38 INTRODUCTION. 



quaintance of William Coxe the pomologist, emigrated to Waj'nes- 

 ville, O., in 1810, and established a nursery there. He procured 

 from Coxe and Smith a large variety of fruit ; his catalogue in 

 1824 containing the names of ninet3~-two apples and fifty-eight 

 pears. To him, more than to any other person, the neighborhood 

 of Dayton is indebted for the introduction of fine fruit. Others 

 of the more prominent pioneers of horticulture in the West were 

 Zebulon Gillett of Lawrence Count}-, O., Lewis Sanders of Grass- 

 hills, Ky., Joseph Curtis of Edgar County, 111. (the inventor of 

 root-grafting), Dr. Samuel P. Hildreth of Marietta, O., and Dr. 

 Jared P. Kirtland of Cleveland, who gave special attention to the 

 improvement of the cherry, which he commenced previously to the 

 year 1824. 1 Dr. Hildreth and Dr. Kirtland were honorary mem- 

 bers of the Massachusetts Horticultural Societ}'. 



An eccentric character, commonly known as u Johnny Apple- 

 seed," but whose real name was John Chapman, a native of New 

 England, was the first to propagate fruit trees in North-western 

 Pennsylvania and Ohio. He had a passion for rearing and culti- 

 vating apple trees from seed, and would clear little patches of land 

 suitable for his purpose, and where he thought apple trees would 

 be wanted at a future day. He procured seed from Alleghany 

 County, Penn., sowed it at the proper time in his little clearings, 

 enclosed it with brush fences, and gave some attention to their cul- 

 tivation, but never secured a title to the land, or grafted any trees. 

 As his first-planted orchards bore, he took seed from them, always 

 choosing the most ameliorated fruits, and, as the population in- 

 creased, his operations were carried farther westward. They com- 

 menced near the beginning of the centur} r , and continued about 

 thirty 3'ears. 2 



The early French and Spanish settlers of Louisiana introduced 

 the peach, which soon grew spontaneously. Professor Nuttall 

 found it naturalized through the forests of Arkansas in 1819. At 

 Natchez he found the peach, fig, pear, and quince succeeding ex- 

 tremely well ; and apple trees introduced from Kentucky met with 

 nearly equal success; but the cherry, gooseberry, and currant, 

 though thriving, scarcely produced fruit at all. The pomegranate 

 and the myrtle grew and fruited almost as in their native climate ; 



i Transactions of the Ohio Pomological Society for 1859 and 1863; Transactions of the 

 Illinois Horticultural Society for 1876; Horticulturist, Vol. II. p. 420; Letter from S. Burnet 

 of Vincennes, Ind. 



* Hovey's Magazine, Vol. XH. p. 133; Harper's Magazine, Vol. XLHI. p. 830. 



