W. P. MANNING F. E. MANNING C.H. MANNING, JR. MARY K. MANNING 
Chairman of the Board President and Vice-President Secretary- Treasurer 
General Manager 
STORY OF MANINGSEED 
1é: MANNING SEED COMPANY was founded by 
Charles H. Manning who, in 1870, had traveled west from his birthplace in Schenec- 
tady, New York, with his wife and young family, to seek his fortune. In 1871 his 
travels took him from San Francisco to Astoria, Oregon. Astoria was a young town— 
rough and tough—but there were plenty of salmon in the Columbia River and huge, 
untouched stands of big Douglas fir trees mixed with giant Western Red Cedar and 
Hemlock at the river’s edge for the taking. It was from these virgin forests that he 
collected the first seed which was shipped by boat to San Francisco and thence East 
by train to dealers on the Atlantic Coast. 
After the big Astoria fire of 1883, Charles H. Manning moved up the Columbia 
River to Fort Vancouver in Washington Territory, where he and his sons, Joseph 
A. Manning, William P. Manning and Charles H. Manning, Jr., collected cones and 
crude botanical drugs to fill the orders which continued to flow from the East and 
now from Europe, as well. In 1888 the urge to go North led the family to Centralia, 
Washington, where a seed extractory was built and operated. Shortly thereafter 
