[225] Aug. Royer Annales De Pomologie Belge et Etrangere 63. 1859.

[226] William Prince, born in 1725, was the second proprietor of the famous Prince nursery at Flushing, Long Island, a nursery established by his father, Robert Prince, about 1730. The first of the American Princes was one of the Huguenots who settled at New Rochelle and on the north shore of Long Island, bringing with them a great number of French fruits and the love of the French people for horticulture. The nursery, one of the first, and certainly the most important one in America at this time, grew rapidly until the Revolutionary War. The establishment was of such public importance that during a part of the war the British placed a guard over it to protect it from depredation. With the establishment of peace came an increased trade and the nursery soon attained even greater prominence than before the war. An effort was made by William Prince, then in charge, to import all of the valuable European fruits beside which he grew many seedlings, selecting carefully from them new varieties. Thus in 1790 twenty-five quarts of Reine Claude plum pits were planted from which came Yellow Gage, Imperial Gage and probably the Washington plum. Prince died in 1802, his business having been divided between two sons; Benjamin Prince keeping the original place under the name The Old American Nursery and William Prince occupying a new place called the Linnean Botanic Garden and Nursery. William Prince seems not to have had the inclination to write as did his son and grandson but had, even more than they, business energy. His European exportations and importations made his name famous in horticulture abroad as well as at home. To him Americans owe the introduction of many varieties of foreign fruits and ornamental plants; his was the first of the great nurseries of the country, soon to be followed by others, to import and exchange plants with foreign countries; his is the first recorded attempt to breed fruits in America on an extensive scale and the fact that the three plums sent out by him are still valuable varieties indicates his judgment as to worth in fruits. The reputation made by his son, William Prince, the second, and by William Robert Prince, a grandson, as writers on horticultural subjects, is in large measure due to the information acquired for them and the training given them by the William Prince of this sketch.

[227] Gilbert Onderdonk was born in Sharon, New York, September 30, 1829. As a boy he showed a taste for horticulture and while a lad planted seeds of potatoes, made selections and developed several varieties more or less widely grown in the middle of the last century. Mr. Onderdonk was educated in the Cortland Academy at Cortland, N. Y., and in the State Normal College at Albany. After having taught in the district schools of New York for a few years, he found it necessary to go to a warmer climate because of bronchial trouble and in 1851 moved to Texas, where he became a cowboy, a rancher and finally a fruit-grower. In the region in which he had settled there were wild grapes and wild plums in abundance. The luxuriance of growth and the number of these fruits so impressed him with the possibilities of fruit culture in southwestern Texas that he began planting fruit trees. Of necessity these came from the north and for most part failed. Not to be discouraged, Mr. Onderdonk began the improvement of the wild varieties about his home. From 1855 to the present time his work has been the testing for the region in which he lives, of every variety of fruit to be had in Europe and America, and the improvement of the wild fruits growing about him. The plum, in particular, has received attention from Mr. Onderdonk, and his chief work with this fruit has been the hybridization of Triflora and Munsoniana varieties from the crossing of which he has grown some valuable plums. In 1887, the United States Department of Agriculture employed Mr. Onderdonk to work with plums, grapes and peaches in the southwest, the results of which are to be found in the reports of the Department immediately following the year mentioned. He has also done considerable work for the French in sending resistant vines to France. Mr. Onderdonk is one of several workers in horticulture who have unremittingly served Texas and the southwest in the production of new varieties of fruits and in testing varieties from other regions. The value of the foundation these men have laid for horticulture in the southwest cannot now be estimated.

[228] Mich. Sta. Bul. 118:52, 54. 1895.

[229] Thomas Am. Fruit Cult. 493. 1897.

[230] Joseph L. Normand was born at Marksville, Louisiana, January 14, 1853. He was educated in the public schools of the parish in which he lived. After leaving school he followed the vocation of a printer for a number of years, though from childhood horticulture had been an avocation with him. Before middle life he gave up office work to begin actively the growing of nursery and fruit trees. His work in horticulture early developed into plant-breeding and towards the close of his life all of his energies were devoted to the production of new types of plants. In his plant-breeding Mr. Normand became noted as a hybridizer and a great majority of the fruits and ornamentals sent out by him were hybrids. Among these may be named the Carnegie Orange, a hybrid more or less frost resistant, which he obtained by crossing the Louisiana Sweet Orange with Citrus trifoliata. Mr. Normand also devoted much time to the testing of figs and sent out the New French Fig, selected from some seventy varieties which he had grown. Pears, apples and plums received his attention and in all these fruits he developed original types by hybridization. Possibly his most meritorious work with the plum has been in testing Triflora and native varieties, although he has sent out not a few hybrids of this fruit most of which, however, do not thrive in northern climates. Mr. Normand did for his region what Kerr, Munson, Terry, Lord and Williams have done in other parts of North America in testing plums. All who knew Mr. Normand say that in this day of commercialism he worked almost wholly for the love of plants—to improve them for his fellow fruit-growers regardless of the money to be made in his calling. He lived and worked in a region where his achievements were at first little known and little understood, quite content to work for his work’s sake, but in the end he gained distinction among the fruit-growers of his State and attracted the attention of plant-breeders all over the United States. Mr. Normand died in the town of his birth, April 17, 1910.

[231] A. L. Bruce, whose name appears so frequently in the pages of The Plums of New York as a breeder of native plums, is of Scotch descent. His father, however, came from Illinois to Texas, settling at Basin Springs, Grayson County, in 1845, where he planted the first orchard in that part of Texas. The son, subject of this sketch, was born October 6, 1861, and was educated in the common schools at Basin Springs, Texas. His work in growing and breeding trees began in his youth, for in 1877 he established himself as a grower and collector of native plums to which he added many of the Triflora varieties that were soon after introduced from Japan. Mr. Bruce’s first definite problem in breeding plums was to find extra early and extra late sorts for Texas; his Six Weeks, Red May, Dayton and several other plums were the results of these efforts. In 1902 Mr. Bruce moved to Donley County in the Panhandle of Texas from which place he has sent out and continues to send out Triflora, native and hybrid plums of unusual merit. Beside working with plums Mr. Bruce is a breeder of peaches, pears, raspberries, dewberries and apples, to all of which fruits he has made more or less notable contributions. Mr. Bruce is still in the prime of life, has many plant-breeding problems projected and his work promises much for horticulture in the Southwest and in the country at large.