The plums of New York

by U. P. Hedrick

A search in the colonial records of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware shows no records of cultivated plums in these states until the establishment of the Bartram Botanic Garden near Philadelphia in 1728. Here John Bartram grew fruits, trees and flowers of many kinds received through exchanges of indigenous species with European correspondents. Among the plants sent over from Europe to Bartram were several varieties of plums which were propagated and distributed throughout Pennsylvania and nearby provinces. It must not be supposed, however, that the Domestica plums had not been grown in Pennsylvania previous to Bartram’s time. The plum grows fairly well in localities of this region, and without question it had been planted by the early colonists with seeds brought from across the sea. But the absence of references to the plum, where they abound to the apple, pear, peach, quince and cherry, shows that this fruit was not much cultivated by the Quakers and Swedes who settled in the three states watered by the Delaware.

In the southern colonies the Domestica plums grow but poorly, and as the early settlers of these states were chiefly concerned with tobacco and cotton, paying little attention to fruits, we should expect the plum to have been neglected. Then, too, the peach, escaped from the early Spanish settlements, grew spontaneously in many parts of the South, furnishing, with the wild plums of the region, an abundant supply of stone-fruits. Yet the plum was early introduced in several of the southern colonies.

Thus Beverly,[16] writing in 1722 of Virginia, says: “Peaches, Nectarines and Apricocks, as well as plums and cherries, grow there upon standard trees,” with the further statement that these fruits grew so exceedingly well that there was no need of grafting or inoculating them. Lawson,[17] in his history of North Carolina, written in 1714, says that the Damson, Damazeen and a large, round, black plum were the only sorts of this fruit grown in that state in 1714.

In South Carolina Henry Laurens, who should be accounted a benefactor not only of that State but of the whole country as well, about the middle of the Eighteenth Century grew in Laurens Square in the Town of Amonborough all the plants suitable to that climate that widely extended merchantile connections enabled him to procure. Thus among fruits he grew olives, limes, Alpine strawberries, European raspberries and grapes, apples, pears and plums. John Watson, one of Laurens’ gardeners, planted the first nursery in South Carolina. His plantation was laid waste in the Revolution, though it was afterwards revived by himself and his descendants and was still further continued by Robert Squib. The plum in several varieties was largely grown and distributed from this nursery.

Charleston, South Carolina, was at the beginning of the Nineteenth Century the southern center of horticultural activities and the European plum was widely distributed from here at this time. Of the several botanic gardens, really nurseries, in Charleston, one was conducted by André Michaux who was sent by the French Government in 1786 to collect American plants. Another was owned by John Champneys at St. Pauls, near Charleston, and was managed by a Mr. Williamson who grew all of the species of trees, fruits and shrubs, native and foreign, which could be procured.[18] The third of these gardens was owned by Charles Drayton at St. Andrews in which not only exotic fruits were grown but those of the region as well. The plum trees frequently mentioned in the records of the time as growing in this region came from these nurseries.

In Florida, as has been stated, the peach was introduced by the Spanish explorers, but if the plum were also planted by the Spaniards it quickly passed out with the cessation of cultivation. But later there are records[19] of this and nearly all of the fruits of temperate and sub-tropic climates having been grown at St. Augustine and Pensacola. In the remarkable colony[20] founded by Dr. Andrew Turnbull at New Smyrna, Florida, in 1763, the plum was one of the fruits cultivated. It is not probable, however, that the culture of this fruit was ever extensive in Florida as it does not thrive there.

William Bartram, son of John Bartram the founder of the Bartram Botanic Garden, set out on a botanical expedition through the Southern States in 1773, which lasted five years. He records[21] numerous observations on the horticulture of both the colonists and the Indians. At Savannah, Georgia, he found gardens furnished with all the cultivated fruit trees and flowers in variety. One of the earliest settlements made by the English in Georgia was Frederica, and here he found the peach, fig, pomegranate and other trees and shrubs growing about the ruins; though not specifically mentioned, the plum had probably been planted here with the other fruits. At the junction of the Coose and Tallapoosa rivers in Alabama, there were thriving apple trees, which had been set by the French at Pearl Island in the last named state. Between Mobile and New Orleans, Bartram found peaches, figs, grapes, plums and other fruits growing to a high degree of perfection and such also was the case on a plantation on the Mississippi in Louisiana near Baton Rouge.

These several references to plums show that this fruit was at least tried in early colonial times, but it was not until after the establishment of fruit-growing as an industry that any extensive plantings were made. Pomology really began in America, though it languished for the first half-century, at Flushing, Long Island, about 1730 with the establishment of a commercial nursery by Robert Prince, first of four proprietors. Just when this nursery, afterwards the famous Linnaean Botanic Garden, began to offer plums cannot be said, but in 1767 one of their advertisements shows that they were selling plum trees. As a possible indication that the fruit was not highly esteemed at this period, an advertisement of trees for sale from this nursery in the New York Mercury of March 14th, 1774, does not offer plums. But in 1794 the catalog of the nursery offers plums in variety. Indeed, as we shall see, William Prince had at this time taken hold of the propagation and improvement of the Domestica plums with great earnestness.

William Prince, third proprietor of the nursery founded by his grandfather says in his Treatise of Horticulture,[22] “that his father, about the year 1790 planted the pits of twenty-five quarts of Green Gage plums; these produced trees yielding fruit of every color; and the White Gage [Prince’s Imperial Gage], Red Gage and Prince’s Gage, now so well known, form part of the progeny of these plums, and there seems strong presumptive evidence to suppose that the Washington Plum was one of the same collection.” In 1828 the Prince nursery was offering for sale one hundred and forty varieties of plums which William Prince states[23] “are a selection only of the choicest kinds, in making which, the commoner fruits have been altogether rejected.” Of the kinds grown, there were over twenty thousand trees.[24] To this nursery, to William Prince and to William Robert Prince,[25] the fourth proprietor in particular, belong the credit of having given plum-growing its greatest impetus in America.

Other notable nurseries founded at the close of the Eighteenth Century, which helped to establish plum culture in America, were those of the Kenricks, of William Coxe, and of David Landreth and Son. The Kenrick Nursery was founded in 1790 at Newton, Massachusetts, by John Kenrick, under whom and his sons, William and John A., the business was continued until 1870.[26] During a large part of this period the Kenrick Nursery probably grew, imported and disposed of a greater quantity of fruit trees than any other nursery in New England. Coxe’s nursery was established in 1806, at Burlington, New Jersey, but he had been growing fruit for many years previous and was thus a pioneer pomologist before becoming a nurseryman. In his book, A View of the Cultivation of Fruit Trees, published in 1817, the first American book on pomology, he says[27] he had been “for many years actively engaged in the rearing, planting and cultivating of fruit trees on a scale more extensive than has been attempted by any other individual of this country.” The third of these nurseries, that of David Landreth and Son, was conducted in connection with the seed establishment of that family founded in Philadelphia in 1784. Their collection of fruits was among the most extensive of the time and must have forwarded the cultivation of the plum in that region.[28]