Because the most conservative statement of yield from our pecan units sounds too good to be true, we have found that it was necessary to urge prospective purchasers to investigate every phase of the company.

For this reason, the men who have invested most largely are always the men most capable of getting at the real facts—and acting on their own knowledge—manufacturers, merchants, bankers, lawyers, physicians, dentists, salesmen, accountants, teachers, preachers, farmers and others of the most intelligent classes are becoming owners of orchard units because their investigation has shown:

First. That the Company is financially strong—a $215,000 corporation, which received its charter in 1911 from the Superior Court of Georgia. Subsequent to the incorporation, the Company purchased what its officers believed to be the finest plantation in Calhoun County for the growth and development of Paper Shell Pecans. The plantation with recent additions, all located around Albany, Georgia, totals nearly 7,400 acres of land, which has been or is to be planted to pecans. From the date of the purchase the Company has expended large sums of money annually upon the development of the property and each passing year sees a greater expenditure upon property development and permanent property improvement. Latest approved methods are sought and applied; and notwithstanding all this the Calhoun County Plantation is subject to a lien of only twenty-seven thousand dollars, the Dougherty County Plantation to only five thousand dollars, the Mitchell County Property to only ten thousand dollars. For the purpose of safeguarding the unit owners a special trustee was appointed whose duty it is to see that the company’s receipts from orchard sales are appropriated to the development of the orchards sold, the planting of new orchards and the reduction of the lien until the same shall have been extinguished entirely. This result will be achieved before the Company shall have conveyed one-half of its orchards—a unique record among modern business concerns. The Trustee plan was specially devised for the protection of Unit buyers, and we know of no Company that has devised a safer plan. It is the result of the most careful consideration given in the interest of the unit buyer. When you are safe, we are safe also.

The books of the Keystone Pecan Co. are audited quarterly by Certified Public Accountants, Vollum, Fernley & Vollum, of Philadelphia, New York and Chicago.

Second. That the orchards are under capable supervision. The active officers of the Company were close students of pecan growing for years previous to 1911.

Realizing the fact that the making of profits depends in part on the skill of the orchardist, the Company has employed educated, practical horticulturists who have large pecan groves of their own, where they earned reputations as orchardists that secured them highest recommendations of well known authorities. The fact that such men accepted positions with the Keystone Pecan Company is a tribute to the possibilities of these plantations.

For resident plantation managers they chose pecan men of excellent reputation, who had demonstrated exceptional ability in handling the problem in all its phases.

Third. That the Company has the character of soil, the kind of budded trees, and the shipping facilities needed to fill the demand for better grade pecans which comes from all over America and abroad. The immediate district in which our plantations are located is the natural home of the pecan. We have an excellent warehouse site on the Central of Georgia Railroad, at Bermuda Station, a passenger station and warehouse on the Dougherty County Plantation, and all portions of our plantations are favorably located for shipping.

Fourth. The Company has demonstrated also that its management is capable and efficient. Every one is interested heartily in the success of the orchards. All are men of unquestioned honor and ability; as inquiry in their home cities will prove. They are, as the following pages show, men old enough and experienced enough to capably manage the business, yet young enough to retain their business capacity and vigor for many years to come.

Fifth. That a marketing organization has been developed which has successfully sold paper shell pecans all over the world, and that the demand for these superior pecans far exceeds the supply.

“The Supply Will Never Equal The Demand”

From the former President of the Albany, Ga., Chamber of Commerce, J. A. Davis, we hear: “The strongest evidence of my belief in the future of this wonderful development is that I have just planted a grove of one hundred acres. I know of no agricultural or horticultural industry which, with proper attention, holds promise of returns half so large as the pecan in Southwest Georgia. Both our soil and our climate are peculiarly adapted for the production of the finest nuts in most abundant yield. These nuts are the size and quality which make them absolutely the finest nut on the market. They will always command a fancy price because the supply will never equal the demand.”

ELAM G. HESS

President of the Keystone Pecan Company

and Pennsylvania State Vice President of the National Nut Grower’s Association, is a resident of Manheim, Lancaster Co., Pa., and is well and favorably known, not only throughout Lancaster County, but in many parts of America. Mr. Hess, who is forty-three years of age, worked on his father’s farm in Lancaster County until he was eighteen years of age. He taught public school for five years, prepared for college at Perkiomen Seminary, graduating in 1902, and in 1906 graduated from Gettysburg College. He had acted as a traveling salesman during his summer vacations for Underwood & Underwood, New York, and had built such a reputation for fair dealing among the best class of trade that he was appointed field manager, along with Mr. Thomas F. Miller. After serving in this capacity for two years, he was sent to England to represent the same company.

In his travels he was impressed with the opportunities which existed for finer grade pecan nuts, and began to make an exhaustive study of their production and their selling possibilities—one result of which has been the formation of the Keystone Pecan Company.

Mr. Hess devotes his entire time to the success of the Company, and is an acknowledged authority on pecan nuts, their growth and their marketing.

Reference: Keystone National Bank, Manheim, Pa.

L. B. Coddington

First Vice President of the Keystone Pecan Company

is a resident of Murray Hill, New Jersey, where he has been successfully engaged in the Wholesale Rose Growing Industry for twenty-four years. The cut flowers from his greenhouses are sold wholesale in New York City and Brooklyn and nearby towns. He is well known as one of the largest rose growers in the United States.

Note Mr. Coddington’s letter on page 59.

Reference: Summit Trust Co., Summit, N. J.

Enos H. Hess

Second Vice President of the Keystone Pecan Company

lives on the farm on which he was reared—R. F. D. No. 3, Lancaster, Pa. He is 50 years of age. He is noted as a truck farmer, selling his own products to Lancaster City consumers at famous Lancaster Markets, which he attends twice a week.

Formerly a director of the Ideal Cocoa Company, Lititz, Pa.

Reference: Farmers Trust Co., Lancaster, Pa.

Willis G. Kendig

Director of the Keystone Pecan Company, and Corporation Counsel

is the well known corporation lawyer of Lancaster. He is widely known as a lawyer of keen discrimination regarding commercial enterprises, and the fact that he and so many associates from the richest agricultural county in the United States place their money in this Georgia pecan orchard is evidence of its worth. Mr. Kendig is 45 years of age; the son of a doctor of Salunga, Pa., who also enjoyed a most excellent reputation in his field.

Reference: Fulton National Bank, Lancaster, Pa.

M. G. Esbenshade

Secretary and Treasurer of the Keystone Pecan Company

lives on the farm in Lancaster Co. on which he spent his boyhood days. (R. F. D. No. 3.) He is noted throughout the county and beyond as a successful grower of tobacco. He is 45 years of age, a graduate of Lancaster Business College, a director of the Farmers’ Association of Lancaster County, one of the founders of the Agricultural Trust Co. of Lancaster, of which he is a director.

In his extensive travels throughout the United States he has visited nearly every State. Mr. Esbenshade has received valuable first hand information on the growing and marketing of large food crops—especially nuts. In 1895 he traveled widely in Florida, paying special attention to orange and citrus fruit groves and pineapple fields, and in 1897 he worked with the large growers of wheat in Dakota and California and in the apple orchards of Colorado. In 1905 he made another trip south, studying the groves along the Gulf Coast in which wild and seedling pecans were raised, since which time he has made several trips throughout the South with special reference to Paper Shell Pecans.

Reference: The Agricultural Trust Company of Lancaster, Pa.

B. L. Johnson

Director of the Keystone Pecan Company

resides at Allentown, Pa., and has been Sales Manager for that district—embracing important counties in Pennsylvania and New Jersey—for the Burroughs Adding Machine Company, a $16,500,000 corporation, which is known all over the world. Mr. Johnson is known throughout the Allentown district as a self-made man, who has, at an early age, held positions of trust and responsibility because of his earnest and efficient work and his remarkable business judgment.

Reference: Penn Counties Trust Co.

Joseph Seitz

Director of the Keystone Pecan Company

is a native of Lancaster Co., residing at Mountville, Pa., formerly a farmer, now a dealer in leaf tobacco.

Reference: Northern National Bank of Lancaster, Pa.

From a commercial standpoint the pecan is by far the most important of native nuts. Its smooth shell, attractive appearance, abundant production, plump kernels, which are usually extracted with ease, and high quality are largely accountable for its popularity. Page 23, Bulletin 160, U. S. Dept. of Agriculture.

Thomas F. Miller

Sales Manager of the Keystone Pecan Company

is 46 years of age. A graduate of State Normal School and also of Lebanon Valley College, and taught public school three years. He has had long, successful experience in selling, and was sixteen years in the employ of Underwood & Underwood, and was associated with Elam G. Hess, President of the Company, as Field Manager, appointing and drilling hundreds of successful salesmen for their Travel System. He resides in Allentown, Pa.; member of the Chamber of Commerce, of Allentown, and is favorably known as a man of high ability and good reputation.

Reference: Merchants National Bank.

A. S. Perry, Field Secretary, Keystone Pecan Co.

A. S. Perry, Field Secretary of the Keystone Pecan Company, is not only one of the best known pecan experts in America, but is also thoroughly in touch with the best pecan land in Southwest Georgia, of which he is a native. For practically a hundred years his family has lived or owned land in Calhoun County—his grandfather’s farm being only ten miles from our Calhoun County Plantation.

Was educated at the Southwest Georgia Agricultural and Military College (a branch of the State University) and also at Emory University. In addition to his general and agricultural education, he studied law and was admitted to practice in all courts of Georgia—specializing in Commercial Law.

Has had much practical experience in pecan growing—orchards near Cuthbert, established by Mr. Perry, are recognized as of such high grade that his services have been in great demand for establishing new orchards, top working old seedling orchards to paper shell pecans and similar expert horticultural work. In addition to the National Nut Growers’ Association, of which he has been elected secretary for the fourth successive term, he is a member of the Georgia-Florida Pecan Growers’ Association, Georgia Horticultural Society and Alabama Horticultural Society, and is in demand as a speaker on pecan culture before these organizations.

Reference: Georgia Bank and Trust Co., Cuthbert, Georgia.