Lue Gim Gong

Lue Gim Gong was born near Canton, China in 1860.  At the age of 12 he sailed to America with a number of other boys, and made his way to Massachusetts. He was taken in by a kind Sunday school teacher named Fanny Burlingame, who nursed him back to health after he fell ill with a deadly fever.

Lue Gim Gong with his pet rooster March

Bill Dreggors Folk Historian told of how Lue came to have this well trained rooster.  "Lue saw a hawk flying over head and in its tallons was March as a newborn chick.  Lue clapped his hands and the hawk dropped him.  Lue tended him back to health and trained him to do many things, one of which was to tuck his head under his wings when there were prayers to be said."

Lue Gim Gong arrived in DeLand 1886 where he lived with Fanny's sister, and began to care for the family orange grove. After the great freeze in 1894, Fanny came down to DeLand.  Leu and Fanny spent many years together caring for the trees and flowers he propagated and it was in DeLand that he began a series of horticultural experiments. 

In 1911 he was awarded the Silver Wilder Medal for his outstanding contributions to horticulture.  Some of his horticultural accomplishments were a fifteen foot high cherry currant developed with grape pollen, and a peach that would ripen for Thanksgiving.  The Lue Gim Gong "Perfumed Grapefruit measured 21 inches around.  He also developed the late growing "Lue Gim Gong Orange"

 

 

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