Image: John Richardson’s House and Garden published in “John Richardson: His House and Garden”
John Richardson
John Richardson, well known as a skilful horticulturist, and especially known for the choice seedling peonies that he raised, was born in Boston the 19th of February, 1798, and died in Dorchester the 22nd of September, 1887, in the ninetieth year of his age.
Richardson developed the hybrid Samuel Henshaw peony among other varieties. The Samuel Henshaw was developed in 1904 and is a double pink variety with a delicate fragrance.
John Richardson inherited the property at the corner of Columbia Road and Boston Street where Edward Everett had been born from his brother George. George Richardson rented the property from the widow Everett from 1819 to 1833, when he purchased it. The Everett family had acquired it after the property was confiscated after the Revolution because it had belong to the Oliver family, who were Loyalists, supporting the British side in the war.
Peony Samuel Henshaw from “John Richardson: His House and Garden.”
The following excerpt is from History of the Oliver, Vassall and Royall Houses in Dorchester, Cambridge and Medford by Robert Tracy Jackson. Boston: Reprinted from The Genealogical Magazine, 1907, p. 7.
“It is an interesting coincidence that one of the choice seedling peonies raised by Mr. John Richardson, more than a hundred years later on these grounds, is named Samuel Henshaw, in honor of the gentleman, the present Curator of the Museum of Comparative Zoology in Cambridge, who is the great-grandson of Samuel Henshaw [who was part of a committee that sold the property after it was confiscated from the loyalist John Vassall at the close of the Revolution]. The garden which is said to have been laid out by Thomas Oliver, was famous when in Mr. Richardson’s possession for the many rare and choice flowers produced in it especially peonies. Richardson’s seedling peonies ranking with the very best productions of their kind in the world. These are described in … the Transactions of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society.”
Sources:
Robert Tracy Jackson. History of the Oliver, Vassall and Royall Houses in Dorchester, Cambridge and Medford. (Boston, 1907). Reprinted from The Genealogical Magazine. January, 1907, Vol. II, No. 1.
Robert Tracy Jackson. “John Richardson: His House and Garden.” Transactions of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society for the Year 1904. (1904).