Frank Taylor Ramsey worried not only about his own legacy, but about that of his customers as well. The nurseryman once wrote fondly of the trees around his childhood home, trees “whose remembrance gives pleasure of a kind that cannot be obtained with money.” Frank urged his catalog readers to create such priceless treasures for their own families. “Are you willing,” he asked, “that your children shall have similar memories in future years?” Enough of Frank’s customers answered “yes” that his trees and shrubs still dot the landscape of Austin’s older neighborhoods decades after his death.
Alexander Ramsey (1825-1895) proved so adept at raising fruit trees after moving to Texas in 1860 that he turned his hobby into a full-time business. (Photo from http://www.charlottes-web.com.)
Frank launched his career in his teens by following in his father’s footsteps. In 1858 Alexander Ramsey sent a few peach seeds from Mississippi to his brother in the tiny Burnet County town of Mahomet. By the time of his arrival in Texas in 1860 a small peach orchard awaited him. The Civil War hampered his efforts but by 1875 Alexander had enlarged both the quantity and variety of his trees enough that he issued a catalog offering trees for sale. Two years later sixteen-year-old Frank quit school to go into business with his father.
Frank Ramsey as a teenager. This photograph was taken about the time that Frank began working with his father. (Photo from http://www.charlottes-web.com.)
Father and son battled freezes and grasshoppers throughout those early years but, as Alexander’s 1895 obituary noted, “The temperate, industrious, honest man who loves his business succeeds.” During 1893 and 1894 the pair moved the business to Austin to ease the process of shipping plants throughout Texas and beyond. Alexander, on the far side of his 70th birthday, then sold his share in the business to his son. According to the obituary, there was “never a word of disagreement uttered” between Alexander and Frank during their long partnership.
The Ramsey home in Mahomet. That's Alexander Ramsey standing on the porch at left. To his left are Frank, Belle and their children Murray and Jessie. (Photo from http://www.charlottes-web.com.)
A nursery needs land and Frank therefore had to locate his business on the edge of the city. He purchased several hundred acres in the vicinity of Austin’s first planned subdivision, Monroe Shipe’s Hyde Park neighborhood. With the nursery office at 45th and Guadalupe, Frank’s commute from his home at 4412 Avenue B merely involved walking north across 45th Street.
The 1894 catalog for Ramsey's Nurseries. Notice the stamped reminder at upper right about the move to Austin. (Photo from http://www.charlottes-web.com.)
The Ramsey family quickly became an integral part of the Hyde Park neighborhood. Because of his initials, locals began calling Frank “Fruit Tree Ramsey.” Frank joined the North Austin Fire Company and remained a member until the city founded its own professional force in 1916. His wife Belle served many an impromptu dinner to unexpected guests brought home by her husband. Years later neighbors remembered the Ramseys serving iced watermelon at gatherings on their lawn. Frank invited the American Legion to use his nursery for an annual Halloween celebration. And for the Hyde Park Christian Church annual picnic Frank would load a hay wagon with men, women and children for a fun-filled ride to the countryside. One woman later recalled, “There was one favorite place where there were trees, grass and a running stream; and when those big baskets of food were spread out on table cloths on the ground, life was perfect.”
The Ramsey family home at 4412 Avenue B in Austin's Hyde Park neighborhood. (Photo by Jeffrey Kerr.)
Frank had located his business ideally. As more families purchased lots in Hyde Park they turned to F. T. Ramsey’s Austin Nursery for landscaping. Added to an already thriving mail-order business, this demand sustained the nursery as a major player in the Austin market for decades.
This advertisement for the Ramsey Nursery appeared in the 1922 Austin City Directory.
His passion for plants led Frank to develop several unique varieties of trees and ornamental shrubs. He wrote articles for trade journals and popular magazines. He served as president of the Texas State Horticultural Society. In his annual nursery catalog he included his own poems that extolled the beauty to be found in nature.
It’s sweet to walk out when the sun’s brightly shining,
And sweet to sit down with my friends in the shade.
My homeyard abloom with vines that are twining
Is the best place, I know, that God ever made.
As he had followed his father into the nursery business, so Frank Ramsey’s son John Murray Ramsey followed him. A 1927 newspaper advertisement for F. T. Ramsey and Son’s Austin Nursery boasted the slogan “Builders of Beauty and Bringers of Bounty.” Frank’s grandson Murray Perkins Ramsey took over the business upon his father’s death in 1944. In 1965 he halted retail sales and restricted business to landscape contracting. When he died ten years later the century-old family business died with him.
The 1945 catalog for Ramsey's Nursery. The last remant of the storage building at upper left and the office building at upper right were demolished within the past few years.
Four generations of Ramsey nurserymen, as pictured in the Spanish version of the 1911-1912 catalog. (Photo from http://www.charlottes-web.com.)
Frank Ramsey’s nursery may no longer be with us but many of the trees grown there thrive yet in Hyde Park and elsewhere. His legacy includes many unique varieties of fruit trees and ornamentals developed by his hand. He served Austin as a member of city school and hospital boards. His heirs donated the land used to create the Rosedale neighborhood’s Ramsey Park, named after Frank. But it is his love of plants and trees that is Frank Ramsey’s greatest enduring feature. The poem he composed for his tombstone highlights his passion:
It’s sweeter to wander on this earth and gather flowers,
But sweeter still the thought, some day it will be ours
In Paradise to walk with her and we loved the best
And gather fragrant fairer ones for longer hours.
Or, as one of the pithy aphorisms from a Ramsey Nursery catalog put it, “Look on beauty and shame the devil.” Over the years Frank “Fruit Tree” Ramsey gave Austinites the opportunity to do just that.
Frank Taylor Ramsey (1861-1932), Austin's "Builder of Beauty."