THE 



Canadian Horticulturist. 



Vol. XV. 



IS{^2. 



Xo. 8. 



SOME CANADIAN HORTICULTURISTS.— XVII. 



^ 



MR. MURRAY PETTIT. 



^ROMINENT among the vineyardists of Niagara district stands Mr. 

 Murray Pettit, director of the Ontario Fruit Growers' Association for 

 district No. 7, which includes the counties of Wentworth, Welling- 

 ton, Waterloo and Halton. To this office he was elected at the 

 annual meeting held in the Town of Wingham in the year 1885, a 

 position which he has held ever since. 

 Like Mr. A. H. Pettit he belongs to one of those old and respectable fami- 

 lies of U. E. Loyalists, who would not stay in a country that had broken its 

 connection with England, and, therefore, came to Canada soon after the Declar- 

 ation of Independence. His grandfather, John Pettit, came to Winona, then 

 called the Fifty Mile Creek, and received from the Crown a free grant of four 

 hundred and sixty-eight acres of land, as a reward of his fidelity. There, on 

 the south shore of Lake Ontario, the family has ever since resided. 



Mr. Murray Pettit was born in 1843 on the old homestead About twenty 

 years ago, he awoke to the possibilities of his situation for the cultivation of 

 fruit. Little by little he has extended his efforts in this direction, until now he 

 has over fifty acres so occupied. His first venture was a peach orchard of eight 

 acres, then considered a very large one. He reaped a few fine crops of peaches 

 and was just beginning to feel encouraged with the prospects of excellent returns 

 for his venture, when in the year 1S79, the yellows, that scourge of peach 



