As early as 1641, a nursery had been started in Massachusetts and was selling among other trees those of the cherry. Troublesome pests had made their appearance, too, as may be seen from the following letter, probably from the first American nurseryman. The letter is written by George Fenwith of Saybrook, Connecticut, under date of May 6, 1641,[28] to Governor John Winthrop, Jr.

"I haue receaued the trees yow sent me, for which I hartily thanke yow. If I had any thing heare that could pleasure yow, yow should frely command it. I am prettie well storred with chirrie & peach trees, & did hope I had had a good nurserie of aples, of the aples yow sent me last yeare, but the wormes have in a manner distroyed them all as they came vp. I pray informe me if yow know any way to preuent the like mischiefe for the future."

These early plantations of cherries in New England were undoubtedly grown from seed; for buds, cions and trees could not have been imported unless the latter were brought over potted out as was not commonly done until a century and a half later—at least, the records make mention of seeds and not of trees as was the case just before and after the Revolutionary War. A statement left by one of the Chief Justices of Massachusetts, Paul Dudley, living at Roxbury, at as late a date as 1726, indicates that varieties were few. In a paper in the Philosophical Transactions[29] on agricultural conditions in Massachusetts, among many other interesting things, Justice Dudley says:

"Our apples are without doubt as good as those of England, and much fairer to look to, and so are the pears, but we have not got all the sorts. Our peaches do rather excel those of England, and then we have not the trouble or expence of walls for them; for our peach trees are all standards, and I have had in my own garden seven or eight hundred fine peaches of the Rare-ripes, growing at a time on one tree. Our people, of late years, have run so much upon orchards, that in a village near Boston, consisting of about forty families, they made near three thousand barrels of cyder. This was in the year 1721. And in another town of two hundred families, in the same year I am credibly informed they made near ten thousand barrels. Our peach trees are large and fruitful, and bear commonly in three years from the stone. Our common cherries are not so good as the Kentish cherries of England, and we have no Dukes or Heart cherries, unless in two or three gardens."

CHERRIES IN NEW YORK

Though settled at about the same time and having a more congenial climate, New York made progress in fruit-growing more slowly than Massachusetts. The early Dutch settlers in New York were transient traders and not home makers. Actual settlement with homes in view did not begin until after the historical bargain in which thrifty Peter Minuit had acquired Manhattan Island for $24.00 and the country became New Amsterdam. But troublesome times followed under the rule of Minuit, Wouter Van Twiller and Kieft, quarrels and actual war, or the fear of it, with colonists to the north and south as well as with the savages, preventing the planting of orchards and farms until in 1647 when the reins of government were taken in hand by Peter Stuyvesant.

Governor Stuyvesant was a farmer as well as a soldier and there is something in history and much in tradition of the Bowery Farm, which flourished on the site of the present Bowery in New York. This farm was planted and tended by "Peter, the Headstrong" when he was not disputing with his burgomasters, watching the Yankees and fighting Swedes and Indians. The orchards and gardens, according to all accounts, were remarkably fine and were kept in a high state of cultivation. Stuyvesant founded the farm during the stormy times of his governorship but did not live on it until the English took possession of New Amsterdam in 1664 when he retired to the land and devoted the eighteen remaining years of his life to agriculture. From the neighboring colonies and from abroad he brought many fruits, flowers, farm and truck crops. Fruits came to him also from Holland and were disseminated from his orchard up the Hudson.

The cherry was one of the fruits much grown by the Dutch. It would be wearisome and would serve little purpose even to attempt a cursory review of the literature of colonial days in New York showing the spread and the extent of fruit culture by the Dutch. Travel up the Hudson and its branches was easy and within a century after the settlement of New York by the Dutch, cherries were not only cultivated by the whites, according to the records of travelers, naturalists and missionaries, but were rudely tilled by the Indians.

For a long time after its introduction in New York, the cherry, in common with other fruits, was grown as a species—varieties and budded or grafted trees were probably not known. Fruit-growing as an industry began in New York and in America, with the establishment of a nursery at Flushing, Long Island, in 1730, by Robert Prince, founder of the nursery which afterwards became the famous Linnæan Botanic Garden. At what date this nursery began to offer named cherries for sale cannot be said but advertisements appearing in 1767, 1774 and 1794 show that budded or grafted named cherries were being offered for sale by the Princes. In 1804, William Prince, third proprietor of the famous Flushing nursery, prepared a list of the named cherries then under cultivation in America for Willich's Domestic Encyclopaedia, an English work which was being edited and made "applicable to the present situation of the United States" by Dr. James Mease. The following is Prince's list:[30]