Found It!

Ta-da!!  I found the old squished envelope of seeds gathered by my Gram in the chest where I keep old photos.

 It wasn't unmarked, her scrawl on the envelope says, Beans Kentucky Wonders.

 Gram was legally blind since she was in her mid 30s. By her 80s, when she squirreled this away, she hadn't seen her handwriting for decades.



Those old photos were in an album she made in her early 20s.  To think, she saw the effects of both the amazing Wright brothers and men on the moon!!! That is Gram below.  Read the little newspaper clipping...Josiah Dow is her father.

And I found that Miss. C. H. Lippincott was Carrie H. Lippincott.  It was in her 1900 catalog.

The mysterious Mr. Haines really was her brother-in-law.  Samuel Y. Haines, who visited Chicago with his wife, Miss Carrie's sister, had a Philadelphia seed business in 1887. He traveled around visiting seed suppliers and going to industry events. I wonder, was the train service from Philadelphia to Chicago  better then, or now? (Later: Found an answer! See this Quartz page. )

Minneapolis...the W-I-L-D west?!!

All of Sam's snippets from