MSS 0634 - Conard-Pyle Company Records

Located in West Grove, Pennsylvania, the Conard-Pyle Company was originally organized in 1897 by Alfred S. Conard and A. Morris Jones as a mail-order nursery and seed business specializing in own-root roses grown from cuttings and sold while still small. Robert Pyle joined the company in 1898 and purchased control in it after Conard's death in 1907. Pyle rapidly developed the business with the popular sale of two-year-old field-grown plants on grafted roots, which brought higher prices and yielded plants that would bloom in the first year of purchase. Pyle became an internationally known nurseryman and authority on roses, serving in leadership positions on the American Rose Society, the National Association of Plant Patent Owners, the American Association of Botanical Gardens and Arboretums, the American Horticultural Society, and other organizations. The most famous rose introduced by Pyle is the Peace rose, patented in 1943 from the work of the French hybridizer Francis Meilland. Nearly every new rose today is descended from the Peace rose.