STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 27 



MEMORIAL OF HON. ROBERT HALLOWELL GARDINER, LATE 



PRESIDENT OF THE SOCIETY. 



By Samuel L. Boardman. 



From the foundation of our Society it has been a devout custom 

 to place upon record in its Transactions memorials of its deceased 

 members, thus preserving among the workers of to-day recollections 

 of the lives and services of its founders and helpers of the past, as 

 an incentive and for the emulation of those who will carry on its 

 good work when we who are here shall all have become numbered 

 with the ''silent majority." In accordance with this pious and rev- 

 erent example it becomes our sad duty to commemorate the life and 

 work of the late Robert Hallowell Gardiner, a member of our Soci- 

 et}' from 1877 to his decease, and its President from 1880 to 1884. 



Mr. Gardiner was descended from a long line of honorable and dis- 

 tinguished ancestry. His great-grandfather. Dr. Sylvester Gardiner, 

 was born in Kingston, R. I., in the j'ear 1707, was educated in Eng- 

 land and France under the best schools and instructors, and became 

 one of the most learned and accomplished physicians and surgeons 

 of the time. He was one of the proprietors of the Kennebec Pur- 

 chase, which, commencing its scheme of colonization in 1757, did so 

 much for the settlement and development of the fertile sections along 

 the Kennebec River, and as agent of the company was largely instru- 

 mental in shaping its policy and promoting its prosperity-. To him 

 the praise should be ascribed of settling the region of ancient Pow- 

 nalborough and the entire Kennebec valley. In a history of the 

 Kennebec Purchase, in the Collections of the Maine Historical Soci- 

 ety (Vol. II, p. 279), it is said, "To his enlarged views, indefatiga- 

 ble exertions and liberal mind may be attributed those plans which 

 so rapidly advanced the prosperity of the Patent." "He brought an 

 uncommon zeal, a ripe judgment, great business talent and a pow- 

 erful interest in the growth of the country to bear on this enter- 

 prise, and so confident was he of success that he was willing to 

 commence at his own expense what the large company of Proprie- 

 tors had never been able to accomplish." He received from the 

 company a grant of four hundred acres of land, and continued to 

 accumulate possessions of real estate until at one time he owned one 

 hundred thousand acres of land. The present cit}' of Gardiner was 

 named in his honor. At the breaking out of the Revolution Dr. 



