APPENDIX. 173 



J 



Human love, in its earliest movements, expresses itself with flowers, and 

 the felicities of success are expressed with fine fruits. It is but natural, 

 then, that we find among the first most important body of home-builders of 

 184,3, those who not only broug-ht garden seeds, but attempted to bring- grow- 

 ing plants of choice fruit. .1. M. (iarrison started with some grafted apple 

 trees but failed to get them through. In 1847, R. C. Geer bought a peck of 

 apple seeds and about half as much pear seeds. But, as illustrative of the 

 greater efficiency of the most advanced frontiersman to best meet the wants 

 of a further advance, we have the grand action of Henderson Luelling, start- 

 ing from Iowa the same year with a very complete nursery of growing fruit 

 trees and succeeding in getting them to Oregon. The enterprise of these 

 two men naturally supported each other, and their mutual dealings amounted 

 to thousands of dollars; as Mr. Geer subsequently received larger quantities 

 of tree seeds from Ohio, and scions of particular kinds of fruit he had shipped 

 to him, in sealed cases, around Cape Horn. Later, Judge Cyrus Olney 

 brought several bushels of apple and i)ear seeds and jilanted in the campus 

 of the Willamette University, and after the wonderful enterprise of Mr. 

 Luelling a Mr. Ladd brought a nursery of fruit trees via the Isthmus of 

 Panama, from Ohio. These, however, were the consjiicuous horticultural 

 enterprises. Less definable sources were by almost every family bringing 

 the seed of some favorite garden or orchard product. It is not known 

 whether the first missionaries of the Methodist Episcopal Board of Missions 

 brought any seeds or plants, but as their pxirposes included an industrial 

 school for the natives, it is presumed they did. 



The writer, who was the first resident owner upon the site, and in the 

 first building erected at Walamet, and selling the right after four months 

 of ownership, reserved and took to his chosen location for a home the horti- 

 cultural plants deemed removable, of which the rosebush, since extensively 

 designated as the "Mission Rose," and the rhubarb, currant, and gooseberry 

 plants were the most important. There was then only left some six or eight 

 peach trees, not less than eight or nine years old. There must have been 

 some apple trees of the same age which were moved to the new location, as 

 I saw trees on the campus of the ''Oregon Institute " evidently too old to 

 have been grown there within the time since the Mission was abandoned. 



The foregoing indicates how the earliest homebuilders began. One 

 family brought peach pits and plums, another cherries, another apjjles and 

 pears, planted them and generously divided with others when they had to 

 spare. Others marked and transplanted wild fruits. In this way the wild 

 currant and choke cherry of Eastern Oregon, and w^ild plum and grape of 

 Southern Oregon, were brought to, and planted in, the Willamette Valley 

 in 1848 ; and the native Blackcap raspberry was transplanted to gardens 

 before the discovery of gold in California. This brought the fact to the 

 attention of the people of Oregon that Henderson Luelling, by his wagon 

 load of choice varieties of fruit trees, had brought a magazine of wealth 

 within reach of the farmers of Oregon. 



With the money results of the first sales of produce to the California 

 miners orders went East for books and periodicals. Fruits, such as the 

 seedling apples from the Gervais and Lataurette orchards, and peaches 



