[Andrew Jackson]. American landscape-gardener, born in Newburgh, NY, on the 31st of October 1815. He aided his brother in the nursery established by their father, and determined to be a landscape-gardener. In 1838 he built a mansion which he considered the true style of a country home, and soon became an authority on the embellishment of country places. In 1850 he visited England and wrote descriptions of its country seats, and on his return in 1851 was appointed to lay out the public grounds at Washington. He was engaged in this work when he sailed from his home in Newburgh in the steamer Henry Clay, which took fire on the Hudson River, New York, and he was drowned in his efforts to save other people, July 28, 1852. Mr. Downing published a Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape-Gardening (1841); Cottage Residences (1842); and Fruits and Fruit Trees of America (1845). He was editor of the Horticulturist, a monthly magazine published in Albany, to which he contributed papers which were collected and issued as Rural Essays (1854).
