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THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN 
A REMINISCENCE OF EARLY NURSERY DAYS IN 
CENTRAL IOWA 
Jimmy Smith, the Pioneer DesMoines Nurseryman 
By Captain C. L. WATROUS 
This takes us almost back to the time when a few United 
States dragoons had a little fort, in the year 1842 or 1843, 
on the Des Moines at the forks of the Raccoon. 
In February, in 1847, there walked into Des Moines, a 
tall, slender man from Kentucky, leading two small boys, 
and carrying a peck of apple seed in a sack over his shoulder. 
So far as tradition goes, that was the very beginning of the 
beginning of the nursery business in the Des Moines district. 
He was always called “old James Smith’’ or “Jimmie 
Smith,’’ as the case happened to be. Although he was not 
much, if any, beyond fifty, he looked like an old man. 
He was tall, very spare of feature and form, quick of 
motion, and with the very keenest eyes and the clearest 
memory of any nurseryman who ever walked among trees 
in this region. He knew and could name in an instant, at 
sight, more varieties of trees, in nursery and in orchard, 
and of fruits on the table, than any other man who was 
ever here. 
He was a very enterprising man in 
testing new varieties; so much so that 
when I reached Des Moines in the spring¬ 
time of 1869, he had eighty acres of 
orchard, and had tested almost the whole 
list of the favorite eastern and southern 
fruits, especially apples. He knew their 
strong points and their weaknesses, and 
transmitted that knowledge to others of us who followed 
him. His decisions have seldom, if ever, been questioned, 
and I think never reversed. 
He soon had a large nursery of the old fashioned sort, 
whereunto men came, sometimes with their wives and 
children, from any distance up to fifty or sixty miles, seeing 
their trees dug and taking them home with them in a 
wagon or on horse-back. Before I came, in ’69, he had 
gained a moderate fortune and quit the business. 
I remember that on one occasion he spoke of again 
taking up the nursery business, but his mfe, with a look of 
alarm, protested with all her might, saying she never again 
wanted to live through her experiences during the years of 
his greatest nursery successes. She said that there would 
sometimes come into the house forty or fifty strangers for 
dinner or perhaps half as many to be sheltered and fed over 
night, and this for weeks at a time, and such a life killed a 
nurseryman’s wife, if it did not kill him. 
James Smith could gather the finest collection of apples 
grown from orchards about Des Moines from trees out of 
his own nurseries that have ever been brought together here. 
It was no uncommon thing for him to gather from one to 
two hundred varieties and spread them out on the floor in a 
spare room of his large brick farmhouse, until he was ready 
to send them to the exhibit. There was never a thought of 
a label amongst all those varieties,—he knew .them as a 
mother knows her children, and could at a moment’s notice 
talk interestingly of their virtues and their frailties. 
His exhibits at the long ago meetings of the American 
Bornological Society excited the wonder and admiration of 
eastern growers. He introduced the Concord Grape to this 
region, growing hundreds of thousands of vines, altogether 
from layers, having many acres of vines growing for this 
purpose. Out of the ConcordjGrape, he realized a small 
fortune and was content. 
THE CAPITAL CITY NURSERIES 
When I came to Des Moines in the spring of 1869, there 
came on the same train a German from Syracuse, New 
York, who sold that summer and delivered in the autumn 
over $6000 worth of eastern grown 
stock. This was the last great sale 
from an outside nursery which I ever 
knew in this region. 
There were, at that time, some six¬ 
teen nurseries within five miles of the 
city. Practically all started through 
the influence of James Smith. None, I 
think, did a commercial business, but 
waited for customers to come and buy their stock. When 
I started, one among these said, “Another fool is going 
to start in the nursery business at Des Moines. He will fail 
and he ought to know better.” 
Having planted some young stock, I mounted a bay 
pony and rode about forty miles from home before beginning 
to offer any for sale. For ten years I sold and delivered 
nursery stock from Des Moines, shipping it out over the 
railrpads. That was, so far as I know, the first beginning of 
commercial nursery work in Des Moines. 
OBSERVATIONS ON CONVENTION PROGRAM 
The program suggestions of Chairman J. H. Dayton for the St. 
Louis Meeting, as published, are practical and right to the point. 
There are many practical questions requiring consideration at 
the present time. For instance, the matter of some co-operative 
arrangements with the trunk lines toward preventing the vexatious 
and ruinous delays in nursery-stock shipments—both car lots and 
less than car consignments. 
There might also be some clean-cut action by the Association in 
discouraging the practice of some nurserymen in accepting orders. 
Then, when the season is about over, advising that the stock can¬ 
not be supplied. 
T yr. Gooseberry Plants. Stark Bros. 
