The peaches of New York

by U. P. Hedrick

Considering the agricultural efforts that must have been required to produce tobacco, then the medium of exchange at home and abroad, and of corn, which in Virginia was the staff of life, one wonders that fruit received the attention indicated by the following account written in 1656 of a still earlier period:[112] "The Country is full of gallant Orchards, and the fruit generally more luscious and delightful than here, witnesse the Peach and Quince, the latter may be eaten raw savourily, the former differs as much exceeds ours as the best relished apple we have doth the crabb, and of both most excellent and comfortable drinks are made." Perhaps the explanation of the popularity of fruits in Virginia is to be found in the statement that from fruits are made "most excellent and comfortable drinks." On the word of Captain John Smith we have it that "few of the upper-class planters drink any water."[113] Wine was not made in quantity in the colonies and liquors distilled from grains were not known so that thirst, in this case the mother of invention, caused the colonists to turn to peaches and apples for strong drink.

Prohibition was not preached in the colonies nor in the states until long after the Revolution and King Alcohol dominated every part of the New World. Distilling spirituous liquors from rye and corn seems not to have been practiced, if the art were known, until the beginning of the Nineteenth Century. The upper classes drank wine, but cider, perry, peach-vinegar and similar fermented fruit-juices were in common use by the middle and lower classes while the carousing population of the whole country, and there seems to have been many liberal tipplers, slaked their thirst with rum, apple-jack and peach-brandy. So much on drinking, not to point a moral or adorn a tale, but to bring out the fact that fruit-growing in America had its beginning and for two hundred years had almost its whole sustenance in the demand for strong drink. This is shown in almost every page of the horticultural literature of the times and in the laws of the colonies restricting prices and levying taxes on liquors made from fruits. Peaches were grown in quantities wherever they could be made to succeed in the colonies, not for the fruit itself, but for the making of peach-vinegar, a sort of cider, and peach-brandy, a distilled liquor.

By the end of the first hundred years in America the English seem to have brought orcharding to a fine state of perfection in Virginia, the peach succeeding then, by all accounts, rather better than now. Bruce[114] gives an admirable summing-up of orchard-conditions at the end of the period named: "In the closing years of the seventeenth century, there were few plantations in Virginia which did not possess orchards of apple and peach trees, pear, plum, apricot, and quince. The number of trees was often very large. The orchard of Robert Hide of York contained three hundred peach and three hundred apple trees. There were twenty-five hundred apple trees in the orchard of Colonel Fitzhugh. Each species of fruit was represented by many varieties; thus, of the apple, there were mains, pippins, russentens, costards, marigolds, kings, magitens and batchelors; of the pear, bergamy and warden. The quince was greater in size, but less aciduated than the English quince; on the other hand, the apricot and plum were inferior in quality to the English, not ripening in the same perfection. Cherries grew in notable abundance. So great was the productive capacity of the peach that some of the landowners planted orchards of the tree for the mere purpose of using the fruit to fatten their hogs; on some plantations, as many as forty bushels are said to have been knocked down to the swine in the course of a single season."

Treasure after treasure of experience and narrative may be found in tracing the history of the peach in Virginia but space permits only the references that best illuminate the development and culture of this fruit in America. Two accounts must serve to give an idea of the peach in Virginia in the Eighteenth Century. Robert Beverly, in his History of Virginia gives a good idea of the culture, kinds and uses of peaches in the early part of the Eighteenth Century:[115] "Peaches, nectarines and apricots, as well as plumbs and cherries, grow there upon standard trees. They commonly bear in three years from the stone, and thrive so exceedingly, that they seem to have no need of grafting or inoculating, if any body would be so good a husband; and truly I never heard of any that did graft either plum, nectarine, peach or apricot in that country, before the first edition of this book."

"Peaches and nectarines I believe to be spontaneous, somewhere or other on that continent, for the Indians have, and ever had greater variety, and finer sorts of them than the English. The best sort of these cling to the stone, and will not come off clear, which they call plum nectarines, and plum peaches or clint stones. Some of these are twelve or thirteen inches in the girt. These sorts of fruits are raised so easily there, that some good husbands plant great orchards of them, purposely for their hogs; and others make a drink of them, which they call mobby, and either drink it as cider, or distill it off for brandy. This makes the best spirit next to grapes."

The text for the only other account we have space to publish for the period under consideration is found in Washington's diary for February 22, 1760. "Laid in part, the Worm of a fence around the Peach orchard." The information in Washington's short statement is inconsequential but from it we form a pleasant picture of peach-growing at Mount Vernon. Washington owned a distillery and in another place we learn that "the distiller made every fall a good deal of apple, peach and persimmon brandy." To supply the needs of the plantation in fruit and brandy, there must have been a considerable number of trees, all seedlings, but set in straight rows, for Washington, the surveyor, would have no botch work in aligning and spacing. The fence, the worm of which Washington was laying on his twenty-eighth birthday, if typical of the times, was of split walnut-rails, laid zigzag. Eventually it became trellised with wild grapes, Virginia creepers, honeysuckles and morning-glories. The corners grew up to sassafras, brambles and other plants of the region. In spring, we picture then, the pink-petalled trees, in the peach-orchard at Mount Vernon, making obeisance to the Father of his Country as he rode the rounds of the plantation; in summer the shady shrub-grown corners of the worm-fence, sweet-scented with honeysuckle or aromatic with sassafras, furnished refreshing resting places as Washington watched his harvest; later, the orchard, voluptuous with fruit, gave gustatory promises of products to eat and drink and dazzled the eye with autumn colors of Virginia creeper, wild grape and sassafras. The peach-orchard not only served the appetite at Mount Vernon but was one of the most picturesque spots on the plantation.

Let the foregoing accounts of Smith, Bruce and Beverly suffice to give status to early peach-growing in Virginia. They apply equally well to Maryland, these neighboring colonies, it will be remembered, being called by one of our authors, "Leah and Rachel or the Two Fruitful Sisters." Of the peach in the states to the south at least a few words ought to be said.

In the discussion of Indian peaches we have had a good account of the early history of the peach in the Carolinas by Lawson. We now show the status of peach-growing in this region at a later period. In an account of South Carolina and Georgia, said to have been written by General Oglethorpe, printed in London in 1733, we find the following:[116]

"Mulberries, both black and white, are natives of this soil, and are found in the woods, as are many other sorts of fruit trees of excellent kinds, and the growth of them is surprisingly swift; for a peach, apricot, or nectarine tree will, from the stone, grow to be a bearing tree in four or five years' time."

"They have oranges, lemons, apples and pears, besides the peach and apricot mentioned before. Some of these are so delicious that whoever tastes them will despise the insipid, watery taste of those we have in England; and yet such is the plenty of them that they are given to the hogs in great quantities."