The Pears of New York. U. P. Hedrick
laid out orchards in the vicinity of New York City. After the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, many Huguenots fled to America. In 1689, some of these French emigrés settled at New Rochelle, New York, and on Long Island. The trees grown by the Huguenots were usually grafted, the parent plants having been brought from France. No doubt, it was from these importations that White Doyenné, Brown Beurré, St. Germain, Virgouleuse, and many other old French sorts that seem to have been in America from time immemorial came.
However, the pear, in common with other fruits, was more largely grown from seeds in these pioneer days than from buds or grafts. Fruits were known and grown as species and not as varieties almost wholly in America until the nineteenth century. The sale of budded or grafted trees began in New York, so far as records show, with the establishment of a nursery at Flushing, Long Island, in 1730, by Robert Prince. This nursery afterwards became the famous Linnaean Botanic Garden. At what date Prince began to offer grafted pears for sale cannot now be ascertained, but advertisements appearing in 1767, 1771, and 1790 offer named varieties at these dates. The following is a list of pears offered by the Princes in 1771:[11]
| Bergamot | Russelet |
| Catharine | Early sugar |
| Vergalieu | Baurre vert |
| July | Winter baurre |
| Monsier Jean | Baurre de roy |
| Trom valette | Green chissel |
| French primative | Swan’s egg |
| Winter bon cretan | Colmar |
| Easter bergamot | Cressan |
| Amber | Spanish bon cretan |
| Chaumontelle | Large bell |
| Citron de camis | La Chassaire |
| Summer bergamot | Hampden’s bergamot |
| Autumn bergamot | Doctor Uvedale’s St. Germain |
| Amozelle | Large winter, weighs near two pounds |
| Lent St. Germain | Pear wardens |
| Brocaus bergamot | Empress |
| Winter bergamot | Large summer baking |
| Jargonelle | The black pear of Worcester or Parkinson’s warden |
| Roussilon | The skinless |
| Cuissemadam | Green catharine |
Coincident with the establishment of nurseries selling named varieties of pears another event of prime importance to pear-growers occurred. Pear-blight became epidemic in the orchards along the Hudson, and while it must have been noticed before, its ravages at this time brought it prominently to the attention of pear-growers. The disease seems to have been first mentioned by William Denning who described it in the Transactions of the Society for the Promotion of Agriculture for 1794 (pt. 2, p. 219) in an article on the decay of apple-trees. Denning says that he first saw the malady in orchards on the highlands of the Hudson in 1780 attacking apples, pears, and quinces. He gives a good description of the disease, but says it is caused by a borer in the trunk which he found after much labor. From Denning’s discovery until Burrill a hundred years later, in 1882, discovered a cause of the disease and suggested a preventive, every treatise on the pear speculates on the cause and cure of pear-blight, a disease which has been and is the terror and despair of growers of this fruit.
Philadelphia was another center of pear-growing in the early settlements of the country. The Quakers, settling in Pennsylvania in 1682, planted all of the hardy fruits; which were soon, as we are several times told, a great asset to the colony. No results worthy of note seem to have come from these early plantings until nearly a half century later when John Bartram[12] founded, in 1728, what became a famous botanic garden. The Bartram Botanic Garden became almost at once the clearing house for native and foreign fruits and plants, and to it came several varieties of pears for distribution throughout the colonies. Here, the first variety of the pear to originate in America of which we have definite record, came into existence. This was the Petre pear raised by Bartram, from seeds sent him from England by Lady Petre. The seed was planted in 1735 near the stone house which Bartram built with his own hands. The tree still stands, somewhat stricken with its two centuries, but withal a noble specimen seemingly capable of breasting the blows of age for many years to come.
The pear industry of the eastern United States is confined to the regions in which the history of this fruit has been traced, and most if not all of the varieties that originated in this country until the middle of the nineteenth century came from the importations to these French, Dutch, and English settlements. There is little profit, therefore, in attempting to trace further the history of pear-culture on the Atlantic seaboard in colonial times. Pears were grown in the states south of Pennsylvania, for many references are found in the colonial records of the southern states, but they bring out no new facts to illuminate the history of this fruit in America. The Quakers and Swedes grew pears in the regions watered by the Delaware, and the English in Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina all planted pears with the other hardy fruits only to find that they so quickly succumbed to unfavorable climate and the blight as to be unprofitable. The Bergamy and Warden, in particular, are mentioned as varieties of this fruit grown in the colonial period of the southern colonies.
Perhaps one, at least, of these lesser centers of pear-growing somewhat to the south of the pear regions in which there are now commercial plantations should receive notice. In 1794, William Coxe,[13] Burlington, New Jersey, began planting experimental orchards. Coxe was acquainted with the leading pomologists of Europe and his own country, and collected the best varieties of tree-fruits to be found in the United States, England, and France. In 1817, he published his View of the Cultivation of Fruit Trees, and the Management of Orchards and Cider, etc., the first American book on pomology. This pioneer pomologist described 65 varieties of pears, most of which he had grown at one time or another on his own place, and names 21 other sorts that were grown in his and neighboring states. Coxe seems to have been the first nurseryman to import new varieties from the Old World. To Coxe, more than to any other one man, the regions adjacent to the Delaware are indebted for the early development of fruit-growing both for pleasure and profit, and the whole country is indebted to him for the introduction of many fine fruits.
A new phase in the history of the pear began soon after the Revolutionary war. Until this time, and until well into the next century, tree-fruits were nearly all seedlings. The pears of the country until as late as 1830 were for most part seedlings, the fruits varying greatly in size, shape, color, and flavor. According to the accounts of the times, the product was so hard of flesh