Who Was The Put-Upon Horticulturist, Mr. Bateham?

There is nothing like a good obit to fill you in quickly on a person's life.  Bateham seems a good horticulturist who did a great deal to spread good practices and varieties through his writings and participation in a variety of societies and committees.

MEMORIAL.

THE LATE SECRETARY OF THE (Ohio Horticultural) SOCIETY.

[From the Rural New Yorker of August 28, 1880]

M. B. Bateham died, after a lingering illness, at his home in Painesville, Ohio, August 5th, 1880. Long, quite intimately associated together for the advancement of agriculture in our adopted State, the elder is now left to lament the departure of his younger yoke-fellow.

Born among the fruitful gardens of smiling Kent, England, on September 13, 1813, with garden associations and surroundings, it was but natural that when his father migrated to the valley of the Genesee in 1825, and established a market garden at Rochester, New York, the younger Bateham, then 12 years of age, should become imbued with a taste for horticulture that has been the guiding impulse of his life-work. His frequent visits to Rochester in later years, since it has become so famous a horticultural center, must have been very gratifying to our friend, who would there see the abundant fruitage of the good seed he himself had helped to sow in the earlier half of this century.

From the garden the transition was easy and natural to the seed-store, and so we find him as a seedman in 1833. His qualifications as a writer were soon called into requisition, and for five years he was editor of the Genesee Farmer, for a long time the leading agricultural paper, even while the fertile valley was recognized as the Great West, a term which has been widely separated from the Genesee in the later years by the westward march of empire.

Mr Bateham's taste naturally brought him into contact with such men as Elwanger & Barry, and he spent some time in their extensive nurseries, which afforded him a fine opportunity of becoming familiarly acquainted with fruits, and encouraged his love for pomology.

 

catalog online

After an extensive western tour, chiefly on horseback, and partly undertaken in pursuit of health, Mr. Bateham settled in Columbus in 1845,  and has ever since been a citizen of Ohio. 

There, in the first year of his residence, he established the Ohio Cultivator, one of the first agricultural papers printed in the State. In it he found a good medium for imparting much valuable information, and a means of communication with others interested in rural affairs. His articles on insects and grasses were among the first papers upon those topics that were spread before the farmers of Ohio. In its pages he called upon the fruit-growers and nurserymen to assemble in convention and compare notes and fruits, and from this beginning in 1847 has grown up the State Horticultural Society of to-day—a fitting monument to the memory of its originator.

 From its early organization Mr. Bateham has been its untiring Secretary, always declining proffers of what some might consider the high post of honor as presiding officer. To do, was his choice, and so he preferred to wield the pen to the gavel.  Indeed, it is the mightier implement of the two, and in his hands it was fully and faithfully employed in the diffusion of valuable information among his fellow-men.

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A bit of his life is seen in this news article from The Ohio Farmer, Jan 28, 1871.

  I feel for his awful loss of his library!

The numerous friends of Mr. M. B. Bateham, will regret to learn that he met with the misfortune, on the 18th inst, of  having his pleasant residence burned, at Painesville. 
Mr. Bateham, with an anxiety to save all the property possible, came very near losing his life, by the falling through of a floor at the same instant he cleared the building.
But little of the furniture, etc., save that from the lower floor, was saved, and in the loss, Mr. Bsteharn laments parting with a thirty year collection of agricultural and horticultural books and papers. The total loss is estimated at $3,500, insurance covering $1500.
Mr. Bateham writes us, that his little daughter Minnie, who, only the Saturday before, had submitted to a severe surgical operation, for the removal of fragments of dead bones from the limbs and arms, having been for two years a sufferer from necrosis of those members, was not seriously affected by the excitement.