E. Dexter Davis papers

Very little is known about E. Dexter Davis. From the collection, it can be discerned that Davis was educated at Cornell University in the field of Horticulture. He began employment with the Montgomery Evergreen Nursery in August of 1931 and remained on staff for several years. He was originally from New York and relocated to Holliston, Massachusetts sometime before 1962, where he died around 2000.

Robert Montgomery acquired his Connecticut estate in 1920 and later willed the property to the town of Greenwich for use as a public park and a preserve for the hemlock and other rare conifers. Now refered to as the Montgomery Pinetum, it is operated by the Greenwich Garden Center. His other property, 83 acres of land in Coconut Grove, Florida, is now the site of the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, dedicated in 1938 and named for David Fairchild, a close friend and plant explorer.

Montgomery became a leading tax authority and was an outstanding amateur horticulturist. In 1945 Montgomery donated approximately 200 specimens of pine, spruce, hemlock, yew and cedar trees to the New York Botanical Garden from his one-hundred acre estate, Wild Acres, in Cos Cob, Connecticut. His donation is currently the core of what is now called the Benenson Ornamental Conifer Collection. Montgomery also served on the Board of Managers of the New York Botanical Garden from 1935 until his death in 1953.

Montgomery wrote many professional papers and received numerous honors, including an honorary degree from Dickinson College in 1941, election to the Accounting Hall of Fame at Ohio State University in 1950, and the Frank N. Meyer Medal of the American Genetic Association in 1951 for his contributions to horticulture. Several of the books he wrote, a memorial biography, and a pamphlet about the Pinetum are in the Garden's LuEsther T. Mertz Library.