Archives: Timeline Stories

Nearing Retirement

JHH Boyd & George Perry sell Forest Nursery and Seed Company to AP Hill. Soon after, JHH Boyd starts Riverview Nursery and Seed Company in association with his son-in-law Forrest Phifer across the Collins River from Irving College. JHH Boyd takes on a managerial/advisory role.

Mountain Folk No More

Driven by his expanding business to reduce shipping costs and improve the productivity of his farm, JHH Boyd moves his family and farm operations to Irving College, Tennessee and sells his 585 acre mountain farm. Operating closer to rail lines and in more fertile soil, Boyd’s nursery thrives.

Getting Serious

JHH Boyd forms Forest Nursery and Seed Company with George W. Perry in 1902. Working together with the Perry brothers, JHH Boyd and the Forest Nursery and Seed Company make sales as far as China, Japan, France, and England – even collecting and selling cacti collected from Mexico. Early Forest Nursery and Seed Company Catalogue

The Emerald Necklace & Iroquois Park

JHH Boyd makes a series of sales to the Olmsted Brothers landscape architectural firm to help establish The Emerald Necklace park system in Boston, Massachusetts and the Iroquois Park in Louisville, Kentucky. Correspondence between the two parties continue from 1898-1899. Correspondence Letters

Mail Call!

Thanks in part to the high volume of plant stock being shipped worldwide, JHH Boyd successfully petitions the U.S. Post Office Department to establish the Gage (Gauge), Tennessee Post Office. JHH Boyd acts as Postmaster, and his family cabin serves as the official community Post Office.

The Sale of A Lifetime

During the early 1890s, Chauncey D. Beadle, approaches JHH Boyd on behalf of the Biltmore Estate. JHH Boyd proceeds to make a sale of close to 1 million seedlings to either the Biltmore forests or Biltmore Nursery (it is currently unclear which). The seedlings are transported via 20 wagons from Boyd’s mountain nursery to the […]

Making A Living

After making his first sale, JHH Boyd sets out to learn all he can of the local flora. He contacts experts and purchases books to study regarding the plants of the area. He even becomes a noted spelunker, seeking ever more effective plant fertilizers in Higginbotham Cave. In 1887, JHH Boyd forms his first business, […]

You Mean Someone Will Buy This?

Following his investigation, JHH Boyd attracts the interest of several naturalist-writers/horticulturalists, including Mr. Emerson E. Sterns and Dr. Robert G. Eccles. JHH Boyd makes his first sale of Bubby seed pods for $5.00 (roughly $135 today) to Mr. Sterns, and in turn, Mr. Sterns agrees to show JHH Boyd the other native species of value […]

What’s Killing My Cattle?

After purchasing two farms early in the 1870s, JHH Boyd moves to the Cagle community. His initial interest in plants is piqued when many of his grazing cows mysteriously grow ill and die. Writing several horticultural publications across the northeast, JHH Boyd learns from the editor of the Farm Journal of Philadelphia that the Bubby […]

There’s No Place Like Home

The Unionist Boyd Family had fled Tennessee immediately prior to the Civil War. Living in Albany, Kentucky for the duration of the war, the Boyd Family returns to Tennessee around 1868, settling in Sequatchie County.