Biographies of American Seedsmen and Nurserymen Wilder, Marshall Pinckney–(1798-1886)–Dorchester, Massachusetts–was born in Rindge, New Hampshire on September 22, 1798.  Wilder’s father owned a farm and a store and wished him to go to college.  Wilder preferred farming and became a partner in the store with his father at age twenty-one. In 1825, he conducted a wholesale business in West India goods in Boston.  In 1837, he became a partner in the dry goods commission house of Parker, Blanchard and Wilder, and continued working with the firm until it was burned out in the great fire of November 9, 1872.  In 1831, he moved to his estate, Hawthorne Grove, and devoted all his leisure to horticulture.  He was a pre-eminent cultivator of the camellia.  He also had a fine collection of azaleas, and he produced a double California poppy.  In 1839, there was a fire in his greenhouse, only two of his collection of eight hundred camellias were saved, but in 1840 when he gave a tour to the Massachusetts Horticultural Society members, he had over three hundred varieties and over six hundred seedlings.  Wilder was the president of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society from 1841-1848.  He exhibited at the Society from 1833 through 1886.  He was President of the Massachusetts Agricultural Club, and the Norfolk Agricultural Society.  He was also President of the Massachusetts Agricultural College for twenty years.  He was President for six years of the United States Agricultural Society.  He died on December 16, 1886.
Sources:  MHS; Plants; Bailey; CHSJ-Apr. 1966; HP