CASSCLES, J.S. 2021. THE PRINCE FAMILY: PIONEERS OF AMERICAN HORTICULTURE. ARNOLDIA, 78(5-6): 16-23 
The Prince Family: Pioneers of American Horticulture 
J. Stephen Casscles 
t was a beautiful day on August 1, 1782, when 
Prince William Henry, the third son of King 
George III, was received at the home and gar- 
dens of William Prince Sr. in Flushing Landing, 
New York. The American Revolutionary War 
had effectively ended the year before when the 
British surrendered at the Battle of Yorktown. 
Yet, the sixteen-year-old visitor, who would, in 
1830, rise to the throne as King William IV, had 
come to present a stand of colors to the King’s 
American Dragoons, encamped three miles to 
the east of the Princes. The British soldiers were 
invited for a barbecue of a whole roasted ox at 
the Prince home, not the kind of warm recep- 
tion that an American patriot would have given 
to a future British monarch and his troops. 
Prince was a nursery owner, almost forty 
years older than William, and the visit suggests 
the prominence of both Prince and the nursery. 
During the visit, Prince and William discussed 
their shared interest in growing and breed- 
ing plums, a specialty of the nursery. Plums 
were a critical fruit crop because they could be 
dried and stored for long periods and used as a 
nutritious food by the British Navy. Prince had 
introduced new plum varieties to Long Island, 
observing the acclimatization of the green gage 
plum (a common form of Prunus domestica). 
He even developed new varieties of plums, 
including ‘Yellow Gage’, which he would offi- 
cially introduce the year after William’s visit. 
In 1789, another group of illustrious visitors 
stopped at Prince’s nursery: the newly elected 
president of the United States, George Wash- 
ington, and his entourage of vice president John 
Adams, New York governor George Clinton, 
and the president of the Continental Congress, 
John Jay. Washington was less impressed with 
the nursery than William had been. He noted a 
large number of young fruit trees but described 
the shrubs as “trifling” and the flowers as “not 
numerous.” Flushing had been under British 
military occupation for the past seven years, 
and little plant material could be shipped dur- 
ing those long years of hostility. Nonetheless, 
by the 1790s, the Prince Nursery was likely the 
largest propagator of grafted fruit trees in the 
United States. It would grow to become even 
more: a center of horticultural learning. 
The Prince family’s horticultural enterprise 
originated with William Prince’s father, Rob- 
ert, who was born in the 1690s. (His birth year 
has been variously presented as 1692 and 1699.) 
By 1723, Robert had begun collecting, grow- 
ing, and propagating trees for his fruit farm. 
The plants included varieties of apples, pears, 
plums, nectarines, peaches, cherries, and small 
fruits. Throughout Robert’s life, the nursery 
slowly evolved into a vibrant commercial oper- 
ation, occupying eight acres directly south of 
what is now Northern Boulevard. This first 
Prince homestead was a beautiful structure 
with rounded shingles, set in a bank of flower- 
ing shrubs on the western edge of his property, 
next to the Flushing Creek. 
Flushing—in northern Queens County—was 
an ideal location for a nursery that would grow 
to become national in scope. It sits on the Long 
Island Sound, where winters are milder than 
most other parts of the state and where summers 
are cooler and less humid than colonial centers 
to the south. Flushing boasted high-quality top- 
soil, rich and fertile, with few stones. An under- 
lying subsoil provided good water drainage while 
retaining sufficient moisture to allow plants to 
grow quickly. Flushing’s location relative to the 
Port of New York meant that plants could read- 
ily be shipped to other parts of the country and 
Europe. Moreover, Flushing benefited from the 
cultural and financial rise of New York City. 
These factors would, in the nineteenth century, 
induce many other prominent nurseries to estab- 
lish operations in Flushing. 
Facing page: The Prince family of Flushing, New York, operated a vanguard American nursery that opened 
before the Revolutionary War. Over five generations, the family championed an extensive array of plants 
from around the world and developed new varieties like the ‘Imperial Gage’ plum. 
PRINCE, 1771/BIODIVERSITY HERITAGE LIBRARY; HEDRICK, 1911/ARCHIVES OF THE ARNOLD ARBORETUM 
