The history of Adams County Illinois : containing a history of the county - its cities, towns, etc. a biographical directory of its citizens, war record of its volunteers in the late rebellion; general and local statistics, portraits of early settlers and prominent men, Part 62

Author:
Publication date: 1879
Publisher: Chicago : Murray, Williamson & Phelps
Number of Pages: 1254

USA > Illinois > Adams County > The history of Adams County Illinois : containing a history of the county - its cities, towns, etc. a biographical directory of its citizens, war record of its volunteers in the late rebellion; general and local statistics, portraits of early settlers and prominent men > Part 62

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HISTORY OF ADAMS COUNTY.

the two men was the better pleased, the one with his wife or the other with his scions, has not yet been decided.

These scions were carefully kept during the winter, and the next spring they were inserted into the young seedling trees as they stood in the nursery rows. The operation was performed by what is known as whip grafting, and the wounds made by the knife were covered by pressing around each, after it had been carefully tied with bass matting, a mud ball of the size of a hen's egg. The earth was then ridged up so as to cover all but the upper bud, and thus protect the young graft from drouth. To modern nurserymen this will seem like a laborious and expensive process, but it was the best then in use, and the trees, though sold at two and three years old for 122 cents each, left a fair profit for the grower. The trees from this grafting are still standing in many of the old orchards, not only of this county and Pike in this State, but also of Marion and Ralls counties in Missouri.

In 1852 Mr. Stewart started a branch nursery at Quincy, under the direction of his son, Wm. Stewart, Jr., whom he had admitted to partner- ship. The Payson branch was discontinued after the death of the proprie- tor, which occurred in 1857, but the Quincy branch was continued for a number of years with increasing success by his sons, John & J. H. Stewart. It has now passed into the hands of Sinnock & Co., and is known as the Quincy Nurseries. Mr. Stewart was remarkable for energy, judgment and integrity. He was unusually well-informed on general subjects, but more especially so in the line of his chosen calling, where, by close and continued study, and by intercourse with the most eminent horticulturists in the West, he kept himself thoroughly well-informed. A Christian in practice as well as in theory, he drew around him a wide and increasing circle of friends.

Henry Kent, of Ellington township, sent in 1839 to Prince's Nursery, Long Island, for a supply of apples, peaches and nectarines, and with these as a beginning he in 1841 started a nursery. He afterward obtained such varieties as he thought valuable from Dr. Mead, of Augusta (whose stock was from Bloodgood's Nursery, Long Island), and from Mr. Stewart of Payson. At that time Mr. Kent found the nectarine a valuable fruit, bear- ing good crops, and of fine quality. It has now become very much neg- lected on account of its being such an easy prey for insects and so easily injured by our severe winters. Mr. Kent continued the nursery business until 1857, when he closed out and devoted himself to other pursuits. He is still living, and although he has mainly retired from active business, his fine homestead still bears the marks, not only of his early horticultural la- bors, but of his present interest in the subject.

Mr. Scarborough, of Payson, some years before his death commenced a nursery at that place. After his death it was conducted by his son, A. Scarborough, Jr. We are not informed as to the exact date when this nursery was started. Mr. Scarborough was from Connecticut. He was the founder of the village of Payson, and was at different times engaged in a variety of enterprises, but seemed to take most delight in horticultural pursuits. Possessed of quick discernment, sound judgment and excellent taste, his work has been invaluable to the horticultural interests of the county.

This brief sketch of the pioneers would hardly seem complete without some mention of the late Robert Rankin, of Fall Creek, who, although he

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HISTORY OF ADAMS COUNTY.

commenced his horticultural career, as he also commenced life, at a much later period than either of the preceding, was one of the earlier of our modern workers, and was an earnest, extensive and successful cultivator of fruit. He was for many years the president of the county horticultural society and occupied that position at the time of his death, in 1878. Al- ways genial, hopeful and enthusiastic, he did much to cheer and encourage his fellow-workers, and to keep up their interest in the society and its work, after the discouragements which followed the financial crisis of 1873 had cooled the ardor of less sanguine natures.

The nurseries of James Orr and of Wm. A. Mitchell, of Payson, of Hargis & Sommer and of D. C. Benton, at Quincy, of C. W. Kay and of A. B. Kelley, at Camp Point, of H. A. Horn, at Clayton, and of Wm. Cut- ter, at Beverly, were commenced at a later date than those mentioned above, and most of them are still in successful operation.

The growers of fruit in those days experienced many disappointments, on account of fruits which they had propagated at great expense, not only in money, but in time and labor, proving at least to be something entirely different from, and usually inferior to, that for which they purchased them. They found also that varieties brought from other sections of the country were often so modified by the change in climate and soil that they would not be recognizable. Some of the standard late-keeping apples, for instance, of the Eastern states, when fruited here were found to ripen in the fall or early winter. In order to meet these difficulties, and to secure a list of varieties which could be relied upon as to quality, season of ripening, bear- ing properties, &c., Messrs. Stewart, Johnson, Scarborough and perhaps one or two others, came to an agreement among themselves to graft or bud every new variety they received into some bearing tree so as to test it in the shortest possible time before disseminating it largely. One of these specimen trees, in the original orchard of Mr. Stewart, died a few years ago. It was an orchard in itself, having borne more than fifty varieties of apples, varying in size from the smallest Siberian crab to the Gloria Mun- di, and in season of ripening, from July until the following May.

Many were the pleasant meetings they had, especially during the autumn and winter months, when each one brought such fruits as his orchards, and especially his sample tree, produced, and also such as had been sent to him by his neighbors, as well as by those at a distance; and they spent evening after evening tasting, comparing and discussing their relative merits. The skill they thus acquired was remarkable, and their decisions came to be regarded as almost oracular.

At one of these meetings some new seedling apples, which were thought by certain parties to possess great merit, had been sent in and were under discussion. They were unanimously condemned as unworthy of a place in any orchard, and some of the party expressed surprise that any man could for a. moment regard such an apple as worthy of a place beside such varieties as the Rhode Island greening, or Newtown pippin. Others of the party contended that only the cultivated taste appreciates the finer flavors, and that the uncultivated taste prefers those fruits which are coarser and harsher, and that this fact accounted for the man's high opinions of his new seedlings. The discussion became lively, and they finally agreed to put the matter to a practical test by obtaining the opinion of the hired girl on the merits of the different fruits before them that evening. This girl, they all knew, had been brought up on the frontiers and scarcely ever saw an apple.

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HISTORY OF ADAMS COUNTY.

A messenger was accordingly sent to the kitchen with a plate containing slices of Newtown pippin, Rhode Island greening, and some other varieties of apples, and also the much denounced seedlings. The girl was simply re- quested to taste each sample on the plate, and then say which she liked best. She tasted very deliberately each of them, and then, pointing to the seed- ling, said she thought that was the best.

As a result of these pomological labors, the list of varieties, especially of apples, offered for sale at the nurseries was very much reduced. That of the Stewart's, which had reached nearly three hundred varieties, was cut down in 1853 to about one hundred. Nor did the work of reduction stop here. Time showed that some of the varieties which at first did well had a tendency, as the trees became old, to diminish in size; others proved to be shy bearers; others had a bad habit of falling from the tree before quite ripe; and still others, and among these were some of the very finest quali- ties as to flavor, were so very tender that it was found to be almost impossi- ble to handle them for market without their becoming so much bruised as to very much mar their appearance. Of some varieties the tree proved to be too tender. It was noticed that after a severe winter such as we often have, characterized by coincidence of intense cold and bright sunshine, the south side of the trunk would show the appearance of having been scorched by fire, and would, during the summer, die, leaving there an ugly wound all the way from the ground to the branches on that side.

The codlin moth, an insect imported to this country from Europe in the early settlement of the Eastern States, and other insects, unknown here by the early settlers, began soon to make their appearance, and it was found that some varieties suffered much more from their attacks than others did. In 1850 summer-blight appeared on the apple-trees, and soon afterward the disease known as the scab attacked the fruit, and has continued till the present time. Each of these appeared to affect some varieties more than others. To find remedies for these evils has, from the time they severally made their appearance, been the one work that more than all others has employed the best horticultural skill of the times. To our most experi- enced nurserymen and planters the readiest means of relief seemed to be a still further elimination of varieties, retaining those only which were least affected by these evils. They worked together in this, the oldest and most experienced orchardists giving to the nurserymen the results of their ex- perience, and they, in turn, propagating or rejecting varieties according to the experience of the orchardists, which they rightly judged would even- tually control public opinion and the public demand. This work continued harmoniously and with good success between the majority of the nursery- men, and the most extensive and reliable tree planters, till the present time. The result is, first, that we now have varieties of fruit planted all over the country, which, though not in all cases first quality as to flavor, sell well in the markets, are of fair quality, large and beautiful, and can be relied on with reasonable certainty for a crop that will leave some margin of profit to the producer; and, second, that the number of varieties of apples now planted for profit or recommended by the nurserymen scarcely exceed a dozen.

While it is true that this practical road out of the difficulties and losses brought upon the horticulturists of the country by the rapid increase of insects and diseases was followed harmoniously by our leading nurserymen and planters, truth requires the admission that, for a time, harmony

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ADAMS COUNTY WAR RECORD.

seemed, on the part of a few, to be somewhat disturbed. It came about in this wise: With the introduction of railroads came a perfect avalanche of tree peddlers from the East, mostly from the State of New York. Some of these men were representatives of reliable nurseries, but for the most part they were merely irresponsible adventurers. They came during the summer months, and, landing at Quincy, Camp Point or Clayton, went all over the country, visiting the farmers at their homes, hanging around the village stores on Saturday afternoons, when the farmers came in to do their week's trading, and, in short, availing themselves of every opportunity to come in personal contact with the people. They were usually men of good appearance and insinuating address, and were abund- antly supplied with colored plates of different varieties of fruits, and also with.small glass jars containing preserved specimens. The colored plates were very fair specimens of the chromo-lithographie art, and for the most part were good likenesses of select specimens of the fruits they represented; but the jars, of course, greatly magnified the speci- mens they contained. Advantage was easily taken of this fact, to make the people believe in them as men who would not misrepresent. Exhibiting

one of the colored plates to a crowd, and expatiating upon the merits of the fruit represented, they would then produce the jar containing that same variety, and call attention to the fact that the picture, so far from exagger- ating, did not represent it as near so large as they saw the fruit itself. Not one auditor, perhaps, in a hundred suspected the magnifying property of the glass jars, and they were thus led to suppose that the fruits offered them would all be as large and fine, at least. as the pictures they had seen. Or- ders were taken at high prices, the trees to be delivered and the money paid the following autumn or spring. When they had obtained all the orders they could for the season, they would return to the East and purchase at wholesale, at some of the large nurseries, a sufficient quantity of trees to fill the orders and then ship them to the different distributing points, where some one was in attendance to deliver the trees and receive the money. The stock thus obtained usually presented a fair appearance, and for the time being gave quite general satisfaction to the purchasers.

If it failed to grow, as it sometimes did, it was accounted for by some assumed exposure in its long journey or in some similar way, and the dis- appointed purchaser would, not unlikely, buy another lot the next year of the same man, flattering himself that if the matter was a little expensive, yet it was better to secure these magnificent fruits than to plant the ordi- nary varieties offered by the nurserymen at home. It is perhaps not beyond the truth to say that the majority of those who purchased these trees and plants thought that by doing so they were placing themselves somewhat in advance, not only of those of their neighbors who had made horticulture their life work, as well as their life study, but of the nursery- men themselves, of whom their neighbors still continued to buy their trees. Things went on in this way, as of course they must, for several years, until the trees first imported came generally into bearing and infor- mation became generally circulated as to how the representations of the peddlers had been fulfilled. In cases where the agent was honest and the nurseryman of whom he purchased his stock responsible, and it is but fair to state that such cases did exist, it usually turned out that the varieties proved to be such as were in high esteem in the localities whence they came, but the majority of them were for some reason not adapted to our soil

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HISTORY OF ADAMS COUNTY. .

or climate, and, indeed, had long before been thoroughly tested by our fruit growers and rejected. Unfortunately, however, many of the agents were not honest, and instead of buying the varieties called for in the orders the peo- ple had given them they would buy up anything they could get at a low price, provided the trees were large and fine-looking, and then, from the same lot, would label the trees with any names the orders called for. Of course when these trees were once in full bearing this business became un- profitable and was mostly discontinued. It could be wished for the good name of our county that the same class of men had never since that time deceived in a similar manner communities farther west with trees pur- chased here.

Among other evils attending this great influx of Eastern trees was the introduction of the bark louse, which has been very destructive in some parts of the State, but as yet it seems to be well under control in this county. This mania for imported trees interfered considerably for a time with the business of our local nurseries, but business men as most of them were they soon found means to adjust themselves to the existing condi- tions of trade, and they began to import large quantities of trees from the East to satisfy the popular demand. This enabled the people to buy East- ern trees at lower prices than they had been paying the agents, and at the same time the nurserymen could often make a fair profit by the business. Some were able to take advantage of the rage for Eastern fruits in another way, as the following incident will show: One of our nurserymen had a large stock of a certain variety of grape. His price was twenty-five cents each by the thousand, but they were rather slow of sale here. An Eastern nursery being unable to fill orders for that variety from their own stock, ordered a lot from the Western man. They were sent and were immedi- ately used to fill the orders of the agents who had been canvassing this county, and were by them distributed among our people at seventy-five cents and one dollar each.

Orchards of the apple, peach, pear and cherry are now found in all parts of the county, but more especially in Ursa, Ellington, Melrose, Fall Creek, and Payson, which lie along the river bluffs where the soil seems to be peculiarly adapted to the growth of fruit. Apples, however, do well and are extensively grown all over the county.

For many years the various kinds of fruit, especially of apples and peaches, have formed a very considerable part of the exports of the county. It is difficult to obtain exact statistics, on account of the large number of points from which shipments are made. The principal of these are Quincy, Fall Creek Station, Seehorn Station, Camp Point. Clayton, and Mendon. Large quantities are also taken by wagon to Hannibal, Mo., and shipped thence. The horticultural society made an effort in 1868 to obtain the figures as far as possible but were finally compelled to rely to a considerable extent upon estimates. According to the best information obtainable the annual shipments of apples were then over two hundred thousand bushels, and of peaches abont fifty thousand boxes of one-third of a bushel each. In 1874 the shipments of peaches had increased to more than two hundred thousand boxes, but since that time the quantity of peaches shipped has somewhat declined. This decline is partially accounted for in this way: About every fourth year, on an average, the crop is des- troyed by the severity of the winter. Of the intervening crops one per- haps will be severely injured by the same cause. Formerly the prices

HISTORY OF ADAMS COUNTY. 443

realized for a full crop were such as to leave a sufficient margin of profit to cover the losses sustained by the severe winters. Lately, however, the pro- duction of this fruit is so great, and the competition with other peach- growing regions so close, that when there is a full crop the prices always rule very low and there is no margin left to apply to the years of failure. Many have therefore come to consider the growing of this fruit for ship- ment as on the whole unprofitable, and they have to some extent ceased to plant the trees.

Plantations of plums were made at an early day and at first they prom- ised well, but the advent of the plum curculio put a stop to the planting of this fruit for profit, so far as the old varieties are concerned. The trees are hardy and healthy and flourish well, the only trouble seems to be with the insects. Trees are still planted in private gardens and by amateurs, and with a great deal of care and protection and a very favorable season, mag- nificent specimens of the fruit are sometimes produced. The Chickasaw family of plums, having a tougher skin and firmer fiber, seem better able to resist the curenlio, and these are now being quite generally planted. What the result will be remains yet to be seen.

The English or sweet cherries were tried at a very early day by per- sons in different parts of the county, and at first they promised well, except that the trees were a little tender, but since the advent of destructive in- sects they have been discarded except in private gardens, the fruit being usually either wormy or so badly stung by insects as to make it knotty and small. The Morello family of cherries have been found to be hardy and much less liable to suffer from insects. The earlier varieties, such as the early Richmond, have a very small proportion of wormy fruit. This class of cherries is now generally planted throughout the county, and they are brought into our markets in great abundance.

Strawberries were cultivated for market in small quantities as early as 1852 or 1853. In 1860 J. H. Stewart had a plantation of some four acres and found a ready market for the fruit in Quincy.

D. C. Benton, of Quincy, was probably the first who attempted to ship strawberries to other markets, and he was also one of the earliest shippers of peaches.

About 1865 Wm. & J. H. Stewart commenced shipping strawberries in a small way, and continued to increase their business until 1874, when they had over forty acres devoted to this fruit, and shipped five or six thousand quarts per day. In 1878 there were more than twenty-five farms in the immediate vicinity of Quincy, where strawberries were grown with special reference to supplying the shipping trade. Extensive experiments have been made in the cultivation of the pear for market, but the success has not met the expectations of the growers. The planting of this fruit commenced with that of the apple. The trees bore well and the fruit was of excellent quality; but the trees became, soon after reaching the bearing age, so subject to the blight as to make the business unprofitable. This has always been the one obstacle in the way of successful pear growing in this country. Clark Chatten, Dr. Merrick and E. A. Dudley may be re- garded as the pioneers in this line of effort. There are still in various parts of the county the remains of many large pear orchards, mainly of dwarfs, which were planted between the years of 1863 and 1868, under the impression then prevailing that pears could be profitably grown for export. Plantings for this purpose have now ceased. In private gardens, however,

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and in farmers' orchards, a few trees still find a place, and, if they survive the attacks of the blight, they sometimes become in their old age very prof- itable. This is especially true of many old specimens of the Seckel variety, which yield very large crops of the finest quality of fruit. The markets of Quincy are still supplied with an abundance of home-grown pears, and not a few are shipped to other points.

The cultivation of such small fruits as raspberries, blackberries, goose- berries and currants has grown almost imperceptibly from small beginnings, till it has become an important branch of industry. While there are few, if any, large plantations of these there are many small ones, and the aggre- gate product forms an important item in our fruit exports.

The first exhibition of Adams county fruit at the Illinois State Fair was at Springfield, in 1853, when Wm. Stewart & Son took a number of premiums; among them that for the " Largest and best Collection of Apples, named and true to name." The first public exhibition east of the Alleghanies by Western growers was in 1860, by J. H. Stewart, who took a choice collection to the annual meeting of the American Pomological Society at Philadelphia. This fruit attracted much attention and received high com- mendation from Marshal P. Wilder, the president of the society, Charles Downing, Dr. Warder, Ellwanger & Barry and other eminent horticultu- ral authorities.

About the years 1863 or 1864 Clark Chatten took the first premium of the Illinois Agricultural Society for "The Best Cultivated Orchard." These instances are mentioned because they were the beginnings in their several lines, and they served to give confidence that the productions of this county would not suffer in comparison with others. Horticulturists throughout the county now began to make exhibitions at various state and other fairs, and with such success that the securing of premiums became the rule rather than the exception.

The Adams County Horticultural Society was organized in December, 1867, by the election of Robert Rankin as president and Wm. Stewart as secretary. They commenced with seven members, and by the first of Jan- uary they numbered fifty, including the leading horticulturists of the county. This society did effective work for many years. It made out lists of the various kinds of fruits, based on the long practical experience of the members, and recommended these lists to planters; it held out-door meet- ings in the summer months, on the grounds of the different members, for the purpose of better observing the practical workings of different systems of culture. It also made exhibits as a society at various fairs with the most flattering results, and occasionally offered premiums and held exhibitions of fruits and flowers in its own hall, or in some other hall in Quincy.

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The history of Adams County Illinois : containing a history of the county - its cities, towns, etc. a biographical directory of its citizens, war record of its volunteers in the late rebellion; general and local statistics, portraits of early settlers and prominent men, Part 62

Author: Publication date: 1879 Publisher: Chicago : Murray, Williamson & Phelps Number of Pages: 1254

Author:
Publication date: 1879
Publisher: Chicago : Murray, Williamson & Phelps
Number of Pages: 1254