e important line of the Southern Michigan and Northern Indiana Railway.
His principal efforts in this direction have been in the Southern States.
After the war, prompted more by the desire of restoring amicable
relations than by the prospect of gain, he made large and varied
investments at the South, and did much to promote renewed business
activity. At Saginaw. Mich., he became a large lumber and salt
manufacturer. He bought much property in Michigan, and at one time owned
vast tracts in the Lake Superior region, where the most valuable mines
have since been worked. While he has been interested in bank and
manufacturing stocks, his larger investments have been in land. Much of
his pleasure has been in reclaiming waste territory and unproductive
investments, which have been abandoned by others as hopeless. The
satisfying aim of his ambition incites him to difficult undertakings,
that add to the wealth and happiness of the community, from which others
have shrunk, or in which others have made shipwreck. Besides his
stupendous achievements in telegraph and railway extension, he is
unrivaled as a farmer and seed grower, and he has placed the stamp of his
genius on these occupations, in which many have been content to work in
the well-worn ruts of their predecessors.

The seed business was commenced in Rochester thirty years ago. Later, Mr.
Sibley undertook to supply seeds of his own importation and raising and
others' growth, under a personal knowledge of their vitality and
comparative value. He instituted many experiments for the improvements of
plants, with reference to their seed-bearing qualities, and has built up
a business as unique in its character as it is unprecedented in amount.
He cultivates the largest farm in the State, occupying Howland Island, of
3,500 acres, in Cayuga County, near the Erie Canal and the New York
Central Railroad, which is largely devoted to seed culture; a portion is
used for cereals, and 500 head of cattle are kept. On the Fox Ridge farm,
through which the New York Central Railroad passes, where many seeds and
bulbs are grown, he has reclaimed a swamp of six hundred acres, making of
great value what was worthless in other hands, a kind of operation which
affords him much delight. His ownership embraces fourteen other farms in
this State, and also large estates in Michigan and Illinois.

The seed business is conducted under the firm name of Hiram Sibley & Co.,
at Rochester and Chicago, wher