THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN 
20 1 
ETHAN ALLEN CHASE 
PATRICK BARRY 
HEAD OF AN IMPORTANT GROUP OF NURSERIES. 
The subject of this sketch was born on a farm in the town 
of Turner, Me., in 183 2. His early life work was exceedingly 
varied. Beginning as a rail¬ 
way employee, he afterward 
taught school, and later was 
a manufacturer of powder 
and of wooden ware. In 
August, 1856, his connection 
with the nursery work began, 
when he canvassed for the 
sale of nursery stock in 
Maine. The firm of Chase 
Bros, was organized by him in 
Rochester, in 1868. This firm 
has grown rapidly, and has 
given birth to several others, 
among them Brown Brothers Company, Glen Bros., T. W. 
Bowman & Son, and the Alabama Nursery Company. 
The motto of the parent firm 
as well as the branch firms, 
has been honesty and straight¬ 
forward dealing. 
In 1881 Mr. Chase moved to 
Riverside, Cab, where he en¬ 
gaged in the nursery business, 
making a specialty of orange 
and lemon trees and rose 
bushes. He now controls 
1,800 acres of orange and 
lemon groves, is president of 
the Chase Nursery Company, 
Riverside, Cab, and the Ala¬ 
bama Nursery Company, in 
addition to various orange¬ 
planting companies. 
HON. NORMAN J. COLMAN 
Prominent among the chief 
executives of the Association was 
Mr. Colman, of Missouri. Prob¬ 
ably no man in the middle West 
ever did so much to promote 
agriculture and horticulture as 
the subject of this sketch. He 
was one of the organizers of the 
Missouri Horticultural Society. 
He was Commissioner of Agri¬ 
culture at Washington; while 
occupying this position estab¬ 
lished the Divisions of Pomology 
and Vegetable Pathology. It 
was during his regime that the great experiment station 
system of today had its inception. Mr. Colman was first a 
nurseryman, and his sympathies were ever with the grower 
of trees. For many years he was editor of Colman’s 
Rural World. 
Born in Ireland, near the city of Belfast, in 1816; died 
June 23,1890,at Rochester, N. Y. He came to this country 
at the age of twenty, and 
immediately entered the 
f ■'■W employ of the Princes, the 
prominent nurserymen of- 
Flushing, Long Island. In 
1840 he moved to Rochester 
and formed a partnership 
with George Ellwanger, 
which marked the organiza¬ 
tion of the Mount Hope 
Nurseries, now of world¬ 
wide reputation. Mr. 
Barry for many years was 
the most commanding 
figure in American horti¬ 
culture. He was a man of 
strong personality, clear perception and great integrity. 
He was a co-worker with Downing, Prince, Parsons and 
others. He was at different times editor of leading 
horticultural papers, and is the author of the “Fruit 
Garden.” For over thirty years and until his death, Mr. 
Barry was president of the Western New York Horticultural 
Society. 
Patrick Barry 
JUDGE JAMES STARK 
BY SENATOR JAMES CHAMP 
Judge James Stark, of Bourbon county, Kentucky, the 
founder of Stark Bros. Nurseries and Orchards Co., Louisi¬ 
ana, Mo., in 1825, served under Gen. William Henry Harri¬ 
son at Tippecanoe, and under 
Cob Richard M. Johnson— 
“Old Dick,” as he was popu¬ 
larly called—at the Battle of 
the River Thames. He was 
present when Tecumseh was 
killed by a private who loaded 
his gun with a peculiar kind 
of slug. Tecumseh was not 
killed by an officer as some 
historians relate. 
He came in the prime of 
his manhood from Bourbon, 
one of the finest counties in 
Kentucky, to Pike, one of the richest in Missouri, reared a 
family which is still numerous and powerful and laid the 
foundation for one of the largest nurseries in the world, 
now conducted by the third and fourth generations of his 
descendants. 
We sometimes build more wisely than we know. He 
little dreamed, while riding horseback from the far-famed 
Kentucky blue grass region to the richer Missouri blue grass 
region, carrying in his old-fashioned saddle-bags, the scions 
with which to start a nursery on the sunset side of the 
Mississippi, that he was beginning a business which would 
render the name Stark honorably familiar not only through¬ 
out America but beyond. 
James Stark 
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