96 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
realized what Peter M. Gideon had done for the northwest as forcibly as I 
did at the Omaha Exposition. I took the finest plate of Wealthy applés 
from my place, and I found a dozen more plates there from Wisconsin. 
We had the best plates in front, and we labeled them, ‘““The Wealthy apple, 
a Minnesota seedling originated by Peter M. Gideon.” There were nine 
states that exhibited the Wealthy. A Montana man said to me, ‘We do not 
have to propagate seedlings, we take the original varieties.” I looked his 
exhibit over, and out of fourteen plates he had twelve plates of northern 
seedlings. When I looked over the various exhibits, notably those of Cali- 
fornia and Oregon, I could not help but feel that Peter M. Gideon had 
done a valuable work for horticulture. We have a fine show of Wealthy 
apples here on the table, and if we could have some plates of the beautiful 
Loudon raspberry, and the Jessie strawberry, the Windsor and Plumb Cider 
apples and other evidences of the work done by Mr. Loudon and Mr. 
Plumb it would make an impressive picture. 
I was arranging for a paper from Mr. Plumb for our winter meeting. 
He was past seventy, and he said to me, “I have been thinking for years of 
writing something of Wisconsin seedlings that should be preserved, and I 
feel now that if I ever do it I must do it this winter.” With the weight of 
three score years and ten on his shoulders he was still delivering milk to sey- 
enty customers. He came to the meeting, but had had no time to write a 
paper, so he made a lot of notes and read them there. I asked him for 
those notes, but he said he must carry them home and revise them. He 
never lived to do it. I obtained the notes and his paper from his family and 
fixed them up the best I could and then returned the paper to them. 
In regard to Mr. Loudon. I was intimately acquainted with him. He 
was just as sincere and anxious to promote his chosen work as were Mr. 
Gideon and Mr. Plumb. I was at his place a few weeks before his death. 
He had a new seedling cherry, and he told me I must come down and get 
some scions and let the people have the benefit of it. He was an unselfish 
man and lived largely for others. He had a brother who was writing a 
book on forestry in England, but his health was so poor that he took his 
wife with him wherever he went for fear he might be taken sick while alone. 
He was so anxious to finish his book, that while he was working on the last 
chapter he dropped dead. F. W. Loudon was the same in his work; he 
possessed the same enthusiasm and perseverance. 
I often visited him and told him what was being done in horticulture. 
He said he preferred hearing of it instead of reading, as he went from home 
but little. 
There is much more that I could say of these three useful men, but I 
have occupied more than my allotted time, but being from another state I 
have taken a little more liberty. 
In conclusion I want to say this: In Massachusetts where the Baldwin 
apple originated there was erected a monument to the man who originated 
it, and on top of that monument is a Baldwin apple, and I hope to live to 
see the day when Minnesota (and our Wisconsin people ought to help your 
people) will have a monument erected to the memory of Peter M. Gideon 
over on your university grounds, where the citizens and especially the young 
men of your state can see it, and in the cemetery where Mr. Gideon is buried, 
and I would propose to put on top of that monument a Wealthy apple that 
will perpetuate the memory of Peter M. Gideon—which will also be. per- 
petuated by the growing and bearing Wealthy trees in the north as long as 
time lasts. 
