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“‘A Nation of Fruit Growers’: Nineteenth-century Nurserymen and the Planting of the American Landscape”

Patrick Barry was a man on the rise when he took over as editor for The Horticulturist in 1853.

It had only been eight years since he began writing editorials in The Genesee Farmer and two years

since he published his first book, The Fruit Garden, in 1851. With each new publication, Barry

expanded his readership from horticultural enthusiasts on the east coast to agriculturists in the

interior reaches of Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. As a writer, Barry shared promoted a

horticultural vision for the American landscape—a practice he believed might “contribute something

towards the improvement of soil and its products, the culture of the mind, and the encouragement

and elevation of men encouraged in the ‘noblest of all pursuits.’’’1 His writing-style blended the

romantic imagery of abundant gardens and luscious fruits alongside practical “how-to” pieces

designed to teach readers on topics including pruning, plowing, and picking. Though each piece was

different, they all promoted horticultural pursuits as a method to transform forests, swamps, and

prairies into, what he called, a “land of promise.”2 His vision, perhaps most visible in The Fruit

Garden, Barry sounded that, “Americans, if they be not already, must become truly a ‘nation of fruit

growers.’”3 Given the growing readership of his editorials, articles, and books, Barry had some

reason to believe that such a landscape might be within reach.

Of course, words are not trees. No matter how many Americans read Barry’s published

works, there is no way of knowing the horticultural sway of his message or if Americans actually felt

charged to plant an apple, pear, peach, or cheery tree on their own plot of land. Such hurdles have

not handcuffed historians who overwhelming focus their studies on the environmental philosophies

1 Patrick Barry, “Horticultural Department Conducted by Patrick Barry,” The Genesee Farmer 8, no. 1 (1847): 25. 2 Patrick Barry, “Horticulture in the West,” The Genesee Farmer 8, no. 8 (August 1847): 196. 3 Patrick Barry, The Fruit Garden: A Treatise (New York: Charles Scribner, 1851), iv.

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of nineteenth-century horticulturists rather than their environmental impact.4 Waves of valuable

scholarship continue to revise our understanding of these individuals as social elites, scientists,

Jeffersonian agriculturists, and Arcadians.5 However, to begin to gauge Barry’s actual environmental

impact we are forced to step outside of his published works and examine his participation in what he

considered his most pressing responsibility in American society—his role as a plant nurseryman.

Plant nurserymen served as vital actors of territorial expansion through a process of

ecological empire—a conceptual framework that places biological factors as central components of

Euro-American Empire. Although most studies of ecological imperialism emphasize the role of viral

diseases or invasive flora and fauna, nurserymen also encouraged this system by distributing plant

material and foodstuffs across the continent. Moving plants on rivers, canals, and rails, nurserymen

offered the plant material to Euro-American settlers striving to transform American “wilderness”

into the culturally familiar, or economically essential, farm, orchard, or garden.6 Ultimately, by

enabling the creation of “neo-Europes” across the continent, plant nurserymen helped to replicate a

Euro-American system of settlement and it’s a corresponding economic system.7 Fueled by their

4 The tension between the cultural and material studies in environmental history is best explored in Lisa Brady, “Has Environmental History Lost Its Way?,” Process: A Blog for American History, December 15, 2015, http://www.processhistory.org/has-environmental-history-lost-its-way/. 5 Horticultural as a practice of elites, see Tamara Plakins Thornton, Cultivating Gentlemen: The Meaning of Country Life among the Boston Elite, 1785 – 1860 (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1989); as scientists as Jeffersonians, see Philip J. Pauly, Fruits and Plains: The Horticultural Transformation of America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007); as Arcadians, see Aaron Sachs, Arcadian America: The Death and Life of an Environmental Tradition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013). 6 On settlement and views of nature in early-nineteenth century, see Roderick Frazier Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 23 – 43; also Alan Taylor, “‘Wasty Ways:’ Stories of American Settlement,” Environmental History 3, no. 3 (1998): 291 – 310. 7 Alfred W. Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 1-7; a monumental work on the role of ecological agents in colonial New England, see William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England (New York: Hill and Wang, 1983; for a history of disease and invasive species on the Northern Plains, see Elizabeth Fenn, Encounters at the Heart of the World: A History of The Mandan People (New York: Hill and Wang, 2014); for a history on weeds as agents of change in the American West, see Mark Fiege, “The Weedy West: Mobile Nature, Boundaries, and Common Space in the Montana

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horticultural convictions and charged by the duties of their profession, nurserymen set out to plant

the North American landscape.

Too often beholden to the published writings of historical actors, scholars too often

overlook how the nature of work shaped the ways in which individuals viewed themselves in

accordance to the world.8 Many historians prefer explicit ideas to the unnamed and unannounced

assumptions that are embedded into the monotony of a day’s labor. I suspect that is why scholars

overwhelmingly focus on individuals such as Andrew Jackson Downing and Frederick Law Olmsted

as intellectuals instead of the less desirable, though equally important, label of professionals. Unlike

the polished prose found in Barry’s editorials, the daily life of nurserymen lacked frill and romance.

Yet it was that work that proved most influential in shaping how Patrick Barry, and men of his

profession, spread their horticultural vision in nineteenth-century America.

I do not intend to argue that the nurserymen’s published works did not matter. No, instead I

propose that their published works served as an extension of their professional duties. When

nurseryman pored over horticultural and gardening journals they did so to improve their craft and

stay true to their professional calling. When they advised readers to take up horticulture; when they

woke each morning to plant, prune, dig, graft, mulch, and manure; when they sold, bought, and

profited from plants they did so as nurserymen. Their professional duties influenced they ways in

Landscape,” Western Historical Quarterly 36, no. 1 (2005): 22 – 47; more on weeds in early North America, see Taylor Spence, “The Canada Thistle: The Pestilence of American Colonialisms and the Emergence of an Exceptionalist Identity, 1783 – 1839, Agricultural History 90, no. 4 (2016): 511 – 544; an interesting article exploring different phases of ecological imperialism, Timothy C. Weiskel, “Agents of Empire: Steps Toward an Ecology of Imperialism,” Environmental Review: ER 11, no. 4 (1987): 275 – 288; for a discussion of apple trees as indicators of ecological and colonial contest, see William Kerrigan, “Apples on the Border: Orchards and the Contest for the Great Lakes,” Michigan Historical Review 34, no. 1 (2008): 25 – 41. 8 For an excellent essay on knowing nature through work, see Richard White, “‘Are You an Environmentalist or Do You Work for a Living?’: Work and Nature,” in Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature, ed. William Cronon (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1996), 171–186.

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which they interacted with potential buyers.9 They were horticulturists, no doubt—but they were

also business owners. With the responsibilities, concerns, and cultural expectations imbibed into the

practice of business in nineteenth-century America, the nurserymen’s vision of horticultural always

ran through the filter of their professional identity. As such, nurserymen firmly believed that beauty

and profit were two sides of the same coin—an ideology that brought about profound ecological

changes across North America.

In an age where men defined each other based on their professional identity, nurserymen

endeavored to be the best. Buyers from the Great Lakes region to New England made their

expectations of nurserymen known in letters or editorials published printed in agricultural journals.

Among the various duties assigned to nurserymen, none were as important as providing reliable and

accurate plant material to buyers. Farmers relied on nurserymen for healthy seeds and sturdy

saplings to make a living. Urban residents who desired to beautify their grounds turned to

nurserymen for advice regarding appropriate plants and the techniques to maintain them. When

Americans visited or bought plants from nurseries they expected profits, beauty, or both. In addition

to the physical plant material, local residents relied upon nearby nurserymen for knowledge about

plant varieties, regional environmental realities, and market prices. One Ohio-based agriculturist

wrote that the best nurserymen exerted themselves, “to be of the greatest possible usefulness, not

only to themselves and the yeomanry, but also to the common citizens of the State.”10 Nurserymen

offered information through agricultural journals, lectures, or conventions. Other agriculturists

9 On identity, entrepreneurship, and capitalism, see Max Weber, The Protestant Work Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons (Mineola: Dover Publications, 2003), 47–78; Scott A. Sandage, Born Losers: A History of Failure in America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005), 3; Gary J. Kornblith, “Self-Made Men: The Development of Middling-Class Consciousness in New England,” The Massachusetts Review 26, no.2/3 (1985): 461–474; Judy Hilkey, Character is Capital: Success Manuals and Manhood in Gilded Age America (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1997); On deceit and identity, see Karen Halttunen, Confidence Men and Painted Women: A Study of Middle-Class Culture in America, 1830–1870 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982). 10 Z. Hampton, “A Word to Fruit Growers,” Ohio Cultivator 6, no. 17 (1850): 269.

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celebrated the nurserymen who helped to “stir the stagnant pool of agricultural matter,” and provide

buyers with a “well-furnished [and] well-disciplined mind.”11 Another editorial applauded those

nurserymen that brought “increased knowledge and advancement” to cities, towns, and the

countryside that were otherwise devoid of beauty.12 Americans applauded the nurserymen that

fulfilled their duties and believed that a nurseryman’s labor spoke to the “excellence of his

establishment.”13

Yet the best nurserymen, those proprietors held in highest esteem, were those few

businessmen who extended themselves outward to expand the horticulture across the American

landscape. From the pages of The Horticulturist (before Patrick Barry became editor) Andrew Jackson

Downing conferred onto nurserymen evangelist-like duties in the name of horticulture. Buried

behind his theories of landscape design Downing advanced a set of expectations for nurserymen

whom he tasked to “popularize the taste for rural beauty.”14 Downing called upon the businessmen

to cultivate a desire for planting “which gives to every beloved home in the country its greatest

outward charm, and the country itself its highest attraction.”15 He encouraged them to leave the

nursery grounds, talk to residents, and carry samples of honeysuckle, roses, peonies, or any beautiful

specimens the nurserymen grew. Downing’s message to nurserymen was simple, “encourage men to

plant at any and all rates.”16

11 “Scientific Agriculture in Europe and American Contrasted,” The Cincinnatus 3, no. 3 (1858): 101–102. 12 John A. Warder, “Fruit Report to Indiana Board of Agriculture,” The Cincinnatus 3, no. 3 (1858): 132. 13 F.K. Phoenix, “Hints on the Characteristics of Fruit Trees,” The Horticulturist 1, no. 8 (1847): 358. 14 Andrew Jackson Downing, "How to Popularize the Taste for Planting," in Rural Essays, ed. George William Curtis (New York: George P. Putnam and Company, 1853), 296. 15 Andrew Jackson Downing, "How to Popularize the Taste for Planting," in Rural Essays, ed. George William Curtis (New York: George P. Putnam and Company, 1853), 296. 16 Andrew Jackson Downing, "How to Popularize the Taste for Planting," in Rural Essays, ed. George William Curtis (New York: George P. Putnam and Company, 1853), 296.

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Though nurserymen across of the American landscape embraced Downing’s declaration, no

group of proprietors came to embody the horticulturist’s errand quite those in Rochester, New York

in the middle decades of the nineteenth century. A city that only claimed four nurserymen in 1840,

Rochester quickly became home to forty-eight growers who cultivated and sold plant material by

1855.17 Each firms varied in size. Alonzo Frost managed the rapidly growing Genesee Valley

Nursery—a large company with nearly 200 acres of plantings.18 Frost’s operation overshadowed the

smaller, though similarly named, Genesee Falls Nursery situated at the northern edge of the city.19

Other firms included the Flora Garden Nursery, the Rochester Seed Store, the John Rapalji &

Company Nursery, The Rochester and Charlotte Plank Road Nurseries, the River Bank Nursery, the

Old Rochester Nursery, the Carthage Nurseries, and the Perinton Nursery.20 City directories failed

to mention those nurseries that lay just outside of the municipal bounds. In fact, by 1855 New York

State census noted that 150 nurserymen lived in the vicinity of Rochester—an astounding number

given that the same census recorded a total of 300 nurserymen across the entire state.21 The

seemingly countless lined acres of apple, cherry, peach, and ornamental saplings appeared like a

stitching upon the city’s urban quilt marking Rochester as America’s horticultural emporium.

Although many Rochester nurseries flourished during this period, no nursery thrived like the

Mount Hope Nursery. Founded by Patrick Barry and George Ellwanger in 1840 on a small, seven-

acre plot of land, the company quickly grew to be a 100-acre firm by 1851. Early on, the company

acquired a reputation for their imported and exotic stock from Europe—a fact that only raised their

profile among America’s horticulturists in Western New York, New England, and the Hudson River

17 Dewey’s Rochester City Directory for 1855 – ’56 (Rochester: D.M. Dewey, 1855). 18 J.J. Thomas, The Illustrated Annual Register of Rural Affairs and Cultivator Almanac, for the Year 1859 (Albany, New York: Luther Tucker & Son, 1859), 209. 19 Dewey’s Rochester City Directory for 1855 – ’56 (Rochester: D.M. Dewey, 1855). 20 Dewey’s Rochester City Directory for 1855 – ’56 (Rochester: D.M. Dewey, 1855); Additional nurseries not named in city directories can be found in The Genesee Farmer 15, no. 3 (1854): 101–103. 21 Dan Parks, “The Cultivation of Flower City,” Rochester History 45, no. 3&4 (1983): 36–37.

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Valley. By the close of the 1850s, the Mount Hope Nursery came to be the largest firm in the

country with 440 acres dedicated to the propagation of seedlings, saplings, and trees for outside

markets. They designated 350 acres for various fruit saplings including pear, apple, cherry, and plum

trees—the remaining 90 acres were reserved for evergreens, deciduous trees and shrubs, flowers,

and various herbaceous plants.22 The size and scope of the Mount Hope Nursery garnered praise

from agricultural journals that readily claimed the firm to be “the most extensive nursery in the

world.”23

While Ellwanger and Barry sold a great deal of the stock to local residents, the Mount Hope

Nursery’s fast rise is best attributed to a growing demand for plant material from western buyers

throughout the Great Lakes region. Agriculturists in Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, and

Michigan expressed deep regrets about the lack of horticultural plantings in their respective regions.

One Michigan agriculturist prompted nearby growers to acquire apple, cherry, peach, and pear trees

for purely Arcadian reasons. “Let us then by encouraging horticulture in all its departments,

endeavor to make the village in which we live, and the little spot of earth, either in the country of the

town…as attractive and beautiful as we can make it, with trees, and fruit, and shrubbery, and

flowers.”24 Such plantings, he argued, gave regional residents a sense of place—roots. “While others

are wandering over the earth, in search of the fabled ‘El Dorado,’” he argued, “perhaps we can fine a

treasure nearer home, more real and substantial, and infinitely more conducive to our present

22 J.J. Thomas, The Illustrated Annual Register of Rural Affairs and Cultivator Almanac, for the Year 1859 (Albany, New York: Luther Tucker & Son, 1859), 207–208. 23 J.J. Thomas, The Illustrated Annual Register of Rural Affairs and Cultivator Almanac, for the Year 1859 (Albany, New York: Luther Tucker & Son, 1859), 207. 24 “Address of Dr. M.A. Patterson, at the Lenawee County Agricultural Fair, October 4, 1850,” in Transactions of the State Agricultural Society, With Reports of County Agricultural Societies, for 1850, ed. J.C. Holmes (Lansing, Michigan: R.W. Ingals, 1851): 437.

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comfort, and permanent happiness.”25 Another grower in Wisconsin argued for the purchase of

horticultural goods by claiming, “horticulture is the legitimate product of a high degree of

intellectual and moral cultivation.”26 By acquiring plants and beautifying the land, this Arcadian

hoped to make Michigan, Wisconsin, and other burgeoning settlements into ideal and permanent

markers of American civility.

Other advocates used less romantic language when describing the need for horticultural

products. No, for many agriculturists, the planting of orchards offered very real commercial

opportunities. “The great advantages of Michigan for the production of fruits, are becoming every

year more obvious,” wrote one Michigan agriculturist who believed that, “the position of the State in

regard to a market for fruit, is particularly favorable.”27 Supplying fruit to “the cities of Canada” as

well as the “markets of Chicago and Milwaukee,” he argued, offered horticulturists a promising

future in the selling of horticultural produce.28 Growers In Lawrence County, Ohio who already

recognized the market demand for desirable fruit noted that, “the apple has long since proved to be

very profitable to its cultivators in this part of southern Ohio.”29

Regardless of their motives, prospective buyers throughout the American Midwest made it

clear that they desired seedlings, saplings, and scions in order to grow beautiful trees or profitable

fruits. This fact was certainly evident in agricultural journals that printed letters from western 25 “Address of Dr. M.A. Patterson, at the Lenawee County Agricultural Fair, October 4, 1850,” in Transactions of the State Agricultural Society, With Reports of County Agricultural Societies, for 1850, ed. J.C. Holmes (Lansing, Michigan: R.W. Ingals, 1851): 437. 26 John J. Miller, “Moral Influence of Horticulture,” in Transactions of the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society, with Portions of the Correspondence of the Secretary: Volume 3 – 1853 (Madison, Wisconsin: Beriah Brown, 1854), 244. 27 “Advantages of Michigan for the Production of Fruits,” in Fourth Annual Report of the Secretary of the State Board of Agriculture of the State of Michigan for the Year 1865, ed. Sanford Howard (Lansing, Michigan: John A. Kerr & Co., 1865), 13. 28 “Advantages of Michigan for the Production of Fruits,” in Fourth Annual Report of the Secretary of the State Board of Agriculture of the State of Michigan for the Year 1865, ed. Sanford Howard (Lansing, Michigan: John A. Kerr & Co., 1865), 13. 29 Eleventh Annual Report of the Board of Agriculture of the State of Ohio (Columbus, Ohio: Richard Nevins, 1857), 276.

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growers frustrated with the lack of desirable fruit saplings in the region. One Ohio-based

agriculturist outlined the poor local plantings when, in 1846, he wrote that, “two years ago there was

not a respectable nursery in the State.”30 No, “there were a great many small nurseries among the

farmers, but few of them took much pains in grafting.”31 Another frustrated farmer flatly proclaimed

that, “there are no first rate orchards or nurseries in Ohio.”32 Yearning for familiar and reliable

varieties, buyers throughout the Midwest turned eastward to nurserymen hoping to overcome the

horticultural failings of their neighborhood growers. “If…any…Eastern nursery-man will furnish

me 200 varieties of apple trees that are better adapted to our soil and climate, and the wants of our

market,” began another agriculturist, “I will pay one dollar each for them, and shall then consider

myself $1000 the gainer.”33 The wild fruit and crabapple trees that constituted the vast majority of

orchards in the western states served as a source of frustration to those western growers that hoped

to cultivate familiar plants on their own patch of land.

Patrick Barry’s frustrations with the horticultural realities the Great West nearly rivaled those

of the actual growers in want of plant material. When Barry toured through Ohio in 1847 he

interpreted the rapid settlement of the region as an early sign of progress. “Here, in the West, I find

large, beautiful, and populous towns and cities, with tasteful dwellings, fine gardens, and all the

accompaniments of civilization and refinement, on the very spot where 30 years ago stood the

Forest,” he wrote in The Genesee Farmer.34 And although astonished by the quick settlement of Ohio,

Barry’s adulation was quickly tempered by what he believed to be horticultural failings of many of

the State’s inhabitants. “Passing from Cleveland to Columbus, through the interior of the State, I

30 I. Dille, “Ohio Seedling Apples—Suggestions to Nurserymen and Fruit Culturists,” Ohio Cultivator 2, no. 21 (1836 31 I. Dille, “Ohio Seedling Apples—Suggestions to Nurserymen and Fruit Culturists,” Ohio Cultivator 2, no. 21 (1836 32 H.N. Gilet, “No First Rate Orchards in Ohio!” Ohio Cultivator 3, no. 4 (1847): 27. 33 H.N. Gilet, “No First Rate Orchards in Ohio!” Ohio Cultivator 3, no. 4 (1847): 27. 34 Patrick Barry, “Horticulture in the West,” The Genesee Farmer 8, no. 8 (August 1847): 195.

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was much disappointed with the condition of the country,” he wrote.35 “It has been settled some 30

years and upwards—and this, in such a country, abounding with natural wealth… should give the

country an aspect of good culture and growing refinement.” Viewing the Ohio landscape through

his horticultural lens, Barry grumbled at the presence of only “a few, very few, evidences of either.”36

Barry echoed his contemporaries. After all it was Andrew Jackson Downing who emphatically

praised those nurserymen and horticulturists that “would see our vast territory made smiling with

gardens.”37 Nurserymen like Downing, Ellwanger, and Barry bemoaned those settlers who failed to

adopt horticultural practices or shirked their responsibilities to make beauty out of the American

landscape.

The proprietors of the Mount Hope Nursery never saw their horticultural vision bound to

Western New York. They shared their visions and plants with anyone they believed might benefit

from their horticultural influence—that was their duty as nurserymen, their mission as

entrepreneurs. Additionally, neither proprietor considered the flow of people into Great Lakes

region as a sign of empire. They did not lament the removal of Indians or the clearing of old-growth

forests. No, they believed that westward expansion offered boundless horticultural opportunities for

immigrants displaced by famine, war, and economic hardship—people from the “old world” and

“older states of the new.”38 The West, as Barry described it in The Fruit Garden, was a landscape

where “land is so easily obtained as to be with the reach of every industrious man.” Both compelled

by the duties of their profession and driven to make beauty out of the American landscape, the

nurserymen set out to improve the perceived horticultural failings of their fellow Americans.

35 Patrick Barry, “Horticulture in the West,” The Genesee Farmer 8, no. 8 (August 1847): 196. 36 Patrick Barry, “Horticulture in the West,” The Genesee Farmer 8, no. 8 (August 1847): 196. 37 Andrew Jackson Downing, “Horticulture,” in Rural Essays, ed. George William Curtis (New York: George P. Putnam and Company, 1853), 5. 38 Patrick Barry, “Horticulture in the West,” The Genesee Farmer 8, no. 8 (August 1847): 196.

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Eager to share their horticultural vision with “industrious” men, the Mount Hope

nurserymen regularly contacted farmers, burgeoning nurserymen, and land speculators believed to

be need of nursery stock. The proprietors wrote numerous letters to prospective buyers in Buffalo,

Detroit, Columbus, Chicago, and Toronto seeking information about regional needs and local

prices. They wrote to an interested grower in Steubenville, Ohio that they “could supply him with 2

years old Northern Spy Trees.”39 They informed another in Cleveland that if he wanted “large trees

he must order soon.”40 As early as 1842, Ellwanger and Barry made contact with the Washington

County California Emigration Company based in Fourche a Renault, Missouri inquiring about the

westward migrants and whether “fruit trees were much wanted” for the upcoming excursion.41 Some

relationships were reciprocal. In 1845 the Rochester nurserymen exchanged correspondence with

A.C. Hubbard of Troy, Michigan agreeing to send an assortment of scions and roses for a reduced

price if Hubbard, in return, would send 1000 wild plum stocks at a much-reduced rate.42 The sale

offered Hubbard, whose family owned massive land holdings in eastern Michigan, plant material

that could be sold to new waves of settlers buying land in the State. Alternatively, the wild plum

trees bolstered the Mount Hope Nursery’s plant selection and provided new specimens for

horticultural experimentation.

39 Letter to B. Wells, March 18, 1845, Letterbook: 1842-1850, Ellwanger and Barry Papers, University of Rochester Rare Books and Special Collections, Rochester, NY. 40 Letter to C.M. Giddings, March 18, 1845, Letterbook: 1842-1850, Ellwanger and Barry Papers, University of Rochester Rare Books and Special Collections, Rochester, NY. 41 Letter to The Washington County California Emigration Company, December 4, 1842, Letterbook: 1842-1850, Ellwanger and Barry Papers, University of Rochester Rare Books and Special Collections, Rochester, NY; Letter to Winter & Co., December 6, 1842, Letterbook: 1842-1850, Ellwanger and Barry Papers, University of Rochester Rare Books and Special Collections, Rochester, NY. 42 Letter to A.C. Hubbard, March 12, 1845. Letterbook; More on Hubbard’s business in Michigan, see J.C. Holmes, “The Early History of Horticulture in Michigan,” in Pioneer Collections: Collections and Researches Made By the Pioneer Society of the State of Michigan (Lansing: Wynkoop Hallenbeck Crawford Company, 1908), 74.

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Each exchange was carefully chronicled in the company’s account books—massive tomes of

hurried scrawl housed in the Nursery office at the front of the grounds. At first glance, the Mount

Hope Nursery business ledgers seem like any other firm’s financial records. Accounts of sale are

organized by a buyer’s name. Transactions are listed beneath in a traditional double-entry

bookkeeping style; debits line the left column and credits along the right.43 A business ledger can be

a valuable source to grasp the history of any company. Sure, they list seemingly countless sales,

mundane purchases, and lingering debts. Yet business ledgers, when diligently read, offer an

unadulterated narrative of a company’s financial dealings. In the case of the Mount Hope Nursery

the ledgers offer something else—they illustrate the business of ecological imperialism. Reading,

documenting, collecting and counting the corpus of sales from the company’s ledgers reveals the

firm’s expanding distribution of plant material across the continent. When this information is

represented in geographic terms, the nursery’s business resembles that of a creeping vine. Furling

outward from Rochester, the Mount Hope Nursery literally planted roots across the continent

transforming economic and ecological landscapes along the way.

43 More on nineteenth-century bookkeeping, see Christopher Densmore, “Understanding and Using Early Nineteenth Century Account Books,” The Midwestern Archivist 5, no. 1 (1980): 5 – 19.

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Figure 1: Aggregate Sales by Location for the Mount Hope Nursery in 1845. Statistics gathered from Ledger, 1840–1847, Ellwanger and Barry Papers, University of Rochester Rare Books and Special Collections, Rochester, NY.

This became clear even in the early days of the company as Ellwanger and Barry constantly

sought-out investment opportunities in burgeoning markets of west of their city. In 1845, they

formed a partnership with a young Canadian horticulturist, George Leslie, and provided the initial

capital and nursery stock necessary to establish the Toronto Nursery Company.44 In a letter to a

prospective buyer, the nurserymen proudly laid out their plans to increase their sales well beyond

Western New York “Toronto is one of the most important and flourishing places in the Province,”

the Rochester described, and “we intend to make a large nursery there and carry on a good seed

44 Ledger, 1840–1847, Ellwanger and Barry Papers, University of Rochester Rare Books and Special Collections, Rochester, NY.

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business.”45 Serving as the principal suppliers to the Toronto nursery, Ellwanger and Barry treated

the Canadian company like a second branch of their own business. In turn, Toronto quickly became

the nurserymen’s second-largest market throughout much of the 1840s—only to be outdone by

buyers in western New York.46

By the mid-1850s, Ellwanger and Barry called upon Michael Bateham to expand their

commercial and ecological reach into Ohio. The once Rochester-based editor of The New Genesee

Farmer emigrated from Western New York in 1845 to begin a new, yet familiar, venture as editor The

Ohio Cultivator—a journal with the “aim to impart such knowledge of the principles and practice of

improved agriculture.”47 As a voice for agricultural reform, Bateham proselytized the pursuit of

knowledge as a means to improve the financial and moral standing of Ohio’s farmers. The Ohio

Cultivator, promoted tools, scientific research, and listed market prices so as to “enable farmers to

increase the value and productivity of their lands.”48 In addition to his continued commitment to

agricultural reform, Bateham actively promoted horticulture to his readers for its ability to bring

“lasting happiness” to practitioners.49

As editor of The Ohio Cultivator, Bateham made for an ideal business partner. After

coordinating shipments of plants and finalizing the financial intricacies of the partnership, all parties

happily announced the creation of the Columbus Nursery Company in 1854.50 “The want of an

extensive general nursery in Central Ohio has long been felt,” Bateham proclaimed in the opening

45 Letter to C. Daly and Son, October 30, 1844, Letterbook: 1842-1850, Ellwanger and Barry Papers, University of Rochester Rare Books and Special Collections, Rochester, NY. 46 Ledger, 1840–1847, Ellwanger and Barry Papers, University of Rochester Rare Books and Special Collections, Rochester, NY. 47 Michael Bateham, “Prospectus of the Ohio Cultivator,” The Ohio Cultivator 1, no. 1 (1845): 1. 48 Michael Bateham, “Prospectus of the Ohio Cultivator,” The Ohio Cultivator 1, no. 1 (1845): 1. 49 Michael Bateham, “Prospectus of the Ohio Cultivator,” The Ohio Cultivator 1, no. 1 (1845): 1. 50 Ledger, 1854–1858, Ellwanger and Barry Papers, University of Rochester Rare Books and Special Collections, Rochester, NY.

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pages of an early catalogue, “and it is the intention of the proprietors to supply that want.”51 The

Ohio company capitalized on the prestige and notoriety of Rochester’s horticultural excellence.

Early nursery catalogues from the Columbus Nursery Company clearly outlined the firm’s

connection to the Mount Hope Nursery in an effort to bolster its status as a dependable and widely

stocked nursery for Ohio buyers. “The correctness of our trees to name may be implicitly relied

upon,” Bateham confidently printed in catalogues, because “most of the young stocks, scions, buds,

&c., were furnished by our eastern partners, Ellwanger & Barry.”52 Using the nurserymen’s names

brought prestige to the young company defining the Ohio firm as a trustworthy supplier of plant

material in the region.

Ellwanger and Barry’s venture in Columbus illustrates the nurserymen’s growing business

activity across the continent. The total number of outgoing shipments increased from a total of 717

orders in 1845 to 1,898 by 1855.53 Whereas the Mount Hope Nursery derived most of its sales from

New York and Ontario in 1845, the company’s ledgers indicate a far more expansive market for

their plants just a decade later. The new business came from Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota,

Wisconsin, and Illinois—a region flooding with Euro-American settlers eager to acquire their own

horticultural materials. Buyers’ enthusiasm for plant material carried real financial implications for

the Mount Hope Nursery whose reported revenues grew $7,4316 in 1845 to $63,782 worth of plant

material just a decade later.54 Given that Ellwanger and Barry sold a single tree for as little as $.06, or

51 For the Spring of 1857. Catalogue of Fruit and Ornamental Trees, Shrubs, Vines, Plants, &c., for Sale at the Columbus Nursery (Columbus, Ohio: The Company, 1857). 52 For the Spring of 1857. Catalogue of Fruit and Ornamental Trees, Shrubs, Vines, Plants, &c., for Sale at the Columbus Nursery (Columbus, Ohio: The Company, 1857). 53 Ledger, 1854–1858, Ellwanger and Barry Papers, University of Rochester Rare Books and Special Collections, Rochester, NY. 54 All prices are adjusted to the value of dollars in 1845. I based my calculations using the commodity price index formulas outlined in John J. McCusker, How Much is That in Real Money: A Historical Commodity Price Index for Use as a Deflator of Money Values in the Economy of the United States (Worcester, MA: American Antiquarian Society, 2001); Ledger, 1840–1847, Ellwanger and Barry Papers, University of Rochester Rare Books and Special Collections, Rochester, NY; Ledger, 1854–1858,

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in bulk for 1000 apple trees for $50.00, the revenues calculated in the business ledgers indicate that

the Rochester nurserymen distributed several-hundred thousand trees ever single year.55

Growing demand for plant material led the proprietors of the Mount Hope Nursery to

restructure their business. They shifted the division of labor to accommodate the increase in

incoming orders. All buyers sent plant orders to nursery office situated at the front of the property.

Once examined, the nurserymen handed the orders off to a foreman who then directed the

employees to retrieve the named plants from their respective locations. More than two hundred

employees weaved through rows of saplings gathering fruit trees, ornamentals, shrubs, and seeds.56

After the employees gathered the specimens, they converged upon a massive, packing shed

prominently situated at the center of the Mount Hope Nursery. Foremen gave one final review of

the gathered materials before directing the employees to bundle the saplings together and pack them

neatly into moss or straw-lined wooden crates. Firmly packed and nailed shut, foremen coordinated

the shipments with varying carriage, steamer, or rail companies ensuring that plants arrived to their

designated patch of soil.

Ellwanger and Barry Papers, University of Rochester Rare Books and Special Collections, Rochester, NY. 55 Fruit and Ornamental Trees, Shrubs and Plants. For Sale By Ellwanger & Barry, Proprietors of the Mount Hope Garden and Nurseries, Rochester, N.Y. (1849). 56 J.J. Thomas, The Illustrated Annual Register of Rural Affairs and Cultivator Almanac, for the Year 1859 (Albany, New York: Luther Tucker & Son, 1859), 208.

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Figure 2: Ellwanger & Barry’s Principal Packing Shed, During the Selling Season. Image from J.J. Thomas, The I l lus t ra ted Annual Reg i s t e r o f Rural Affa ir s and Cult ivator Almanac , for the Year 1858 (Albany, NY: Luther Tucker & Son, 1858), 207.

In addition to the changes made on the grounds, the proprietors, like many nursery owners

of the day, hired agents to roam the countryside, cultivate sales, coordinate shipments, and collect

payments for orders. Nursery agents served as scions of the main company as they communicated

with prospective buyers and handled financial exchanges between customers and local lending

institutions. For example, one Rochester-area nurserymen, Henry Fellows, hired numerous agents to

help find those buyers in want of plant material. One agent, D.M. McDonald, wrote Fellows from

South Bend, Indiana in 1859 that he was, "taking orders for fruit and ornamental trees about this

country for spring delivery," and expected to sell "about $2000 worth" of plants.57 Another one of

Fellows’ agents in Chagrin, Ohio reported that, "I shall remain in Ohio this winter," where, "I am

making contracts."58 Fellows went as far as to send his son to the Oregon Territory in 1855 where he

57 Letter from D. S. McDonald, December 17, 1859, Henry Fellows Horticultural Correspondence, University of Rochester Rare Books and Special Collections, Rochester, NY. 58 Letter from E. Tripp, December 31, 1859, Henry Fellows Horticultural Correspondence, University of Rochester Rare Books and Special Collections, Rochester, NY.

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sold nearly $1500 in nursery stock to growers in Champoeg.59 Fellows kept regular correspondence

with agents in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Oregon in order to boost sales and expand his

horticultural reach.

Agents served as vital actors of the business as a means to cultivate sales, but they were also

sources of information for nurserymen who often lived several hundred miles away. Agents

monitored and reported settlement trends as well as the needs of prospective buyers. Fellows

exchanged regular correspondence with D.P. Fuller, an agent and who lived near Detroit, Michigan

and toured throughout the state seeking out buyers in need of plant material. While traveling

through Oakland County in the summer of 1855, Fuller informed Fellows that he had sold just over

$600.00 in the region—an order consisting “of 1876 appel trees and 72 cherry trees, 81 peare trees

all dwarf peares mosely of baring trees the pear 19 plumb trees and some ornamental trees.”60 Yet,

despite promising numbers Fuller announced that he intended move on to other markets after

discovering that two other agents from Rochester now sold in the “same town in which I have maid

my sales.”61 He moved on to “White Lake settlement,” speculating that, “business hear I think will

bee… good.”62 It was a settlement consisting mostly of farmers, and Fuller informed the

nurseryman that the initial sales were “incuragin.”63 By late September Fuller recorded another

several hundred dollars in orders but again felt the competitive pinch to move onwards. “I shall have

to go to some other town soon myself and 3 or 4 other agents from Rochester has filled this pretty

59 Letter from S. Ellsworth, May 7, 1855, Henry Fellows Horticultural Correspondence, University of Rochester Rare Books and Special Collections, Rochester, NY. 60 Letter from D.P. Fuller, July 29, 1855, Henry Fellows Horticultural Correspondence, University of Rochester Rare Books and Special Collections, Rochester, NY. 61 Letter from D.P. Fuller, July 15, 1855, Henry Fellows Horticultural Correspondence, University of Rochester Rare Books and Special Collections, Rochester, NY. 62 Letter from D.P. Fuller, August 11, 1855, Henry Fellows Horticultural Correspondence, University of Rochester Rare Books and Special Collections, Rochester, NY. 63 Letter from D.P. Fuller, August 11, 1855, Henry Fellows Horticultural Correspondence, University of Rochester Rare Books and Special Collections, Rochester, NY.

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well up.”64 After Supplying the White Lake market with fruit trees, Fuller packed his things and

traveled to the newly incorporated settlement of Flint where he would hope to replicate earlier

successes. Though many plant nurseries commissioned agents to sell plants on their behalf few of

the firms could match the army of agents employed by the Mount Hope Nursery. By the 1860s, the

Mount Hope Nursery employed 69 plant agents and 66 agents by the 1870s.65 Equipped with plant

catalogues, an awareness of local lending institutions, and a familiarity with the transportation

networks, agents ensured the nursery’s shear dominance in the American plant trade.66

Though Ellwanger and Barry happily filled the orders of individual agriculturists, they

welcomed orders for western nurserymen hoping to fill their grounds with desirable varieties for

local buyers. They filled large orders to entrepreneurs such as Francis Hastings in Chicago, Illinois.

Recently emigrated from Utica, New York in 1843, Hastings hoped to situated himself as the

premier plant nurserymen in the region for a future wave of settlers. Upon arriving at Chicago,

Hastings quickly cut the cottonwoods and pulled prairie to make way for apple seedlings and

potatoes. His fist year was slow.67 The wild apple seedlings, barley sprouting from the soil, would

take too long for sale in a market the seemed to be only increasing with demand. Hastings quickly

wrote to several nurserymen throughout Western New York in order to acquire desirable saplings.

Several nurserymen responded to his letters eager to sell to the budding proprietor, including one

Buffalo grower who wrote, “I am anxious to supply all of our western Nurserymen.”68 The Mount

64 Letter from D.P. Fuller, September 19, 1855, Henry Fellows Horticultural Correspondence, University of Rochester Rare Books and Special Collections, Rochester, NY. 65 Ledger, 1863 – 1867, Ellwanger and Barry Papers, University of Rochester Rare Books and Special Collections, Rochester, NY; Ledger, 1872 – 1876, Ellwanger and Barry Papers, University of Rochester Rare Books and Special Collections, Rochester, NY. 66 Cheryl Lyon-Jenness, For Shade and For Comfort: Democratizing Horticulture in the Nineteenth-Century Midwest (West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University press, 2004), 87 – 146. 67 Francis Hastings’ Notebook, 1846, Francis Hastings Horticultural Papers, University of Rochester Rare Books and Special Collections, Rochester, NY. 68 Letter from Benjamin Hodge, October 18, 1844, Francis Hastings Horticultural Papers, University of Rochester Rare Books and Special Collections, Rochester, NY.

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Hope Nursery provided several hundred plants to the firm giving the Chicago nurserymen a leg-up

on the nearby competition.

Burgeoning plant nurserymen became the most profitable buyers throughout the second half

of the nineteenth-century. The Mount Hope Nursery became the primary vendors to several

nurserymen throughout the Great Lakes region who struggled to keep up with local demand. J.C.

Ferris in Cincinnati, Ohio, Samuel Edwards in La Moille, Illinois, B.W. Steere in Adrian, Michigan,

and John Gray in Toronto, Ontario all prominent nurserymen who relied upon the Rochester firm

to sustain their businesses.69 The Mount Hope Nursery also became a prominent vendor for local

nurserymen. By 1855, several local nurserymen including Samuel Moulson, Moses Long, C.J. Ryan,

and John Rapalji called upon Ellwanger and Barry for plant material when western sales

overwhelmed their company’s capabilities.70 Rather than see the local growers as potential

competitors, the Mount Hope nurserymen secured their position as perpetual wholesalers to the

Rochester-based nursery trade. Aware that smaller nurseries could not possibly compete with their

size and selection, the proprietors of the Mount Hope Nursery happily served local growers with

plant material claiming horticultural authority in the city while confidently assuring themselves of

their commitment to America’s horticultural transformation.

69 Ledger, 1854–1858, Ellwanger and Barry Papers, University of Rochester Rare Books and Special Collections, Rochester, NY; “Ferris & Clark, Nurserymen and Florists,” The Horticultural Advertiser (1854): 7; on Edwards, see Transactions of the Northern Illinois Horticultural Society (Chicago: Prairie Farmer Company Print, 1868), 15; on Steere, see “List of Some of the Principal Nurserymen, Seedsmen and Florists in the United States and Canada,” Genesee Farmer 25, no. 9 (1864): 284; on Gray, see “List of Some of the Principal Nurserymen, Seedsmen and Florists in the United States and Canada,” Genesee Farmer 25, no. 9 (1864): 284. 70 Ledger, 1854–1858, Ellwanger and Barry Papers, University of Rochester Rare Books and Special Collections, Rochester, NY.

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Figure 3: Aggregate Sales by Location for the Mount Hope Nursery in 1855. Statistics gathered from Ledger, 1854–1858, Ellwanger and Barry Papers, University of Rochester Rare Books and Special Collections, Rochester, NY.

Although Ellwanger and Barry sold a great deal of plant material in the Great Lakes region,

the nurserymen never turned down sales to more distant markets. By the mid-1850s they sold plants

as far as Texas, Oregon, and California where buyers like William Neely Thompson eagerly waited

for the familiar plant material. 71 Originally from Pennsylvania, Thompson bought thousands of

plantings for his new home in San Francisco. Like all other orders, nursery employees packed the

fruit saplings in dry moss. The Mount Hope nurserymen then directed employees to ship the

saplings southward by steamship to the Isthmus of Panama where they transferred to new a new

71 The Texas order came from an Alexander Rossy in New Braunfels whereas the orders from Oregon came from two different individuals in Oregon City, Oregon, see Ledger, 1854–1858, Ellwanger and Barry Papers, University of Rochester Rare Books and Special Collections, Rochester, NY

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ship for the last leg of the trip.72 When the saplings arrived in San Francisco, Thompson quickly laid

out the saplings and established some of the region’s earliest orchards. Within a few years

Thompson had grown into one of California’s first professional and most prominent

horticulturists.73 In the case of William Neely Thompson, the Mount Hope Nursery provided the

plant material that would serve as the economic foundation of his horticultural success.

Though Rochester nurserymen relied upon steamers and canals during the early decades of

their company’s operation, the expansion and dominance of railroad traffic in the 1870s both

standardized and expanded their reach further across the continent.74 By the 1870s the Mount Hope

Nursery recorded multiple sales throughout Montana, New Mexico, Nevada, and Utah where, as

before, the nurserymen supplied foundational plant material to burgeoning entrepreneurs.75 That

was certainly true of John Reading, a nurseryman in Salt Lake City in the 1870s. After placing an

order of several thousand trees with the Mount Hope Nursery, Reading quickly advertised his stock

as the most complete in the American West. Within a few years of the initial order, Reading grew to

be one of the most active nurserymen in the region receiving sizeable orders from buyers in

Montana, Nevada, Wyoming, and Idaho.76

By the 1880s several Rochester nurseries navigated and profited from a massive

transcontinental plant trade of their making. Leading the way was the Mount Hope Nursery whose

72 Miscellaneous Recollections, Ellwanger Family Papers, University of Rochester Rare Books and Special Collections, Rochester, NY. 73 Ledger, 1854–1858, Ellwanger and Barry Papers, University of Rochester Rare Books and Special Collections, Rochester, NY; For a brief biography of William Neely Thompson, see Campbell Augustus Menefee, Historical and Descriptive Sketch Book of Napa, Sonoma, Lake and Mendocino (Napa City: Reporter Publishing House, 1879), 130–135. 74 On the growth and significance of railroads in the nineteenth century with particular focus on American environmental history, see William Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1991), 55 – 96; Richard White, Railroaded: Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2011), 455 – 495. 75 Ledger, 1872 – 1876, Ellwanger and Barry Papers, University of Rochester Rare Books and Special Collections, Rochester, NY. 76 “Horticulture in America,” Gardeners’ Monthly and Horticulturist 29, no. 348 (1887): 380.

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reach extended the furthest distributing plant material in seven countries, 45 states, and six

provinces.77 Although their business epitomized one extreme of industry, their activity exemplified

the potential commercial reach of the Rochester-area nurseries. In fact, several of the region’s

nurserymen marketed their plant material across the country in regional journals such as Moore’s

Rural New Yorker, The Prairie Farmer, The Ohio Practical Farmer and The Southern Cultivator and Dixie

Farmer.78 Others promoted their plant material in the nation’s leading agricultural and gardening

journals of the day including The American Agriculturist, The Cultivator and Country Gentleman, and

American Gardening.79 At the close of the decade, the city of Rochester carried a nationwide reputation

for their plant nurseries. Any American grower looking for a fruit tree was well aware of Rochester’s

prominence in the transcontinental plant trade for the simple reason that it would be too difficult to

miss one of their many advertisement in a horticultural and agricultural publication.

77 Ledger, 1895 - 1898, Ellwanger and Barry Papers, University of Rochester Rare Books and Special Collections, Rochester, NY. 78 “Strawberry Plants,” Moore’s Rural New Yorker 40, no. 1649, 601; “Our Book Table,” The Prairie Farmer 55, no. 2, 25; ‘Green’s Nursery,” The Ohio Practical Farmer 93, no. 4, 67; “Small Fruit Plants and Vines,” The Southern Farmer and Dixie Farmer 44, no. 10, 445; 79 “Vick’s Floral Guide,” The American Agriculturist 45, no. 1, 33; “Mt. Hope Nurseries,” The Cultivator and Country Gentleman 53, no. 1861, 736; “Green’s Nursery Company,” American Gardening 8, no. 9, 273.

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Figure 4: Aggregate Sales by Location for the Mount Hope Nursery in 1885. Statistics gathered from Ledger, 1895 - 1898, Ellwanger and Barry Papers, University of Rochester Rare Books and Special Collections, Rochester, NY.

The long trail of print advertisements only offer an ephemeral record of the nurserymen’s

commercial influence. Monthly periodicals, annual plant catalogues, and receipts of sale could all be

ripped, thrown away, or forgotten. The same could be said a nurseryman’s published works. There

was no guarantee that agriculturists and horticulturists read Patrick Barry’s words in issues of the

Genesee Farmer and The Horticulturist. Although those publications demonstrated his horticultural

expertise, his most influential work emanated from the nursery grounds—not his pen. The

ecological influence of plant nurserymen, like Barry, sat there, right in plain sight. By 1890 the

American Department of Interior calculated that roughly 120 million apple trees had been growing

throughout the country, of which 50 million grew within the American Midwest—the region most

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shaped by Rochester nurserymen.80 Although apple trees outnumbered all other horticultural

plantings, the census recorded sizeable numbers of cherry, peach, pear, plumb, and prune trees in

production throughout the country.81 By the mid-1890s the transcontinental plant trade was a truly

massive industry that included nurserymen in all parts of country including California, Texas,

Connecticut, Florida, and the Dakotas.82 Every professional dealt with unique soil, climates, and

buyers. Some of them wrote for agricultural journals and attended conferences. Yet, despite their

differences all nurserymen shared deep desire to transform the American environment that they had

inherited into something else—a horticultural landscape.

80 U.S. Department of Interior Census Office, Report on the Statistics of Agriculture of the United States at the Eleventh Census: 1890 (Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1895), 498 – 499. 81 The same census reported, 5 million cherry trees, 50 million peach trees, 5 million pear trees, 7 million plumb and prune trees. 82 The Nurseryman’s Directory: A Reference Book for Nurserymen, Florists, Seedsmen, Tree Dealers, etc. (Galena, IL: D.W. Scott & Co., 1883).