The cherries of New York

by U. P. Hedrick

There now remains for the history of the cherry but to sketch its introduction and culture in North America, an undertaking that can be done briefly and to the point, for the data are abundant, recent and reliable. Here, too, accounts of the origin of varieties and the development of the cherry may be looked for in the chapters which comprise the main part of the book.

CHERRIES IN AMERICA

The cherry was one of the first fruits planted in the fields cleared and enriched by our hardy American ancestry. From Canada to Florida the colonists, though of several nationalities and those from one nation often representing several quite distinct classes, were forced alike to turn at once to the cultivation of the soil as a means of subsistence. And while in all of the colonies the early settlers must have been busily engaged in the cultivation of cereals for the staff of life, in the South in growing cotton and tobacco for money and for purposes of barter, in the North in harvesting forest and fish products for bartering; yet the historians of the colonies notice so often and describe so fully and with such warmth of feeling the vegetables, flowers and fruits in the orchards and gardens of the New World that it is certain that the ground was tilled not only as a means of subsistence but because the tillers loved the luxuries of the land.

What fruit better adapted to the uses of colonists than the cherry? It possesses in a high degree, especially the Sour Cherry, the power of adaptation to new environment and thrives under a greater variety of conditions than any other of our fruits unless it be the apple, which it at least equals in this respect. The cherry is easily propagated; it comes in bearing early and bears regularly; of all fruits it requires least care—gives the greatest returns under neglect; and the product is delectable and adapted to many purposes. We shall expect, then, in examining the early records of fruit-growing in America to find the cherry one of the first planted and one of the most widely disseminated of fruits.

CHERRIES PLANTED BY THE FRENCH IN AMERICA

While written records are lacking, the plantations of old trees and the development of cherry culture indicate that the French early planted cherries in Nova Scotia, Cape Breton, Prince Edward Island and in the early settlements on the St. Lawrence River. The cherry is a favorite fruit of the French and the venerable trees that survived on the sites of their settlements when the English came into possession of Canada are proof sufficient that the émigrés from Provence or Normandy, fruit districts of France from which many French settlers came, brought with them seeds of the cherry with those of other fruits. Peter Kalm in his Travels into North America in 1771,[24] records the very general culture of all the hardy fruits in Canada and leaves the impression that such had been the case from the first settlements.

CHERRIES IN NEW ENGLAND

The cherry came to New England with the first settlers. This we are told in all the records of early New England in which the conditions of the country are described and of it we have confirmatory proof in many enormous cherry trees, Sweet and Sour, both about ancient habitations and as escapes from cultivation in woods, fields and fence rows, all pointing to the early cultivation of this fruit. The early records are very specific. Thus, to quote a few out of an embarrassment of references: Francis Higginson writing in 1629, after naming the several other fruits then under cultivation in Massachusetts, notes that the Red Kentish is the only cherry cultivated.[25] In the same year, the 16th of March, 1629, a memorandum of the Massachusetts Company shows that "Stones of all sorts of fruites, as peaches, plums, filberts, cherries, pear, aple, quince kernells" were to be sent to New England.[26]

These seeds, provided by the home company with forethought of the need of orchards in the colony, evidently produced fruit trees sufficient to supply both hunger and thirst; for John Josselyn, who made voyages to New England in 1638, 1639 and 1663, writing of "New England's Rarities Discovered," says:[27] "Our fruit Trees prosper abundantly, Apple-trees, Pear-trees, Quince-trees, Cherry-trees, Plum-trees, Barberry-trees. I have observed with admiration, that the Kernels sown or the Succors planted produce as fair and good fruit, without grafting, as the tree from whence they were taken: the Countrey is replenished with fair and large Orchards. It was affirmed by one Mr. Woolcut (a magistrate in Connecticut Colony) at the Captains Messe (of which I was) aboard the Ship I came home in, that he made Five hundred Hogsheads of Syder out of his own Orchard in one year. Syder is very plentiful in the Countrey, ordinarily sold for ten shillings a Hogshead.

"The Quinces, Cherries, Damsons, set the Dames a work, Marmalad and preserved Damsons are to be met with in every house. It was not long before I left the Countrey that I made Cherry wine, and so may others, for there are good store of them both red and black. Their fruit trees are subject to two diseases, the Meazels, which is when they are burned and scorched with the Sun, and lowsiness, when the woodpeckers jab holes in their bark: the way to cure them when they are lowsie is to bore a hole in the main root with an Augur, and pour in a quantity of Brandie or Rhum, and then stop it up with a pin made of the same Tree."