MARSHALL PINCKNEY WILDER.* 



Marshall P. Wilder was born in Rindge, in the State of New Hamp- 

 shire, on the 2 2d of September, 1798. 



Our limits do not allow us to enter much into detail with regard to any 

 portion of Mr. Wilder's life, much less that part which is not purely 

 horticultural. 



His paternal ancestors * were among the early settlers of the beautiful 

 English-like town of Lancaster, Mass. ; his grandmother being sister of 

 Samuel Locke, a former President of Harvard University. His father 

 bore the name of Samuel Locke, was of Puritan origin and Puritan prin- 

 ciples, and connected a farm with his mercantile pursuits. Marshall P. 

 was the eldest of nine children, and was tenderly loved by his mother, 

 who was a gifted woman, pious like her husband, a great admirer of the 

 beautiful in Nature, and a lover of rural pursuits and of countiy life. 



Under the influence of such a home, young Wilder caught the love of 

 Nature and of the pursuits of the farmer. It was here that he learned 

 to revere every thing that was sacred, and to support the institutions of 



* Livingston's Memoirs of Eminent Americans, p. 513. 



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