230 ' TRANSACTIONS OF THE HORTICULTURAL 



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as the saying now is. But those of my old compeers of business at 

 that time know what a fall there was of my countrymen. That was 

 the year I came west and made a start, hard times ard panic fol- 

 lowed but a fevv months after. 1857, eventful year, what had we 

 then horticulturally? In the transaction of the old North Western 

 Fruit Grower's Society, the forerunner of what was afterwards the 

 National Poraological or Horticultural Society ( now before me ), 

 there is a membership of 126 names. Where did they come from, 

 and who were they? Out of that number Illinois is credited with 

 sixty; Iowa, forty-four; (the meeting was in Burlington in 1856,) 

 Wisconsin, five; Michigan and Ohio, two each; New York state, I 

 think, half a dozen; one from Indiana and one from Kansas terri- 

 tory. Think of it, the great state of Kansas, then it only a territory, 

 with struggles a huodred fold more than Dakota now is having to 

 get into the sisterhood of states. Who were some of these repre- 

 sentative men? The New Yorkers, it is safe to say, were Rochester 

 Nurserymen. They had an eye to business, and the great growing 

 West at that time was a bonanza to theui. The long bundles, and 

 boxes of trees, mainly fruit, could be seen at every railroad depot in 

 season; spring and fall, 



Arthur Bryant, Sr., of Princeton; M. L. Dunlap (Old Rural), 

 then of Lydon, iCook county; Louis Ellsworth, of Naperville; S. Fos- 

 ter, of Muscatine; 0. B. Galusha, of Kendall; Dr. Hull, of Alton; 

 Edson Harkness, of Peoria; Smiley Shepherd, of Putman county; 

 Tyler McWhorter, of Mercer; Jerry Aldrich, of Bureau; C. R. Over- 

 man, of Fulton, all men of note of the early West, were there, but, 

 who all have fought the good fight and we hope now rest well from 

 their labor. A few more names like Samuel Edwards, then of 

 Lamoile; S. G. Minkler, of Kendall; W. H. Mann (now of Florida), 

 F. K. Phoenix, now of Wisconsin, then of Bloomington, what does 

 not that name call up in bygone years in the Nurseryman's line. 

 A. R. and N. Whitney of this place, with possibly others that do 

 not now occur to me, are almost sure to be pi'esent at this meeting, 

 they are truly old wheel-horses, and have been at any time these 

 forty years past with a hand to the horticultural plow. 



Fruit and fruit trees was in these early times the great thought 

 of these men. Forest and ornamental trees came later. What is at 

 this day a tremendous industry, the Florists with vast sums of money 

 interested, had scarcely its morning then. The speaker was the 

 third in point of time in the smallest of small ways, as would be 

 understood now in the great and growing City of Chicago, in 1857 — 

 with nearly a hundred thousand souls. There was not, all told, to 

 exceed a couple of thousand dollars invested in the City of Chicago 

 prior to that year, and I doubt very much if there was as much more 

 in the whole State of Illinois. I know of no one even then exclus- 



