, Transparent and Wilding. Rommel's seedlings are characterized by extreme vigor and productiveness. They were not designed for table grapes and they lack the qualities to recommend them as such. In 1900 Rommel retired from business and removed to Chamois, Missouri, where he still lives.
[From: The Grapes of New York, page 352.]
William Saunders, great Canadian horticulturist, entomologist, and a
leader in experimental work in agriculture in the Dominion of Canada,
was born in England in 1835 and died in London, Ontario, September 13,
1914. His name will be found in The Small Fruits of New York as a
breeder of raspberries, gooseberries, and currants more often than that
of any other man. On his fruit farm, near London, Ontario, Saunders
worked for many years hybridizing small fruits, grapes, and apples,
besides which he did much in improving Canadian cereals. Saunders
started his professional career as a chemist and druggist, but found
time for work in the avocations of botany, entomology, horticulture,
and plant breeding. He was one of the founders of the Entomological Society of Ontario, and for thirteen years was editor of the Canadian
Entomologist. He is the author of Insects Injurious to Fruits, long
regarded on this side of the Atlantic as about the best book on
economic entomology for fruit growers. In 1886 he became director of
the Dominion Experimental Farms at Ottawa, where for a quarter of a
century he labored unremittingly in science and administrative work to
build up the splendid chain of agricultural stations which now stretch
in the provinces of Canada from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Space does
not offer to give details of his work with all the fruits; mention can
be made only of his most meritorious small fruits. Perhaps he did most
with black currants, of which Magnus,
Clipper, Climax, and Eagle are
best known. He crossed the gooseberry with the black currant, thereby
producing an interesting but sterile hybrid. In his work with
raspberries he made many crosses between red and black sorts. Sarah is
about the best of these. Two red varieties, Brighton and Count, have
been grown more or less. Several of the gooseberries originated by
Saunders as Pearl and Josselyn, are now commonly grown in gooseberry
regions. Perhaps his most noteworthy work in breeding fruits was with
hardy apples for the cold Canadian Northwest, using the common crab and
Russian and American apples as parents. His Marquis wheat proved to be
one of the best varieties for the Northwest, and added millions of
dollars to the farm crops in the Far West. He was, all in all, Canada's
greatest pomologist, plant breeder, and worker in agriculture, and
stands out as a foremost man in several fields of agriculture on this
side of the Atlantic.
Dr. Joseph Stayman was born in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, in 1817. The family was of German descent and had long been identified with the Mennonites of the region of his birthplace.
Stayman's father was a farmer and miller and during early life the son was engaged in these occupations. In 1839 he accompanied his parents to Ohio, where he was engaged in the milling business
with his father for a time and later entered the lecture field and studied medicine. In 1849 he married and established his home in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, removing two years later to Abingdon,
Illinois. For several years he practiced medicine but in 1858 purchased a nursery which was the beginning of his connection with the fruit business. In 1860 he removed to Leavenworth, Kansas,
where he lived the remainder of his life, dying at his home in that city in 1903.
Dr. Stayman was a man of great originality and had varied interests. In plant-breeding he worked with strawberries, apples, raspberries and grapes,
producing among others the Clyde strawberry,
the Stayman apple and a host of varieties of grapes. Of his named sorts of grapes there are: Black Imperial, Cherokee, Concordia, Daisy, Darwin, Exquisite, Marsala, Mary Mark, Mrs. Stayman, Osceola, Oscaloosa, Oswego, Ozark, Pawnee, Perfection, Prolific, Snowflake, White Beauty, White Cloud and White Imperial.
Stayman and John Burr were neighbors and friends, and held similar opinions as to the best methods of procedure in originating new varieties.
Neither believed in artificial pollination but grew the several varieties from which crosses were desired in close proximity and then planted seed from the best developed fruits.
Their methods certainly gave them varieties with a high standard of excellence. Stayman may be regarded as one of the leading viticulturists of the Great Plains region.
He was, too, one of the pioneers of America in breeding fruits. His many contributions to our lists of fruits make his name memorable to fruit-growers and lovers of fine fruits.
[From: The Grapes of New York, page 422.]
H. A. Terry
H. A. Terry was born in Cortland County, New York, July 12th, 1826. His parents were from New England having come as pioneers to New York
from Worcester, Massachusetts. The spirit of pioneering seems to have
been strong in the Terry family for in 1836 the parents moved again to
Livingston County, Michigan. The son, leaving his parents in 1845,
again went westward to Knox County, Illinois, and still again in 1846
farther west to Pottawattamie County, Iowa. After this there were still
more wanderings in which Mr. Terry and his family, he having married in
1848, were as far east as New Haven, Connecticut, for two years and
again west to several places in Iowa. He finally engaged in the nursery
business at Crescent, Iowa in 1857; he lived here for over fifty years,
giving to the world his best services in the production of new fruits
and flowers, and here his death occurred February 14th, 1909. Mr. Terry
was noted as a peony and a plum specialist. Of plums he is the
originator of over fifty sorts nearly all from the native species a
record unsurpassed in point of numbers for new varieties by any other
plum-breeder. Several of Mr. Terry's plums are of surpassing merit for
varieties of their species; among these may be named such well-known
sorts as Go Id, Hammer, Hawkeye, Nellie Blanche, Crescent City, Downing
and Milton. Most of his varieties are offspring of Prunus americana but
there are a few from Prunus munsoniana and Prunus hortulana.
Unfortunately there is little in regard to Mr. Terry's method of
breeding plums on record for he seems to have written or spoken little
for publication. He was long a prominent member of the Iowa State Horticultural Society and for a number of years had charge of one of
the experiment stations of this society. Of his work with peonies, of
which he produced more than one hundred named sorts, and with other
plants, space does not permit discussion. The last half of his life of
more than four score years was a tireless effort to improve the fruits
and flowers of the Mississippi Valley.
[From: The Plums of New York, p. 242.]
David Thomas is now scarcely known in horticulture except as he is spoken of as the father of America's well-known agricultural, horticultural and pomological writer, John Jacob Thomas. Yet the father merits recognition for his work in agriculture and horticulture. David Thomas was a Quaker, born in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, in 1776 He became a civil engineer and moved to Aurora, Cayuga County, New York, in 1805 and began to practice his profession. Later he became one of the engineers in charge of the construction of the Erie Canal and still later performed a similar service in building the Welland Canal. Soon after, we find him a nurseryman and fruit-grower at Aurora. Throughout his entire life, his son writes, he was interested in horticulture, pomology and botany and by his writings on these subjects, published principally in the Genesee Farmer, then the leading agricultural paper in western New York, and in Travels in the Western Country in 1816, published in Auburn in 1819, David Thomas performed most valuable services in forwarding the cultivation of fruits. He was a corresponding member of the London Horticultural Society and of the Linnaean Society of Paris. His articles in the Genesee Farmer and other agricultural papers furnish the most authoritative statements we have in regard to the early history of fruit-growing in western New York. The name of David Thomas ought long to be preserved by horticulturists of the State and country together with that of his illustrious son, John Jacob Thomas.
Joseph Pitton de Tournefort
Joseph Pitton de Tournefort, a French botanist of considerable
reputation in his day, was born at Aix, Provence, in 1656 and died in
1708. He was educated by the Jesuits for a priest but following a
natural inclination he later became a botanist. In 1683 he became
professor of botany at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris. While occupying
this position he made trips through western Europe, Greece and Asia
Minor. His principal work, and the one quoted here, is Institutiones Rei Herbariae in three volumes, published in Paris in 1700. He was one
of the most prominent systematic botanists who preceded Linnaeus.
[From: The Grapes of New York, page 95.]
The Underhills
No one family has furnished so many members who have been prominent in American grape-growing as the Underhills. The first of this remarkable family,
Robert Underhill, was born in Yorktown, Westchester County, New York, in 1761. During his early life he appears to have been engaged in various enterprises. At one time he was part owner and conductor of a flouring mill at the head of navigation on the Croton River; later he sold his interest in this business and in 1804 removed to Croton Point,
which he had previously bought. Here, during the War of 1812, the supply of watermelons from the South being cut off, he planted eighty acres of melons, and it is said that as
many as six vessels were lying off Croton Point at one time waiting for the melons to mature. Among other of his ventures was the growing of castor beans, and toward the end of his life he became interested in viticulture. An account of his operations cultivating grapes is given in the first part of this work. Robert Underhill died at Croton Point in 1829.
After his death his two sons, William Alexander Underhill and Robert T. Underhill, bought from their father's estate the two hundred and fifty acres comprising Croton Point. Their holdings were not in common, William A. Underhill having about one hundred and sixty-five acres and his brother the balance.
R. T. Underhill was born on the Croton River in 1802 and died in 1871 at Croton Point. William A. Underhill was born at the same place as his brother in 1804,
and died suddenly while on a trip to New York City in 1873. The first three Underhills were pioneer vineyardists in this State, and were men of great enterprise and initiative,
contributing much to American viticulture by precept and example; but none of them was an originator of new varieties.
Stephen W. Underhill, son of William A. Underhill, was born at Croton Point in 1837. In his boyhood he became familiar with the grape-growing operations of his father and uncle,
and about 1860 became interested in hybridizing as a means of originating new varieties. Most of his work was done between 1860 and 1870. He originated Black Defiance Black Eagle, Croton, Irving, Senasqua and many other named and unnamed sorts. Of his varieties it may be said that they generally show too many Vinifera weaknesses for profitable commercial sorts. S. W. Underhill is still living at Croton-on-Hudson, a short distance from Croton Point, the scene of the labors of three generations of the Underhill family. Since the death of his father, in 1873, he has devoted himself almost exclusively to brick-making, an occupation in which his father had been interested.
[From: The Grapes of New York, page 226.]
Martin Vahl
Martin Vahl, a Norwegian, was born in 1749, and died in 1804. As a
pupil of the great Linnaeus, Vahl became a prominent worker in botany
and natural history in Denmark and was an author and writer of note on
these subjects, publishing much on botany. He traveled extensively, but
it does not appear that he visited North America, though he wrote three
large volumes on the flora of tropical America. It is probable that he
named and described Vitis palmata from herbarium specimens.
[From: The Grapes of New York, page 125.]
Thomas Walter
But little is known of the life of Thomas Walter. He was a native of
Hampshire, England, and migrated to St. John's Parish, South Carolina,
where he had a plantation on the Santee River. Here he died in 1788 at
about the age of forty-eight years. His only publication of note is the
Flora Caroliniana, published in the year of his death. He must have
been in correspondence with European botanists of that time as his
herbarium is preserved in the British Museum.
[From: The Grapes of New York, page 96]
Frank A. Waugh
Frank A. Waugh was born in
Sheboygan Falls, Wisconsin, July 8, 1869. On his father's side he is of
Scotch descent, though the family has long been in America; his mother
came from Germany. He was educated in the public schools of Kansas and
in the Kansas State Agricultural College, graduating from the latter
place in 1891. In 1893 he became professor of horticulture in the
Oklahoma Agricultural College and horticulturist at the Experiment
Station, a place which he held for nearly three years, going late in
1895 to take the same position in the University of Vermont. After
eight years of arduous service in Vermont, during which time he became
well known by his writings on horticultural, botanical and agricultural
subjects, he left Vermont to take charge of horticulture in the
Massachusetts Agricultural College and the Hatch Experiment Station. Professor Waugh's study of plums began in the West, Kansas and
Oklahoma, but his reports in regard to this fruit have come from
Vermont where his work has been mainly done. The chief titles under
which his studies have been published in the bulletins and annual
reports of the Vermont Station are: The Pollination of Plums,
Classification of Plums, A Monograph of the Wayland Group of Plums, Hybrid Plums, Types of European Plums, Propagation of Plums, The Myrobalan Plums, A Review of the Americana Plums and The Grouping of Japanese-Hybrid Plums. In 1901 he published Plums and Plum Culture, a
popular presentation of the various phases of his botanical and
horticultural work with this fruit. The titles given do not represent
the extent of his studies with this fruit for there were third and
fourth reports upon several of the subjects mentioned. In particular he
has been helpful to American pomology in the classification of native
plums, in his study of sex in plums and in setting forth the hardiness
of the various species and groups. Besides his papers on plums,
Professor Waugh's chief contributions to horticulture have been a book
entitled Fruit Harvesting, Storing, Marketing, another under the title
Systematic Pomology and two works on apples. He has also published two
books on Landscape Gardening which have given him high standing in this
division of horticulture. Professor Waugh will long be remembered in
horticulture for the great extent of his work, for his versatility in
the profession and for his ability to present well to both readers and
hearers, either technically or popularly, horticultural knowledge.
[From: The Plums of New York, pp.85-86]
Nelson Bonney White
Nelson Bonney White was born in the town of Putney, Windham County, Vermont, in 1824. During his younger years he lived for a time in Ohio and in New York but finally settled in Norwood,
Massachusetts. White was a cabinet maker by trade, but coming under the influence of E. S. Rogers at the time when Rogers' hybrids were causing a stir in New England,
he took up grape-breeding as a pastime. He is probably the oldest grape-breeder of note now alive, as he has been engaged in this occupation over fifty years. His best known productions are August Giant, Amber Queen, and Norfolk. Two other of his varieties, International and King Philip, are very highly spoken of but have not yet been distributed.
[From: The Grapes of New York, page 364]
Marshall Wilder
Marshall P. Wilder contributed to all fields of American
horticulture as an ardent amateur grower and as a most generous patron. But it was as a pomologist and especially as a grower of grapes and
pears that he established a permanent place for himself in the
horticulture of the country. He was born in New Hampshire in 1798 and
died in Boston in 1886, having lived in Dorchester, a suburb of Boston,
for upwards of a half century. By vocation a merchant, he was a captain
of industry in his day, yet most of his life, especially after the
prime had been passed, was devoted to the avocation of horticulture. He
was one of the founders of the American Pomological Society and had
the great honor of being its president, excepting a single two-year
term, from the first meeting in 1850 until his death. During the last
years of his presidency, Wilder actively engaged in the reform of
pomological nomenclature which the Society was then carrying on. He was
an active member of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society for
fifty-six years and its president from 1841 to 1848. He was also one of
the founders of the Massachusetts Board of Agriculture, of the
Massachusetts Agricultural Society, of the United States Agricultural
Society, and was a trustee of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Besides membership and activity in these agricultural
organizations, he served as colonel and commander in a military company
and as president of the New England Historic and Genealogical Society
from 1868 until his death. Wilder was a zealous collector and
introducer of flowers. He specialized in camellias, azaleas, orchids,
and roses. A rose bearing his name is still a garden favorite. Many
floral novelties of his day owe their origin or introduction to
Marshall P. Wilder. He was ever enthusiastic over American grapes and
tested all of the many new varieties introduced about the middle of the
last century. But the pear was even more to his fancy than the grape,
and he endeavored to grow every native variety of any promise
whatsoever. All told, he tested over 1200 varieties, and in 1873
exhibited more than 400 varieties. He originated several new pears and
to him is due the honor of having introduced the Beurre d'Anjou in
1844. At his death he left the American Pomological Society $1000 for
Wilder medals for new fruits and $4000 for general purposes. To the
Massachusetts Horticultural Society, he left $1000 to encourage the
introduction of new American pears and grapes. Among many distinguished
American pomologists who sought to improve the pear, Marshall P. Wilder
deserves most of any recognition for his services and a place is
therefore accorded him for his likeness in the frontispiece of The
Pears of New York and the book is thereby dedicated to him.
Samuel D. Willard
Samuel D. Willard was born August 24, 1835, near Cayuga, New York. He was
educated in the district school, Canandaigua Academy, and Temple Hall,
Geneseo, having been graduated at the last named place in 1854. After a
successful business career of a decade and a half following his
schooling, Mr. Willard engaged in the nursery business in Geneva, New York. He prospered in tree-growing and soon embarked in fruit-growing
as well, rapidly attaining distinction as a nurseryman and as a
fruit-grower. He early began to specialize in plum culture and soon
became one of the leading growers of plums, one of the chief
authorities on varieties, and one of the largest importers of new
sorts. In 1897, with Dr. L. H. Bailey as co-author, Mr. Willard
prepared Bulletin 131, Notes upon Plums, of the Cornell University
Agricultural Experiment Station. In this bulletin Mr. Willard put on
record the results of his long experience in growing plums and gave
descriptions of seventy varieties, nineteen of which he had imported
from Europe. Besides this bulletin he has published but little on
plums, but his spoken words regarding them may be found in nearly every
report of the two horticultural societies of New York since 1880, as
they are also to be found in the reports of horticultural societies in
neighboring states and the provinces of Canada. Besides his work in
horticultural societies, Mr. Willard was one of the earliest and
foremost institute speakers in New York. He was, too, for many years
active in the development of the state fair in New York, having charge
of the horticultural department, a position which he also held at the
Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo in 1901. For nearly a half-century
Mr. Willard has been prominent in his profession in the state and
nation; he is known by all eastern fruit-growers and his vigorous and
enthusiastic utterances in the press, from the platform and in
conversation have made him a favorite authority with the fruit-growers
of this generation.
[from page 149 of The Plums of New York
Dr. A. P. Wylie
Dr. A. P. Wylie was a southern hybridizer. His life was one of exceptionally varied usefulness. Besides being a physician he worked with many different plants,
producing new varieties of cotton, peach, nectarine, magnolia and other species. His hybrids were produced chiefly during the sixties and early seventies. His method of testing hybrid grapes was unique; as soon as the fruit from the cross-fertilized blossoms ripened, the seeds were planted and the seedlings forced the first winter in a hothouse. In the spring it was planted by the side of a mature vine outside and the seedling grafted by inarching on the established vine. In this manner, his son writes us, he frequently secured fruit the second summer. In 1873 he suffered the irreparable misfortune of losing his residence by fire. This destroyed all of his seeds and also his seedlings, which were in an adjacent hothouse. The number of Dr. Wylie's grape seedlings cannot be accurately told as many of them were never disseminated. Of his better known sorts there are Berckmans, Dr. Wylie, Mrs. McClure, and Peter Wylie, the best known of which is the first. Dr. Wylie was the first man to hybridize the
Vitis rotundifolia with other species of grapes. Unfortunately these hybrids appear to have been lost to cultivation. He died at his home in Chester, South Carolina, in 1877.
[From: The Grapes of New York, page 182-183.]