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