Philadelphia was another center of pear-growing in the early settlements of the country. The Quakers, settling in Pennsylvania in 1682, planted all of the hardy fruits; which were soon, as we are several times told, a great asset to the colony. No results worthy of note seem to have come from these early plantings until nearly a half century later when John Bartram[12] founded, in 1728, what became a famous botanic garden. The Bartram Botanic Garden became almost at once the clearing house for native and foreign fruits and plants, and to it came several varieties of pears for distribution throughout the colonies. Here, the first variety of the pear to originate in America of which we have definite record, came into existence. This was the Petre pear raised by Bartram, from seeds sent him from England by Lady Petre. The seed was planted in 1735 near the stone house which Bartram built with his own hands. The tree still stands, somewhat stricken with its two centuries, but withal a noble specimen seemingly capable of breasting the blows of age for many years to come. The pear industry of the eastern United States is confined to the regions in which the history of this fruit has been traced, and most if not all of the varieties that originated in this country until the middle of the nineteenth century came from the importations to these French, Dutch, and English settlements. There is little profit, therefore, in attempting to trace further the history of pear-culture on the Atlantic seaboard in colonial times. Pears were grown in the states south of Pennsylvania, for many references are found in the colonial records of the southern states, but they bring out no new facts to illuminate the history of this fruit in America. The Quakers and Swedes grew pears in the regions watered by the Delaware, and the English in Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina all planted pears with the other hardy fruits only to find that they so quickly succumbed to unfavorable climate and the blight as to be unprofitable. The Bergamy and Warden, in particular, are mentioned as varieties of this fruit grown in the colonial period of the southern colonies.