Pelargonium peltatum To the Rescue! (Part 3)

Our hero, Grant Thorburn was living in 1801 at 22 Nassau Street, running a grocery with his new wife.

Nassau Street seems to have been the sort of street where you could find anything...but you had better look at it very closely before buying. Signs hung from every wall, were posted in windows, painted on stairs and fluttered as posters aged.  It bustled!  These two pictures, nearly 100 years apart, show similar scenes.

Thorburn was doing well...until a competitor opened a shop in a much more noticeable corner building.  Thorburn's business started to fail.

I am constantly impressed by Grant Thorburn's energy and ability not to get stuck saying "poor me".  This time he noticed a new craze for potted plants has created a greater need for pots.


 He picked up a few plain terracotta pots, and sold them. Then he thought that an improved pot, one with a green varnish might sell.  He slapped a coat of varnish on two pots, sat them in his window and they sold almost immediately.  He continued customizing the pots that he bought in the market.

One day while passing a plant dealer there he noticed for the first time in his life a geranium!
(The guy was not into plants.)

He was impressed with its tangy smell, thinking it would look great in his pots and catch a lady's eye. Thorburn bought the geranium, and it sold quickly with its pot so he had to buy more.  Eventually he did a deal with the plant man where the plant grower would stay  home from the market and use his time to grow more for Thorburn to sell. Both were Scots, the business arrangement worked well, and Thorburn began to attract buyers for his plants.

Many people, in the city for amusement and not wanting to carry a heavy potted plant home on the train, asked if he sold seeds.   And that is the beginning in 1802 of the seed and plant business for the Thorburn family.

To be continued...

Pelargonium peltatum

A nice book to peruse  that shows New York in the late 1800s (published in 1872 I think):

Lights and Shadows of New York Life: Or, The Sights and Sensations of the Great City. A Work Descriptive of the City of New York in All Its Various Phases

Wiser to Marry than Hire a Housekeeper (Part 2)

I found him!

This is Grant Thorburn, Long Island seedsman and father of the C. G. Thorburn who published seed catalogs and books of plant care.  (Do you find the feet oddly big?)

He was a Scot who emigrated to the United States.  Born near Edinburgh in 1773, he was the son of a nail-maker.  Twenty years later his father paid the passage on the Providence of New York for Grant and his brother. They set sail in 1794 to make their way in a new country.  Father Thorburn gave them 20 shillings silver to tide them over until they found work.  The young men had a family heirloom trunk stuffed with provisions they would need on the voyage.  They went steerage, as did many Scots (my husband's grandfather among them) and found themselves 3 to a bunk... with their bunkmate being a "very large Highland porter".  Squished between the Highlander and his brother, Grant feared smothering when the ship listed. 

There was a scare of being impressed into the English navy one day when the ship was stopped by an English ship.  Young men were sent below so as not to catch the eye of the officers. While it turned out they were only looking for a deserter, politics of the day would continue to mark Thorburn's activities.

His activities are amusing, making an enjoyable read if you are so inclined.  The original multi-tasker, Thorburn even arranged it so his future wife would sit in the window of his shop doing needlework while he made nails, thus "killing two birds with one stone"!  In his defense, he was rising at 4 AM and made nail until 8 when he went to open a store he and his brother kept.  He worked there until 8 PM at which time he went back and made nails until 12!  Getting married was the only answer...he would then have a shopkeeper.  His brother was sickly, if you were wondering where he was keeping himself.

He prospered, had amusing adventures is this new republic, had a son, the Yellow Fever decimated New York, his wife died.  He married again, "thinking it more creditable and wise to marry a wife than to hire a housekeeper". 

I'll end the tale today with the sad news (to Grant Thorburn) that the Industrial Revolution had inched its way into nail making.  The invention of the cut, rather than forged,  nail eliminated the trade he was so proud of, the trade of his father.  He was now a grocer.

Tomorrow - how does a grocer become a seedsman?

Extra info for those so inclined:

I like old technologies.  I have been surrounded by men all my life who work in crafts that haven't changed much in 500 years.  I know bits and pieces, some much bigger than others, of many skills needed in the pre Industrial Revolution world. Until I became a teacher in my 40's, I made my way being an artisan...thinking back on it, the only modern tool that crept its way onto my workbench is a Dremel or Fordham tool (teeny tiny routers that can sound like, and work like,  a dentist's drill).

>>=<<

FYI - By 1886 wire nails were edging out cut nails.

Information on the history of cut nails:

Nails: Clues to a Building's History by Thomas D. Visser

This is from: 

Encyclopaedia Londinensis: or, Universal dictionary of arts, sciences, and literature, comprehending, under one general alphabetical arrangement, all the words and substance of every kind of dictionary extant in the English language ... embellished by a ... set of copper-plate engravings ... Compiled, digested, and arranged, by John Wilkes, of Milland House, in the county of Sussex, Volume 16, 1819

:

Hurl or Hell? (Part 1)

Help!  The energy to pursue seed history is harder to save than the seeds themselves!

School wiped me out this week...I was doing painting with kindergartners, sewing hats with the 5th grade, modular origami with the 4ths and who knows what with the rest.  Between scrubbing hands, arms, faces and floors, doing the "dishes" of brushes and trays, being super alert with needle wielding overly-animated social beings all trying to get their work done and needing help simultaneously, and trying to convince 4ths that precision in the end saves you labor and that persistence is worth cultivating...with all that I get home with a brain the consistency of sea foam.

Seed research is my relaxation and joy.
As a teacher type, sharing it with you is my second joy!
Only I pooped out on the gathering and synthesizing last night.  Kids come first, you come second. :-)

On the bright side, today is Saturday.  It is rainy and mild in this New England winter.  My fireplace is warming the right side of my body and crackling away like the cyber fire you can download for your phone.  I am looking around for some one thing to spin a story around for a change and I think I found it in the family of Thorburn.  They lived on Long Island  and were very well respected seedsmen and plant dealers around 1830.  It is a multigenerational story taking place on  Long Island where my mother's family is from, and it is an early story.  The only negative is catalogs then were not illustrated, so for a hit and run visual snack it won't satisfy.  But, then again, I think it will be interesting in a more calorically dense way.

The first quest is to figure out where the nursery was located on Long Island.

Hurlgate?    The answer to where the heck is Hurlgate (none found in contemporary map search) is in the great page by The Gotham History Blotter that is all about the naming of that particular area.  

So there you go...a start.  This photo is from Gotham History's essay, HELL GATE: NAMES OF FEAR, FEAR OF NAMES, by Michael Nichols. 
"Michael Nichols is at work on a book about Hell Gate—a riff on its name, history, and lore."

And just because this is too cool to waste...

Silly Sells Seeds (by the seashore)

Silly did seem to sell seeds when it came to the trade cards. I find this one fascinating because of the reversed violin scroll banjo. Having a hubbard squash dropped on your head is pretty harsh criticism of your playing ability!   

Trade cards had their heyday in the late 1800s to very early 1900s.  Lithography had a breakthrough in the late 1800s that made the printing of these colorful cards affordable for advertising.  Reid's Seeds card with the latest in sports, the penny farthing race,  combines two great collectible themes.

I posted larger versions of these primarily eBay harvested cards. 

Seed Company Letterheads: Mostly 19th & Early 20th Century

Old letterheads let you know what was going on.  I like that.  You can tell what the company sold back then.  Names and artwork worked together to fill you in on what the business was up to.  

I'm collecting images of the ones that include engravings of the seed buildings. The pride in accomplishment at that level is charming.  The nice thing about following flower seed companies is that global domination is not the ultimate goal, unlike field crop seed.  That is just my observation.  Besides,  in the early days of seed production in the US what we were trying to do was make a more reliable and desirable seed than the imported seed from France, England and others.

Here is a collection of seed letterheads that I accumulated off eBay. 

   To see them full size, check out this folder.

I smile every time I see the happy dude hugging his cabbage!  (It is a cabbage?) 

Download a paper by Robert Biggert giving a very good grounding in the art of letterheads and how they reflect the history of the country and the attitude of the people.
"The Robert Biggert Collection of Architectural Vignettes on Commercial Stationery was donated to the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library by Robert Biggert in honor of Lisa Ann Riveaux. This unique collection of printed ephemera contains over 1,300 items with architectural imagery spanning the dates 1850 to 1920, in more than 350 cities and towns in forty-five states, as well as the District of Columbia and U.S. possessions. The collection's billheads, letterheads, envelopes, checks, and business cards document the rise of the United States as an industrial nation, in often elaborate vignettes of factories, warehouses, mines, offices, stores, banks, and hotels."

Links Too Good To Ignore; Bird Books

I keep bumping into nice things I want to share, seeds or no seeds.  
Think of them as "seeds of future interests".  :-)

According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, more than 55 million Americans spend upward of $3 billion a year on birdseed. I tried really hard to find some current birdseed industry figures  for this page but can't before bedtime.   BUT I found a nearby city of Cranston, Rhode Island passed an ordinance restricting homeowners to one bird feeder per property, with a penalty of $50 for each infraction. The ordinance is aimed at reducing the rat infestation affecting several wards in the community.

Rats are so 15th century sounding.  
But I know they are very "now"...I used to live next to a donut shop that was not a good neighbor (until the health department told them to keep their trash bin lids closed).  The rats were unreal!   They dug runs under ground and popped up all over our yard like a Whac-a-Mole game! 

Here is an absolutely charming article from Chambers Journal on pet birds.

Free, downloadable books:

Birds:

The Bird Book  - Written in 1905 it is a nice blend of scientific information and more casual observations.



There are pleasant little pen and ink illustrations scattered in the margin of the text that bring it alive.

Published a year after the last passenger pigeon died.  I assume that is why they got the place of honor.  By the way, 2014 marks the 100th anniversary of the extinction of the Passenger Pigeon, when “Martha,” died in captivity at the Cinncinnati Zoological Gardens.


Next, a book of 2 dozen lithos of the famous natural history illustrator Louis Aggasiz Fuertes bird paintings.  These would be nice for any child who likes birds.  The poses and "feel" of each plate give room for imaginings.

Three Misses From Minneapolis

To tidy up my posts about Minnesota seedswomen from around the turn of the 20th century, here are seed catalogs from the three from Minneapolis.

 The University of Minnesota has featured the three women's catalog art - Miss C. H. Lippincott,  Miss Jessie R, Prior  and  Miss Emma White.  I looked at Lippincott earlier this year.

Here are a few pages from the UM archive (above thumbs from their Pinterest page).
Visit the Andersen Horticultural Library's  Pinterest page for these and other worthwhile pins.

I am having an awful time finding out anything about Miss Jessie Prior.  Thanks to the University of Michigan we have a bit.

Check out that "finger spade" (above)!!  Is that cool, or what?!! 

 I wonder what people think it is when they find one at a flea market.

"The Andersen Horticultural Library collection is a rich resource for everyone from the weekend gardener planning a perennial border to the professional horticulturist. Its vast collection of nearly 20,000 books and 300 subscriptions to magazines, newsletters, and scientific journals provides information and inspiration—from the literature of horticulture, botany, landscape architecture, and local natural history to children's books and specialized horticultural research."                                 

Miss Emma White is easier to find full catalogs for and the catalogs give you starters for looking things up.  Below she mentions she bought out E. Nagel & Co.  Cashing in wisely on the popular conception at the time that women were more careful and honest seed dealers, Miss Emma emphatically emphasizes she is a woman. You go, girl!!

Link to UM Pinterest page...really full of fantastic, lush catalog covers.

This is the PDF download for the 1896 catalog below.

1898 catalog issued by Miss Emma White (PDF download) was pixie filled and had no color.

By 1899 she had a marvelous color lithographed front and back cover.  Download PDF.

Below is the 1900 catalog cover.

I am confused on how little info pops up about these 3 seedswomen in business journals.  I have done an immense amount of focused research for two other projects over the last 10 years.  One project is all about antique outboard motors from the same period this blog focuses on - 1890s to 1920.  There is tons of mentions of the 50 or more companies I follow in trade mags, exhibition coverage, patents, magazines that cover new consumer goods, racing sports, commercial fishing,  and a weird assortment of other stuff, all in addition to the company catalogs.   Why Miss Lippincott is the only one I have so far found an article written about her business seems to say I just haven't stumbled on the right searches yet. Google Books is being more opaque than usual!  Burpee  was a great self promoter with books and articles, but what I like is third party mentions of business deals, expanisions, buy-outs, managers acquired from other companies; all the nitty gritty which is probably so boring to most people.  Over the years I found that there are always people that like what you do (which feels so very, very nice!) so it is worth documenting what calls to you.

My other projects are done for my husband who collects American  turn of the 20th century outboard motor ephemera and the motors themselves!  I have caught the bug insofar as my interest in documenting the European motors of the same period lets me weasel around the internet with a focus.   The sites are:

             • Jack Craib's Rowboat Motor Information Site

             • Jack Craib's Caille Outboard Motor Information Pages

Most of my interest is on the rowboat motors.  The Caille site is a research site to help people identify what model they have plus learn about the company.  The rowboat site is more interesting as it includes period articles (of which there were many), plus the many models of early motors are interesting if you are a gearhead :-)