282 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
In connection with the nursery business we carried on vegetable 
and small fruit growing. A man from Ohio sold me 200 large 
clumps of Turkey rhubarb for $200, and from this I sold more than 
$400 in leaf stalks and roots in one year. Early Scarlet and Hovey 
strawberries brought forty cents per quart before others got a start 
in that line. After we built the pioneer greenhouse a good bouquet 
maker was secured from Cincinnati, so that people in the two em- 
bryo cities who wanted floral luxuries could find them by driving 
out to Groveland. 
Just before the war of 1861-5 burst upon the country, I started the 
Minnesota Farmer and Gardener, with Col. J. H. Stevens as assist- 
ant editor. Things looked so dark ahead that we were compelled to 
give up its publication after some over a year’s trial. Soon after its 
suspension, Editor J. A. Wheelock, of the Daily Press, kindly 
offered us space for a department pertaining to agricultural mat- 
ters, which was conducted by the writer for many years. In the 
above publications are to be found a mass of information about 
the farms and farmers of early times. 
During the fore part of 1861 my pet scheme was to get Horace 
Greeley to visit Minnesota and make a speech at the coming fair. 
Four letters received from the great reformer I have kept since then 
and prize most highly. The last was very brief and penned just 
after the sad defeat at Bull Run—in which he declined to leave his 
post on the Tribune until a brighter day came to our distressed 
country. Later he came out and spoke at one of Col. King’s big 
Minneapolis fairs. 
My marriage to Abbie Guild, in 1855, at her brother’s home in San- 
dusky, Ohio, her coming here with me in 1885 and death from a par- 
alytic stroke more than a year ago, are all told in the January, 1897, 
number of curmagazine. After coming to this delightful land (and 
regaining my health measurably)I started again in my old business. 
I often tire of our perpetual summer and tropical surroundings, 
but I never expect to revisit the scenes of my cherished Minnesota; 
I expect to end my pilgrimage here and be buried with friends 
beneath the oaks and evergreens of Oakland. 
Mr. Ford is very well known to all the older members of this 
society. While not a charter member, the association was only 
in its third year when his name appeared on its rolls. In 1884 
he was made an honorary life member, to which place he was 
justly entitled by his many years of faithful service in its 
ranks. Prior to his removal to California in 1885 his name 
appears very frequently in our records, and no member wielded 
a more facile pen or had a larger experience and observation 
to draw from. He was one of three much prized St. Paul mem- 
bers who, at about the same time, removed to the Pacific coast, 
W.E. Brimhall and Truman M. Smith being the others. Of 
this trio Mr. Brimhall is dead, while the others are still in act- 
ive life, and we hope many more years may be granted them,— 
SEC’Y. 
