248 GENERAL HISTORY. 



William Woodbrilge, one of the early governors of tlu- State, at one time 

 owned a farm which is now part of the city of Detroit. About the year 1824 

 or 1825, he purchased two thousand apple trees, together with a quantity of 

 pear trees, of Grant Thorburn, of New York, from which he planted two 

 large orchards on this farm. This importation included many, if not most, 

 of the leading varieties of that period, although he added others from the old 

 orchart^s on the Canada side of the river, the trees for which are reputed to 

 have been imported from Montreal, in some cases at least, as early as 1706. 



Respecting the origin of the old French orchards little is certainly known. 

 On this point the following is quoted from a paper entitled, "The Early Coloni- 

 zation of Detroit," contributed byBela Hubbard to the first volume of Michi- 

 gan Pioneer Collections: 



** The prevailing opinion that the pear and apple trees of the Canadas 

 originated from seeds brought from France is founded on the supposition 

 that nursery trees could not withstand the long sea voyage of that period. 

 Yet this opinion cannot be accepted without hesitation. It is a law well 

 understood by fruit cultivators, that trees raised from the seed of these fruits 

 tend to revert to their original wild state. They are, with rare exceptions, 

 inferior to the cultivated varieties, and, besides, are of almost as many different 

 sorts as the seeds which produce them. Neither the pear nor the apple trees 

 of the French orchards have the character of seedlings, and the fact that 

 almost every orchard contained several trees of the same, and of noted kinds, 

 militates against that supposition. On the other hand, it is improbable that 

 they are seedlings raised here and grafted, for the art was then little prac- 

 ticed in America, and not at all among the Canadians." * * * <»l am 

 informed by an old resident that, in 1812 or 1813, he saw one cut down, 

 which was jn the way of a battery that was being built just above the city, 

 and which measured nearly two feet in diameter of trunk. Such a growth 

 could hardly have been acquired in less than a century. * * * * 



** Appreciated by all, no one has thought of continuing the sj^ecies, or else all 

 attempts have failed. No young trees are to be found in the extensive 

 plantations of the present century, which include so many vastly inferior. 

 None of the nurseries contain it. It is even yet without a name in the dic- 

 tionary of American fruit trees. Still, however, the pear trees flourish in a 

 green old age while the apple orchards are fast disappearing, partly from 

 natural decay, but more perhaps from neglect, while many are annually 

 swept from existence by the relentless besom of modern improvement. 



"The old pear tree belongs to Detroit and her old habitans, and will perish 

 with them, and with their homesteads, which are so fast disappearing. 

 Another half century will see the last of those magnificent trees, the pride of 

 the French orchard, the mammoth of fruits of which the world does not 

 afford the equal." 



As among the French farmers along the river Raisin, so equally among 

 their countrymen along the Detroit, nearly every family planted an orchard. 

 The same was even more generally true of the more recent settlers of the 

 interior who, coming as the most of them did, from the fruit-producing 

 regions of New England, New \''ork and adjacent States, with inherited 

 tastes for fruit growing and in very many cases provided with trees, sprouts, 

 cions or seeds for a renewal of the plantations left behind, made the planting 

 of orchards the first business, as soon as suitable ground could be prepared. 

 Among the earliest of these orchards were those of John 1'ibbits, Roswcfll 

 Root, Henry Ward, Clark Griswold and others of Plymouth, John G. Welch, 



