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Rh men, women, and children came from miles around to see it, and made a hard beaten track through the nursery to this joyous reminder of the old homestead so far away.

Ralph C. Geer also came in 1847 and brought one bushel of apple seeds and half a bushel of pear seeds, and was one of the first to plant an orchard in the Waldo Hills.

People in those days in this sparsely settled country knew what their neighbors were doing, and in the fall of 1848 and spring of 1849, they came hundreds of miles from all over the country for scions and young trees to set in the little dooryard or to start an orchard; so that the trees were soon distributed all over the settlements of the valley—yearlings selling at fifty cents to one dollar each.

The first considerable orchards were set on French Prairie, and in the Waldo hills and about Salem. Of apples the following varieties were common: Red Astrachan, Red June, Talman's Sweet, Summer Sweet, Gravenstein, White Winter Pearmain, Blue Pearmain, Genet, Gloria Mundi, Baldwin, Rambo, Winesap, Jennetting, Seck-no—further, Tulpahockin, American Pippin, Red Cheek Pippin, Rhode Island Greening, Virginia Greening, Little Romanite, Spitzenberg, Swaar, Waxen, and a spurious Yellow Newtown Pippin since called Green Newtown Pippin—a worthless variety which has since caused much trouble to nurserymen, orchardists, and fruit buyers, and brought by mistake for the genuine—and other varieties not now remembered.

Of pears, the Fall Butter, Pound Pear, Winter Nellis, Seckle, Bartlett, and others.

Of cherries, May Duke, Governor Wood, Oxheart, Blackheart, Black Tartarian, Kentish, and others.

Peaches, the Crawford, Hale's Early, Indian Peach, Golden Cling, and seedlings.