Seed Selling History - Part 1, The First Sellers to 1850

I welcomed this article from 1900 as an organizer of my blog's topics.  Just the mention of how the Civil War effected seed trade (not much) knocked some perspective and time awareness into me that was refreshing.  It also contained some anecdotes about individuals that make the times come alive.  All in all, it is well worth reading and sharing as an overview.

Appearing in the Yearbook of Agriculture, 1900, this history of the seed business is divided into major topics.  I am presenting them here by these parts rather than the whole thing at one go - it is much too long, (and it makes me feel better to get something done and posted)!

I have also reformatted the article  to be easier on the eye for online reading, reformatting into paragraphs, adding illustrations, adding links, and bulleting lists for easier comparison. My comments within the articles are in red usually.

To start off, here is a seed ad that predates what is mentioned in the article, but is from one of the Boston newspapers mentioned.  My hat is off to the writer of 1900 tracking down what old documents are quoted...research without the internet!!

Part 1

SEED SELLING:

DEALERS PREVIOUS TO THE COMMENCEMENT 

OF THE PRESENT CENTURY.

The first record of seeds for sale that the writer has been able to find is in the Newport, R. I., Mercury of 1763, where Nathaniel Bird, a book dealer, advertised garden seeds just arrived from London. Connecticut-grown onion seeds early acquired more than a local reputation. In 1764 Gideon Welles, ‘‘on the Point”, announced in the Newport Mercury that he had some choice Connecticut onion seed for sale.  Other advertisements ran through the following years, among them one by Charles Dunbar, gardener.

We get some idea of the prices of seeds from Dunbar's advertisement of 1767, where the following are given: 

• Peas and beans, 30 shillings per quart;
• Strasburgh onions and orange carrots, 25 shillings per ounce; 
• early cabbage, 40 shillings per ounce, and 
• “colliflower,” 6 pounds per ounce. 

 An N. B. informs us that “said Dunbar has to sell a great variety of flower seeds.”

(The value of the currency had fallen so low that in 1759 it required 2,300 pounds in currency to equal 100 pounds sterling; these conditions were only beginning to improve in 1767.)

Unfortunately, this document is not available online; this snippet from Google Books is all I found.

In New York City hemp and flax seeds were advertised for sale at least as early as 1765 and garden seeds in 1776. In that year Samuel Deall, a dealer in general merchandise on Broad street, opposite the end of Weaver street, kept “a general assortment of seeds,” many of which he names, including red clover, grass, and “Saintfoine” for improvement of land.
In the New Hampshire Gazette field seeds were advertised as early as 1766 and garden seeds in 1770.  

But Boston was the chief city for the sale of garden seeds, as it was the commercial center of the time. 

In the Boston Gazette of 1767 six out of twenty-six advertisers were dealers in seeds.  

(I couldn't find that issue; closest I came is one ad for 50 bushels of hemp seed. 
The ads appearing here are from the Mass Historical Society's collection.
 Boston Gazette, April 7, 1766.)  




Some of these did not advertise other goods, but it is doubtful whether they were seed dealers exclusively.

In the spring, when these advertisements appeared, the trade in seeds was probably more important than any other branch of their business. 

 Some of these dropped out and others appeared in later years, but several advertised regularly each year until 1773. 

 William Davidson, the gardener in Seven Star Lane, offered in 1768 seeds of 56 varieties of vegetables and herbs, and of one flower, the carnation. Some of his prices were as follows: 

• Lettuce, 3 to 4 pence per ounce; 
• cabbage, 9 pence to a shilling per ounce; 
• cauliflower, 3 shillings per ounce; 
• carnation, 4 shillings per ounce. 
• Most of the other vegetable and herb seeds ranged from 2 pence to a shilling per ounce; peas, Early Golden Hotspur and Early Charlton, were worth 24 shillings the bushel or 10 pence per quart. 

Davidson dealt in seeds wholesale and retail for cash. 

The war of independence, interrupting as it did the regular channels of trade, interfered with the importation of seeds, and the few garden seeds offered during this time were either imported from Holland or were taken from prize ships. 

Immediately after the war there was a revival of the trade in seeds, and in 1784 John Adams, Susanna Renkin, and Susanna Martin all advertised seeds just imported from London.  

These advertisements, however, soon after ceased, and in 1790 John Adams advertised for the last time in the Boston Gazette. It is not to be supposed that the absence of advertisements indicates the total cessation of the trade in seeds. 

This either slowed in other channels or the traders lost enterprise. But with the advertising habit well formed as it was prior to 1770, the total absence of advertisements of seeds for sale certainly indicates an unhealthy condition of the trade. 

In Philadelphia and New York seeds were but little advertised, whatever the trade may have been. In Philadelphia in 1772 Peteliah Webster sold clover and duck grass seed, and in 1775 James Longhead made known to the public that he kept “a quantity of the largest kind of colly-flower seed, found on trial to be extraordinary good.”   In 1775 David Reid, who styled himself “Gardener and seedsman,” advertised seeds for sale at his stall at the courthouse, and in 1781 purchasers were advised that flower seeds and seeds for the kitchen garden, “imported from Holland, can be procured next door to General Philip de Haas, in Third street, near Race street.” 

During the remaining years of the eighteenth century the papers contained few advertisements of seeds, and we can trace no connection between dealers of pre-Revolutionary times and those of the opening years of the nineteenth century. It is not probable, however, that there was a time when seeds could not be bought in any of the large towns.  The people were fond of gardening, the population was rapidly increasing, and there is no reason to suppose that the demand for garden seeds was less than before the war. 

This demand was doubtless partly supplied by the market gardeners, one of whom, David Landreth, established himself in Philadelphia in 1784, and engaged in the market gardening, nursery, and seed-growing business. The last was at first of small importance, and for many years the nursery occupied most of his attention. Seeds were almost entirely imported, and American gardeners had yet to learn that seeds could be as well grown here as in England. 

In spite of this, however, the seed business seems to have increased in importance until, in 1848, David Landreth, Jr., sold the nursery and became exclusively a seed grower and merchant.

Source

THE TRADE DURING THE FIRST HALF OF THE CENTURY.

One of the first seedsmen of the present century was Bernard M’Mahon, gardener, seedsman, and author, who in 1800 opened a seed store in Philadelphia. 
Fortunately, we have a description of his store, which throws light on the condition of the trade at that time: 

"His store was in Second street, below Market, on the east side. Many must still be alive who recollect its bulk window, ornamented with tulip-glasses, a large pumpkin, and a basket or two of bulbous roots. Behind the counter officiated Mrs. M'Mahon, with some considerable Irish accent, but a most amiable and excellent disposition, and withal an able saleswoman. Mr. M'Mahon was also much in the store, putting up seeds for transmission to all parts of this country and Europe, writing his book, or attending to his correspondence, and in one corner was a shelf containing a few botanical or gardening books, for which there was then a very small demand; another contained a few garden implements, such as knives and trimming scissors, a barrel of pease, and a bag of seedling potatoes, an onion receptacle, and a few chairs, and the room partly lined with drawers containing seeds, constituted the apparent stock in trade of what was one of the greatest seed stores then known in the Union, and where was transacted a considerable business for that day."  (Wonder where this great description came from!!)

In the fall of 1805, Grant Thorburn began to sell seeds in New York, and subsequently built up a substantial business.  During the next quarter century seed stores were opened in Baltimore, Boston, and Charleston, S. C., as well as in Philadelphia and New York, and there was a considerable trade in Shakers' seeds. These Shakers’ seeds were popular as early as 1818. They were sold by regular dealers, and were peddled about the country in the Shakers' wagons. 

Source

The population of the United States had increased from a little more than three millions of whites in 1790 to ten and a half millions in 1830. In 1790 this population was practically confined to a narrow strip along the Atlantic seaboard. Forty years later it had overflowed into the rich valleys beyond the mountains. To meet the growing demand for vegetables and flowers, these ten and a half millions required more than three and a half times as many seeds as were used in 1790. Dealers established themselves in the principal cities and crossed the Alleghenies in the rear of the wave of settlement that swept into the Ohio Valley. The large cities became centers of distribution for the surrounding country, but the trade remained essentially local, though the larger houses did a wholesale business and supplied country dealers with their stocks, put up in packets for the retail trade. 

But transportation was slow and expensive, and the modern development of the postal service was as yet undreamed of. The amount of seed sold in Ohio at this time was insignificant. Mr. Parsons Gorham, a grocer and seed dealer in Cincinnati between 1827 and 1831, seldom carried a stock of more than 50 bushels of grass seed; and when, in 1831, S. C. Parkhurst opened a seed store, he sold in one year not more than 600 bushels of timothy and clover seed, while before the end of ten years his trade had increased to 6,000 bushels. 

Seed houses were opened in Mobile and New Orleans, and in 1844 William W. Plant began the sale of farm tools and seeds in St. Louis. While most of the trade between 1820 and 1850 was local or wholesale to country dealers, a change took place with the advent of the locomotive. The larger houses reached out for wider fields, made accessible by the railways, and new firms sprang up in every city of considerable size. Locomotives were unknown in the United States before 1829 and were scarcely used before 1832. At the end of 1835 there were 1,098 miles of railway in the United States; in 1850 the total mileage was 9,021, and in 1860 it was 30,635. 

This rapid increase in the railways not only opened up a vast and flourishing country, but facilitated transportation in the East and made possible the immense development of the mail trade. The mails brought the seedsman to every door; a letter brought a catalogue, and a few cents paid the postage on an order of seeds. The changes in the rates of postage and the regulations of the post office have at times helped or embarrassed the trade; but, though cheap postage has stimulated, higher rates have never checked the growth of the business.

Detail from a Cincinnati print.  Trains came to the city in 1836.

Want to read the original?   https://naldc.nal.usda.gov/download/IND43620780/PDF