Alexander W. Livingston was one of the most important vegetable seedsmen in American history and is often regarded as having given a greater contribution to the development of the tomato as a cultivar than any other personage in history.

Alexander Livingston was born in Reynoldsburg, Ohio on October 14th, 1821; the son of John Livingston and Mary Graham Livingston, who had moved to Ohio from Cambridge, New York in 1815.

At the age of twenty-one, in 1842, Livingston began working for a local seed grower in Reynoldsburg; his first steps into a field which he would devote the rest of his life to. Two years later, in 1844, he married Matilda Dickey Graham. Over their next 46 years of marriage, the couple had 10 children, including seven sons, several of which would later follow in their father's footsteps. The year that Livingston was married, he leased a piece of land and began farming for himself. In 1852, after a lot of hard work, he was finally able to purchase his own land in Reynoldsburg, Ohio.

In 1856, Alexander Livingston entered his first venture into the commercial seed business with the purchase of 400 consignment boxes (i.e. retail seed racks) from the Buckeye Garden Seed Company. Over the next decade, Livingston did well enough as a seedsman that he was able to expand his operation. In 1864 and 1865, he was able to build a new house and to also consolidate his seed and breeding operations into a single location at Reynoldsburg.

It was about this same time that Alexander Livingston began to have his first real success as a tomato breeder. Prior to Livingston's work, tomatoes had been mostly a vegetable with heavy ribbing, hard cores and often had hollow seed cavities. Livingston's goal was to produce a strain of tomato that was smooth skinned, uniform in size, fleshy and that excelled in flavor - all the things that are loved and often taken for granted about tomatoes today. For many years, Livingston had attempted to meet these goals through the hybridization of existing varieties, but met with little success until he began selecting seed from the individual plants which came the nearest to his aspirations. When put into motion, this process required only about five years to yield the wanted result.

In 1870, Alexander Livingston released what is regarded to be the first ever perfectly uniform smooth skinned tomato introduced to the United States. This indeterminate tomato variety with heavy foliage was a producer of deep scarlet-red fruit that matured at about 75 days after transplant. Prior to this, nobody in the United States had seen a tomato quite like it before. Livingston called this new variety “Paragon”, which was the first of some thirty-one tomato varieties that Livingston and his descendents introduced to the public between 1870 and 1941. Other Livingston introductions included:

Acme (1875), Perfection (1880), Golden Queen (1882), Favorite (1883), Beauty (1886), Potato Leaf (1887), Stone (1889), Royal Red (1892), Gold Ball (1892), Buckeye State (1893), Aristocrat (1893), Large Rose Peach (1893), Honor Bright (1897), Dwarf Yellow Prince (1898), Magnus (1900), Aristobright (1901), Royal Colors (1901), Dandy Dwarf (1901), Multicolor (1901), Princess (1901), Grandus (1901), Dwarf Stone (1902), Dwarf Purple (1903), Globe (1905), Hummer (1907), Coreless (1908), Manyfold (1917), Rosy Morn (1923), Giant Oxheart (1926), Hansing’s Improved Wilt-Resistant Marvel (1927), New Yellow Oxheart (1929), Ohio Red (1929), Ideal (1930), Main Crop Pink (1941).
 

In 1875 and 1876, an economic crash destroyed many businesses in the United States, including the Buckeye Garden Seed Company owned by Livingston. The Buckeye Company went bankrupt and was soon dissolved, but Alexander's third son, Robert Livingston (born 1849) formed a new entity. The new company was named the "A.W. Livingston's Son Co." Where as the old Buckeye Garden Seed Company had made its way by selling only through retail stores in seed boxes, Robert Livingston expanded into a much larger business by printing seed catalogues and advertising in newspapers and magazines.

By 1880, the A.W. Livingston's Sons Co. had grown so large that the company moved from Reynoldsburg to Columbus, Ohio. Alexander Livingston moved to Des Moines, Iowa where he bought the farm of Robert Robertson, whom had been the original owner of the Buckeye Garden Seed Company. Alexander's plan was to relocate the business to Des Moines, but the company had done so well under Robert Livingston's direction in Columbus that the plan to move the main office was abandoned.

A decade later, in 1890, Livingston's wife passed away and Alexander moved back to Ohio, leaving his Iowa division in the charge of his son, Josiah Livingston. In Ohio, he began work on the writing of his memoirs. Published in 1893, his book, "Livingston and the Tomato" was a work which was part biographical, as well as part practical. Besides documenting his work and methods, the book also contained over 60 different tomato recipes. The book is still in print over 110 later.

In 1898, the A.W. Livingston's Sons Company was again changed under Robert's direction and was incorporated as the Livingston Seed Company Inc.

On November 11th, 1898, Alexander W. Livingston passed on into the Garden of Memory at the age of 77 years. During his lifetime, he devoted over a half century to breeding and improving the tomato as a food crop. He is interred at Green Lawn Cemetery in Columbus, Ohio.

Of the thirty one tomato varieties introduced by Alexander W. Livingston and his descendents between the years of 1870 and 1941, at least thirteen of those varieties are believed to be extinct today, while many others exist in name only, having undergone cross breeding and poor selection which has changed them from their original intention.

With this in mind, it makes it all the more important for gardeners, and especially those in the United States, to take up the Livingston flag by helping to insure that the remaining varieties of Livingston tomatoes are preserved for future generations and do not cease to exist on this earth.

Livingston and the Tomato
by A. W. Livingston, Andrew F. Smith
Amazon price: $19.95

A reprint, with a new foreword and appendix, of a volume first published in 1893 by A.W. Livingston (1821-1898), an Ohio tomato seedsman described as the best-known developer of tomato varieties of his era. His work contains descriptions and drawings of the tomatos he developed, as well as over 60 tomato recipes. Includes an appendix of 19th-century tomato varieties, including where to obtain heirloom seeds today.