Note 129 — Chapter I · HISTORY OF THE PEACH (continued 2)

David Thomas is now scarcely known in horticulture except as he is spoken of as the father of America's well-known agricultural, horticultural and pomological writer, John Jacob Thomas. Yet the father merits recognition for his work in agriculture and horticulture. David Thomas was a Quaker, born in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, in 1776. He became a civil engineer and moved to Aurora, Cayuga County, New York, in 1805 and began to practice his profession. Later he became one of the engineers in charge of the construction of the Erie Canal and still later performed a similar service in building the Welland Canal. Soon after, we find him a nurseryman and fruit-grower at Aurora. Throughout his entire life, his son writes, he was interested in horticulture, pomology and botany and by his writings on these subjects, published principally in the Genesee Farmer, then the leading agricultural paper in western New York, and in Travels in the Western Country in 1816, published in Auburn in 1819, David Thomas performed most valuable services in forwarding the cultivation of fruits. He was a corresponding member of the London Horticultural Society and of the Linnaean Society of Paris. His articles in the Genesee Farmer and other agricultural papers furnish the most authoritative statements we have in regard to the early history of fruit-growing in western New York. The name of David Thomas ought long to be preserved by horticulturists of the State and country together with that of his illustrious son, John Jacob Thomas.