78 WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. [1892. 



The contributors at this first exhibition were largely members of 

 the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, among whom, some of 

 you, will recall the names of Wilder of Dorchester, Manning, 

 and Cabot of Salem. The Massachusetts Spy of that date speaks 

 in glowing terms of the exhibition of dahlias, which it calls the 

 queen of flowers, and says they were surprisingly fine and were 

 exhibited mostly by Boston growers. In 1841, the exhibit was 

 held in the small room at the south end of the Old South meet- 

 ing-house, then used as a vestry. 



The first exhibition after the incorporation of the Society in 

 the spring of 1842 was in the hall of the Society of Friends, 

 over the jewelry store of Jos. Boyden and W. D. Fenno in the 

 brick block opposite the residence of Daniel Waldo, one of our 

 early presidents. This, I think, was the first exhibition adver- 

 tised in the newspapers, a notice being inserted in the Spy, 

 signed by Edwin Conant, Fred. W. Paine and Clarendon Harris, 

 Committee, gentlemen for many years active working members. 



In 1843, the exhibition was held in the new Central Exchange, 

 the first building having been destroyed by fire early in that year. 

 The next and the following year a room was secured near the 

 Common in the brick block of Gale & Beach, No. 14 Front Street, 

 on the lot next east of the present property of the Society. 



The newspapers of forty and fifty years ago did not have much 

 to say in regard to our local institutions and but little can be 

 found in relation to the early history of this Society. It may 

 have been with the intention of calling public attention to the 

 first exhibition of the Horticultural Society that John M. Earle, 

 editor of the Spy and for many years one of our most active 

 members, spoke of a remarkable free-stone peach he had picked 

 from one of his trees, which measured 9f inches in circumference 

 and weighed 3 ounces (such specimens are seldom found in 

 Worcester now), and a few days later mention is made of 51 

 citron melons grown from a single self-sown seed, the vine of 

 which measured over 1,800 feet in length. 



Dr. John Green, the first president, whom many of you recall as 

 a successful physician and the founder of the Green Library, had 

 extensive grounds in the rear of his house on Main Street, now 

 covered with buildings, in which I remember were some fine old 



