Background
Samuel Bowne Parsons was born on February 14, 1819 in Flushing, Queens County, New York, United States in a house which had been the home of his family for 150 years. He was the son of Samuel and Mary (Bowne) Parsons.
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horticulturist Landscape architect nurseryman
Samuel Bowne Parsons was born on February 14, 1819 in Flushing, Queens County, New York, United States in a house which had been the home of his family for 150 years. He was the son of Samuel and Mary (Bowne) Parsons.
Samuel Browne Parsons was educated in a private school.
Samuel Bowne Parsons began his career as a clerk in New York City. In 1839 he became infected with the mulberry craze and set out 25, 000 mulberry buds. That same year, in partnership with his brother Robert, he established on the ancestral farm in Flushing the nurseries of Parsons & Company. In 1840 he traveled extensively in the West Indies and in 1845 made a voyage to Europe to study the horticulture of the Old World. The following year he added to his experiences by exploring Florida, at a time when most of the state was still a wilderness. Encouraged by what he saw, he bought 160 acres of land near Palatka for $160 and began a citrus plantation and nursery. In 1859, the United States government commissioned him to investigate the horticulture and agriculture of Sicily and the Ionian Islands. The most important consequence of this trip was his importation in 1860 of ten colonies of Italian honey bees, the first to arrive safely and live throughout the winter in the United States. These were turned over to the Rev. L. L. Langstroth, the noted bee authority, and to the apiary of W. W. Cary & Sons at Colerain, Massachussets, where the sale of Italian queens began in 1861.
On March 20, 1862, the nursery firm of Parsons & Company bought from Dr. George R. Hall of Bristol, Rhode Island, a collection he had made representing most of the interesting trees and plants found in Japan, including the first Japanese maples ever brought into the United States. Parsons & Company announced: "A collection so rich and so varied [has] never been obtained from any country, even by the best English collectors". Japanese maples remained one of the Parsons specialties, together with the Asiatic rhododendrons, which they were the first to propagate. In 1870, Samuel Parsons imported the first Valencia oranges from Thomas Rivers, an English nurseryman. These were sent to his Florida nursery, after a few years in his Flushing greenhouses, and were introduced in the early 1870's, especially by Edmund Hall Hart of Florida.
In 1871, Samuel succeeded to the whole nursery business of Parsons & Company, which was continued as the Kissena Nurseries until within a short time of his death. Not only was Parsons prominent as an horticulturist, landscape gardener, and nurseryman, but also as a participant in civic activities in Flushing. He was identified with the Flushing school system for twenty-five years and with library work. "In religion, he was a Quaker and in the troublous times previous to the Civil War, he was a staunch abolitionist and took an active part in assisting slaves to liberty".
Samuel Bowne Parsons was offered but declined the editorship of The Horticulturist, which had been left vacant by the death of A. J. Downing in 1852. His book, The Rose: Its History, Poetry, Culture, and Classification (1847 and subsequent editions), is one of the classics of horticulture. In 1869 a new abridged edition appeared, under the title of Parsons on the Rose, with much of the poetry and sentiment cut out at the editor's advice. A number of editions of the abridgment were issued, one appearing as late as 1912. He died on January 4, 1906.
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Samuel Bowne Parsons was a charter member of the American Pomological Society and a member of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society from 1856.
Samuel Bowne Parsons married Susan R. Howland, on November 3, 1842, and four children were born to them, one of whom, Samuel B. , Jr. , became a well-known landscape gardener, at one time superintendent of parks in New York City. The mother died in 1855, and in 1862 Parsons married Mrs. Clara E. Weyman, by whom he had one child.
