An Indispensable Man
Immediately after the Civil War, Joshua Peirce urged Beckett to come back to Linnaean Hill to manage the nursery as a free man. Peirce was eager for him return. He told a colleague “he must get William Beckett back” since it was “impossible to carry on his business without him.”
Peirce offered Beckett a generous salary of $100 a month and promised to make him “easy through life.” Beckett accepted, and returned to his post as nursery foreman. He also helped care for his elderly father until his death in 1869. In his will, Joshua Peirce left William Beckett a bequest worth $3000. But Beckett did not end up getting everything Peirce had promised.
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By 1906, when this photograph was taken, the greenhouses behind Joshua Peirce’s mansion were in ruins. (Kiplinger Library, DC History Center)
Joshua Peirce published a catalogue listing all of the “Fruit and Ornamental Trees, Shrubbery, and Plants” he sold from his nursery on Linnaean Hill. (Biodiversity Heritage Library )