88 
time worth. A once popular peach, raised by Benjamin Guil- 
liss, gardener to Jacob Snider, Jr., of Philadelphia, was 
named in honor of the family, the "Gorgas Peach," and Gor- 
gas Park, also "Gorgas Home," commemorate its work and 
worth. 
Among the exhibitors from Germantown taking pre- 
miums at the farmers' meeting of 1850, held at Rising Sun, 
were Henry N. Johnson, James Gowen, of Mount Airy, for 
a fine bull, John Williams for a bull working in harness; 
Owen Sheridan, for fine wheat; James S. Huber, for sweet 
potatoes, and Rev. John Rodney, for the best butter. Con- 
temporaneous with the "Society for Promoting Agriculture," 
as here indicated, was the "Farmers' Club," of which Philip 
R. Freas was an active member, and also the "Mount Airy 
Agricultural Institute" upon Main Street, opposite the 
Gorgas Homestead, of which John Wilkinson was principal, 
an institution which occupied an important position in the 
agricultural world, the property having been once the home 
of Chief Justice Allen. 
In the year 1850, the Germantown pupils attending this 
school were Charles W. Krebs, Samuel Gorgas, Columbus 
Thompson, Jacob David, John Livezey, Thomas Live- 
zey, Joseph Livezey, William Pope and W. Scott 
Wilkinson. Upon the decline of the school, the place 
was bought by James Gowen, and gardener to him 
was Peter Kieffer, an able German. With the ex- 
ception of a few rare trees and shrubs, and a magnolia 
of fantastic growth, the Gowen garden is a thing of the past. 
Peter Kieffer prospered, and upon leaving Mr. Gowen he 
started a nursery on the Gorgas tract upon Cresheim Road, 
immediately south of Allen's Lane. Peter Kieffer' s house is 
yet standing upon Allen's Lane, west of the Pennsylvania 
Railroad, but his large stone barn was taken down in the year 
1909. From this place Peter Kieffer removed to Shawmont 
Avenue, Roxborough, near to the Wissahickon boundary, 
where he established another nursery, and where in 1863 he 
