“As early as 1763 the tree was very old and decayed. It was very much injured in the gale of 1804. In the gale of 1815 it was so much shattered that its recovery was considered doubtful. It was injured again in a gale about 1843. For the last fifty years it has been protected by a fence around it. In 1837 it was eighty feet high by measurement and fifty-five feet in the circumference of its branches, and does not probably vary much from these dimensions now. Two suckers have sprung up on opposite sides of the tree, which bear the same fruit as the original, proving it to be ungrafted. It stands near the site of the first mansion of the Governor, on a slope where it is somewhat sheltered from the north and north-west winds. The soil is a light loam, with a substratum of clay. Grafts taken from the old tree grow very vigorously. From a pomological point of view, the fruit is of no value. It is hardly of medium size, roundish, green, with more or less rough russet, very coarse, and soon decays.
“It may be of interest to state that the farm on which the old tree stands is again in the Endicott name, having lately been purchased by a descendant of the Governor. The tree stands in the town of Danvers originally a part of Salem.
“For further facts concerning this tree, see the Transactions of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society for 1837, and also an article by Charles M. Endicott, a descendant of the Governor, in Hovey’s Magazine of Horticulture, vol. xix, p. 254, June, 1853, from which the above account has been mainly derived. Each of these articles is illustrated with a cut of the pear.
“The Orange Pear. This tree is owned by Capt. Charles H. Allen, and stands in his yard on Hardy street, Salem. The Rev. Dr. Bentley, who died about 1820, investigated the history of this tree and found it to be then 180 years old, which would make it now 235 years old. The trunk is hollow, nine feet five inches in circumference in the smallest part near the ground; just below the limbs it is several inches more. The tree is more than forty feet high, and the limbs are supported by shores. It was grafted in the limbs, as a branch fifteen or twenty years old, shooting out several feet higher than a man’s head, produces ‘Button’ pears, and a large limb, part of which was ‘Button’ which grew out still higher up, was blown off several years ago. In the very favorable pear season of 1862 it bore thirteen and a half bushels of pears. It bears in alternate years, having produced eight and a half bushels in 1873. The brittleness of the limbs of old pear trees is well known, yet Capt. Allen, with a care worthy of imitation, gathers every pear, excepting about a dozen specimens, by hand.
“This variety was, until the introduction of the modern kinds, highly esteemed. It is above medium size, averaging fifty-six pears to the peck, globular obtuse pyriform, covered with thin russet, juicy when gathered early and ripened in the house; of pleasant flavor but rather deficient in this respect. It is ripe about the middle of September. It was considered by my father a native, and was called by him the American Orange, and after examination of the descriptions and plates, I cannot think it the same as the Orange Rouge or Orange d’Automne of Duhamel, Decaisne, and Leroy. The Hon. Paul Dudley, Esq., of Roxbury, in some ‘Observations on some of the Plants in New England with remarkable Instances of the Power of Vegetation,’ communicated to the Royal Society of London (I quote from the ‘Philosophical Transactions,’ abridged, London, 1734, Vol. VI, Part II, p. 341), says: ‘An Orange Pear Tree grows the largest, and yields the fairest fruit. I know one of them near forty Foot high, that measures six Foot and six Inches in Girt, a Yard from the Ground, and has borne thirty Bushels at a Time, and this Year I measured an Orange pear, that grew in my own Orchard, of eleven Inches round the Bulge.’
“If this is, as believed, of native origin, it is the oldest American fruit in cultivation, unless we except the Apple pear, which is probably of about the same date. This is small, oblate, of pale yellow color, ripening in August. It is quite distinct from the Poire Pomme d’Hiver, of Leroy, and I think also from the Poire Pomme d’Été, of the same author. I had supposed the variety to be extinct, but last year discovered in a garden in Salem the remnant of an old tree with a trunk four feet in diameter, and still producing fruit.
“The Orange pear tree which produced the specimens exhibited, was inherited by the present owner from his father, to whom it came from his wife. It had descended to her almost from the first settlement of Salem, but partly in the female line, so that the name of the owner sometimes changed. The house on the estate was built in 1812, having replaced one which was pulled down after standing 150 years. Within the period of a generation there were standing in Salem several trees of the Orange pear, some of which were reputed to be more than two centuries old, and all of which were undoubtedly very ancient, but they are all now gone except Capt. Allen’s, the last one having been blown down in the winter of 1874-75. I have heard a tradition that this last mentioned tree was one of several imported from England and planted in gardens at intervals on the northerly side of the principal street in Salem. This tradition may or may not be true with regard to these trees, but it would not apply to the Allen tree, for the height at which it was grafted forbids the idea that it was imported from England in a grafted state.
“The Anthony Thacher Pear. This tree stands near the meadows about a fourth of a mile north of the Universalist church in Yarmouth, where Anthony Thacher’s house formerly stood. It is a large, rotten-hearted old tree. It has lost nearly all its old branches, but has thrown out many new ones. The late Judge George Thacher, who, if now living, would be 120 years old, inquired into its history, and made the matter certain that it was planted by Anthony Thacher about 1640. It is believed to be a grafted tree, as it contracts two or three inches at about a foot and a half from the ground. It is taken good care of and will probably last many years. It is now owned by the heirs of James C. Hallet. There are other trees of the same kind in the vicinity, but their age cannot be proved.
“The fruit is of medium size, ovate pyriform, green, changing to yellow at maturity, of tolerable quality, ripening early in September. For the specimens exhibited, as well as the facts above noted, I am indebted to the kindness of Amos Otis, Esq., of Yarmouth Port, who had made the local history of Cape Cod his study for the last fifty years, and who died much lamented on the 19th of October last.
“Anthony Thacher came from England in 1635, and after residing in Marshfield, removed to Yarmouth in 1639, being one of the three original grantees of land in that town. The late Dr. James Thacher, of Plymouth, author of the ‘American Orchardist’ (published in 1821), was a descendant of Anthony in the sixth generation. Anthony Thacher accompanied his cousin, Rev. John Avery, in that disastrous voyage of which Whittier has perpetuated the memory in his ballad, ‘The Swan Song of Parson Avery.’ Anthony Thacher got ashore on Thacher’s Island, the headland of Cape Ann, and gave name to the island. (See Whittier’s ‘Home Ballads’ and Young’s ‘Chronicles of the First Planters of Massachusetts,’ p. 485.)