Transcript of Antique Plant Catalogues
Most of us in the room are gardeners. I'm making that assumption, am I right? Is there no non-gardener here? You, oh, you're gonna admit it? ) Okay. Well, good for you. (LAUGH) We welcome you. We hope to...
(FEMALE AUDIENCE MEMBER) We hope to convert you.
We hope to convert you, right.
(MALE AUDIENCE MEMBER) I'm married to one.
Okay, well, that counts. (LAUGH) That totally counts. And as gardeners, (LAUGH) we all are vulnerable to that supreme temptation every winter. (LAUGH) All right? Nurseries and seed houses publish catalogues by the hundreds of thousands. And they mail them to us...both solicited and unsolicited. And we sit, beguiled by the brilliant photographs captured by the exclamatory text. Optimism reigns. We record our want list, this year's garden will be the best, so far. Does anybody relate to that? (LAUGH) (ADAMS LAUGHS) Well, were our garden forefathers and mothers so very different? Did they welcome the dreams that a seed catalogue represented? Did they act upon those dreams? Were their gardens indeed more colorful and more diversified every year? Were their tomatoes larger and more brilliantly crimson?
Were the asters a bolder purple with petals as double as a hollyhock? (LAUGH) So here's something for us to think about. Back to the, the present, what do our seed nursery catalogues and the industry, as it exists today, say about us, as gardeners? Does it say anything about us as a culture? About our economy, our aesthetic values, our concern for the environment? What will people in the future learn about us, by looking at our records? And the second part of that question is how many of you are putting away a few representative catalogues every year for posterity?
While we are still in the paper edge. Because soon (laugh) that will be, of course, obsolete and storage will be a different issue. So i challenge you to put away a few boxes. My husband brought this to my attention as i was throwing out, you know, the latest because they accumulate so fast. And he said, you go out and you look for catalogues and you're always excited when you find one. What are you doing with those? Just because they're, you know, 2001, instead of 1901. So I'll leave you with that for the moment.
When we look to gather published information about gardens of the past, we typically have three general categories of primary documentation to us. The Gardening Book, the Horticultural Periodical, and the Seed & Nursery Catalogue. And that is, of course, a list of plants for sale. And I probably should say in the beginning that the earliest catalogues were most likely for a more local audience. And as the 19th century progressed, mail order became more important. And that, of course, becomes a little more obvious as we continue in our discussion.
We looked at Prince Nursery and the Flushing Nurseries. The first catalogue or broadside of which we believe there is record is the Prince 1771. Which, of course, is not this one. And just in case you're curious, I wanna jump into the foray of what the first nursery in this world or, or this part of the world was. We've heard Prince, we've heard Bartram, and I'm gonna throw out the name of Henry Wolcott for the next time you're playing Trivial Pursuit and the question comes up. (LAUGH)
Active in Connecticut, and Chuck did mention this earlier, between 1648 and 1653. So he was around for a little while, fruit trees were his specialty. I'd like to look a little bit about what brought around a proliferation of catalogues. We do know that by the 1820s, they were becoming fairly common, at least with the largest seed houses. And by the 1850s and '60s, they could be found in, or at least we're assuming, we're speculating that they could be found in many American households.
A few facts about that period of time. At the beginning of the 19th century, almost 94 percent of the population lived in rural areas. With increased immigration and industrialization, American cities grew so that by the end of the century, the urban population stood at 40 percent. We often think of nurseries as a more agrarian concept or something to do with the rural and the land, which, of course they are. But the need for nursery catalogues developed because the city folk needed plants. And they needed a place to get them.
So that urbanization was influential. Along with the rising urbanization, the development of an effective transportation system was essential for the growth of the nursery industry. And this has all been alluded to, of course, today in the various talks. Waterways provided the initial mode of transportation. By 1843, an established line of steamships traveled between England and the major Eastern ports. Over 1 thousand steamships traveled on the Ohio River alone in the 1850s. And in the early years of the settlement, roads were really nothing more than trails.
But the construction of a turnpike system began in the 1830s. Canals and railroads slowly enmeshed the country, accelerating in their prominence. And between 1850 and 1860, alone, the distance of track lines increased over 300 percent. So accessibility is no longer an issue. Catalogues began as simple lists. This is a broadside that can be viewed in the cabinet upstairs. And they became more than just a list, didn't they? They all, in, excuse me, involved into compendiums of information about plants, about their culture, and the art of beautifying the home landscape.
As the editor of the 1869 Horticulturist explained, catalogues are a valuable addition to horticultural literature. "The value of a catalogue is in its practical nature. What a relief it is to a perplexed mind endeavoring to conjure up a good selection of varieties to plant in his garden or on his farm. To pick up a good catalogue from some reliable man and find there in detail good descriptions of all the different types, and good advice as to those choices. Well, plant illustrations became an important marketing tool. And they began as simple black and white woodcuts.
And they seemed to have become more predominant in the 1850s and '60s. As the century went on, they became a little more detailed, as you can see here, with a little more artistic license involved in showing the Coreopsis lanceolata and a good setting for it. They exercised a little bit of license, too, in that, just in representing the plants. And I ask you what is this plant?
It is a zinnia. (LAUGH) Did it hit you all immediately that this is a zinnia (LAUGH)
Here is what it is. It actually is a 1901 woodcut of an, of the cactus variety, very good. I was puzzled for a while, I have to say.
A. Blanc of Philadelphia was a very prolific provider of woodcuts. He also, in his own right, was a nurseryman as this catalogue displays and a collector and propagator of cacti, of great prominence. There's a little controversy about when the first color plate appeared in a catalogue. Hedrick, in his history of American Horticulture says that it occurred in the 1853 Bliss Catalogue.
I've not been able to find an extant Bliss Catalogue from that year. So I have to assume he really saw it or he wouldn't have written that. But later historians of American horticulture history give the nod to Breck, in his 1864 catalogue as being the first time a color plate was exhibited. And this, of course, is from D.M. Ferry, a decade after that.
So developing . . . (TECHNICAL) . . . not only refined the printing process, but also allow for color prints to become readily available for marketing of horticultural products. Rochester, New York was the center for the production of color plates, with at least 18 firms specializing in horticultural printing by the second half of the 19th century. By the 1870s, it was a common practice for itinerant tree peddlers to use bound collections plates to advertise and sell their wares to farmers and rural folk. And again, there are some examples in the case upstairs. And I love the quote that Peggy gave us earlier about the voluptuous nature of these color plates. It really a very good word for the rich colors.
Of course, again, they did like to exaggerate a little bit. (LAUGH) I'm sure everyone was very excited to have this plant in their garden, where the, the flower heads just overwhelm and camouflage the foliage. What was it again? Reality is sobering, I think, is what Peggy said this morning. And a photograph, actually the PJ hydrangea is a perfectly good plant, (ADAMS LAUGHS) it just doesn't have quite the voluptuousness of that previous photograph. And, of course, they were gonna throw in the little boy, as well, as part of the package in their sales plan. (LAUGH)
As the plates were created, as color images were realized in the catalogues, of course, composition, the artistry of it became more important. And there are many very nice examples going up to about 1910 of the, using plants solo in combination, obviously, vegetables, perennials, water colors were used. And it was quite a heyday for the color plate in the catalogue.
Of course, photography did move in, in the 1890s. Not quite as good a sales tool, I would say. This Canna america doesn't really give you the essence of the true plant, courtesy of Scott Koontz here. And color photography, of course, hit in the early 20th century. This is a 1931 peach blossom astilbe, which really tells the tale. It's, it's very realistic and I'm sure drew many people to be attracted to having that particular plant. As the catalogues progressed, as a marketing device, the use of superlatives was a common feature in descriptions.
And so much so that, that 1869 Horticulturist editor declared, if thee is one point in which we could suggest an improvement, it is in the description of varieties. The writer of the catalogue should not endeavor to get off as glowing and favorable a description as possible. But should aim to give as honest an opinion as possible. (LAUGH)
Appreciation for the lavishly illustrated genuine, catalogues was genuine among patrons of the nurseries and seed houses. Walter Elder writing in the Gardener's Monthly for 1868, the finally illustrated catalogues with glowing descriptions of rare and valuable plants by the more intellectual portion of our seedsmen, nurserymen and florists have awakened a more general love of horticultural production. And a desire to grow them from which here's, here's the result of these catalogues, according to him. Highly embellished parks, richly adoring villas, and suburban gardens are numerously, annually increased. And by which our land is made beautiful and our national character is exalted. So nurserymen are in the forefront of the national character, according to Walter Elder.
On the other hand, Henry Ward Beecher admonished prospective seed customers not to be entrapped by sounding names and seed stores and made wild by pompous catalogues from florists and seedsmen. Which I Claim To Be, and that's the title of this talk.
Okay, using antique seed catalogues for research brings with it a certain group of biases right from the start. And you kind of have to realize this before you start generalizing from the information that you're gathering. First of all, catalogues typically are representative of the nurseries or seed houses that were large enough or prosperous enough to produce them. When I was doing my research at Ohio State, looking through newspapers and periodicals and books and, and the catalogues, anything I could find mentioning nurseries. I actually found certification, if you will, of the existence of over 1,000 nurseries in that state. And I'm counting, you know, part time somebody is selling apple trees down the road to very established firms. Over 1,000 mentions different in the state of Ohio in the 19th century.
Of those, I could only locate ninety catalogues that represented thirty-six of the thousand firm names that I was aware of. So if I'm gonna generalize from those catalogues, and they're all I have, you know, I have to be a little careful about what I say. .
Moreover catalogues had to be of sufficient quality to survive. Someone had to be motivated, like I just tried to motivate you, to save those catalogues. I got a call, when I was working there, from a farmer in a county outside of Columbus. And he had found a box of catalogues dating from the very early 20th century in his barn. And called and asked me if I would be interested in them. Of course, I was interested in them. And he brought them by. And they were very gnawed and some of them were so mildewed as to you probably would not want them, you know, among other things. But still a valuable resource that someone saved. And someone overlooked when they were cleaning out that barn, all of that time.
The Vick's Floral Guard, Guide, excuse me, in the 1870s reported that it issued 200,000 copies for distribution. Well, how many of those have survived? I think you'll find just a handful. So it's no wonder that book dealers refer to this kind of document as ephemera. Okay, added to that, now we know we have a small representation. What if we don't have sales records? So what do we know that they really sold the things?
And I believe it was Chuck that brought up the point of the, putting out some, I can't think of the term where telling, saying you had a plant and it, you really don't have a plant, but you're trying to get people into your establishment. Did that happen? Did they actually identify the plants that they're talking about correctly? You know, if they said they had a Acer saccharinum, did they have that plant? We can't really be sure. So there are a lot of questions.
And, at this point, maybe you're saying, well, why are you even talking to us about using these? Because they're what we have. And we use what we have. And they are wonderful for giving us insight, as long as we're, we are aware of these caveats for their use. Elisabeth Woodburn, the late, great bookseller of garden books, I think she said it best. She said "there's no better year by year history of our horticulture and the men who created it."
So let's see, I'd like to just look at a few things we can see in catalogues.
And let's start with a little bit of a, a insight into culture and the Victorian times. You want evidence of romanticism, the Wash[burn] Catalogue of 1870 provides us with that idealized view of family life and gardening. The Victorian ideal was that gardening would be a virtuous pursuit. Primarily for children, also for their mothers, the women, and that if you could occasionally capture a man, that you might keep him from the pub on the corner. And I like the soil-less gardening here. That's a feature also of this period of time. Lovely outfits and no dirt to be seen.
Catalogue covers are fun to look at sometimes. And they, they'll depict similar images. Like you can see here, again, we've got a real romantic version of, of life and a garden and the nanny and the, and the child, of course, walking down the street. And about 40 years later, the idealized version of the house everyone wanted to live in, and the garden that would be out front.
The small business personifies the American dream. And the nursery industry provides very good examples of small businesses. Characterized by owner management, use of local resources, community involvement, and production for the local markets. The structure was perfect. And in talking with people who specialized in this history of business, as a general pursuit, small businesses typically did not survive more than five years. And often there are no records, particularly for 19th century. And so they feel that the, the nursery industry, because of the existence of catalogues, is really a very wonderful source for looking at business history in the United States.
So here we are at DM Ferry, and you can see methods of production, composition of the workforce. Here are greenhouse structures at Dingee & Cannard in Westfeldt, Pennsylvania.
Here we are weeding some gender issues in this in this particular picture. (ADAMS LAUGHS) (LAUGH) The overseer and the ladies. And speaking of gender issues, catalogues are a fun place to also look at the existence of female entrepreneurial industries in the 19th century. There supposedly were three women owned seed houses in Minneapolis toward the late 1890s. This Miss (C.H.) Lippincott would be one, and then I also found evidence of one in New York, Floral Park, a Miss Mary Martin. And later Miss Jessie (M.) Good in Springfield, Ohio.
Now, I don't really wanna so see the doubt, but I would like to point something out. I was doing some research at the Smithsonian and I had the opportunity to look at Miss Mary Martin's catalogue. And I compared it with some other catalogues of the time. And it really appeared to be word for word the same catalogue as some that went under a different name, owned by male entrepreneurs. I have seen this question raised before and I, somebody in here may wanna take this on as a research project, as to whether it was a marketing ploy and these women did not exist. Or if they existed, they gave their name to the enterprise and that was all. Or if there really was a thriving female owned nursery industry all its own, small but all its own.
Nursery catalogues sold items other than plants. If you wanna look at garden technology, just pick up a few catalogues and look over the years. This wonderful 1876 lawnmower. And then if you look ahead about 30 more, or 20 more years, we have this wonderful model, (LAUGH) pulled by the horse, Henderson's new horse lawnmower. (LAUGH)
And finally, 1938 the great exposition of the motor Moto-Mower. If you purchase the Super Detroit 30 inch model, it will cost you $321 and 50 cents. Which would be a lot of money in that period of time.
The nursery catalogues are a good place to get insight into design ideas. And this, too, would be a marketing strategy. If you can show the gardens, as they do today, how many present day catalogues will show a completed garden? Then you might be moved to buy a package of plants rather than one or two. So we see the typical Victorian tropical style in this Bliss 1869 (B. K. Bliss & Son, New York). Of course, bedding schemes and list of the annuals to go in them. The old fashioned garden (LAUGH) I really love this one. Something about it appeals.
And actual designs that one can follow, like this one from the Hicks Nursery of (Westbury) New York 1915 for herbaceous border.
Now we do have to, for some of these design styles, it's probably important to use other resources to actually date them and, and talk about them with credibility. A good example is the foundation planting that you see here. And we know that the early nurseries of the 19th century did promote this style. But if you look at actual photographs from the era, you don't really see foundation planting coming about commonly, at least till after World War I. And some garden historians claim that you, it's not a common feature until the 1930s. So the, the nurserymen are trying to promote, they're trying to sell plants.
What about plant lists? Of course, that's what we're really looking for in the old catalogues, aren't we? And one of the most challenging tasks, for those involved in restoration or reconstructions of historic landscapes, is to develop an appropriate plant list. Most of us want to go beyond using those plants that were known to have been grown somewhere in America prior to the period of significance.
Over the past fifteen years, I've looked at hundreds and hundreds of catalogues, and I'd like to tell you just a little bit about what I've done and how I've organized information. For starters, I have spent literally thousands of hours putting plant names into a database. I use FileMaker Pro, I have an Apple Computer. Nobody's to say anything about that. (LAUGH) I've taken enough grief. (ADAMS LAUGHS) My database currently includes over 25,000 plant taxa. And I've included a sample page, which I'm gonna talk about in a minute, just to give you an idea of, of how I have put my information together.
And that's in your, in your folder. Plant names can be tricky. And that is one of the challenges in looking at old catalogues. (LAUGH) Do you know this plant? (LAUGH) Funkia alba, also known as the 'day lily.' (LAUGH) This is from a Stores & Harrison 1896 Ohio Catalogue. (LAUGH) Well, if it didn't have the picture, we would be in, in trouble, probably, many of us. Because from the picture, we, we think we're looking at a hosta, but the day lily throws you a little bit.
And this is the sort of thing that sometimes will prove to be one of the biggest challenges in looking at early catalogues. Both the combination of scientific names or botanical names that have changed over time and in the common names, which are in themselves, you know, a challenge that I'm not gonna go into a lot at the moment. It's just a, a very fun, but something that does require some research to get to the bottom of the situation sometimes.
These are all names that Hosta plantaginea, which is the plant you just saw. These are all names that I have found it listed under (LAUGH) in 19th century catalogues. Of course, funkia was the prevailing genus name and albas of cordata, subcordata, grandiflora, japonica variety alba, liliastrum, and then they threw me a curve and started calling it Hemerocallis japonica. (LAUGH) And what is hemerocallis, of course, but day lily? And you saw the Appalachian day lily, so you can see it can, it can be fun sometimes. (LAUGH)
The sheet, if you don't mind pulling that out. I'm really kind of embarrassed that I, that I actually am giving you this sample sheet. This is like inviting you into my office and you see for yourself how cluttered my desk is. You know, I've, I've felt like maybe I should clean this up and make it just a little more (LAUGH) palatable. But this is, do you all have this in your? I'm not gonna go over it in great detail because the one thing that I hope you get from this is, is this is a really personal type of research. And what you were looking for may not be what I am looking for when you look through catalogues. But organizing your information is of great value later, when you wish to recover or retrieve something (LAUGH) that you know you saw. (LAUGH)
So basically, I think it's, it's fairly obvious, you know, what I'm doing here. I've entered all the genera, the species, if there's a variety, etcetera, etcetera. But you're probably more interested in the central part. Every catalogue that I looked at, I gave a code. And I have that code recorded in multiple places. Because if I lose it, I'm dead. (ADAMS LAUGHS) (LAUGH) Ass far as where the catalogue came from, what the contents were, how many pages, you know, et cetera, et cetera. And when I would go through a catalogue and I should say, and I know that many of you are interested in fruits and vegetables, but my primary interest has been ornamentals. So that is all that I've put in. And I have to say I'm starting to regret that choice because I'm wishing now that when I had some of those catalogues at Cornell or Massachusetts Hort[icultural] Society or wherever, in front of me, that I had put everything in. Hindsight is wonderful.
So I'm, I'm just basically putting a number in. I'll go through the catalogue page by page and when I see hollyhock and it's in the Stores & Harrison 1896 Catalogue, then it gets a, a one under the, in the column where the year grouping is. As you can see, I have nine different periods of time. And then the actual code goes down below. And it looks like this is cut off a little bit. The bottom part is actually the regions. So the Stores & Harrison would go in the Great Lakes region.
What I can do with this is pull up a plant list for just about any year in any region. I can go back and put actually state codes in, so if I wanna pull up one for a state for the 1890s, I've done that for Ohio. But I've not done that for other places. I can tell you the percentage of native plants versus exotic plants that a catalogue, a particular catalogue had. I can pull up and give you a printout of the ornamental offerings of Prince 1845 or John Childs, 1897. It's all, it's all here.
If you're going to start doing research with catalogues, as I said when I started, my only regret is that I didn't think far enough. Assume you're gonna want to know everything and when you have the opportunity, then you can enter it. You never know later on what information might be of, of great value to you.
Now some people like to do a statistical analysis of that information. And I'm gonna show you that just a one sample of that, just real quickly here. Because this may or may not appeal to you.
It's actually a very simple formula that was devised by Robert Harvey at Iowa State University. He published it in the APT Bulletin. What year is this? Nineteen eighty-nine. And he called, let me find my notes here so I can actually give you the, the title of his article, if you are so interested. An Approach To Developing A Documented And Quantified Plant List.
Now what Dr. Harvey has done, it's a little different. In my database that I showed you, I'm, I'm working with actual numbers, with real numbers. And I'm coming up with totals and it, I had the the database fixed so that the totals accumulate for a plant. So every time I add a plant to hollyhock, you know, the total increases. He said that it's a that it can be more beneficial if you can weigh when a plant was first introduced against the period of time that you're watching. Because the idea being that once a plant is introduced, it's probably remains in an area. And that is what this particular formula shows us.
Are you all excited about having a division formula up here? (LAUGH) This is a ranking, pure and simple. It doesn't give you a probability, it gives you an index whereby you can rank. And I've taken dianthus barbatus here. Looking at how prominent it was in catalogues over the 19th century. Okay, so going all the way to the year 1900, the first year of occurrence and this was in, it doesn't really matter, but it was a certain region in the Northeastern United States. And the first incidence was in 1810. So the number of years in this formula equals the year of first occurrence subtracted from the end of the period you're looking at. That's how I get the 90. The total of all sources are all of the catalogues that I looked at. The number of sources here are those that had Dianthus barbatus in them. So it's really very simple. So the number of years, which gives us a clue as to the first and weights when this first became available times the number of sources, 216 divided by 356, which was the total number of catalogues.
Gave us the 54.61 which is an index number. And it actually made diantus barbatus the second most available plant in the area that we were looking at, with Hollyhock being first and Fflox being third for that particular region.
If you're more if you're interested in this, of course, we can look at this a little further. But I think I better move on.
There are other fun things you can do with catalogues. When I was doing my research at Ohio State, we wanted to look at native plants and their prominence in these catalogues. And we took Landreth's (Seed Catalogue and Rural Register) as an example. Looking at the, I believe it was the 1810, 1812 and 1826 catalogues and finding that there were 75 different species of native ornamentals being offered. There were none in the catalogues following that time. Which was a puzzle to us until we saw that in that period, Landreth had died, David Landreth had died. And his eulogy stated that "their collection of indigenous plants obtained through the agency and friendship of traveling collectors and local correspondents was perhaps the largest of its day. If we can accept the magnificent one of the Bartram Botanic Garden."
It's easy to look at the availability of fruit trees versus ornamentals, annuals versus perennials in the database. Make a note of if it's offering seeds, say if it's from a greenhouse, say if it's field grown and you've got that much more information. It's difficult to chronicle plant introductions from a catalogue. For one thing, a plant might be introduced in one year, but it becomes in production available in quantities for people, you know, at a, at a further date, maybe a year, maybe many years.
Many times nurserymen will state that they're introducing something, but you can't always believe them. So you kind of have to find other supporting evidence, as well. Still you can get an idea by its presence, that a plant was in American commerce. And this is Lily maradam (sp?), which was introduced in the early 1860s by Parson's Nursery in New York. And this Bliss illustration dates from 1869, so the dates jive very well.
Pricing can be interesting. The price of seeds and plants actually did not vary much over the course of the 19th century. Prince's 1844 catalogue offered perennials for prices ranging from $.18 to $.50. At this time, to put it in perspective, agricultural laborers received $8.00 to $12.00 a month and craftsmen were being paid $12.00 to $18.00 a month. So you had to be affluent to buy plants, at least, from that place.
Forty years later, in the 1880s, James Vick of Rochester, New York offered perennial plants for $.25 to $.30 a piece. His novelties, including various lily bulbs and cultivars of peony could priced anywhere from $.50 to $10.00. What's happened to the wages? Well, at this time, farm wages are still the same. It's 40 years later, it's still about $12 a month. But the craftsmen are earning up to $50.00 a month. So there we're starting to see a, a change in the economy that's going to provide more people with the resources to purchase plants.
This is my garden muse. I fit her into every lecture. Mrs. Helen Boyd and here she is, today, enjoying her Salvia splendens that she has ordered from the John Childs, Floral Park, New York catalogue of 1902. Mrs. Boyd's been, I should, this has nothing to do with catalogues but I've been taking her with me on my lectures since I started, (LAUGH) in the mid '90s. She has a sobering effect on me. (LAUGH) (ADAMS LAUGHS) But I'm looking at her with new eyes. She is in the pages of my book, that's where she resides currently. And it has been called to my attention that she greatly resembles our Secretary Of Defense (Donald Rumsfeld). (LAUGH) So, do you see it? (ADAMS LAUGHS) (LAUGH) Once it was pointed out to me, I saw it. So Mrs. Boyd (MAKES SOUND) hmm. (LAUGH) (ADAMS LAUGHS) .
Okay. You have one more handout I'd like to just talk about. You have a list here of nursery and seed catalogue repositories. I haven't been to all of these, but I've probably been to about 75 percent of them. The good news is that over the last 10 years, the libraries are taking great interest in cataloguing inventory and providing adequate storage space et cetera for their seed and nursery catalogues. I remember when I first started doing research and I went to Cornell, which is a fabulous place to go. And Sherry Vance is one of the most gracious women, I think, in the library industry in the United States. She will help you with any question.
I went, the boxes of catalogues were stacked on type of her barium cabinets, throughout this floor in the Mann Library. And she would, she'd let me sit at a table, she would bring me the box and just say, here. And I would go through it, hoping to find something that would be of interest. Because of her experience, she knew a lot about what was there. But there had not been time or resources really to, you know, to put it down.
I remember on that particular day, as she was leaving, she handed me the key to the building. This was in a (LAUGH) safer, saner time, too. and said, just let yourself out and lock the door when you leave. (ADAMS LAUGHS) (LAUGH) So I stayed until about midnight and then the noises in that library got to me and I left rather (LAUGH) hurriedly. The Web is providing wonderful advantages too for these (STAMMERS) these different collections.
I'm not gonna go through everything with you, but I would like to point out that the collection at the New York Botanic Garden is online. That is accessible. Many of them you can call the repository and they can answer your questions on the phone. Although it may not be available for you to go with your computer. The Smithsonian currently has online display, I don't know if it's going to be a permanent display for them or, you know, what the time period is. But you can go. You have their website and page after page of seed catalogue covers, just really fun to look at, rainy afternoon. I know you're busy. You're not on the computer most days now.
And I think that probably just about, all of them, of course, are, are wonderful. And check your universities, your local county historic societies, your state, et cetera. I'm sure you've all done that. You do have a contact information for Elisabeth Woodburn. Book, I mentioned Miss Woodburn earlier. Of course, she's deceased and has two wonderful women running her business and they inform me they're just getting ready to put out a seed catalogue, catalogue. So if you're not on their mailing list, you might want to call to receive that, if that's of interest. Thank you very much. (APPLAUSE)
©Denise AdamsAugust 2004