The New York Botanical Garden. All rights reserved. © 2005
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Very little is known about E. Dexter Davis. From the collection, it can be discerned that Davis was educated at Cornell University in the field of Horticulture. He began employment with the Montgomery Evergreen Nursery in August of 1931 and remained on staff for several years. He was originally from New York and relocated to Holliston, Massachusetts sometime before 1962, where he died around 2000.
Robert Montgomery acquired his Connecticut estate in 1920 and later willed the property to the town of Greenwich for use as a public park and a preserve for the hemlock and other rare conifers. Now refered to as the Montgomery Pinetum, it is operated by the Greenwich Garden Center. His other property, 83 acres of land in Coconut Grove, Florida, is now the site of the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, dedicated in 1938 and named for David Fairchild, a close friend and plant explorer.
Montgomery became a leading tax authority and was an outstanding amateur horticulturist. In 1945 Montgomery donated approximately 200 specimens of pine, spruce, hemlock, yew and cedar trees to the New York Botanical Garden from his one-hundred acre estate, Wild Acres, in Cos Cob, Connecticut. His donation is currently the core of what is now called the Benenson Ornamental Conifer Collection. Montgomery also served on the Board of Managers of the New York Botanical Garden from 1935 until his death in 1953.
Montgomery wrote many professional papers and received numerous honors, including an honorary degree from Dickinson College in 1941, election to the Accounting Hall of Fame at Ohio State University in 1950, and the Frank N. Meyer Medal of the American Genetic Association in 1951 for his contributions to horticulture. Several of the books he wrote, a memorial biography, and a pamphlet about the Pinetum are in the Garden's LuEsther T. Mertz Library.
The papers of E. Dexter Davis are devoted to plant lists, notes and correspondence regarding the Montgomery Pinetum in Cos Cob, Connecticut, as well as Davis' employment history with the Montgomery Evergreen Nursery. Included are notes and correspondence from Robert H. Montgomery, founder of the Montgomery Pinetum as well as correspondence from other nursery staff and members of the Greenwich Garden Center, of which the Montgomery Pinetum is currently a part of.
Arrangement |
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The collection is organized into two series: | ||
Series 1: Montgomery Pinetum. 1930-1984 and undated. Arranged chronologically. | ||
Series 2: Correspondence. 1931-1984 and undated. Arranged alphabetically. |
This collection is open for research with permission from Mertz Library staff.
Requests for permission to publish material from the collection should be submitted in writing to the LuEsther T. Mertz Library of the New York Botanical Garden.
Indexing Terms |
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The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the library's online public access catalog. | ||
Persons | ||
Davis, E. Dexter, 1911-2000? | ||
Montgomery, Robert Hiester, 1872-1953. | ||
Subjects | ||
Coniferae--Propagation. | ||
Horticulture--New York State. | ||
Places | ||
Cos Cob (Conn.) | ||
Organizations | ||
Montgomery Pinetum. | ||
New York Botanical Garden. | ||
Document Types | ||
inventories. aat. | ||
letters (correspondence). aat. |
New York Botanical Garden.
VF Montgomery, Col. and Mrs. Robert H.
PP Robert H. Montgomery Photographs
Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden.
Robert H. Montgomery Collection
E. Dexter Davis (PP), Archives, The New York Botanical Garden.
This collection was donated to the New York Botanical Garden by Robert Fincham in December 2000.
Processed April 2005 by Kathleene Konkle under a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) PA-50678-04.