126 TRANSACTIONS OF THE ILLINOIS ' 



The original settlers, with reminiscences of the cider orchards of Nor- 

 mandy, were doubtless more energetic in keeping up the supply of horti- 

 cultural products than were their American-born descendants. Pittman, in 

 1770, says that the inhabitants made wine of the wild grapes " very 

 inebriating," and " in color and taste very like the red wine of Provence ;" 

 but Reynolds adds that '' this wine was made by the first settlers, but dis- 

 appeared with the Europeans. The Creoles made little or none." 



In some historical sketches of Randolph county, published in 1859, 

 in a notice of Mrs. Maxwell, daughter of Pierre Menard, our former Lieu- 

 tenant-Governor, I find mention of an ancient and honorable rose tree, the 

 only trace of ornamental horticulture that I find in the early day. " She has 

 in her possession," says the writer, " a damask rosebush which was brought 

 from New Orleans more than a century ago. It is the first rosebush that 

 ever bloomed in Illinois, and though it has been swept over by the floods 

 of the last hundred years, it still retains its vigor and bloom, putting forth 

 its sprouts at the annual. recurrence of spring time." 



" In horticulture," says Reynolds of the French, " they excelled the 

 Americans. The lettuce, peas, beans, carrots, and similar vegetables, were 

 cultivated considerably in the French gardens." "Their houses," says 

 Ford, " were generally placed in gardens, surrounded by fruit trees of 

 apples, pears, cherries and peaches." This was better than the average 

 American even of to-day. 



EARLIEST ORCHARDS, 



As early as 1800, when a few American settlers had been established 

 in the country about twenty years. Governor Reynolds states that " both 

 the French and Americans possessed large apple orchards in proportion 

 to the number of people in the country. The French," he adds, "also 

 cultivated considerable orchards of pears, but the peach tree was almost 

 entirely neglected." So far as I can learn, none of these orchards were 

 planted of grafted or budded trees. Even that of M. Girardin, which I 

 have mentioned, does not seem to have perpetuated anything more valua- 

 ble than the Prairie du Pont pear, which Downing (under the name of 

 Prairie Am Fond) classes as "poor." Samuel Seybold, whose mother 

 planted an orchard of 120 trees within the present limits of Madison 

 county, in 1803, gives the same statement, that apples, pears and peaches 

 were propagated from the seed. Some trees of this orchard were in bear- 

 ing as late as 1874. Major Solomon Prewitt, who came to the State in 

 1806, told me that he did not know of any grafted fruit at that time. The 

 French were in the habit of bringing up loads of apples from St. Clair into 

 Madison county in the autumn and trading .with the settlers. Some of the 

 varieties were very good, from one of which Major Prewitt raised and set 

 out in 1820 some forty seedling trees, some of which also proved very 

 good. The Whitesides, of Whiteside station, in what is now Monroe 

 county, and in Madison county, were noted as having orchards as 

 early as 1806. In corroboration and addition to this, a writer in 

 the Gardener's Monthly states that the Whiteside settlement of Mon- 

 roe was made as early as 1790, and assumes the orchards to be planted 



