STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 12T 



soon after. He adds that "most of the orchards planted at that time 

 were seedlings ; but one gentleman — a General Whiteside, I think — 

 grafted a number of seedling apple trees with the best varieties he could 

 obtain, and from these trees some very good apples have been somewhat 

 disseminated through the West." This account, which I am unable to 

 verify, is the first suggestion of grafting in Illinois. The Whitesides, 

 according to Peck, came, however, in 1793, instead of 1790, as here stated. 

 In 1810 there were grafted trees planted in Union county by a Mr. Wolfe. 

 From the year 1800 until the time of the admission of Illinois as a 

 State, we find little evidence of horticultural progress. An orchard 

 planted in Johnson county in 1814, by a Mr. Grogan, is said to have 

 been partly of suckers from old trees. This is the first mention that I 

 find of a method of propagation much used by our Southern and Western 

 emigrants to secure their favorite varieties. It was considerably practiced 

 during the next fifteen or twenty years. 



THREE EARLY NURSERYMEN. 



About the year 1818 three nurseries, at least, were established in the 

 incipient State by Joseph Curtis, John Smith and Wm. B. Archer. Of 

 these, Joseph Curtis, of Edgar county, an account of whose life and labors 

 may be found in vols. 3 and 9 of our Transactions, is one of the most 

 remarkable. A native of New Jersey, he came from Ohio up the Wabash 

 in 181 7, and heeled in some of the trees of his future nursery, in the soil 

 they were to occupy, the same year. He continued in the business until 

 1845. -^^ ^^^^ '^^ early and honest tree peddler, and his wagons, pene- 

 trating far into the center and north of the State, disseminated his 

 varieties far and wide. He invented root-grafting in his early youth, 

 and practiced it from the first in this State. He propagated pears and 

 apples from root-cuttings, and thus made an advance on propagation by 

 suckers. In 1845, ^'^ collection numbered 300 varieties of apples, 90 of 

 pears, 28 of cherries, 25 of peaches, 30 of plums, 12 of grapes, besides 

 other collections. It was a remarkable collection to have been made 

 one-third of a century ago on the banks of the Wabash. 



Another wide dissemination of good fruits was John Smith's, of Bond 

 county, who planted apple seeds for a nursery near Greenville, in the 

 autumn of 181 8. His stock of varieties came from George Heikes, an 

 emigrant from Pennsylvania to Kentucky. The result, though not so 

 widely spread, was the same. He disseminated a large number of trees 

 of what were and are standard sorts. Both Mr. Curtis and Mr. Smith 

 received and disseminated the Rawles' Janet, Gilpin, Pennock, Milam, 

 Newtown Pippin and Rambo. Mr. Curtis had the Early Pennock, Early 

 Harvest and Smith's Cider, which Mr. Smith did not; and the latter 

 disseminated the Pryor's Red, Limber Twig, and Pennsylvania Red Streak 

 or Wine. 



Col. Wm. B. Archer, the third upon this list, then a resident of 

 Clark county, obtained apple seed from Warren county, Ohio, in 1818. 

 "He drilled one bushel on the 25th of December that year, and adver- 

 tised in a Vincennes paper 100,000 seedling trees for sale, it being the 



