South Carolina - Seed Dealers & Nursery Owners

Charles Fraser (1782-1860) Golden Groves The Seat of Mrs (John) Sommers Stono River. Carolina Art Association Gibbes Museum, Charleston, South Carolina

South Carolina was a world of its own in the early 18th century, & it might be interesting to compare & contrast the marketing of plants & the growth of professional seed & plant dealers there with the more northern colonies.

Searching for Native Plants

In warm, nearly tropical South Carolina, naturalists Mark Catesby (1682-1749) amp; John Bartram (1699-1777) both visited the intriguing colony, increasing botanical awareness in the area & abroad. Catesby & Bartram took samples of new plants they found & traded them with others, on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

John Bartram, the Philadelphia gardener, explorer, & botanist, regularly sent plants to English merchant & botanist Peter Collinson (1649-1768). His famous garden at Mill Hill contained many American plants.

c. 1796. Charles Fraser (1782-1860). The Seat of James Fraser, Esq., Goose Creek, South Carolina. The Carolina Art Association Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston, South Carolina. James Fraser was the older brother of Charles. The house was called Wigton

Whether planting their lands for necessity or pleasure, early South Carolina gardeners were initially bound to write back to England for gardening manuals & for many of the specific plants & seeds they were familiar with from their mother country. But soon, commercial seed dealers & nursery owners began importing plants to sell directly to South Carolina gardeners.

Many South Carolina gardeners ordered their seeds directly from England. In the December 19, 1754, issue of the South Carolina Gazette, Captain Thomas Arnott noted that he brought a box of “Tulip, Narcissus, & other Flower Roots” from England “supposed to have been ordered by some person of this province” & that the “person that can properly claim them, may have them.”

c 1796. Charles Fraser (1782-1860). Rice Hope viewed from One of the Rice Fields. South Carolina. The Carolina Art Association Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston, South Carolina.

Comparison of seed dealers & nursery owners in South Carolina & the Mid-Atlantic & Upper South

The pattern established by the growing South Carolina seed & nursery trade is similar to that of the Mid-Atlantic & Upper South, but there are some significant differences. In the extended Chesapeake region, gardeners & plant dealers dedicated to promoting & selling plants found their most secure footing after the Revolution.

Female Pennsylvania & South Carolina nursery owners & seed merchants successfully began selling both useful & ornamental plants decades before the Revolution. In South Carolina, much seed & plant material was imported from England, both before & after the Revolution.

In the Chesapeake, the earliest seed merchants & nursery owners, appearing after the Revolution, were from France & Germany. After the war, Dutch bulbs & roots found their way into South Carolina as well; & itinerant French seed merchants also peddled their wares in Charleston, but English nursery proprietors continued to own the majority of Carolina businesses.

In both regions, English gardeners & nursery owners came to dominate the local seed & nursery trade by the turn of the century. Both Chesapeake & Carolina garden entrepreneurs offered a full range of stock from greenhouse plants to seeds for field crops, from traditional medicinal herbs to fragrant shrubs by the beginning of the first decade of the 19th-century.

Seed merchants & nursery owners in both areas aggressively advertised their services & stock (at both retail & wholesale prices) in regional newspapers, & sometimes offered free printed catalogues to prospective clients. Gardeners in both regions sold seeds & plants at their nurseries & stores; at local farmers’ markets; & through agents at various locations throughout their regions.

Jacques Burkhardt (1818-1867). Home of Gabriel Manigault.

Gardeners from both regions sold seeds & plants imported from Philadelphia & New York, as well as those from their local suppliers. A new nationwide network of capitalistic nursery & seed business was nipping at the heels of traditional garden barter exchanges in the Mid-Atlantic, Upper South, & South Carolina as the 19th-century dawned over the horizon.

Nurseryman - Benjamin K Bliss 1819-?

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Benjamin K. Bliss–New York, New York

Benjamin K Bliss was born in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1819. He established a seed, bulb, and nursery firm in 1845, in New York City.

Information from the Smithsonian Institution Libraries and private research.
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Nurseryman - Albert A Blanc 1850-1928

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Albert A. Blanc–(1850-1928)–Philadelphia, Pennsylvania–

Blanc was born in Belgium in 1850, and came to the United States in the early 1870s. He began as a cactus dealer and illustrated plant lists with his own woodcuts.

His Hints on Cacti, a combination cultural guide and trade catalog, was published in 1886. It was the first cactus catalog published in the United States.

He expanded a hobby into the world’s largest cactus nursery, and was considered to be the person responsible for starting the cactus craze of the 1890s. Other dealers were impressed with his illustrations, and by the 1890s he was selling thousands of illustrations to American and European companies.

Information from the Smithsonian Institution Libraries and private research.
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Nurseryman - Patrick Barry - 1816-1890

Patrick Barry–(1816-1890)–Rochester, New York–

Barry was born near Belfast, Ireland in 1816 and was a teacher in Ireland, but at 21 years old he went to seek his fortune in America. He arrived in New York in May 1836 and worked with William Prince and Sons, proprietors of the Linnaean Nursery, Flushing, NY. There Barry got a solid foundation in American horticulture.

In the summer of 1840 he negotiated a partnership with George Ellwanger in Rochester, NY. Ellwanger & Barry were the proprietors of the Mount Hope Nurseries. In 1842 Barry wrote an article on “Horticulture in Western New York,” in which he criticized the refusal of the judges at the State Agricultural Society Fair of 1842 to award fruit prizes. In 1844 Barry took the post of editor of the Horticultural Department of the Genesee Farmer and continued there for eight years.

In 1847 Barry journeyed through Europe, visiting all the leading nurserymen and studied their methods for pruning. Shortly after his return he started writing The Fruit Garden that was published in 1851. In 1849, Barry gave the annual meeting address to the Genesee Valley Horticultural Society that met at the Monroe County Agricultural Society’s fair.

Barry was editor of The Horticulturist for 1853 and 1854. He was president of the Western New York Horticultural Society for more than thirty years; president of the New York Agricultural Society; president of the Rochester City & Mechanics Savings Bank; Rochester Gas Co.; and Powers Hotel Co. In 1877 he served as the president of the State Agricultural Society. He died June 23, 1890.

Information from the Smithsonian Institution Libraries research.
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Nurseryman - Prosper Julius A Berckmans 1830-1910–Augusta, Georgia

"Louis Mathieu Eduoard Berckmans was born in 1801 in Lierre, Belgium, a small town between Brussels and Antwerp, known for lacemaking, textiles and the crafting of musical instruments. His coming of age experience included the Napoleonic Wars, the consolidation of his country with Holland following the Congress of Vienna in 1815 and the subsequent unrest and eventual secession of Belgium years later. A member of the lesser nobility, he was well-educated, spoke French and German, enjoyed and played music, and created art. Trained as a physician, he also loved the natural world and became well-known in his homeland as a talented horticulturist. 

"In the 1820s, he married the love of his life, Marie Gaudens. More than 40 years after her death he would remark to friends, “My first wife…was an angel from heaven, God bless her.” In October 1830 Marie gave birth to a son, Prosper Jules Alphonse, and died soon after. Prosper became Louis’s “dear boy,” the apple of his eye. Four years later Louis remarried Holland-born Elizabeth Charlotte Arnoldine Rubens who gave him a second son, Emile, in 1837. According to the Smithsonian, Prosper was educated in France in horticulture and at age 17 returned to his father’s estates while studying at the Botanical Gardens in Brussels. 

"At age 20, with his father’s blessing, Prosper sailed to the United States to search for a good home for the family. There he travelled extensively, including a sojourn in Georgia to examine Rome, where a colony of Belgian expatriates had already settled. In July 1851, he returned North for the arrival from Belgium of his stepmother, younger half-brother and father, who had brought horticultural specimens from the homeland. 

 "In spite of his son’s enthusiasm for Georgia, the elder Berckmans decided to settle in Plainfield, N.J., where he and Prosper began a nursery to cultivate pears and experiment with other plants. The family was well-received and met some American luminaries. New Yorker Andrew Jackson Downing, often considered the father of American landscape, and author of the 1845 Fruit and Fruit Trees of America, sought out Louis Berckmans who he declared would “be a great acquisition in the society of American fruit growers and pomologists…. We rejoice that such a man has settled among us.” Downing’s unfortunate death in July 1852 cut short what might have been a long and productive relationship. By 1856 Dr. Berckmans was prominent enough that he was asked to judge in the United States Agricultural Exhibit. In New Jersey, Prosper married New Jersey-born Mary Craig, who in 1857 gave birth to the first of three sons, Louis Alphonse. 

"After several New Jersey winters, the South’s climate began to beckon. In 1857 Dr. Berckmans bought almost 145 acres on the south side of Washington Road and dubbed it Pearmont. To the west was the Fruitland Nursery property of Dennis Redmond who, like Dr. Berckmans, was an immigrant. Born in Ireland, Redmond had settled in Utica, N.Y. Hired by Daniel Lee, a fellow New Yorker who had moved to Augusta to become editor of the Southern Cultivator, Redmond became first a correspondent, then assistant editor, for the magazine. Both Lee and Redmond were proponents of agricultural reform in the South, including fruit cultivation, which they promoted in the pages of their publication. 

"Redmond’s property had been the orchard portion of James Coleman’s Bedford Nursery. As early as 1853 Redmond had begun advertising in The Augusta Chronicle the sale of fruit, fowls and trees from Bedford Nursery. And in 1854 he purchased 315 acres that included the Bedford orchard and gave the nursery the name Fruitland. In 1858 Louis Berckman purchased Fruitland from Redmond and combined it with Pearmont. Redmond then bought the land to the east of Pearmont naming it Vineland for the vineyards he began to cultivate there. (For an interesting analysis of Fruitland and Redmond, readers might enjoy an article by Dr. Philip Herrington, Augusta native and history professor at James Madison University, in the November 2012 issue of the Journal of Southern History.) Dr. Berckmans and Prosper’s young family moved to Augusta in 1857 with Emile following in 1858. Louis’s wife Elizabeth never joined him in Augusta, staying in Plainfield where son Emile later returned. Elizabeth, along with an Irish servant named Anna, appeared in the 1860 census living with $20,000 in real estate and $3,000 in personal property. In 1863 Emile, living in Plainfield, registered for the U.S. Army draft enacted in that year. Emile evidently remained in the North for life. In 1870 he married a New Jersey girl named Elizabeth, a fellow music teacher. In the Plainfield city directory of 1883, his occupation was still music teacher. ”

"In 1858-59 the first ads for the Descriptive Catalogue of Fruit and Ornamental Trees, Shrubs, Vines, Roses, Evergreens, Hedge Plants, &c., cultivated and for sale at Fruitland Nursery in Augusta, Ga., by P. J. Berckmans & Company” began appearing. The catalog could be obtained at Berckmans or at Mr. V. LaTaste’s Grocery Store in town. By 1860 Prosper appeared in the census with real estate worth $18,000 and a personal estate valued at $8,000. In addition to his father, wife and son, the household included Joseph Tice, a laborer from Belgium; Peter Benne, a nurseryman from France; Albert Coles, a clerk from New Jersey; and Rose Kelly a servant from Ireland. They were building one of the largest and most successful nurseries in the South. 

Prosper Julius A Berckmans 1830-1910

"During the Civil War, they provided vegetables and fruits for the Confederacy and donated to the mayor’s charity for wounded soldiers. Prosper and Mary added two more sons to their family—Robert Craig, born in 1864, and Prosper Julius Alphonse Jr., born in 1866. During the Civil War they provided vegetables and fruits for the Confederacy… In 1870 Dr. Louis M.E. Berckmans left the business in the capable hands of his son and, upon the invitation of Georgia author and newspaper columnist Charles Smith, better known as Bill Arp, he moved to Rome, Ga., where he lived on Horse Leg Mountain, which he nicknamed Mt. Alto. In a fascinating article on Rome’s Belgian colony in 1977, author Bernice Couey Bishop described his contented life there. His home was a 12- by 15-foot cabin of stone and wood, which he termed his “castle,” surrounded by a wall and terraces of flowers. On the hillside he planted orchards that fed him on pears, apples, peaches, plums and cherries. Inside the cozy home, books of the classics paintings of heroes lined the walls. There he cooked for himself, mainly vegetables and fruits, rice and grits. According to the article, the sounds of his violin often reverberated through the mountainside. Du Drovided vegetables and fruits for the Confederacy… 

"Periodically he walked the four miles down the mountain to town where he occasionally accompanied some of the accomplished local pianists on his violin. His character is reflected in letters of advice to his grandsons, whom he urged to follow the example of their father Prosper for honorable careers: “not seeking for…ambitious aims but shaping your course so as to deserve the esteem of your fellow man.” Distinction, he cautioned, “too often converts to vanity…a man can be happy and more so by following a plain, honorable course than by glitter.” 

 "On a visit to his beloved family 82- year-old Louis walked from Fruitland to downtown Augusta and back on December 6, 1883; he died the next day. Prosper buried him in Summerville Cemetery where he himself would one day rest. 

"...Prosper continued to operate the nursery, within a decade shipping catalogs throughout the region, nation and world. He served his profession well, founding the Georgia State Horticultural Society in 1876 and the Richmond County Agricultural Society in 1885, serving as president of each from its establishment until his death. In 1885-1886 he collected horticultural exhibits for the United States government for the New Orleans Exposition and the following year his peers elected him president of the American Pomological Society. For a number of years he presided over the editorial board of the Farmer and Gardener. In 1893 he gave the opening address at the Horticultural Congress held at the Chicago World’s Fair. A generous man, he also donated money and plantings to organizations and institutions such as the state mental institution in Milledgeville. 

"Having become a naturalized citizen, Berckmans took his civic responsibility seriously and participated in many community activities. Having become a naturalized citizen in 1854, Berckmans took his civic responsibility seriously and participated in many community activities. In the 1870s he became president of the Cotton States Mechanical and Agricultural Fair Association and in 1888 a leading member of the board of Augusta’s National Exposition. Active in political affairs as well, he served as the manager of elections in his precinct of Richmond County, as a grand juror and as a delegate to the Congressional Convention. His sons lived and worked with him at Fruitland while growing up and acquiring their educations. He sent sons Robert and Allie (Prosper Julius Alphonse Jr.), whom the paper called “two of the brightest and most popular Augusta boys,” to the University of Georgia. They, in turn, along with older brother Louis, who became a known designer of golf courses and the gardens at Radio City Music Hall, would become active professionals and community members, carrying on their father’s work. 

 "In 1897 Prosper’s wife Mary Craig died after more than 40 years of marriage. The next year Prosper, by then more than 70 years old, married 38-year-old Edith Fromm Purdy of New York, the editor of a fashion magazine. They met when he was on a visit to relatives in New York. The couple lived in Augusta and spent summers up North. In fact, in the 1900 census Prosper was enumerated with his new wife in Essex, N.J. 

 "In November 1910 Prosper J.A. Berckmans died after a long and productive life. At their first conference since the loss of their founder and long-time president, the Georgia State Horticultural Association dismissed their business agenda to pay tribute to their colleague and friend, whom one member said was the “greatest pomologist the South has ever seen.” Professor T. H. Hatten of the University of Georgia, whose campus landscape reflected Berckmans’s expertise, praised not only his “encyclopedic knowledge,” but his character: “His course was not that of the money-accumulating merchant but rather that of altruistic scientist who preferred the good of all before any considerations.” Although he was 80 when he died, Hatten said, “old age of the spirit was never his.” 

 "In 1903 Prosper had rewritten his will leaving the bulk of the estate, both in New Jersey and Georgia, to his second wife, including all the couple’s horses, carriages and personal belongings, 100 shares of stock in the company and 200 acres of Fruitland, including the dwelling house and the greenhouses of the nursery. The deed, however, was subject to the lease of the nursery portion to P.J. Berckmans and Co. Nursery until 1918. The rest of the estate, including the remaining Fruitland property was left jointly to the three sons, who already had received the largest share of the moneys from their father’s own inheritance of “patrimonial estates in Belgium” in the 1890s. The three brothers continued to run P.J. Berckmans & Company with Louis as president, Robert as vice-president and Allie as secretary-treasurer until the company lease on Edith’s portion ended in 1918 when they left the business. 

"In a few years, the new story of the estate as the Augusta National Golf Club began, with Louis and Allie both involved. It is fitting that the Augusta National keeps the name of the Berckmans family alive as a reminder of their remarkable legacy of beauty there and in landscapes throughout the world." 

This article appears in the April 2016 issue of Augusta Magazine. by Dr Lee Ann Caldwell of Augusta University

Nuseryman -James Lockwood Belden 1774-1847

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James Lockwood Belden–1774-1847-Wethersfield, Connecticut–

Established Wethersfield Seed Gardens in 1820 (or possibly 1811).  Belden sold the company in 1838 to Judge Comstock and his son, William G. Comstock.

Information from the Smithsonian Institution Libraries and private research.
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Nurseryman - Charles Briggs 1824-aft 1880

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New York native Briggs was the proprietor of the Briggs Seed House, Rochester, New York. In 1877 he had 20,000 merchants and dealers who sold his seeds. He had a large payroll with most of his employees being girls who filled orders, made paper bags, then labeled and filled them, and worked the printing presses.

Charles Briggs...commenced business here as a clerk about thirty years ago, & today has one of the largest seed houses in the city. His immense business is thoroughly systematized, each floor being devoted to some particular branch. In passing through the establishment one is likely to become astonished at the magnitude of the concern. His trade in vegetable seeds is enormous; but not to that alone is it confined, as flower seeds & bulbs form an important feature. He does a very large trade among merchants & dealers, of whom there are about twenty thousand who sell his seeds. Mr. Briggs' payroll is very large; the greater number of the employees, however, are girls, who do such work as filling the orders, making paper bags, labeling, filling, & packing them for market, besides operating tbe printing presses. The space used for this business amounts to over one hundred & thirty-six thousand feet. He has a large seed store in Chicago, & also a seed farm at Clinton, Iowa. Mr. B. has passed an active life in this business, & is justly entitled to the rank this establishment holds among the leading seed houses in this country.
From History of Monroe County, New York by W. H. McIntosh & W.E. Morrison, 1877
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Plants & Catalogs - Philadelphia Seed Dealer & Nurseryman - Robert Buist 1805-1880

Buist was born near Edinburgh, Scotland, November 14, 1805. He was trained at the Edinburgh Botanic Gardens & sailed to America in August 1828.

When he arrived in America, he was employed by David Landreth, & then took employment with Henry Pratt who owned Lemon Hill which was probably one of the finest gardens in the U.S. at the time.

He formed a partnership with Thomas Hibbert in 1830 in a florist business in Philadelphia. They imported rare plants & flowers, especially the rose.

After Hibbert’s death he began a seed business, along with the nursery & greenhouse business. The business in Philadelphia started out as Robert Buist's Seed Store, selling gardening supplies, potted plants, shrubs, small fruits, & rose bushes. By 1837, the growing business relocated to 12th Street below Lombard; & in1857, the company moved to a location on Market Street.  And in 1870, it expanded to 67th Street near Darby Road. The Buist farm, Bonaffon, was located in the section of Philadelphia through which Buist Avenue now runs.

Alfred M. Hoffy, lithographer. View of Robert Buist’s City Nursery & Greenhouses. Philadelphia Wagner & McGuigan, 1846.

Buist if often credited with introducing the Poinsettia into Europe, after he saw it at Bartram's Gardens in Philadelphia.  During Buist’s early training at the Edinburg Botanic Garden, he met James McNab, a scientist & artist who eventually became the garden’s director.  In the early 1830s, McNab traveled to America with retired nurseryman Robert Brown to study plants native to the United States. While in America, McNab visited his friend Buist in Philadelphia. When McNab met with Buist in 1834, he gave the Poinsettia plant to him to take back to Scotland. The garden’s director, Dr. Robert Graham introduced the plant into British gardens.

Buist was reknown for his roses & verbena.  He was also the author of several books & many catalogues of his plant offerings.  Among his books are The American Flower-Garden Directory (1832); The Rose Manual (1844, 6 editions); & The Family Kitchen-Gardener (c1847).

Buist was obsessed by roses.  Gardener & plant historian Alex Sutton tells us that Buist sailed to Europe every year or two to buy new rose hybrids being developed in Europe.  He purchased much of his stock from M. Eugene Hardy of the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris. In 1832, Buist saw 'Madame Hardy' for the first time & he wrote: "Globe Hip, White Globe, or Boule de Neige of the French, is an English Rose raised from seeds of the common white, a very pure white, fully double & of globular form. A few years ago it was considered 'not to be surpassed,' but that prediction, like many others, has fallen to the ground, & now 'Madame Hardy' is triumphant, being larger, fully as pure, more double, & an abundant bloomer; the foliage & wood are also stronger. The French describe it as 'large, very double pure white, & of cup or bowl form."  Buist introduced 'Madame Hardy' in Philadephia to his customers, many of whom must have been Philadelphia matrons, as he called them his Patronesses.

In 1839, Buist visited another of his suppliers, Jean-Pierre Vibert, of Lonjeameaux, near Paris, where he found 'Aimee Vibert'. He brought this rose back with him to Philadephia & wrote: "Aimee Vibert, or Nevia, is a beautiful pure white, perfect in form, a profuse bloomer, but though quite hardy doe snot grow freely for us; however, when budded on a strong stock it makes a magnificent standard, & blooms with a profusion not surpassed by any."

Seed storage warehouse of Philadelphia seedsman Robert Buist. From an 1891 wholesale seed catalog

In his catalog of 1872 Buist wrote “Three of the celebrated ‘Gordon’s Printing Presses’ are kept constantly at work on seed bags, labels, & other printing matter required in our business, & the stock of type & other printing material we use is equal in extent to that required by some of our daily papers...“When we established ourselves in 1828, the Seed business in this country was in its infancy, the trade was really insignificant in comparison to what it is in the present day.”

He was active with the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, treasurer from 1858-1862 & vice-president for twenty-two years. He died in Philadelphia, July 13, 1880.  The family business was carried on by his son, Robert, Jr.