OUR FRONTISPIECE 



Two of the earliest pecan planters in the United States were 

 George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. 



Jefferson's name will live many years as one of the great natural- 

 ists. In several places in his notes can be found references to the 

 pecan, he was the first to give it a correct botanical classification. 

 In his notes on Virginia, written in 1784, he gave the native home of 

 the pecan as on the Illinois, Ohio, Wabash and Mississippi Rivers. 

 He always described it as the "paccan or Illinois nut." On January 

 3, 1786, Jefferson wrote from Paris to Francis Hopkinson as follows: 

 "Procure me two or three hundred paccan nuts from the West. I 

 expect they can always be got at Pittsburgh." 



Washington's diary shows that in March, 1775. he planted pecans 

 at Mt. Vernon, and again in 1794 he sent to Alexandria by Thomas 

 Jefferson "a bundle of paccan and Illinois nuts." After Jefferson's 

 death, his home at Monticello was not properly cared for, and not 

 many of the extensive selection of trees he planted yet remain. 

 At Washington's home, however, better care was given the plants 

 and trees he had set there from all parts of the world, and after 

 more than one hundred years the most striking and vigorous 

 trees at Mt. Vernon are the three large, beautiful pecan trees, one 

 of which is shown in our frontispiece. Xo doubt these were gifts 

 from Jefferson planted there by Washington himself. When photo- 

 graphed in September, 1916, these trees looked as if they were 

 good for another hundred years. 



Turn again to the picture and you will see then why we say 

 that the pecan is truly one of our most wonderful trees and why it 

 was planted by the great Father of our Country, whose home it 

 has adorned for more than a centurv. 



