Grant Thorburn was a Scottish immigrant who arrived in the US in 1796 after being released on bail from a UK jail after being charged with treason for his involvement in the “Friends of the People” which was a political movement that sprang from the Whig Party in the 1700s concerning itself with parliamentary reforms and not a political movement that came the Quaker Society of Friends religion as some have assumed. In the US he became a somewhat prominent seed and nurseryman living in New York City. He’s credited with being the first to include a growing calendar in the US as well as being the first documented seller of cosmos flowers to the American public. One of his biggest claims to fame was being Scottish writer and fellow debtor’s prison alumnus John Galt’s inspiration forLawrie Todd; Or, the Settlers in the Woods published in 1830.
He seems to have thought a lot of himself and his opinions and saw himself as a man of letters often writing to newspapers. You can read a compilation for free on Google Books and the Library of Congress website. But if you’d rather not, the proceeding is a rundown.
What you learn from the book is that Thorburn was more of a seed dealer and not an actual seed producer as some say. He writes a lot on his first wife but not so much on his second and third wives. He writes of his heroism during a devastating yellow fever outbreak. He writes a little about his first and last stint as a seed producer at a farm in New Jersey which ended with his term in a debtor’s prison. What you don’t get out of the book is much on plants or gardening. The chapters are disjointed letters and op-eds that are more or less a laundry list of things he didn’t like. And he disliked a whole lot.
Here are some things Grant Thorburn made apparent he wasn’t down with: men wearing tight fitting bloomers, corsets, men that look poor, men that flaunt their riches, mixed marriages, Native Americans that were more educated and worldly than himself, England, the French Revolution, Thomas Paine, Irish people, drunk Irish people, the government paying drunk Irish people to build bridges, drunks in general, Atheists, Catholics, a newspaper man that called him “a bigoted Scottish dotard”, people that sing in theaters, women that go to theaters, Irish immigrants, bachelors, a competitor named William Cobbett, people that didn’t observe the Sabbath, writer Fanny Wright, church organs, the color red in churches, church choirs, Cambridge, Massachusetts, lazy Irish people, the separation of church and state, Frances Milton Trollope, William Carver, illiterate Irish people, the Illuminati, yams, universities, poor Irish people, oyster houses, Irish prisoners, Irish immigrants, Free-Thinkers, the waltz, and did I mention the Irish?
But hey–don’t take my word for it. You can read it yourself. It’s free to read online…which I’m sure Thorburn would find a problem with.
Image: Pink Cosmos. © 98201 Seed All Rights Reserved
Illustration :Daniel Maclise, Public domain
Thorburn, G. (1852) Life and writings of Grant Thorburn. New York: E. Walker. [Web.] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://lccn.loc.gov/11013838.
Carver, William. A Bone to Gnaw for Grant Thorburn. New York 1836.