Tho Jefferson (1743-1824) & The Nursery & Botanic Garden in New York City

Thomas Jefferson by Tadeusz Andrzej Bonawentura Kosciuszko (1746 - 1817) 

Encounters with America’s Premier Nursery & Botanic Garden

The Prince Nursery of New York City

The year was 1791, and Thomas Jefferson, then Secretary of State under George Washington, was embroiled in various political and personal matters. His ideological vision for America, in conflict with the governmental system espoused by Alexander Hamilton, was causing political relationships to crumble and his already strained friendship with John Adams to deteriorate further. Consequently, Jefferson’s month-long “botanizing excursion” through New England with James Madison in June was the subject of much speculation that summer. Hamilton and other political adversaries were convinced that this lengthy vacation of two Republican Virginians through Federalist strongholds in the North had secret, ulterior motives. It would seem likely that, as Jefferson historian Merrill Peterson surmised, while the two future presidents “bounced along in leisurely fashion, their conversation must have turned occasionally to politics.” Yet, apparently the trip was innocent of intrigue and intended exclusively for, in Madison’s words, “health recreation and curiosity.” This goal was successfully achieved, for both Jefferson’s “periodical” migraines and Madison’s “bilious attacks” vanished in the nearly four weeks they spent walking over historic battlefields, studying botanical curiosities, wildlife and insects (including “musketoes” and the Hessian fly), recording observations on climate, the seasons and the appearance of birds, and even boating and fishing in Lake George and Lake Champlain.

Their journey did, nevertheless, incorporate elements of a working vacation, for Jefferson was seeking ways to advance the new nation through alternative domestic industries. He believed his most recent idea—the addition “to the products of the U. S. of three such articles as oil, sugar, and upland rice”—would lessen America’s reliance on foreign trade, improve the lot of farmers, and ultimately result in the abolition of slavery itself. At that time a Quaker activist and philanthropist Dr. Benjamin Rush of Philadelphia, himself an ardent opponent of slavery, was seeking ways to convince political leaders and slave owners to create a sugar maple industry in America, convinced it would “lessen or destroy the consumption of West Indian sugar, and thus indirectly to destroy negro slavery.” Jefferson took up the cause of Benjamin Rush, becoming a conscientious consumer of maple sugar much in the way that modern environmental activists boycott plantation grown coffee today. In a letter to a friend in England, Jefferson expressed the political and humanitarian benefits of commercial independence when he wrote, “What a blessing to substitute a sugar which requires only the labour of children, for that which it is said renders the slavery of the blacks necessary.”

In their quest for the sugar maple, Jefferson and Madison made a noteworthy visit to the Prince Family Nursery in Flushing on the north shore of Long Island, New York. Established on eight acres of land in the 1730s by Robert Prince—within a community chiefly of French Huguenot settlers—it became America’s first commercial nursery and remained a thriving family business through four generations, until just after the Civil War. Initially called the “Old American Nursery,” it soon became the largest supplier of fruit trees and grapes in the New World, producing most of the grafted apple, pear, and cherry trees that could be found in early northeastern orchards.

Robert’s son William Prince, the nursery’s second proprietor and the one who was in charge at the time of Jefferson’s visit, was the first to propagate the native pecan commercially. In 1771, the nursery’s first broadside advertised 33 different plum trees, 42 pear trees, 24 apple trees and 12 varieties of nectarines. Their offerings expanded and diversified by 1774, when they listed in the New York Mercury, “Carolina Magnolia flower trees, the most beautiful trees that grow in America, and 50 large Catalpa flower trees” along with other flowering trees and shrubs. The Prince Nursery was among the first to introduce Lombardy poplars and, in 1798, they advertised ten thousand trees. The nursery continued its focus on fruits and, according to U. P. Hedrick, “the first planned attempt to improve fruit on a large scale began in the Prince Nursery” with their work on plum seedlings.

Although the American Revolutionary War had led to a seven-year occupation of Long Island by the British, the by-then successful and well-known nursery suffered little, for it was guarded by British General Lord Howe and his troops, who were interested in protecting the property for its contents. Following the war, an excellent demand for American shrubs ensued, as the former enemy soldiers shipped plants home to their gardens in England and Germany.

When William, in his advanced years, divided the operation between his two sons, Benjamin and William, the second William Prince purchased additional acreage nearby and, in 1793, began “The Linnaean Botanic Garden and Nursery.” Named for Carolus Linnaeus, the renowned Swedish botanist and naturalist who a mere half-century earlier had devised the system of plant classification called binomial nomenclature, William Prince’s Linnaean Botanic Garden served to educate the public as well as encourage potential customers by displaying the richness and diversity of the world’s botanical treasures.

As the Prince family nursery passed from father to son, each generation shared a common, underlying goal: to propagate and make available every known plant of merit, including North American species, not so much for profit as from a deep-rooted love of botany and the discipline of horticulture itself. This scientific approach toward the natural world was an attitude in keeping with the essential philosophical tenets also embraced by Jefferson and many of his contemporaries.

William Prince became an active member of the newly created New York Horticultural Society. Through this prestigious organization he was in fellowship with Dr. David Hosack, who established the Elgin Botanic Garden in 1801, the city’s original botanical garden, which now lies directly beneath the present Rockefeller Center. Prince nurseries supplied Dr. Hosack with many of the trees for his 700-acre estate on the Hudson River, Hyde Park.

William’s son, William Robert Prince was the fourth and final generation to oversee the family enterprise. William Robert operated the nursery more as a botanical garden and, as a young man, he accompanied professor John Torrey, of Columbia University, and Thomas Nuttall, of Harvard, on botanical forays and plant collecting expeditions throughout the entire length of the Atlantic States. He would later publish two important books on fruits, A Treatise on the Vine and A Pomological Manual, which became standard references for decades. Likewise, the Prince catalogs from1815 through 1850 became common resources for horticulturists of all sorts. His now rare manuscript, Manual of Roses, published in 1846, two years after Robert Buist’s seminal volume The Rose Manual, firmly established him as a premier authority on roses of the 19th century. But, his unwavering zeal to import white mulberry trees and promote the silkworm industry nearly bankrupted the family business. Although the nursery operations ended after William Robert Prince’s death in 1869, many unusual trees and shrubs flourished on the property and throughout Flushing well into the 20th century. In her book, Old Time Gardens Newly Set Forth, published in 1901, Alice Morse Earle describes the “oldest Chinese magnolias” and the “finest Cedar of Lebanon in the United States” still standing in the forlorn and forgotten garden at the Prince homestead.

Two years prior to Jefferson’s and Madison’s journey to Flushing, two other notable American statesmen paid a visit to the Prince Nursery. In October 1789, when the seat of American government was in New York City, George Washington, accompanied by vice president John Adams, “set off from New York, about nine o’clock in my barge, to visit Mr. Prince’s fruit gardens and shrubberies at Flushing.” Although his assessment would improve upon later visits, President Washington was unimpressed with what he saw during his first, noting “these gardens, except in the number of young fruit trees, did not answer my expectations. The shrubs were trifling and the flowers not numerous.”

Jefferson, on the other hand, certainly saw much that interested him. He began that summer day by making the following entry in his Memorandum Book: “June 15, 1791. Hamstead. breakfd. –went to Prince’s at Flushing.” While at the home of William Prince, Jefferson left a note requesting “all you have” of sugar maples and bush cranberries (Viburnum trilobum) as well as three balsam poplars, six Venetian “sumachs” (Cotinus obovatus), and twelve “Bursé” (Beurré Gris) pears. Later that year Jefferson would receive sixty sugar maple trees, Prince’s entire stock, which were subsequently planted “in a grove” below the Second Roundabout on the northeast slope of Monticello mountain. This became Jefferson’s experiment in sugar production at Monticello. Eventually, it was found that the central Virginia climate was not ideally suited for adequate sap flow in the spring, and Jefferson’s well-intended project proved unsuccessful. While a national commercial sugar industry never took hold, Jefferson continued to advocate the sugar maple on a household level by stating there was no reason why every farmer “should not have a sugar orchard, as well as an apple orchard.”

But, William Prince’s 1791 shipment of plants—which arrived at Monticello in early December, nearly a month after Prince’s November 8 invoice—was substantially larger than the original limited request Jefferson made in June. Jefferson had taken a copy of Prince’s catalog and obviously had studied it thoroughly, for the following month, when in Philadelphia, he wrote an enormous addendum to his original short list, explaining “To [my original order] I must now desire you to add the following; the names of which I take from your catalogue.”

Jefferson expanded his fruit order to include Brignole plums, apricots, Red and Yellow Roman nectarines, Green Nutmeg peaches, Yellow October and Lemon Clingstone peaches, and Spitzenburg apples, as well as Madeira walnuts (Juglans regia) and filberts. The fruits, according to the planting instructions Jefferson prepared at the time he placed the order, were to be planted “in the vacant places” of his South orchard, while the Madeira walnuts were to be “among the trees on the S.W. slope…towards the grove,” and the filberts were for the “room of the square of figs.” He enhanced his selection of native and ornamental trees and shrubs with an eclectic collection, intended primarily for planting either in the various clumps of trees on the slopes of the mountain or for the “vacancies of the 4 clumps at the corners of the house.” These included three types of conifers: “Hemlock spruce” (Tsuga canadensis), “large silver” (Abies alba), and “balm of Gilead” or balsam fir (Abies balsamina), as well as balsam poplars, “Carolina kidney bean trees with purple flowers” (native wisteria, Wisteria frutescens), “Balsam of Peru” (Myroxylon balsaminum), Rhododendrons, and cuttings of yellow, or golden willows. The “monthly honeysuckles” (possibly the native Lonicera sempervirens) were for the base of weeping willows.

And finally, quite significantly, Jefferson went through Prince’s entire inventory of roses and specified three each of all ten varieties the nursery had to offer that year. In fact, this extensive assortment of rose varieties has proved to be the richest and most comprehensive documentation of Jefferson roses presently known.  These thirty shrubs were to be planted around the clumps of lilacs at the East Front of the house.

The quantity and diversity of trees and shrubs Jefferson purchased from Prince in 1791 vividly exemplified the evolution and complexity of his long-ranging aspirations for Monticello.

Jefferson’s subsequent associations with the Prince Nursery were few and indirect. A notable connection occurred years after the Jefferson inspired Lewis and Clark Expedition, when the Prince nurseries played a leading role in making commercially available one of the expedition’s most ornamental species, the Oregon grapeholly (Mahonia aquifolium). According to Stephen Spongberg in A Reunion of Trees, the demand for this novel shrub was staggering. “By 1825, when the plant had become widely known up and down the Atlantic seaboard, the Prince Nursery firm…listed plants in their catalogue at twenty-five dollars each, in today’s currency doubtless equivalent to several hundreds of dollars!”

A final occasion connecting Jefferson with Prince was in a more intellectual way, as part of a poignant tribute made during Jefferson’s later years. In 1823 Dr. Samuel Latham Mitchill, Jefferson’s former lieutenant in Congress and fellow enthusiast for newly discovered inventions and natural productions, sent Jefferson an unusual invitation. Mitchill proposed that, as honorary members of the Linnaean Society of Paris, the two should simultaneously observe the May 24th birthday of Carolus Linnaeus, the man who united “all nations under one language in natural history.” Mitchill planned to celebrate at Prince’s garden in Flushing, New York, and promised to think of Jefferson on the occasion, knowing that he would “not disapprove of an attempt to render science popular and attractive.” Although not known for certain, it is likely that Prince family members were among those gathered to raise a toast to Linnaeus. Jefferson assured Mitchill that he likewise would be with them in spirit from his Bedford, Virginia retreat Poplar Forest, where he planned to invite “some amateurs in natural science in [the] neighborhood to fraternize on the same day with their brethren of New York by corresponding libations to the great apostle of Nature.” Unbeknownst to Jefferson, this commemoration would be on the final day of his final stay at Poplar Forest.

By Peggy Cornett, Thomas Jefferson Center for Historic Plants.

Research & images & much more are directly available from the Monticello.org website. 

Garden to Table -

Peter Jakob Horemans (1700-1776)  Gentleman enjoying Table of Fruit & Vegetables with a sip of Wine     Detail

Garden Design - 18C Garden Furniture from England to the British American colonies

As the British American colonies became more secure & furniture became more plentiful in the early 18th century, colonists often moved routine daily chores outdoors as soon as the weather allowed. Preparing vegetables & fruits; churning butter; washing, spinning & sewing; studying schoolwork; and practicing musical instruments all became outdoor activities during the hot, humid summers along the shores of the Atlantic.

In England. Household chairs and tables are carried outdoors.  1738 William Hogarth, (English artist, 1697-1764) The Hervey Converstion Piece - The Holland House Group

Traditionally the formal pleasure gardens of the British gentry, living in servant-laden households, had served as pleasure grounds for promenading, playing at games & sport, meditating, romancing, or entertaining.  It is clear from English paintings, that even the gentry were using their household furniture outdoors.

In England. Here the wife sits on a garden bench.  1763 Arthur Devis (English artist, 1712-1787) Francis Vincent, his Wife Mercy, and Daughter Ann, of Weddington Hall, Warwickshire. Detail
18th Century English Woodcut

By mid-century, the up-to-date colonial gardener knew that the latest taste dictated placing seats & benches to emphasize a focal point in the garden; to terminate an impressive vista on the property; to view the garden or an impressive vista; or to catch a cooling breeze under trees or by the water. As early as 1669, English garden writer John Worlidge had instructed his readers in Systema Agriculturae that proper garden seats should be placed "at the ends of your walks...that whilst you sit in them you will have the view of your garden."

In England. Here the gentleman sits on a bench which is clearly placed at a focal point in his garden.  1749 Arthur Devis (English artist, 1712-1787) The Thomas Cave Family

In his 1718 garden writings, Stephen Switzer, Iconographia Rustica or the Nobleman, Gentleman and Gardeners' Recreation makes a direct reference to the Windsor chair. By 1730, a London newspaper advertisement offered for sale "All sorts of Windsor Garden Chairs."
Like their less wealthy neighbors, colonial gentry usually carted common chairs outside, whenever the weather permitted. Gardens & yards served as welcome extensions of cramped indoor living spaces. Small, close living quarters were the rule in the colonies, even for the rich in the first decades of the 18C, and this encouraged a variety of sedentary outdoor leisure activities across all classes such as doing chores, chatting, reading, gambling, & eating.

In America. Scenes from a Seminary for Young Ladies. St. Louis Art Museum.

Colonials needed something to sit on & something to put things on, indoors & out. Common household furniture including chairs, benches, & tables regularly found their way outdoors. Most British American colonials looked for some balance between the functional & the ornamental. The ordered, geometric gardens of the gentry in the colonies were a combination of ornament & function. Most colonists, even the wealthy Charles Carroll in Annapolis, grew edible plants in their formal terraced garden parterres.

In England. Here the lady of the family sits in a Windsor type chair.  1749 Arthur Devis (English artist, 1712-1787) Mr and Mrs Van Harthals and Son

As the consumer revolution reached full-tilt mid-century, British American colonial gentry occasionally ordered special garden furniture from local craftsmen or from English factors. Garden furniture was part of the competitive furniture trade in England. Most furniture designers offered a few examples in their style books. Although Thomas Chippendale's furniture stylebook was the most influential of the period, enraver & London furniture designer Matthew Darly, who flourished between 1754 & 1778, seemed to have led the way toward this new design.

In England. This tables & chairs sit far from the house in this painting.  1750 Arthur Devis (English artist, 1712-1787) Henry Fiennes Clinton,9th Earl of Lincoln, with his wife Catherine and his son George on the great terrace at Oatlands

Always searching for the latest trend in the mid 1700s, British tastemakers were drawn to rustic or "forest" furniture style for their new natural gardens. No more of the stiff classic benches dotting those old-fashioned Dutch influenced William & Mary English formal gardens.
The 1761 3rd edition of Thomas Chippendale's The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director, contained a single plate called "Designs for Garden Seats," engraved by Matthew Darly, of rococo French chair with a possible rustic leg, a gothic French settee, & a "grotto chair." Matthew Darly was a London printseller, furniture designer, and engraver who owned a very successful print shop with his wife Mary.

In England. Just throw the fish on the table!  1773 Edward Smith (English artist) An Angling Party (perhaps The Willyams Family at Carnanton)

Even though English garden designers would soon be rebelling against the French & Dutch formal influence in the gardens of the gentry, Chippendale & Darly were introducing a fairly formal serpentine & rococo into the garden with these design patterns. Matthew (also called Mathias) Darly earlier had designed "root chairs and tables," whimsical garden furniture to be made out of gnarled roots, for Edwards & Darly's, A New Book of Chinese Designs published in 1754.
In his 1765 design book The Cabinet and Chair-maker's Real Friend and Companion, English furniture designer Robert Manwaring described his garden seat designs, "designs given for rural Chairs for Summerhouses finely ornamented with Carvings, Fountains, and beautiful Landscapes, with the Shepherd and his flock, reaper, etc. Also, some very beautiful designs, supposed to be executed with Limbs of Yew, Apple, or Pear Trees, ornamented with Leaves and Blossoms, which if properly painted will appear like Native."
Manwaring's 1765 Rural Garden Seat design included classical busts as finials on the back posts. The basic Gothic design incorporated many of painter William Hogarth's serpentine curves. Hogarth had published a treatise on esthetics in 1753, The Analysis of Beauty, which promoted the serpentine curve as the true "line of beauty."
An 1735 inventory of Andrew Allen at Goose Creek, South Carolina did record "an Old Forest Chair." It is not clear whether this refers to one of the simple outdoor chairs which were known in England as forest chairs, or whether "forest" referred to the (beech) forests of the English the Chilterns where many of them were produced or to the shades of green in which they were painted.  There were also a few less practical "designer" forest garden chairs available in Britain.

1786 Unknown artist. John Coakley Lettsom (1733–1810), with His Family on an ornamental Garden Bench, in the Garden of Grove Hill, Camberwell
One of Matthew Darly's root designs.

Life in the colonies was difficult, where many grew old & infirm quickly. For those who could not yet walk or no longer stroll & strut around their grounds, there was the "garden machine" or "rolling chair." A depiction of a "Garden Machine" appeared at the top of a trade card in late 18th century London, which also advertised "all Sorts of Yew Tree, Gothic, and Windsor Chairs."

In the last quarter of the century, 2 South Carolina inventories each boasted "1 Mahogany Roling Chair." Focusing on the special needs of the elderly & the infirm, Charleston cabinetmaker Thomas Elfe advertised in 1751, that he made "All kinds of Machine Chairs...for sickly or weak people."

In America.  This is a rolling chair built for a child.  1751 John Hesselius (1728-1778). The Grymes Children- Lucy Ludwell Grymes 1743-1830, Philip Ludwell Grymes 1746-1805, John Randolph Grymes 1747-96, & Charles Grimes 1748-?  They were the children of Phillip Grymes and his wife Mary Randolph who were born at "Brandon" on the Rappahannock River in Middlesex County, Virginia. In the year following this painting, another daughter, Susanna Grymes was born into the family. Similar rolling chairs & variations which appear to be a cross between a carriage or wagon & a rolling chair are found in British paintings.

In England.  1747 Arthur Devis (English artist, 1712-1787) Richard, Mary, and Peter, Children of Peter and Mary du Cane Detail

In 1752, a South Carolinian offered his plantation on the Ashley River for sale including "several handsome garden benches." Many garden seats appear in colonial inventories with no specific description, making identification of the style of garden furniture impossible.

In England. Here both mother & father have Windsor chairs. 1751 Arthur Devis (English artist, 1712-1787) The James Family

Two 1755 Charleston inventories of record each of the deceased owning 2 "garden chairs." In 1767, Charleston turner John Biggard specifically advertised that he could produce both "Windsor and Garden chairs." The difference is not spelled out, and without a sketch, it is difficult to know the particularity of each.

In America.  Scenes from a Young Ladies Seminary. St. Louis Art Museum.

After the Revolution, gardening burgeoned into a democratic pursuit, needing to satisfy both the functional & the ornamental goals of the new nation. Lightweight, orderly, simple Windsor chairs--that could be used indoors or out--seemed to fill the bill & appealed to all levels of society in the new republic. Sensible, airy Windsor chairs, painted or stained, became the most popular garden furniture in America.
Green windsor garden chairs had been popular in the South well before the Revolution. At first, merchants offered imported chairs to their stylish customers. In the 1764 Charleston inventory of John McQueen was "1 Windsor Garden Seat." In 1766, Charleston merchants Sneed & White offered "Windsor Chairs ... and settees ... walnut ... fit for piazzas or gardens," imported Philadelphia.
18th Century English Woodcut

Aiming to cut out transportation costs & the middlemen, Philadelphia turner John Biggard moved to South Carolina in 1767, opening a "turner shop" advertising "Windsor and Garden chairs... cheaper than could be imported."
One 1775 Charleston inventory revealed 2 specialized windsors, "In the Passage...2 green Garden Windsor Chairs...2 Children do (garden Windsor Chairs)."  Most inventories noted that the Windsor chairs were painted green. The 1783 South Carolina inventory of Benjamin Cattell listed 12 green Windsor chairs.

In England.  Here the Windsor chairs are brought out to the statue in the garden.  1763 Johann Zoffany (German-born English painter, 1733-1810) The Mathew Family at Felix Hall, Kelvedon, Essex

A year later, inventory takers noted 12 green Windsor chairs in another Charleston entrance hall lined up like soldiers ready to see if their next engagement would be indoors or out. Charleston's leading professional gardener John Watson's 1789 inventory listed green Windsor chairs in his seed sales room plus garden tools & books. On his piazza, he had 4 out-of-the-ordinary teal benches & one normal green bench.
Outdoor Windsors were often painted green to blend with nature. Englishman Uvedale Price wrote in his "Essays on the Picturesque" that white seats created unnatural spots in their green surroundings.

In England. In this group portrait, the gentlemen have taken a variety of household furniture outdoors.  1780 Johann Zoffany (German-born English painter, 1733-1810) A Group of Gentlemen

Thomas Dobson's first American edition of his Encyclopedia or Dictionary of Arts and Science in Philadelphia in 1798, recommended, "To paint arbours and all kinds of garden work, give a layer of white ceruse grinded in oil of walnuts...then give two layers of green...This green is of great service in the country for doors, window shutters, arbours, gardens seats, rails either of wood or iron; and in short for all works exposed to the injuries of the weather."
Charleston wasn't the only city with a local suppy of windsor chairs. In New York City, Andrew Gautier advertised in the 1765 New York Journal, "a large and neat assortment of Windsor Chairs, made in the best and neatest manner, and well painted. Chairs and settees fit for piazza or garden."

In America. Detail 1772 William Williams (American artist, 1727-1791). The William Denning Family

Marylander John H. Chandless advertised in the 1792, Baltimore Daily Repository "a large assortment of Windsor Chairs, of the newest fashions and painted in the best manner...Chairs, Settees, Garden Seats & Made and painted to particular directions." During the last decade of the 18C Baltimore furniture makers were arguably the best in the United States.

A rare surviving wooden bench is the late 18C “Almodington Bench,” a diagonally slatted back design of yellow pine which was originally made for the Somerset County Maryland, plantation named “Almodington.” This is the oldest known piece of American garden furniture, which is now in the collection of the Museum of Southern Decorative Arts at Old Salem in Winston Salem, North Carolina.
In America. This appears to be a small bench rather than a Windsor chair.  1793 James Peale (American artist, 1749-1831). The Ramsey-Polk Family in Cecil County, Maryland.

In the Virginia, inventories often listed "green chairs in the passage," meant to be used indoors & out. George Washington purchased 27 windsor side chairs for his piazza at Mount Vernon from Philadelphia Chairmakers Robert & Gilbert Gaw in 1796. The 1800 inventory of Mount Vernon recorded "in the Piazza...30 Windsor Chairs."
Virginian John Randolph's Tagewell Hall included "5 green windsor chairs and one green settee belonging to my summer house." Mary Page of Spotsylvania County, Virginia ordered "one dozen Windsor Chairs for a passage."

In eastern North Carolina, David Stone's Hope Plantation contained 12 Windsors in the hall passageway running from the front door to the back door, a design encouraging both air circulation & the moving of chairs in & out of doors.
Wooden chairs aged a little faster outdoors. In the Fayetteville North Carolina Minerva in 1796, Vosburgh & Childs advertised that they could make, paint, & repair Windsor chairs, probably the victims of a little rain and humidity now & again. Hall's North Carolina Wilmington Gazette on February 9, 1797, advertised "Windsor Chairs of every description...elegant settees of ten feet in length or under, suitable to either halls or piazzas...garden chairs suitable to arbors." A premature war between the North & the South was on as the ad noted, "those that are imported...are always unavoidably rubbed and bruised."

In America.  Here the ladies sit on rather delicate chairs, while they gather around the pond to watch the gentlemen fish.  1770 Henry Benbridge (American colonial era artist, 1743-1812). The Tannatt Family

While in Wilmington, North Carolina, Eliza Clitherall recorded seats under trees in the more shady recesses of the Big Garden. William D. Martin recorded in his journal while visiting a "Girls Boarding School Pleasure Garden in Salem, North Carolina," Next I visited a flower garden...situated on a hill, ...At the bottom of this terrace were arranged circular seats, which, form the height of the hill in the rear were protected from the sun."
18th century English Woodcut.

In 1801, Virginian Thomas Jefferson designed "benches for Porticos & Terraces...the back Chinese railing...to be painted green." Jefferson also noted "the seats at Washington by Lenox are 8 ft. long 21 I high, & the seat is 15 I broad, of five laths 2½ I wide." Peter Lenox (1771-1832) was the head carpenter, foreman, & clerk at the President's House in Washington, District of Columbia.
In America. c 1796. Charles Fraser (1782-1860) Detail of Settee on a Hill at Rice Hope Plantation Taken from One of the Rice Fields. South Carolina.

Not all gardeners relied on the simple Windsor chair for their gardens. A grey garden bench appears in the 1771 Charles Wilson Peale painting of the Edward Lloyd family of Wye House in Talbot County, Maryland. The bench had rolled arms & a latticed back. Peale wrote in his autobiography that in Pennsylvania, "The proprietor [Peale himself] made summer houses (so called), roots to ward off the Sunbeams with seats of rest. One made of the Chinese taste, dedicated to meditation, with the following sentiments within it. "Mediate on the Creation of Worlds, which perform their evolutions in prescribed periods!"
In America.  1771 Charles Willson Peale (1741-1827) Edward Lloyd Family wife Elizabeth Tayloe and dau Anne.

For those not satisfied with ordinary wood furniture, both English & local craftsmen also fashioned cast iron garden furniture including chairs, benches, & tables during the early federal period. Weight would have been a consideration in importing them from England. The Robert Wood foundry in Philadelphia produced cast iron garden furniture between 1804 -1858.

In America.  Here the American grandmother is clearly sitting in a Windsor chair.  1787 Henry Benbridge (American artist, 1743-1812). The Hartley Family.

Henry Benbridge painted stone garden seats in paintings of a Charleston family; the Enoch Edwards family of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and the Taylor family of Norfolk, Virginia, during the last 2 decades of the 18C. 

In America. 1779 Henry Benbridge (American artist, 1743-1812). The Enoch Edwards Family.

Whether these stone benches were real or fanciful is unclear. What is clear is that the dark green Windsor chair was the most enduring piece of garden furniture in practical 18C America. The use of everyday chairs for garden events continued into the 19C & early 20C.
In 19C America. Photo Maryland Historical Society

To follow the development, diversification, & distribution of Windsor Chairs see any of these books by Nancy Goyne Evans, (2005) Windsor-Chair Making in America: From Craft Shop to Consumer; (1997) American Windsor Furniture: Specialized Forms; and (1996) American Windsor Chairs.

1764 Plants in 18C Colonial American Gardens - Virginian John Randolph (727-1784) - Comfrey

A Treatise on Gardening Written by a native of this State (Virginia)
Author was John Randolph (1727-1784)
Written in Williamsburg, Virginia about 1765
Published by T. Nicolson, Richmond, Virginia. 1793
The only known copy of this booklet is found in the Special Collections of the Wyndham Robertson Library at Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia.

Comfrey

Comfrey, Symphytum...Is good for healing wounds, being a great vulnerary, and is to be propagated by parting the roots, and planting them in the fall, eighteen inches asunder, or from the seed. It is hardy, will grow any where, and will last long.

South Carolina - 18C A Man-made agricultural Byway Bason & Storehouse on the Santee Canal

 South Carolina. This was the storehouse at Simpson's Lock on the canal 

between the Santee & Cooper Rivers

Charles Fraser (1782-1860). A Bason & Storehouse Belonging to the Santee Canal in South Carolina. The Carolina Art Association Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston.

The watercolors of Charles Fraser allow us feel the South Carolina landscape around us as we learn how it was being groomed & planted. Thanks to South Carolina native Fraser, we have a chance to see, through his eyes, the homes & gardens there as he was growing up. Although he was primarily known his miniature portraits, he also created watercolors of historical sites, homes, & landscapes. He painted while working as a lawyer, historian, writer, & politician. Today, many of Fraser's works are displayed at the Carolina Art Association & the Gibbes Art Gallery in Charleston.

Seeds & Plants - Tho Jefferson - A Botanical Anniversary

Thomas Jefferson by Tadeusz Andrzej Bonawentura Kosciuszko (1746 - 1817) 

A Botanical Anniversary

On May 18, 1792, six men gathered in Philosophical Hall for the Friday meeting of the American Philosophical Society. Benjamin Smith Barton, professor of botany and natural history at the University of Pennsylvania, rose to read a letter he had written to a European botanist. In it he described an American wildflower, traced its short path through the scientific literature, and concluded that, as a genus "distinct" from any other, it was in need of a new name.

"I take the liberty," said Barton, "of making it known to the botanists by the name of J E F F E R S O N I A in honour of Thomas Jefferson, Esq. Secretary of State to the United-States." He added that his purpose was not to honor Jefferson's political character or his reputation for general science and literature. "My business was with his knowledge of natural history," he said. "In the various departments of this science, but especially in botany and in zoology, the information of this gentleman is equalled by that of few persons in the United-States."

The Society member honored in this act of scientific classification was absent--one would like to think because his mind was on zoology rather than botany. Earlier that day Jefferson had invited James Madison to his house to examine the difference between a "Northern hare" and a "common" one from the market, before they continued to Edmund Randolph's lodgings to dine.

But Jefferson's attendance at the meetings of the Philosophical Society had fallen off since the previous year, when he and Dr. Barton had collaborated energetically on investigations of the Hessian fly. The Society's minutes record the presence of their vice-president at only two of the Friday meetings in 1792, a year filled with the "hateful labours" of office and the intensifying disputes of partisan politics.

In this spring of 1792 Jefferson was abused as well as honored for his interest in natural history. In April he had been the target of the first round fired in the partisan pamphlet wars. 

Massachusettensis (now thought to be British consul Sir John Temple), after attacking Jefferson as the intriguing "tool of a party," called for his "speedy retreat" to Monticello. There he could "range the fields of science, and the natural history of his country" without doing lasting harm to the nation. Jefferson's response was predictable: "However ardently my retirement to my own home and my own affairs, may be wished for by others as the author says, there is no one of them who feels the wish once where I do a thousand times."

His letters in this year are full of laments about being "shut up drudging within four walls" in Philadelphia and longing for the "tranquil" occupations of the fields and gardens at Monticello. And beyond Monticello was a whole unexplored continent to be studied--"What a feild have we at our doors to signalize ourselves in!" Having chosen the path of public leadership, Jefferson had to remain on the sidelines, cheering on American naturalists to their goal of revealing to the world the rich flora and fauna of the young nation.

Benjamin Smith Barton was perhaps Jefferson's greatest hope for leading the American team to eminence. The plant he had rescued from the wrong genus is what we know as twinleaf, a spring-blooming perennial of the woodlands of eastern North America. It entered scientific literature in 1753, when Linnaeus assigned it to the genus Podophyllum in his Species Plantarum. This work became our starting point for the naming of plants by introducing the binomial system which substituted two Latin names for the cumbersome Latin descriptions then current. Linnaeus likened his improvement to "putting the clapper in the bell" and sixty years later Jefferson was grateful. In 1814 he wrote that, "fortunately for science," Linnaeus had brought order out of chaos by providing a "universal language" for naming and classifying nature's productions.

Linnaeus had made his identification of twinleaf from a non-flowering specimen sent to him by a Virginian, John Clayton. Jefferson called the clerk of Gloucester County "our great botanist," and used the Flora Virginica, a compendium of Clayton's discoveries, when preparing the plant lists for his Notes on the State of Virginia. The first twinleaf to bloom before the eyes of botanists was collected in Virginia' Blue Ridge Mountains by Andre Michaux. Michaux's root first flowered in Bartram's Garden in Philadelphia in the spring of 1791 and was observed by Dr. Barton and William Bartram, who "together" made the first drawings of it.

Soon Jeffersonia became a feature of the gardens of Philadelphians, presumably those with republican leanings, but its namesake may never have seen it in the wild. Barton first saw it in its natural habitat at a site Jefferson had visited too late in the season. In 1802 Jefferson was living in "splendid misery" in the executive mansion and Barton was planning a botanising tour into the southern mountains. "I really envy your journey," wrote the President, "but I am a prisoner of state." He had to content himself with solitary rides out of Washington, during which, as Margaret Bayard Smith recalled, he would dismount "to climb rocks, or wade through swamps to obtain any plant he discovered or desired."

Passing through the Blue Ridge at Harper's Ferry in July, Barton saw "immense quantities" of twinleaf, past flowering, but could not find "even a single seed-vessel." He carried with him Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia, which contained a highly charged account of the meeting of the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers at this spot. Barton confided to his journal that what Jefferson called "one of the most stupendous scenes in nature" did not equal his expectations.

Barton arrived at the author's house in August, crossing the Rivanna River at the Shadwell ford and noting plentiful pawpaw trees, some castor-bean plants, and "a good deal" of horsemint. His fascinating journal then proves a major disappointment to future historians. "Monticello," written with a flourish and twice underlined, is followed by "Monticello is the beautiful seat of Mr. Jefferson," and not a word more--the rest of the page is blank. He elsewhere recorded his host's comments on the elevation of Monticello, its soil, and the scarcity of insects and insect-eating birds there (hummingbirds, however, were common). The President also shared his opinion that the counties along the eastern side of the Blue Ridge were the "healthiest" part of the United States. He had been told by an officer of the U.S. Army that this area produced "the largest men" among its recruits. Jefferson and Thomas Mann Randolph, Barton's former schoolmate at the University of Edinburgh, also contributed to the journal their comments on local plants, like honey locust, strawberry bush, and umbrella magnolia.

When Barton passed through Harper's Ferry again on his way north, he "sought in vain" for Jeffersonia, but found the scene far grander on a second inspection. The rocks were "indeed, stupendous," and had "an awful appearance." Perhaps Jefferson had responded to his initial disappointment with a story he had recently told another American botanist. When Samuel Latham Mitchill asked him for directions to the precise spot from which he had viewed the passage of the Potomac through the Blue Ridge, Jefferson replied that it was no longer there. During the Adams administration a military expedition was mounted to blow up the projecting rock, "doubtless," as the shocked Mitchill wrote his wife, "with the intention of falsifying his account, and rendering it incredible by putting it out of the power of any subsequent traveller to behold the like from the same point of view. What shameful, what vandalic revenge is this!" Nevertheless, when Mitchill later visited the site, he too joined the many disappointed tourists whose expectations had been raised by Jefferson's description.

Like Barton a physician-naturalist and former Edinburgh schoolmate of Thomas Mann Randolph, Mitchill was Jefferson's zealous lieutenant in Congress and frequent companion in the delighted contemplation of newly discovered inventions or natural productions. The man whom Jefferson called the "Congressional dictionary" kept a record of the curiosities he saw at the President's House. At dinner he marveled at exotic dates and ice cream in pastry, was tactful about water from the Mississippi and three-year-old pieces of the Mammoth cheese, and was relieved to find the meat well done, instead of the "half-raw Viands" served elsewhere. The "chatty and communicative" President showed him a wooden model of the moldboard of least resistance, minerals from Mexico and the American west, and mastodon bones from Big Bone Lick.

One day Jefferson proudly displayed a length of silk cloth produced by worms "bred in Virginia," after which he and Mitchill performed a little experiment together. Jefferson produced his surtout coat of British broadcloth waterpoofed by a new method. As Mitchill reported to his wife, the President "took hold of one part of the Skirt, and myself of the other end, so as by skilful holding to make a hollow or Cavity. Into this some water was poured. We stirred and moved it about. I put my hand to the under-side and agitated it there. But not a drop came thro. The President said he had hung up such a woolen-bag of Water for several weeks and it did not leak at all."

John Quincy Adams attended one presidential dinner, at which Jefferson and Mitchill enchanted the guests with their conversation, moving from the President's "usual" dissertation on wine to Epicurean philosophy to Fulton's steamboat to agriculture. Adams described Mitchill's conversation as "very various, of chemistry, of geography, and of natural philosophy; of oils, grasses, beasts, birds, petrifactions, incrustations...and a long train of et cetera." It was "one of the most agreeable dinners" he had had at the President's House.

Life on Pennsylvania Avenue must have resembled Benjamin Smith Barton's Chestnut Street establishment, where he worked "surrounded by books, bottles of insects, the bones of the mammoth, and other evidences of his ruling passion." A visitor to New York found Dr. Mitchill "surrounded by his cabinets of conchology and mineralogy, and with his room still further enriched with collections of Indian tomahawks and antiquities, and the dresses of the inhabitants of the south seas." Once he actually received his guests clothed in this Fiji Islands costume.

In 1803 Mitchill wrote that "botanists consider it an honor of the highest kind to be immortalized by having their names given to plants." The international code of botanical nomenclature made this distinction impossible for the good doctor. He cheerfully told his wife that Willdenow had wished to name a new plant after him but "was prevented by finding that the name had been bestowed already" (Linneaus had called patridgeberry Mitchella repens after John Mitchell of Virginia). Barton's honor came in the shape of an obscure plant of undistinguished appearance--Bartonia. And the rules of precedence prevented Jefferson from being immortalized twice.

John Brickell of Georgia tried in 1798 to apply the name Jeffersonia to the Carolina jessamine (now Gelsemium sempervirens), "in compliment" to the man "who, to his immense stores of other knowledge, has added the science of Botany."

In 1807 Barton complimented Jefferson again by forwarding a diploma of membership in the short-lived Linnaean Society of Philadelphia, which he had founded. In his letter of thanks Jefferson wrote that, although he was "sincerely associated with the friends of science in spirit and inclination," he regretted "the constant occupations of a different kind which put out of my power the proper cooperations with them, had I otherwise the talents for them."

A few months later he resisted Dr. Mitchill's efforts to induct him into another organization--the Tammany Society of New York. If the President accepted the invitation of this "vigorous part of the Republican Population," Mitchill was to "erect a Wigwam, to administer our obligation, to make known the tammanial pass-Word, Sign and Grip," and to deliver a copy of the war song, which "may afford a moment's entertainment."

The next year Jefferson finally reached the permanent harbor of Monticello, and ceased to worry about the hostilities of Federalists and Republicans. From his retirement Jefferson wrote Barton that "botany here is but an object of amusement, a great one indeed and in which all our family mingles more or less." He added regretfully, "My mind has been so long ingrossed by other objects, that those I loved most have escaped from it, and none more than botany, whose lodgement is made peculiarly in the memory."

By this time Jeffersonia had been introduced into English gardens by Scottish plant collector John Lyon and that Jeffersonian site--Harper's Ferry--was the home of the immigrants. On May 17, 1804, Lyon noted in his diary that he collected there "about 200 roots" of the twinleaf. Another plant enthusiast made a pilgrimage to the junction of the Potomac and the Shenandoah in 1817. A young Virginia lawyer, Francis Walker Gilmer, wrote to Jefferson of his journey to "Harper's Ferry, where all the regions of nature have conspired to do you honor." He gathered seeds of Jeffersonia to give to Jefferson's daughter Martha, because "its name will I am sure recommend it to her piety."

Jefferson never returned to the Blue Ridge gap where he had seen the "monuments of a war between rivers and mountains" in 1783. He remained close to his gardens at Monticello and Poplar Forest and, in 1823, considered ways to honor the man who had helped to clarify the "order of nature" by "uniting all nations under one language in natural history." Samuel Latham Mitchill had written suggesting that, as honorary members of the Linnean Society of Paris, he and Jefferson should simultaneously observe the birthday of Linnaeus on May 24th. Mitchill intended to celebrate this "fete botanique" in "a becoming manner" at Prince's garden in Flushing. "We shall think of you on the occasion," he wrote, "since we feel an assurance that you will not disapprove an attempt to render science popular and attractive."

Jefferson, in reply, regretted that he could not "join them physically on the occasion, but will certainly be with them in spirit. He will invite also some amateurs in natural science in his neighborhood to fraternize on the same day with their brethren of New York by corresponding libations to the great apostle of Nature." It is not known who shared the libations at Poplar Forest on the twenty-fourth--the last day of Jefferson's last visit.

And until almost the last day of his life he tried to pass his enthusiasm for natural history on to a younger generation. He worked to ensure the inclusion of botany, one of "the most valuable sciences," in the curriculum of the University of Virginia. It was time for the young to pursue his former passions. In 1822 Jefferson wrote to the discoverer of a new mineral, Jeffersonite. Thanking him for "the honor done my name by the appellation given it," he concluded that although "age and a decayed memory" had weakened his attention to the natural sciences, "nothing can ever weaken my affection to them, and the pleasure with which I observe so many of my young countrymen pursuing them with an ardor and success equally honorable to themselves and our country."

Lucia C. Stanton, Shannon Senior Research Historian, 1992

Research & images & much more are directly available from the Monticello.org website. 

Garden to Table - Home-Made Clover Wine

 

John Greenwood (American artist, 1727-1792) Sea Captains Carousing, 1758.  Detail

George Washington's English visitor Richard Parkinson did not care for Washington's welcome drink or his clover.  Parkinson wrote Tour in America in 1798, 1799, & 1800: Exhibiting Sketches of Society & Manners, & a Particular Account of the America System of Agriculture, with its Recent Improvements (Travel in America).  Before sailing to the new republic, Parkinson had made something of a name for himself in England as a scientific agriculturist & had published a book called the Experienced Farmer. He apparently negotiated by letter with Washington for the rental of one of the Mount Vernon farms; & in 1798, without having made any definite engagement, sailed for the Potomac with a cargo of good horses, cattle & hogs. His plan for renting Washington's farm fell through, by his account because it was such poor land.  He settled for a time near Baltimore. 

Soured by the failure of his new techniques in Maryland, he returned to England, & published an account of his travels, partly with the avowed purpose of discouraging emigration to America. His opinion of the country he summed up by this sexist observation: "If a man should be so unfortunate as to have married a wife of a capricious disposition, let him take her to America, & keep her there three or four years in a country-place at some distance from a town, & afterwards bring her back to England; if she do not act with propriety, he may be sure there is no remedy." 

Even more revealing are his views of American "notions of equality," as he complains mightily of the "disrespectful manners of white servants toward masters," finding it shocking that "The idea of liberty & equality there destroys all the rights of the master, & every man does as he likes." In decrying his experience in America, Parkinson highlighted the very qualities that made the United States & Americans of the late 18C what they were, showcasing the cultural & material divide between England & her former colony.

Perhaps a few glasses of clover wine might have softened his haughty prejudices. 

Old-Time Recipes for Home Made Wines Cordials & Liqueurs 1909 by Helen S. Wright

CLOVER WINE
Three quarts blossoms, four quarts boiling water; let stand three days. Drain, and to the flower heads add three more quarts of water and the peel of one lemon. Boil fifteen minutes, drain, and add to other juice. To every quart, add one pound of sugar; ferment with one cup of yeast. Keep in warm room three weeks, then bottle.

Old-Time Recipes for Home Made Wines is a cookbook for those who want to make their own wines & liqueurs from available ingredients, including fruits, flowers, vegetables, & shrubs from local gardens, farms, & orchards. It includes ingredients & instructions for making & fermenting spirits, from wine & ale to sherry, brandy, cordials, & even beer. 

Colonial Era Cookbooks

1615, New Booke of Cookerie, John Murrell (London) 

1798, American Cookery, Amelia Simmons (Hartford, CT)

1803, Frugal Housewife, Susannah Carter (New York, NY)

1807, A New System of Domestic Cookery, Maria Eliza Rundell (Boston, MA)

1808, New England Cookery, Lucy Emerson (Montpelier, VT)

Helpful Secondary Sources

America's Founding Food: The Story of New England Cooking/Keith Stavely and Kathleen Fitzgerald Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, 2004.

Colonial Kitchens, Their Furnishings, and Their Gardens/Frances Phipps Hawthorn; 1972

Early American Beverages/John Hull Brown   Rutland, Vt., C. E. Tuttle Co 1996 

Early American Herb Recipes/Alice Cooke Brown  ABC-CLIO  Westport, United States

Food in Colonial and Federal America/Sandra L. Oliver

Home Life in Colonial Days/Alice Morse Earle (Chapter VII: Meat and Drink) New York : Macmillan Co., ©1926.

A Revolution in Eating: How the Quest for Food Shaped America/James E. McWilliams New York : Columbia University Press, 2005.

Geo Washington (1732-1799) - A Critical Visitor (Richard Parkinson) at Mount Vernon

George Washington as Farmer by Junius Brutus Stearns. 1851

George Washington: Farmer 1915  by Paul Leland Haworth (1876-1936) 

A Critical Visitor (Richard Parkinson) at Mount Vernon

This section of this chapter is taken from A Tour of America in 1798, 1799, & 1800, by Richard Parkinson (1748–1815), an agricultural writer, came to America in 1798 with his family & a number of different types of livestock, intending to rent one of GW’s Mount Vernon farms. After seeing the farm he decided not to rent it and instead leased Orange Hill, near Baltimore.  In 1805 Parkinson published in London The Experienced Farmer’s Tour in America, which was published again the same year under the title A Tour in America in 1798, 1799, and 1800. In this two-volume work Parkinson was extremely critical of the agricultural practices of Washington & other American farmers.

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He praised the soil very highly. I asked him if he was acquainted with the land at Mount Vernon. He said he was; & represented it to be rich land, but not so rich as his. Yet his I thought very poor indeed; for it was (as is termed in America) gullied; which I call broken land. This effect is produced by the winter's frost & summer's rain, which cut the land into cavities of from ten feet wide & ten feet deep (and upwards) in many places; and, added to this, here & there a hole, which makes it look altogether like marlpits, or stone-quarries, that have been carried away by those hasty showers in the summer, which no man who has not seen them in this climate could form any idea of or believe possible....

In two days after we left this place, we came in sight of Mount Vernon; but in all the way up the river, I did not see any green fields. The country had to me a most barren appearance. There were none but snake-fences; which are rails laid with the ends of one upon another, from eight to sixteen in number in one length. The surface of the earth looked like a yellow-washed wall; for it had been a very dry summer; & there was not any thing that I could see green, except the pine trees in the woods, & the cedars, which made a truly picturesque view as we sailed up the Potomac. It is indeed a most beautiful river.

When we arrived at Mount Vernon, I found that General Washington was at Philadelphia; but his steward had orders from the General to receive me & my family, with all the horses, cattle, &c. which I had on board. A boat was, therefore, got ready for landing them; but that could not be done, as the ship must be cleared out at some port before anything was moved: so, after looking about a few minutes at Mount Vernon, I returned to the ship, & we began to make way for Alexandria....

No doubt Anderson, Washington's last manager.  When I had been about seven days at Alexandria, I hired a horse & went to Mount Vernon, to view my intended farm; of which General Washington had given me a plan, & a report along with it--the rent being fixed at eighteen hundred bushels of wheat for twelve hundred acres, or money according to the price of that grain. I must confess that if he would have given me the inheritance of the land for that sum, I durst not have accepted it, especially with the incumbrances upon it; viz. one hundred seventy slaves young & old, & out of that number only twenty-seven[10] in a condition to work, as the steward represented to me. I viewed the whole of the cultivated estate--about three thousand acres; & afterward dined with Mrs. Washington & the family. Here I met a Doctor Thornton, who is a very pleasant agreeable man, & his lady; with a Mr. Peters & his lady, who was a grand-daughter of Mrs. Washington. Doctor Thornton living at the city of Washington, he gave me an invitation to visit him there: he was one of the commissioners of the city.

Most certainly a mistake.  I slept at Mount Vernon, & experienced a very kind & comfortable reception; but did not like the land at all. I saw no green grass there, except in the garden: & this was some English grass, appearing to me to be a sort of couch-grass; it was in drills. There were also six saintfoin plants, which I found the General valued highly. I viewed the oats which were not thrashed, & counted the grains upon each head; but found no stem with more than four grains, & these a very light & bad quality, such as I had never seen before: the longest straw was of about twelve inches. The wheat was all thrashed, therefore I could not ascertain the produce of that: I saw some of the straw, however, & thought it had been cut & prepared for the cattle in the winter; but I believe I was mistaken, it being short by nature, & with thrashing out looked like chaff, or as if chopped with a bad knife. The General had two thrashing machines, the power given by horses. The clover was very little in bulk, & like chaff; not more than nine inches long, & the leaf very much shed from the stalk. By the stubbles on the land I could not tell which had been wheat, or which had been oats or barley; nor could I see any clover-roots where the clover had grown. The weather was hot & dry at that time; it was in December. The whole of the different fields were covered with either the stalks of weeds, corn-stalks, or what is called sedge--something like spear-grass upon the poor limestone in England; & the steward told me nothing would eat it, which is true. Indeed, he found fault with everything, just like a foreigner; & even told me many unpleasant tales of the General, so that I began to think he feared I was coming to take his place. But (God knows!) I would not choose to accept of it: for he had to superintend four hundred slaves, & there would be more now. This part of his business especially would have been painful to me; it is, in fact, a sort of trade of itself.

I had not in all this time seen what we in England call a corn-stack, nor a dung-hill. There were, indeed, behind the General's barns, two or three cocks of oats & barley; but such as an English broad-wheeled waggon would have carried a hundred miles at one time with ease. Neither had I seen a green plant of any kind: there was some clover of the first year's sowing: but in riding over the fields I should not have known it to be clover, although the steward told me it was; only when I came under a tree I could, by favour of the shade, perceive here & there a green leaf of clover, but I do not remember seeing a green root. I was shown no grass-hay of any kind; nor do I believe there was any.

The cattle were very poor & ordinary, & the sheep the same; nor did I see any thing I liked except the mules, which were very fine ones, & in good condition. Mr. Gough had made a present to General Washington of a bull calf. The animal was shown to me when I first landed at Mount Vernon, & was the first bull I saw in the country. He was large, & very strong-featured; the largest part was his head, the next his legs. The General's steward was a Scotchman, & no judge of animals--a better judge of distilling whiskey.

I saw here a greater number of negroes than I ever saw at one time, either before or since.

The house is a very decent mansion: not large, & something like a gentleman's house in England, with gardens & plantations; & is very prettily situated on the banks of the river Potowmac, with extensive prospects.... The roads are very bad from Alexandria to Mount Vernon.

The General still continuing at Philadelphia, I could not have the pleasure of seeing him; therefore I returned to Alexandria.

I returned [to Mount Vernon some weeks later] ... to see General Washington. I dined with him; & he showed me several presents that had been sent him, viz. swords, china, & among the rest the key of the Bastille. I spent a very pleasant day in the house, as the weather was so severe that there were no farming objects to see, the ground being covered with snow.

Would General Washington have given me the twelve hundred acres I would not have accepted it, to have been confined to live in that country; & to convince the General of the cause of my determination, I was compelled to treat him with a great deal of frankness. The General, who had corresponded with Mr. Arthur Young & others on the subject of English farming & soils, & had been not a little flattered by different gentlemen from England, [pg 278] seemed at first to be not well pleased with my conversation; but I gave him some strong proofs of his mistakes, by making a comparison between the lands in America & those of England in two respects.

First, in the article of sheep. He supposed himself to have fine sheep, & a great quantity of them. At the time of my viewing his five farms, which consisted of about three thousand acres cultivated, he had one hundred sheep, & those in very poor condition. This was in the month of November. To show him his mistake in the value & quality of his land, I compared this with the farm my father occupied, which was less than six hundred acres. He clipped eleven hundred sheep, though some of his land was poor & at two shillings & sixpence per acre--the highest was at twenty shillings; the average weight of the wool was ten pounds per fleece, & the carcases weighed from eighty to one hundred twenty pounds each: while in the General's hundred sheep on three thousand acres, the wool would not weigh on an average more than three pounds & a half the fleece, & the carcases at forty-eight pounds each. Secondly, the proportion of the produce in grain was similar. The General's [crops were from two to three[11] bushels of wheat per acre; & my father's farm, although poor clay soil, gave from twenty to thirty bushels.

A misstatement, of course. During this conversation Colonel Lear, aide-de-camp to the General, was present. When the General left the room, the Colonel told me he had himself been in England, & had seen Arthur Young (who had been frequently named by the General in our conversation); & that Mr. Young having learnt that he was in the mercantile line, & was possessed of much land, had said he thought he was a great fool to be a merchant & yet have so much land; the Colonel replied, that if Mr. Young had the same land to cultivate, it would make a great fool of him. The Colonel did me the honour to say I was the only man he ever knew to treat General Washington with frankness.

The General's cattle at that time were all in poor condition: except his mules (bred from American mares), which were very fine, & the Spanish ass sent to him as a present by the king of Spain. I felt myself much vexed at an expression used at dinner by Mrs. Washington. When the General & the company at table were talking about the fine horses & cattle I had brought from England, Mrs. Washington said, "I am afraid, Mr. Parkinson, you have brought your fine horses & cattle to a bad market; I am of opinion that our horses & cattle are good enough for our land." I thought that if every old woman in the country knew this, my speculation would answer very ill: as I perfectly agreed with Mrs. Washington in sentiment; & wondered much, from the poverty of the land, to see the cattle good as they were.

The General wished me to stay all night; but having some other engagement, I declined his kind offer. He sent Colonel Lear out after I had parted with him, to ask me if I wanted any money; which I gladly accepted.

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Parkinson had earlier written this letter 

To George Washington from Richard Parkinson, 

Doncaster [England] Augt 28. 1797

Sir

Having for some Time past had an Intention of going to America, which having been intimated to my good Friend Sir John Sinclair Bart, he desired me to write to you, by the 1st Conveyance to inform you; that he intended reccommending me to you, as an English Farmer, to take one of your Farms, on the Potomac, of which Farms he has sent me the Plans, Conditions & ca. Accordingly I take this the 1st Opportunity of writing to you to say, that I shall be exceeding glad to be under the Patronage of 2 such highly respectable Gentlemen, as Sir John & yourself, & shall be extremely so to take one of the Farms (if yet unlet) but before entering into any Agreements whatsoever, I shd wish to see them, which I think prudent, & hope you will coincide in Opinion with me; As I shd be very sorry to enter into any Agreements, which I might not be able to perform. Having a treatise on Agriculture entitled, “the experienced Farmer,” (a Proposal of which I have taken the Liberty to enclose) which I have got almost in a State of Readiness for the Press; & on Acct of other Business, which I must finish before I leave England it will be March next before I can set off for America. In my intended Work I have the Honour to be encouraged, by the first Men in Agriculture, in this Kingdom, & by the Nobility of the first Rank. The inclosed Proposal is the Heads of the Work, of which when printed Intend to take the Liberty to present you with a few Copies by different Ships, as I have been desired by my worthy Patron Sir John Sinclair.

If your Farms shd be all disposed of ’ere this reaches you, it wd still give me the greatest pleasure to have a Situation near you, if possible—I shall conclude for the present & have Sir the Honour to be your very hble Servt

Richd Parkinson