A Good Read: Love Stories Riddle the Prince Family Nursery History

This marvelously agreeable history of the Prince Nursery of Flushing, New York  written in 1917 by Margaret L. Farrand was too hard to read from the Google scan so I am recreating it here from the OCR copy.  I think I have unraveled it fairly well, filling in missing text and  adding spacing for easier online reading, plus additional images just for fun.

A NURSERY OF ROMANCE

IN the busiest section of the little town of Flushing, Long Island, there is an oasis of green terraces, blossoming trees and a picturesque old white house so beautifully incongruous with its surroundings that it is impossible to pass it by without a second glance and a great deal of pleasantly aroused curiosity.    Trolley cars clang all about it, the street from which its terraces rise is noisy and none too clean, but nothing seems to disturb the old Prince place.    It dreams on pleasantly and peacefully. There is much dignity but no scorn about it; it has too many agreeable memories with which to occupy its time. 

Today the place consists of the charming old house and about six acres of grounds. Fifty years ago there were eighty acres, and it was the most important nursery in the country.

Four generations of Princes were nurserymen. William Robert, the greatest of them all, died in 1869.

 "The first of the American Princes, Robert, was one of the Huguenots who settled at New Rochelle and on the north shore of Long Island, bringing with them a great number of French fruits and the love of French people for horticulture. The nursery, one of the first, and certainly the most important one in America at this time, grew rapidly until the Revolutionary War. The establishment was of such public importance that during a part of the war the British placed a guard over it to protect it from depredation."  

 Thus the report of the New York Agricultural Experiment Station for the year 1910, which omits to mention that a daughter of the household, patriotic American though she was, lost her heart to the major in command of the British troops and that, when the war was over, they lived happily ever after.   Many of the British officers purchased plants and trees from the nursery to send to their friends in England. International connections were established in this way, and after the war business flourished.

In those days the Princes lived in an interesting old house—now, alas! torn down to make way for the railroad—which stood close to the present place. It was in 1826 that the present place— the house was old even then—was purchased for William Robert Prince and his bride. Their story is one of the prettiest of the nursery's romances.

Governor Collins, of Rhode Island, and his charming daughter were making a visit to New York. The good governor derived most of his income from a coffee plantation in Cuba, which would one day descend to his daughter.

 Being a man of advanced ideas he believed that it would be an excellent thing
for his child to have some knowledge of the plant from which her income grew, so they made a visit to the famous  Prince nurseries. Young William Robert, then in partnership with his father, showed them through the African and Asiatic greenhouse, but it is doubtful whether Miss Collins learned much about coffee at that time, for she and Mr. Prince fell in love at first sight.

The nursery was also responsible for the romance of William Robert's sister, Mary Ann.

Mr. Thomas Mitchell, a young botanist, from Virginia, spent a summer in Mexico and, on his return, sent a valuable collection of plants to the Linnaean Garden as the place in America where they would be most appreciated and best cared for. William Prince, pleased by the compliment, invited the young man to stay with him when next he visited New York. Mr. Mitchell not only accepted the invitation but promptly fell in love with and, in due course, married Miss Mary Ann Prince.

It was a delightful house to which William Robert Prince brought his bride, solidly built in good Colonial style, clapboards without and stout oak timbers within. It has not been made over nor altered, but stands today just as it did a century and more ago. A wide hall runs straight through the house, with two large, well-proportioned rooms on either side. The kitchen is in an ell on the east.

There are four particularly interesting things about the hall: the gooseneck mahogany stair-rail; the solid oak door, divided in the Dutch manner; the bust of Linnaeus on a bracket against the wall; and the pictures of the front and back gardens which one sees when the door stand open.

The bust of Linnaus is not so much an artistic as a botanical treasure. Linnaeus was the patron saint of the nursery. William Prince, the second proprietor, named it in his honor the Linneean Botanic Garden and Nursery.  William Prince, the third proprietor, who established the first steamboats between Flushing and New York, named one of them Linnaeus. In 1823, when a great celebration was held in Flushing, to do honor to the nursery and the men who had made it, and DeWitt Clinton made an address, the bust of Linnaeus was crowned with laurel. Now it occupies a place of honor near the front door of the house.

(This is a cameo of Linnaeus by Josiah Wedgewood.  While not referred to in this article I think it is too nice to leave out.)

When the upper half of that front door is swung back you look across the narrow porch, which runs the width of the house, into the pink-and-white blossoms of a tall magnolia tree—that is, if you are lucky enough to see the place in early spring. 

At a little distance from the magnolia, two box trees meet across the walk, half hiding the house from the street, and beyond the box trees you can see the fan-shaped leaves of a salisburia, or Japanese ginkgo tree, the oldest one in the country.

 William Robert Prince introduced to America nearly all the Japanese trees we know. As soon as Perry opened the door of Japan, the Flushing nurseries began to bring out trees. Long before that they had been importing trees from China: the oldest Chinese magnolia in America stands close to the back door of the house. 

The European trade was chiefly with France. William Prince, second, imported the first Lombardy poplars. The oldest cedar of Lebanon in America, a magnificent tree, stands on the west side of the house, and in the grounds arc the oldest Mt. Atlas cedars, paulownias and purple beeches in the country.

The Princes were always on the alert for some new thing in the plant world. If a new plant was produced in Europe, they had it in the Linnaean Garden the next year. They conducted most of the trade in trees, plants and bulbs between the United States and Europe. They sent trees and shrubs all over this country, particularly to the southern states, because, thanks to theGulf Stream, the Long Island climate is somewhat like that in the South. William Robert Prince was much interested in the native silk industries and had huge plantations of mulberries in many cities. He promoted mulberry culture to such an extent that at one time the slips of the Chinese mulberry passed currency in Flushing stores at the rate of twelve and one-half cents.

But the Princes always put more stress on the scientific than on the commercial side of their business. Many valuable botanical collections were entrusted to their care; most interesting of all, perhaps, the specimens brought back by the Lewis and Clark expedition.
William Robert Prince botanized all over the Atlantic States with Professor Torrey of Columbia and Professor Nuttall of Harvard. It was from a trip to the West that he brought back the first California poppies that the East had ever seen. The Linnaean Garden was full of rare and interesting specimens of trees and plants.

A nursery catalogue of 1771, when "any person having a mind for any of the above trees, 

and choose to have them sent to New York,
 they can have them sent 

on Tuesday and Friday of every week, as there is a boat that goes constantly from Flushing to New York on them days"

The greatest of the Princes' claims to fame, however, lies in their writings. Their trade catalogues from 1815 to 1850 rank among the standard publications of horticulture. Mrs. Henry, the daughter of William Robert Prince, tells of the rapt expression with which her father used to taste berries and fruits, trying to catch and to put into words the exact and distinctive flavor of each one, in order to list it in his trade catalogue.

 William Prince, the third proprietor of the nursery, wrote in 1828 a Treatise on Horticulture, the first work of its kind produced in America. William Robert Prince was the Liberty H. Bailey of his day. Besides contributing all through his life to the horticultural press, he wrote three books which not only rank high among those of his time but are held in great esteem by modern horticulturists. The nineteenth century turned to them as the twentieth century turns to the Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture. These are a Treatise on the Vine, a Manual of Roses and a Pomological Manual. Vigor, accuracy and a perfect knowledge of French are the distinguishing characteristics of his style.

A passage in the preface to the Pomological Manual gives an interesting statement of William Robert Prince's attitude toward his work. It was not a business, but a science, almost a religion.

"The studies of nature have been wisely ordained by Omnipotence as the most pleasing to the mind of man; and it is in the unbounded field which natural objects present, that he finds that enjoyment which their never-ending novelty is peculiarly calculated to impart, and which renders their study devoid of that satiety which attaches itself to other pursuits. Most wisely has it been thus prescribed that, by an occupation of the mind in itself inviting and recreative, we should be insensibly led on to a development of the intricacies of nature, and be thus taught to appreciate the beneficence of the Creator, by a knowledge of the perfection and beauty which mark the labors of his hand."  

"The establishment whence this work emanates is the oldest of the kind in our country, and it has from its commencement been the primary desire of its proprietors to preserve the utmost accuracy; in doing which, pecuniary considerations have been deemed a subject of but minor importance, their nurseries and garden being a family inheritance, in the high character and perpetuity of which they have not only enlisted their interest and welfare, but whose advancement, as a great national institution, has been made a particular object of their feelings and pride."  (Phew!)

In view of the recent publication by the American Joint Committee on Horticultural Nomenclature of the 1917 Official Code of Standardized Plant Names, it is interesting to read Mr. Prince's thoughts on the subject in 1832.   

    

"It has long been a received opinion among a portion of the public, that the proprietors of nurseries prefer to perpetuate a plurality of names for the same fruit, and are not desirous to reduce the nomenclature to a correct basis, but find an advantage in the confusion that exists.  

This opinion has gained credence from the circumstance that the same fruit is cultivated in some nurseries under two, three or more names;but as erroneous a practice is most generally attributed to the ignorance of the proprietor, and seldom arises from an intention to deceive,  the opinion referred to is not supported by the premises.

It must, however, be acknowledged as a correct position that the proprietor of a nursery ought invariably to possess a full knowledge of the qualities and peculiarities of the respective varieties of which he cultivates." 

The oldest cedar of Lebanon in America came from France 

so long ago that no one remembers tbe date

Mr. Prince's writings were the result of direct, personal observation and experiment in the nursery.  Every inch of the eighty acres in the Linnaean Garden was used for botanical purposes.  The ground was held so precious that the family were not allows even enough space to raise vegetables for their own table.  Mr.Prince never did any of the work with his own hands, but directed everything, watched and examined everything, planned, thought, wrote.  In his day the Linnaean garden did for the country the work the Department of Agriculture is doing now.

William  Robert Prince died in 1869.  Since then most of the nursery has been sold, but the old house and six acres of delightful grounds are still preserved by the family.  There are two children now living: L. Bradford Prince, governor of New Mexico, who carries on family traditions spending his spare moments on his western fruit ranch; and Mrs. C.C. Henry, of Flushing, who tells in the most delightful manner the history and romances of the nursery.

Close to the back door of the house is the oldest Chinese magnolia in the country. It owes its size to grafting with American stock.