But history has repeated itself; the North has again invaded the South but not with drum and fife and armed hosts and has been met not with shot and shell but with a genuine southern welcome and from this commingling of northern capital and energy with southern soil and sunshine has sprung a new industry of such roseate promise as to almost make the story of Aladdin's Wonderful Lamp fade into insignificance and Dixie's imperial product, the cultivated paper shell pecan makes her bow to the world.
French explorers as early as 1740 left authentic records of pecans in the Mississippi Valley and the many giant pecan trees scattered from Maryland to Texas which the scientists tell us are hundreds of years old seem to indicate that the pecan is a native of America whose origin is lost in prehistoric times.
The earliest financial transaction in pecans that has come to my notice was in 1772 when William Prince of Flushing, New York, sold in England eight pecan trees for ten guineas each. These trees were grown from seed planted by himself.
Prior to 1890 there had been little if any attempt to plant pecans in orchards but about this time a few scattering seedling orchards began to appear.
In October 1902 about thirty owners of small pecan orchards met in Macon, Georgia, and organized the National Nut Growers Association. Of those pioneer growers only three remain today as active members of the Association, Theo. Bechtel, H. C. White, and O. P. Mears.
By this time the art of budding and grafting having become reasonably well known several pecan nurseries came into bearing and orchards of budded trees began to appear and the foundations of a real industry were laid. About this time the nursery crook began to appear and sold thousands of worthless trees but despite this handicap pecan culture continued to spread and shortly thereafter attracted the attention of Prof. John Craig of Cornell who after investigation pronounced it safe sane and profitable. He also made a study of the various sections and decided that the Albany district was the ideal section for profitable pecan culture.
This announcement by Prof. Craig was sufficient to induce northern capitalists to begin developing the Albany district on a commercial scale and several companies entered the field planting many thousand acres to be sold in units. As an evidence of the lack of faith on the part of local land owners let me say that a few weeks ago I read the original contract between one of the pioneer development companies and the gentleman from whom they bought their land. This contract was dated early in 1908 and provided for the sale on time payments of several thousand acres of land closing with the limitation that unless as much us 100 acres of this land were planted in pecans and sold in 1920 the contract was to be null and void. As a matter of fact this company developed and sold about 4500 acres in less than five years. They have long since retired as developers and give their entire time to the care of their immense orchards and the sale of their nuts which annually run around two hundred thousand pounds.