LENAWEE COUNTY. 219 



Following this letter Mr. Steere goes on to say: "The lamented Ira J. 

 Thurston's was the second nursery started at Adrian (mine being the first), 

 and I often think, with his zeal and enthusiasm for the business, his agreeable 

 social qualities, and love of the beautiful, combined with an earnest, energetic 

 character, how very d liferent many things might have been at Adrian had he 

 not been overpersuaded to make that last fatal balloon ascension (at Ionia). 



'' My father, David Steere, took a decided interest in collecting good fruits 

 and in budding and grafting them at his home, in Belmont and Jefferson 

 counties, Ohio, and some of us boys learned to tinker at such work very 

 young. He left a fine orchard at the old home in Jefferson county when he 

 came to Michigan, in the fall of 1833. 



'* Whether mother had as much taste as father in such matters, I do not 

 know, as her labors and calling were not calculated to develop such traits. 

 However that may be, some of us children must have been born with an 

 uncommonly active, not to say good, taste for nice fruit, as witness the fre- 

 quent testing of mother's pears, carefully laid away in remote corners, 

 drawers, or the bottom of the big family clock ; and the ripening of early 

 apples, etc., was watched with a vigilance that often cheated even the birds 

 out of the first taste. 



"Ow the place, near Adrian, where we settled for the winter, was a bed of 

 .several hundred two-year seedling apple trees. The next spring, 1834, my 

 elder brother, William N., and myself (a boy of sixteen), were set to graft 

 these seedlings. We got such cions as we could of the neighbors, dug the 

 seedlings, shortened the top and other roots a little, and cleft grafted them 

 at the ground line; used no wax or ties, simply heaped up the soil a little, 

 and 0, how they did grow! It would hardly do to call that my first nursery, 

 but never after did I raise such fine one-year trees. We moved that fall to 

 land my father had entered in the west part of the county, taking the trees 

 with us, and resetting them in the new ground, that had been grubbed and 

 otherwise carefully prepared. Eemember, we were in the wilderness, but the 

 little trees were well cared for, and in a year or two, when the ground was 

 cleared and fitted, father set out an orchard, selling and giving away the rest 

 to friends and neighbors. 



'Every fall for several years that orchard was manured, and worked the fol- 

 lowing season in vegetables, etc., and many of my noonday rests (?) were 

 ■spent in fussing over those trees, scrubbing, hoeing, pruning, and lo! almost 

 before we knew it, several varieties were in bearing — the first, 1 think, in the 

 township of Eollin. 



" Father also first introduced Fallawater from Ohio, and perhaps others; but 

 I remember that, because he previously had it from Pennsylvania, at a time 

 when it was greatly praised. 



^'^My own work commenced, in Eollin, in 1843, when three pecks of apple 

 seeds and a quantity of peach stones were planted ; 2,000 two-year apple 

 seedlings were bought, making about 4,000 root grafts, which were very nice 

 at two and three years. 



" Meantime fatiier had established a home, four miles from Adrian, atEaisin 

 Valley, and invited me to move my nursery to his place, which was done, after 

 selling a large portion in western Lenawee and eastern Hillsdale. 



"For several years while in Eaisin Valley, my youngest brother, G. P. Steere, 

 was my earnest helper and partner, but he soon left with a brother-in-law to 

 start farther west. Father, too, was virtually a partner, receiving a portion 

 of the proceeds for ground rent. 



