12 BULLETIN 179, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
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 utilization of the native species is not, however, 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 earlier than the application 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 followmg 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 
didnot. 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 history: 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 first 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 Illinois and settled near Springfield. He brought with him some sprouts 
