58 THE PEACHES OF NEW YORK 



rick,' the pomological author, who for years was Prince's chief competitor, 

 his nurseries being located at Newton, Massachusetts, began business in 

 1790 by planting a quantity of peach-stones the trees from which he did 

 not bud. Four years later, we are told, he learned to bud and greatly 

 extended his assortment of varieties, making a specialty of budded peach- 

 trees.' 



Until the middle of the next century, peaches were nevertheless com- 

 monly grown from the pits. It is probable that never before nor since, the 

 world over, have seedling peaches been raised on so extended a scale as in 

 America during the half-century following the Revolutionary war. The 

 country between the Atlantic seaboard and the Mississippi was being rap- 

 idly settled and on nearly every farm from the Great Lakes to the Gulf, bar- 

 ring a few in the northernmost parts of this great area, peaches were planted. 

 They furnished food not only for the pioneers but were used in fatten- 

 ing pigs and in the earlier part of the period, at any rate, were, with apples, 

 the chief supply of ardent spirits which every farmer then kept on hand fqr 

 daily use. There were millions of peach-trees in America before 1825 

 but until that time there were but few named varieties. Then the art of 

 budding began to spread; nurseries sprang up; this vast collection of 



they made currant-wine, their output in 1824 being 1700 gallons; in 1825, 3000 gallons and in 1826, 3600 

 gallons. The date and place of John Kenrick's birth cannot be learned. His death occurred in 1833 in 

 the Kenrick mansion, built in 1720, standing near the nurseries. New England, and peach-growers 

 everywhere, owe him a debt of gratitude for his services in horticulture. 



' William Kenrick, son of John, of whom we have just written, was bom in 1 795 in the family mansion 

 on Nonantum Hill in the town of Newton, Massachusetts. He was trained by his father as a nurseryman 

 and in 1823 became a partner in the Kenrick nurseries, of which he soon after appears to have assumed 

 control. The Kenrick nurseries, at this time, were probably the most extensive and the best known of 

 any in New England. Besides growing the fruit-bearing plants of the time and such ornamentals as were 

 then to be found in America, the Kenricks seem to have taken an enthusiastic part in the craze for the 

 Lombardy Poplar which was then raging in America. The elder Kenrick must have been one of the early 

 growers of this popular plant for in 1797 two acres of his nursery was appropriated to the Lombardy Poplar. 

 The son, in his turn an enthusiast, succumbed to the silk-culture fad and seems in 1835 to have been one 

 of the leading growers of the mulberry, Morus multicaulus, for feeding silkworms. In this year Mr. Ken- 

 rick published the American Silk Growers Guide, which is, in essence, a treatise on mulberry-culture. 

 William Kenrick's most notable pomological achievement, however, was the publication of the New 

 American Orchardist which appeared in 1833. While not the best of the pomological manuals of the time, 

 it is ;i valuable contribution to American pomology because of its full descriptions of the fruits of that date. 

 Beginning with his father in 1823, WiUiam Kenrick continued in the nursery business for twenty-seven 

 years, probably growing, importing and disposing of more fruit and ornamental trees than any other 

 nurseryman in New England during this time. He died in February, 1872, at the ripe age of 77, having 

 lived to see the orchards planted from his nursery come to full fruition and every part of New England 

 made more beautiful by the ornamental trees and shrubs grown under his care. 



2 Hist. Mass. Hort. Soc. 33. 1880. 



