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THE STORY OF THE OLDEST CHESTNUT GROVE 



IN ILLINOIS 



Amelia Riehl, Godfrey, Illinois 



In the year 1860 our father, E. A. Riehl, bought this piece of 

 rough, hilly land. Only about one-third of it was fit for cultivation, 

 the tops of the hills and the little valleys between them. These 

 small pieces he gradually cleared and began growing various kinds of 

 fru)it which he shipped to the Chicago market. He was a pioneer by 

 nature and was always the first one in the neighborhood to start grow- 

 ing a new product. When he saw that any one thing was being 

 planted to excess he quit growing it and went to planting something 

 else before the market became glutted. 



He had gone to school in Pennsylvania where the chestnuts grew 

 wild. In his early days here he planted a few trees so as to have 

 chestnuts for his children. These trees grew and bore so well that 

 about 40 years ago he got the idea of growing chestnuts for market. 

 The largest of these old trees is now eight feet in circumference and 

 has a spread of about 60 feet. 



Tlien he began a search for the best chestnuts to be found any- 

 where. Wherever he heard of an especially good nut he tried to obtain 

 a few nuts of it for seed and planted them. When the little trees 

 came into bearing he made various crosses ; always with the idea in 

 mind of producing a new variety that would be as large as some of 

 their foreign parents and as fine grained, sweet and delicately flav- 

 ored as the little native American chestnut. 



Hundreds of these little trees were grown, and planted in rough, 

 uncultivated land that had never been plowed. As soon as they were 

 large enough, the land was pastured. They were set much too close 

 together for permanent planting. Each tree was allowed only enough 

 space to be able to produce a few nuts. As fast as they came into 

 bearing, and their nuts were tested, the poorest trees were either cut 

 out to make room for others near them, or topworked to some of the 

 better varieties. Out of many hundreds, probably thousands, of these 



