Rushden Research Group: James M Abbott

James M Abbott - Rose Grower

James Martindale Abbott was born in 1872 in Witherslack WES. He grew up on a farm.

After working as a gardener, he trained at Kew between 1894 and 1898.

James M Abbott in 1901 was working on his own account as a nurseryman, and boarding at 73 High Street South.

In 1915 he married Maud Lewis, daughter of Watson Lewis, at St Mary's Church. They were then living at 65 High Street South.

Advert 1908

ROSE TREES

Hybrid Perpetuals, Trees,

Hybrid Teas & Climbers.

Currant and Gooseberry Bushes.

JAS. M. ABBOTT,

Bedford Road, Rushden.

Marriage certificate shows he was living at 65 High Street South

1918 invoice for fruit trees and roses

Some further research by Francois Gordon, via email, 2020

Born 1872

School until 1886 (?)

Monitor at school 1887-8

Gardener at Witherslack vicarage 1889 - March 1891

March 1891 – May 1894 at Brathay House

He first applied to Kew 15 May 1894. William Purdom provided a reference dated May 10 1894:
“James Abbott has worked under me for the last three years and two months [i.e. since March 1891] and I have great pleasure in saying that he is a strong, steady and obliging young man. He has had charge of vineries, peach house, stove including orchid and other houses is very well up in the culture of fruit under glass I have every trust in recommending him for any place of trust in a good garden”

James was placed on the waiting-list, had to write again on 6 August 1894 to renew his application, when he said “I have worked both inside the vineries and greenhouses and in the kitchen garden also on the lawn and in the shrubberies. I am leaving my present situation so as to try to get into some large Botanic Gardens”

The curator sent him a telegram on 27 Oct 1894 “CAN YOU COMMENCE WORK HERE NOV 5^th?”

Period at home in Witherslack working in a local nursery (?)

Nov 1894 - Sep 1898 at Kew, subforeman equivalent from Sep 1896

He obtained the following lecture certificates:

Geographical Botany

Economic Botany

Oceanographic and Systemic Botany

British Botany

Elementary Physics and Chemistry

1895

1896

At Kew Gardens, he was a student gardener between 1894 and 1898. Prior to that he was an apprentice gardener at Brathay Hall, Ambleside (3 years and 2 months) and before that apprenticed to the vicar at Grange-over-Sands (2½ years). Before that he "went for a teacher" and was a monitor at his school for two years, roughly when he was fourteen and fifteen, when he seems to have decided his future lay in horticulture and botany. James did well at Kew, promoted to propagotor (sub-foreman crossed out) and left to go into commercial horticulture. [extracts from his file at Kew]

1901 nurseryman on his own account in Rushden

June 14 1902 wrote to Kew Curator from 73 High Street South, Rushden recommending Will Purdom for a place as a student gardener

1908 advertised various plants for sale from business in Rushden

1915, May 24th - married Maud Lewis in Rushden St Mary's Church

1918 still in business in Rushden

1946, Sep 15th died, aged 74, buried in Rushden Cemetery, Grave F.1524.

William Purdom was born in Cumbria in 1880, the son of a gardener. He trained under his father before going to work for Low & Co in Enfield, then for James Veitch & Sons in Kingston. In 1904 he became a “student gardener” at Kew Royal Botanic Gardens.
At Kew, Purdom was elected the first Secretary of the Kew Gardens Employees Union, and was dismissed for “agitating”. Labour MPs protested in the House of Commons, and Purdom was reinstated by order of the Board of Agriculture.
Purdom continued to lead a protest over wages and organised the first ever strike at Kew: today we would call the action taken a work-to-rule. This may have been a factor, behind the 1908 decision of the Director at Kew, when asked if he could suggest someone to go plant-hunting in north-west China, to recommend Purdom!
Purdom’s first expedition, financed jointly by James Veitch & Co and the Arnold Arboretum, to north-western China took place against the background of considerable civil disorder in the region. Nonetheless, he took a large number of photos of landscapes, buildings, people and plants and collected and sent back to Britain and the USA plants and seeds including peonies, poplars, rhododendrons, and a particularly fine viburnum, v. fragrans. Purdom clearly liked and got on well with Chinese people and worked hard to learn to speak the language, and to read and write Mandarin.
Purdom returned to England in the Spring of 1912, and in 1913 he met Reginald Farrer (1880-1920), an Alpine plant enthusiast who invited Purdom to accompany him plant-hunting trip in Kansu (now Gansu) Province in NW China. This expedition took place between January 1914 and the Spring of 1916, when Purdom was appointed Forestry Adviser to the Chinese government.
Sometime after 1916, Purdom introduced to China Sequoiadendron (giant redwood) and Taxodium distichum (swamp cypress), fast-growing species intended to produce timber for railway companies. After 1919, he lived in a converted rail-car near where he was establishing tree nurseries and “forest stations” (one such, near Xinyang, is now the William Purdom Forest Park).
Purdom died on 7 November 1921 in the French hospital in Peking from an infection contracted following minor surgery.

James Abbott does not appear to have advertised in trade directories.
He was buried in Rushden Cemetery grave F.1524 aged 74 in 1946.

MI - In loving memory of James Martindale ABBOTT beloved husband of Maud ABBOTT died Sept 15th 1946 aged 74 years. In God's keeping.

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