12 BULLETIlsr 119^ U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGEICULTUEE. 



more recently F. T. Ramsey, A. L. Bruce, and D. H. Watson have 

 originated a number. 



Many other growers have cultivated and originated new varieties, 

 but the names here mentioned will serve to indicate where the great- 

 est activity has been and what influences have aided this develop- 

 ment. The contribution that each of these men has made toward 

 the utihzation of the native species is not, hov/ever, to be measured 

 merely by the number of varieties that have been introduced, for an 

 equal or sometimes greater service has been rendered by growing 

 the untried varieties and freely making known the results of this 

 experience before horticultural societies and elsewhere. 



It would probably be very difficult to tell when the first recog- 

 nized horticultural variety of native origin received a name, but 

 excluding such terms as "Red and Yellow Chickasaw," "Red and 

 Yellow American," and "Beach Plum," which are group names and 

 can scarcely be considered as horticultural varieties in the same 

 sense as the Weaver, De Soto, Miner, and Wild Goose, the first 

 variety to receive this distinction was apparently the Miner. This 

 variety was first known by other names, and the use of the name 

 Miner may have been no earher than the apphcation of other names 

 to other varieties of about the same period. This event is of so much 

 importance in the development of American plum varieties that it 

 deserves as complete a history as may be given, and of the several 

 accounts, differing in details and even sometimes in essential facts, 

 the following one by Mr. Giddings (26, p. 332) is generally credited 

 as being authentic: 



The Miner -plum. — I have been kindly asked by a number of members of this 

 society to write the history of the Miner plum. There is no fruit that has been talked 

 of more of late at the West and of which so little is really known as the Miner or Hinck- 

 ley plum. Its origin having become a mooted question, I will endeavor to give you 

 a true history. I know that Charles Downing gave credit to Mr. Miner for originating 

 it; but let us give credit to whom credit is due. This plum has been traced into Mr. 

 Hinckley's hands several times by different parties, but no further. It is thought 

 he bought it of a tree peddler, and perhaps he did, but I am now inclined to think he 

 did not. At any rate, if Mr. Hinckley bought it of a peddler, he was not the first 

 man who brought it to Galena. Though not known to have been cultivated in any 

 nursery, it is now known to have been disseminated by sprouts among the farmers 

 for more than 50 years in the State of Illinois; and Mr. Hinckley's peddler could 

 easily have picked it up at some farmer's house. We here give the true histoiy: In 

 1813 one Wm. Dodd, then an officer under Gen. Jackson, found this plum growing 

 among the Chickasaw Indians at the horseshoe bend on the Talaposa creek. His 

 attention was called to it by the beauty, size, and excellence of quality of the fruit. 

 In the year 1814 he brought the seeds of this plum with other valuable fruits collected 

 by a friendly Chickasaw Indian chief to Knox county, Tenn. Here he planted his 

 seed and raised the fij-st trees. In Knox county, Tenn., they went by the names 

 of "Old Hickory" and Gen. Jackson. About the year 1823 or 1824 Wm. Dodd 

 moved to IlUnois and settled near Springfield. He brought with him some sprouts 



