Was Rev. Cathcart Related?

The Universal York blog has a nice post on the Rev. Cathcart and his garden. He was a Presbyterian minister in York at the end of the eighteenth century into the nineteenth who kept a diary, mostly on his garden. "Cathcart" must be a relatively common name, but there was a Cathcart in northwest PA who married a Harshaw.  Too lazy to doublecheck the data.


Anyway, all gardeners will recognize this sort of thing:

In late winter he planted lettuce and radishes, and triumphed March 12, 1803 that his peas had come up in 12 days. The Cathcarts feasted on asparagus each spring. In May 1821 he wrote: "Vegetation rapid--one stalk of asparagus grew in 35 hours 16 inches and at 48 hours was 19 inches.' On April 26, 1822, Cathcart cut 162 stalks of asparagus and 111 stalks on the 30th. It is hoped that the Cathcart children shared their father's enthusiasm for asparagus.

My wife exults when she can have her peas up by mid March.