Dr. John Aston Warder
At the age of seventy-one, on July 14, 1883, on his beautiful place at North Bend, there died Dr. John Aston Warder, a most beneficent character. He was born in Philadelphia of Quaker parentage, and in early life saw at his father’s house and associated with those eminent naturalists, Audubon, Michaux, Nuttal, Bartram, and Darlington, from whom he acquired great fondness for nature and how to woo her sweet delights. He studied medicine in Philadelphia, practised eighteen years in Cincinnati, and then moved to North Bend to give his entire attention to horticulture. Meanwhile he did everything in his power to advance education and science, and was a leader through his capacity and love. The public schools, the Astronomical Society, Western Academy of Natural Sciences Horticultural Society, Ohio Medical College, and Natural history Society all felt his guiding power.
Warren Higley, President of Ohio State Forestry Association, wrote of him: “His early surroundings and associations were powerful allies in his education as a naturalist. He read and studied and mastered the book of Nature in its varied teachings as but few have mastered it. A seed, a bud, a leaf, a plant, a branch, a tree, a shell, a rock, attracted his notice and elicited investigation. He was a veritable student of Nature, and his love among men was as lovingly beautiful as it was among his plants and trees. . . He justly called the Father of American Forestry.”
Associated for a time, about the year 1854, with Dr. Warder, in the publication of the “Botanical Magazine and Horticultural Review” was James W. Ward, a gentleman highly accomplished by varied attainments in science, literature, art, and both a poet and the nephew of a poet. The best remembered of his verses by the older citizens is a parody of Henry W. Longfellow’s “Hiawatha,” entitled “Higher Water.’’ descriptive of a freshet on the Ohio river; other of his pieces were characterized by delicate fancy and refined instincts.
From Historical Collections of Ohio: By Henry Howe; Pub. 1888