My Genealogy Hound

Charles Patterson, a well-known nurseryman and horticulturist, is a native of Sweden and was born in 1825. He was twenty-four years old when he left his native country, and came to Louisville, Ky., in 1849. He spent two and a half years in the latter city, and then, returning to Sweden, married Christina Annette Lovell. On his return to this country he remained in Louisville until 1856, when he came to Adair County, where he has since resided. During the war he spent about one year in Company A, Thirty-ninth Missouri Volunteer Infantry. He began the nursery business in 1866, about eight miles east of Kirksville, and about four years later leased a farm near that city, which he devoted to nursery growing for seven years before he purchased his present home. His nursery farm embraced forty acres adjoining Kirksville, on which he has now 1,700 bearing apple trees, etc., but he has since added eighty acres more, and planted in orchard; besides this, he rents land, so that he now cultivates over 150 acres. He makes a specialty of small fruits, and grows all the finer and better varieties of raspberries, blackberries, grapes, etc. He has a family of four sons and three daughters, one of the latter being deceased, all of whom have been or are being educated at the State Normal. The father, Peter Carlson, and the mother both spent their lives in Sweden, the former dying in 1882, and the latter surviving but a year or so longer. Our subject’s name would have been Peterson according to the Swedish rule, but on coming to America he changed it to its present form. He is a member of the American Horticultural and the American Pomological Societies, and also belongs to several State horticultural societies.