74 STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY, 



from the seeds they had brought with them. M}' father started 

 with both methods. He brought a few trees from Garland, and 

 they were destroyed the year they were set, by grasshoppers eating 

 away all the growth of the year. I remember the stumps of those 

 trees — some of them having feeble sprouts from the root. These 

 trees were probably set in 1810. and his nursery started the same 

 year. Some of the nursery, after four years' growth, was ingrafted 

 by my father with scions brought by him from his former home in 

 Massachusetts in 1814. Some of these grafted trees remained 

 where planted, so that we soon had good apples from them. I feel 

 quite safe to claim this as the first grafting done in this county. 



Mr. John Hart, who moved his family to Atkinson from the town 

 of Penobscot in 1815, obtained a few grafted trees at Garland, but 

 they did not come to bearing before he had apples from the seeds 

 he planted. Planting seeds in all these towns was probabl}' done 

 as early as these cases named. A seed planted in Abbot by Mrs. 

 Huston before 1810, produced the Rolfe apple. 



In 1820, Oliver Crosby, Esq , came from New Hampshire, and 

 commenced farming at Atkinson on a larger scale than before seen 

 here. Salmon and Cyrus Holmes came from Hebron to Foxcroft 

 at about the same time. 



Mr. Crosby started good apples soon, as some of the older trees 

 there are now bearing the "Canada Red." Capt. Salmon Holmes 

 did some grafting on his farm before 1830. Mr. A. Jackson in 

 ♦Sangerville and Mr. McClure in Sebec had grafted fruit that must 

 have been started as early as the work of Crosby and Holmes. 

 To show how I gained and retaine<l my interest in fruit, I must here 

 give some account of my movements. I worked with my father a 

 part of each year from 1831 to 183G inclusive. In that time I had 

 seen some of our country from Eastern Maine to Connecticut. For 

 a time I was employed so as to visit the most of the farms in the 

 then Kennebec county from Farmingtou and Temple to Readfield 

 and AVinthrop. In these short journeys I gave special attention to 

 orchards and their treatment. In June, 1838, my father, by an 

 accident, was removed from the primary school of earth life, leav- 

 ing directions for me to occup}' his plaoe on the farm for the next 

 thirteen years. This event called me from Michigan where I had 

 entered on a life-work of making a farm in another wilderness. 

 The old farm at that time had several acres of orchard, and 

 a row of trees was set by long lines of stonewall. My father's 

 grafting had not extended much bej'ond 100 trees. The 



