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RESOLUTION ON THE DEATH OF 



Coleman K. Sober 



At the thirteenth annual convention of the Northern Nut 

 Growers' Association, held at Rochester, N. Y., September 7, 8 and 

 9, 1922, a committee was appointed to express the feeling of the 

 association at the death of one of its life members, Coleman K. 

 Sober, at the age of seventy-nine, at his home in Lewisburg, Pa., in 

 December 1921, and to inform his family of its action. 



Colonel Sober, as he was most often called, was a frequent at- 

 tendant at the meetings of the association in its early history. He was 

 a pioneer in the culture of the chestnut in America and the grower 

 and distributor of a variety which he called the Sober Paragon. He 

 developed the production of this valuable variety, and its nursery 

 stock, on a large scale and had demonstrated chestnut growing as the 

 first of the established nut industries in the north-eastern United 

 States. He devised methods of grafting and cultivating the chest- 

 nut and invented means and machinery for harvesting and shelling 

 the nuts, for which he found a ready market at good prices. 



A man of strong personality, capable of large operations ar 

 unaccustomed to failure he found it hard to admit defeat of hir 

 deeply cherished purpose, and success already within his grasp, by 

 that great national calamity the invasion of this country by the fatal 

 chestnut blight. Undoubtedly he foresaw, as did other advocates 

 of nut culture, the great help and stimulus to the industry that woul 

 result from the commercial success of chestnut culture, and it was 

 a bitter disappointment to him to find himself helpless before the 

 irresistable progress of the blight. This failure came too late in 

 life for him to recover and develop new fields in nut culture which, 

 let us believe, he would have done if he had been younger, for we 

 know that he was an advocate of the roadside planting of nut tree? 

 and a supporter of the efforts of those of us who are striving for 

 the success of all forms of nut culture. 



Nut growing and this association have lost an able and energetic 

 worker. 



An account of Col. Sober's life and works may be found in the 

 August 1922 number of the American Nut Journal. 



