Author Pringle Cyrus Guernsey

was through these meetings that he met, and later married, on February 25, 1863, Almira L. Greene of Starksboro, Vermont, a school teacher and a talented speaker of the Friends. His first horticultural undertakings were on his mother's farm in 1857, when, at the age of nineteen, he budded a small seedling apple tree, with a large, striped, sweet summer apple. In 1858 he started his first nursery, containing a small pear orchard, fruit yards, gardens of currants, cherries, grapes, peaches and potatoes. He made a definite plan for each orchard or garden, giving the name and location of each plant. By crossing, he obtained a new variety of potato seedling "No. 6 (1870)," which was called "Snowflake." This potato was introduced to the public in New York. Robert Fenn, an Englishman much interested in crossing American and English varieties of potatoes, recognized Pringle's ability and the two of them worked together on other projects, such as the crossing of "Snowflake" with "Rector of Woodstock" and vice versa. Another cross-bred potato of 1870, "Ruby," gained a first-class certificate from the London Horticultural Society, and, with "Snowflake," was awarded a Silver Medal by the Massachusetts Horticultural Society. During the American Civil War, about five months after his marriage, he, along with two other Vermont Quakers, was drafted into the Union Army on July 13. They all shared the Quakers' disapproval of war, and when Doctor Pringle's uncle offered to pay the $300 necessary for his release, he would not allow this to be done, regarding that solution as a selfish compromise with principle. Refusing to perform all military duty, he was subjected to severe discipline. The Friends were kept for days in the guardhouse in company with drunks and criminals. Finally, on October 3, 1863, at Culpepper, Doctor Pringle was staked to the ground, with his arms outstretched and his legs cruelly racked; he was left in this position for hours, until "so weak he could hardly walk or perform any exertion". He was even threatened with death if he would not give up, but his only reply was, "It can but give me pain to be asked or required to do anything I believe to be wrong." After a day of extreme pain he wrote in his diary, "This has been the happiest day of my life, to be privileged to fight the battle for universal peace." When Secretary of War Stanton heard of this treatment, he ordered "the three incorrigibles" sent to Washington. Isaac Newton, Commissioner of Agriculture, went to President Lincoln about their case, and the President asked the Secretary to release them. The Secretary refused, claiming that his oath of office stood in the way of giving them a discharge. In the meantime Doctor Pringle's physical strength began to give way, and he spent most of his three weeks in Washington in bed. It was only after President Lincoln had gone personally to Stanton that the parole was granted. After recovering his health in 1868, Pringle again turned his energies to plant breeding, attempting to hybridize new varieties of fruit and corn, tomatoes, and various grains such as wheat and oats. In 1872 Pringle's wife separated from her husband to pursue evangelistic work, and they formally divorced on October 16, 1877. Sometime around the 1870s, Pringle began to collect plants throughout Vermont, from deep in mossy woods, by lakesides, or high on mountain summits. On December 13, 1874, he was appointed to the Vermont Board of Agriculture. During three successive years he took boat trips up the lower St. Lawrence, to the Saguenay, a river in Canada, and the St. Francis and St. John Rivers of northern Maine. In 1878, he displayed many of the Vermont specimens which he had been collecting, at the Paris Exposition. In 1880, he was named as botanical collector for the American Museum of Natural History, and as an agent for the United States Census Department, to explore the forests of that region and to collect data for a final report. In 1884, he was charged with a botanical survey of the north and northwestern portions of Arizona, under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution, and this later branched into a 26-year survey of Mexico. The Mexican Herald referred to him as one of the most brilliant and scholarly men ever to grace Mexico with his presence. During his thirty-five years of field work in the United States, Canada and Mexico, he distributed to various herbaria over 500,000 specimens, embracing some 20,000 species, about 12 per cent of which were new to science. In April, 1896, he was elected a member of the New England Botanical Club, within the first year of its existence and when in Boston from time to time enjoyed attending the meetings. He became, also, vice-president and charter member of the Vermont Botanical Club. In the last year of his life he talked of planning a trip to South America, but died before he ever realized that dream, on May 25, 1911. He wrote many articles in The Country Gentleman from 1869 to 1880 on various subjects. For example, in an 1880 issue he wrote "Origin of the Snowflake Potato." In 1884, he published Pringle's Reports on Forests of Vermont, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania and West Virginia in Dr. C. S. Sargent's "Report on the Forests of North America," Census Office, 1884.