Necrology of i88g. 



225 



tion overlooking this creek four miles below in the adjoining county of 

 Summit, Austin M. Hale, at the age of 17, purchased a piece of land and 

 started in a small way the growing of budded and grafted fruit trees. His 

 father had for many years made it a pastime and recreation to bud and 

 graft and collect varieties, so Austin was not only familiar with methods of 

 propagation, but had a fine specimen orchard at hand from which to pro- 

 cure scions. 



In 1853 Mr. Hale took into partnership Dr. Mendall Jewett, who remain- 

 ed with him until i860, when he removed to Middlebury, six miles west of 

 Magadore, where he went into the nursery business with Dennis Hine, es- 

 tablishing a nursery that was finally crowded out by the growth of the city 

 of Akron. After the dissolution of the partnership between Hale and 

 Jewett, Mr. Hale took into partnership his two sons, then just attaining 

 their majority, and the business was pushed with vigor, the annual sales of 

 trees grown on the place reaching $4,000 and upwards. 200 acres of excel- 

 lent land were added to the estate and the boys turned farmers, while Mr. 

 Hale continued the business alone until his death, having lived nearly 58 

 years in his home overlooking the little village of Magadore. 



Mr. Hale built himself a monument more enduring than marble in the 

 introduction of Hale's Early peach. He learned in the autumn of 1852 of 

 an extremely early peach in Randolph, some eight miles east of his nurs- 

 ery. He made some investigation, and on July 7, 1853, he drove over to see 

 this new peach, but was extremely disappointed to find that it had ripened 

 and gone. Just why it ripened so much earlier than it afterward did, 

 which is about the 20th of July in average seasons at Magadore, does not 

 appear, but there is no doubt about the fact that it ripened that year about 

 the 4th of July. The original tree was owned by a German named Moore, 

 who said he raised it from a pit brought from Germany by himself six 

 years before. Soon after, Mr. Hale took buds and set them in his nursery 

 and the following winter (a cold one) killed the original tree, and thus it hap- 

 pened that Mr. Hale's enterprise alone saved to the world this peach, which 

 was an advance of nearly three weeks in earliness over Early Tillotson, at 

 that time the earliest known peach. The following year, Dr. Jewett, 

 Mr. Hale's partner, whose instincts were those of a physician and amateur 

 horticulturist more than a nurseryman, gave away buds to several parties, 

 and thus it went out of Mr. Hale's control and soon after fruited in several 

 places. It at once sprang into popular favor, and M. B. Bateham named it 

 Hale's Early, although it was staked in the Hale & Jewett's nursery as 

 Early German. 



Mr. Hale collected nearly 100 varieties of peaches upon his place and 

 about the some of apples. Among the rarer apples always kept in stock 

 by Mr. Hale and now to be found in many orchids in Summit and Portage 

 counties, were Western Beauty (also called Merton and Summer Rambo), 

 Star, White Baldwin, Upson's Huron, Weaver Sweet and Bronson Sweet. 



Mr. Hale was a genial, intelligent conversationalist, but a man of very 

 decided views. He was a strong abolitionist and kept a prominent station 

 on the underground railroad, giving shelter and aid to fleeing slaves when 

 it was a criminal offense to do so. Stephen Foster and wife, Abby Kelly, 

 Parker Pillsbury, Henry C. Wright, Maurice Robinson, and other prominent 

 abolitionists, were personal friends and sometimes visitors at his home. 

 Later in life Mr. Hale was an ardent prohibitionist. 



