How About Them Apples?
How about them apples?
Last October our family came bearing gifts, a bag of apple cider donuts and a jar of applesauce from an orchard in Red Hook, NY. The label on the applesauce gave a brief history of the variety of apple used. It was an “heirloom” – Jonathan – resulting in an attractive rosy colored sauce.
It was one of the types of apples I grew up with -- Jonathan, Baldwin, Cortland, Northern Spy. A relative in the Swank lineage in a rural part of Pennsylvania had started a commercial apple orchard in 1919, now in its fourth generation. I loved visiting it.
That jar of applesauce started me wondering about the apple business in North Hampton. Where were the major growers in town? What kinds of apples did they grow? What was their market?
From Evelyn Philbrook Squires’ and Orace Moulton’s reminiscences, we know that many property owners had some apple trees. Apples, apple cider, and hard cider would have been staples in any household. And offered, especially the hard cider, to friends and neighbors as part of the visiting and entertaining on those cold, winter nights a hundred or so years ago.
The Way it was in North Hampton tells us that Charles L. Barton, Joseph O. Hobbs, George C. Lamprey, and Oliver Lamprey were major growers. And that Charles Batchelder and Son was a large buyer of apples from growers in New Hampshire, shipping more than 10,000 barrels in 1892.
Until the 1880s, a barrel might be any size wooden barrel. Then, at least in western NY, the “pony” barrel holding 100 quarts was used. Some buyers / brokers objected, aiming for the use of the flour barrel, holding 112 quarts. If you want to see a flour barrel, the Historical Society has one. We’re talking 200 and more apples in one of those larger barrels. Similar controversies occurred elsewhere, including Maine. Perhaps also in New Hampshire?
The adage “one rotten apple spoils the barrel” is quite true and a similar metaphor in English dates back to the year 1340. The scientific reason is ethylene triggers ripening, ripening triggers more ethylene production, and accelerates the process. So one overripe or damaged apple can spoil the barrel.
One of the weekly newsletters of the McGill University Office for Science and Society states:
Since the 1960’s growers have kept apples firm in warehouses by slowing respiration through reducing oxygen and raising carbon dioxide levels. Such “controlled atmosphere storage” has allowed some varieties of apples to be sold all year, although they don’t keep their full flavour and can go soft and mealy.
According to a Brooklyn Botanic Garden blog, the early nineteenth century era was the golden age of apples and other fine fruit. It blames inexpensive railroad transportation and later refrigeration for the vanishing varieties and the proliferation of apples bred for transportability and not taste.
The CowHampshire blog gives the names of old apples, none of which I have ever heard of, and a brief description of their origin. Two names that made me take notice because they originated in nearby towns was Marston’s Red Winter, first grown in Greenland in the 1860s, and Ledge Sweet/Portsmouth Sweet introduced at the MA Horticultural Society in the 1850s.
There also was an apple named after Lafayette in honor of his farewell tour of the United States. We now know he stopped in North Hampton. The apple was called Lafayette’s Favorite, first fruiting in Chester in 1824
An even older apple grown in North Hampton was the Baldwin. The Woman’s Club scrapbook of 1929/1930 includes a photograph of a Baldwin apple tree that the Rev. French had brought up from Massachusetts in 1804, possibly when he and his bride were settling into the parsonage. (He had become the Congregational minister here in 1801 and, as a bachelor, lived in Colonel Thomas Leavitt’s house). French’s Baldwin apple tree had succumbed to old age or disaster in 1929, making it more than one hundred twenty five years of age.
Most likely, the Baldwin was popular among growers and home orchards in North Hampton. It was first found shortly after 1740 in Wilmingon, Massachusetts on the farm of John Ball and was cultivated for years in that locality. Eventually, it came to the attention of Col. Loammi Baldwin who encouraged its cultivation more widely in eastern Massachusetts; the variety gradually became known as the Baldwin.
The Baldwin was long prized for making hard cider and was known as an exceptionally good pie apple. Because of its hardness it shipped well without bruising and was among the most popular apples in the United States until the introduction of the Red Delicious.
Back to our local late 19th century growers. Charles L. Barton and other Bartons lived on Barton’s Hill on Winnicut Road. Joseph O. Hobbs inherited his uncle John W. F. Hobbs’ estate at the intersection of Hobbs and Lafayette where Throwback Brewery is now located, albeit on much reduced acreage.
George C. Lamprey and Oliver Lamprey – we’re not sure. Were they the same Lamprey family that were in the Little River area of town? There was a Simon Oliver Lamprey who built a house on Exeter Road around 1870 but the current long term owner has not come across any evidence of an apple orchard. Any of these growers could well have owned additional land not adjacent to their residences.
As for Charles L. Batchelder, in 1885 he had started and run a stage coach and baggage wagon business, traveling between the railroad depot and Little Boar’s Head at the height of LBH’s popularity as a summer resort. It seems a natural fit that he would develop another business related to railroad transportation.
So what varieties of apples were grown in North Hampton and what were the markets for NH apples? Perhaps the Baldwin but what others?
Where were the apples shipped? I could not ascertain their market. Boston where North Hampton milk went? Southern New England? Farther north to the grand hotels in the White Mountains?
While NH is far from being one of the major apple producing states, apples have remained a key fruit crop in NH into the 21st century. According to the 2012 Agricultural Census conducted by the USDA, NH farmers harvested more than 24.5 million pounds of them, worth more than six million dollars. Shipped somewhere or staying right here.