182 LUTHER BURBANK 



father was an unusually prosperous farmer and 

 manufacturer. Besides his farming interests, 

 with a large family, he founji it necessary to 

 engage in manufacturing. On the farm was an 

 extensive bank of splendid clay; and as pottery 

 then was in great demand he engaged in its 

 manufacture. This business was carried on for 

 several years; but later the mammoth manufac- 

 turing paper and textile plants were established 

 in the vicinity, which created so great a demand 

 for brick that he found it profitable to establish 

 a brickyard on the farm; and as it takes wood 

 to burn brick he began buying woodlands, of 

 which he acquired large holdings. His judg- 

 ment of the value of growing woodlands was 

 good, and he employed a large number of men 

 each summer to make and burn the brick, some 

 of whom were engaged during the winter in 

 chopping and hauling wood, and in hauling the 

 brick by teams to the railroad stations, or deliv- 

 ering them to the various towns and cities within 

 fifty miles of the farm. Luther, and a younger 

 brother, Alfred, when quite young, perhaps only 

 six or eight years of age, used to drive the oxen 

 with loads of brick to Clinton, Lancaster village, 

 Harvard, Fitchburg, Groton, Leominster, Shir- 

 ley, Sterling, Acton, and other near-by towns. 

 The Lancaster Gingham Mills, the Washburn 



