John Theodore Scheepers

John Theodore Scheepers was born in Arnhem in the Netherlands on January 20, 1878, son of Johannes Theodore Scheepers and Anna Berendina Carolina van Heauman.

In 1897, John Scheepers came to America at the age of nineteen, quite a bold and adventurous undertaking for a young Dutch man at that time. On the boat, he met a Dutch bulb exporter who offered him the position of American representative of his firm.

ohn Scheepers became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1905. According to Mr. Harry T. Burn of Niota, Tennessee, the great nephew of Rose Dorothy Heywood, his beautiful and charming Aunt Rose met John T. Scheepers while attending social gatherings in Washington, D.C. She was born in Troy, Ohio on June 22, 1885, and raised in Boston, Massachusetts. Methodist Minister Charles A. Littlefield officiated their 1910 marriage in Lynne, Massachusetts. In the following years, according to Mr. Burn, the Scheepers moved to a well-appointed residence at 173 Riverside Drive in New York City. The couple summered at a cottage that they had built in the middle of Benjamin Cottrell`s Fox Hill Farm in Jamestown, Rhode Island. Mr. Burn remarked that it was referred to as `Rose`s Cottage` by the family. Benjamin Cottrell was the husband of Mrs. Rose Scheepers` sister, Agnes Heywood Cottrell. This photograph of Mrs. John T. Scheepers appeared in the 1929 Beauty from Bulbs catalog with the caption, "Natural Beauty at Paradou".

Tulipa batalinii Red Gem