Updated
Editor’s note: This is another in an ongoing series of articles we call “Marking History” looking at the stories behind the hundreds of historic markers scattered about the Crossroads.
Without pioneer horticulturist Gilbert Onderdonk and his wife Martha, founders of Nursery, fruit may not have been grown in Texas, especially not the variety of famous Texas peaches.
A historic marker at the north entrance to Nursery School, 13254 Nursery Drive, pays homage to Gilbert Onderdonk, the man credited with productive fruit farming techniques in Texas.
Martha purchased 100 acres near the new Victoria-Cuero railroad line in 1883 for a branch of the Mission Valley Onderdonk Nursery.
“A post office named Nursery soon opened,” the marker reads, “and Gilbert Onderdonk served as both postmaster and Wells Fargo shipping agent. The small town of Nursery grew up around the railroad, post office and nursery operations.”
Evelyn Oppenheimer penned a University Of North Texas Press study of Onderdonk in 1991, titled “Gilbert Onderdonk: The Nurseryman of Mission Valley, Pioneer Horticulturist.”
Oppenheimer gives Onderdonk credit for developing fruit farming in Texas.
“It was Gilbert Onderdonk who began and developed production of fruit in Texas,” Oppenheimer noted. “Onderdonk literally planted the foundation of the vast production of Texas fruit today.”
Before Onderdonk’s successful nursery, it was believed fruit could not be grown in this section of Texas, the Texas State Historical Association wrote.
“His success dispelled the previously accepted notion that fruit could not be grown in that part of Texas. He originated or introduced into Texas more than seven peach varieties, at least eleven plum varieties, as well as the Victoria mulberry and the Lincoln apple,” Oppenheimer and Craig Roell wrote for a Historical Association article.
Onderdonk “collected and raised specimens of fruits and flowers and furnished the area between the Rio Grande and New Orleans with acclimated fruit trees and shrubs,” Oppenheimer wrote.
Onderdonk was a Dutch native New Yorker who traveled to South Texas in 1851 in search of a warmer climate, hoping to ease his fragile health.
His health quickly improved, and he taught school and worked on a local ranch. He eventually raised his own horses, until 1856, when he sold his herd for a profit, Oppenheimer wrote.
He married Martha and bought 360 acres in Mission Valley and began his nursery operations there, about 1858.
He quickly gained renown as a nurseryman, publishing news extensively about his work, Oppenheimer said.
He served in the Confederate Army during the Civil War, was taken prisoner and later returned home.
As Oppenheimer put it: By the time of his death in 1920 at the robust age of 91, he had been a pioneer botanist and horticulturist, a rancher, a soldier, a traveler throughout Mexico for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, a prolific letter writer and essayist, a travel writer for newspapers and a man of family, property, international recognition and fame among horticultural experts in Europe for his work in South Texas.
An Advocate article published upon his death Sept. 9, 1920, titled “Tribute to the Memory of a Horticulturist,” agreed with Oppenheimer’s assessment of Onderdonk.
“There are a great many men throughout our country who have blazed the trail and made civilization possible,” the article said. “Many of these pioneers have left legacies of experience and knowledge to future generations. One of these men was Gilbert Onderdonk.”
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