[From The Weekly Florists' Review, January 10, 1907, p. 539:] Antoine Wintzer's father emigrated to America in the year 1854. He brought with him all his family except the eldest son, who was then an active participant in the Crimean war. His father was a pyofessional gardener and soon obtained a good position after landing at New York. Antoine was 6 years old when tbey arrived, and between the years 1854 apd 1862 he attended the public schools, most of the time at Flushing, N. Y., where his father had moved in 1857. In March, 1862, when he was 15 years old, he entered the Parsons establishment as an apprentice. At this time the Parsons place was the largest producing nursery stock in America.....after again recovering his health, he went to West Grove, Pa., to accept a position with the Dingee & Conard Co. He arrived at West Grove July 31, 1866.... On August 1 he commenced work for the Dingee & Conard Co. as propagator. They had two small green-houses, 10x80 feet each, at this time. This company at that time was doing a general nursery business, having over 300 acres devoted to the growing of fruit and ornamental trees, shrubbery, roses, etc., which were sold almost entirely through agents. This business proved to be unprofitable and it was Mr. Wintzer's ability as a propagator of roses that saved the company from being totally wrecked financially, for it was perceived that there was an increasing demand for roses grown on their own roots, and Mr. Wintzer was very successful in growing the roses, by a process which he claims was his own invention. At this time the roses were sold almost entirely as one-year plants and shipped by mail to the purchaser. By advertising in a very few papers, enough customers were found to take all the roses they could grow in the few greenhouses that then comprised the plant. But other greenhouses were built and a catalogue published to help make sales, so the business grew and prospered and almost every year new glass was added to the plant. This continued till the year 1892, when the greenhouses numbered seventy. Mr. Wintzer's ability as a propagator was now fully established; he had produced fine, healthy rose plants all these years and the number he could grow was only limited by the space at his command to grow them in. Unfortunately, in 1892, differences arose in the management of the Dingee & Conard Co. and the late Alfred F.
Conard, who had always been president of the company, withdrew. A year later, in 1893, Mr. Wintzer withdrew, leaving to others the splendid business that had been reared upon his life work as a skilful, untiring and devoted grower of the queen of flowers. Mr. Wintzer had purchased a small farm about one mile from West Grove and had built thereon a commodious modern residence and in the fall of 1893 he erected two greenhouses. His business was continued with varying success and connections till 1897. He was anxious to enlarge the business and the late Alfred F. Conard, who had been associated with him for so many years previous to 1892, and S. Morris Jones, a business man of West Grove, knowing Mr. Wintzer's great ability as a propagator, furnished capital to organize the Conard & Jones Co. The new company purchased from Mr. Wintzer thirty-five acres of ground and his plant, which had grown to seven greenhouses. That year the company erected seven more greenhouses, an up-to-date packing-house, a large boiler-room, and coal bins, and a frost-proof house for storing dormant plants. The new company has been very successful, so that the plant has now been largely increased in size. .....
