Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-g7gxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-15T09:03:26.820Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Cataloging Nature: Standardizing Fruit Varieties in the United States, 1800–1860

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 November 2016

Emily Pawley
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The forests and fields of the early American republic teemed with individually varying seedling fruit trees. American nurserymen stabilized both this chaotic landscape and their trade by promoting named fruit “varieties” gleaned from domestic orchards and from a global network of botanical gardens. Developing strategies to regulate the production of names and descriptions, they altered both texts and organisms, replacing a profusion of “wild” trees with a negotiated list of “named varieties.” Examining this process reveals intersections between commercial and scientific credibility and illuminates the alternative business forms built around living goods.

Type
Research Article
Information
Business History Review , Volume 90 , Special Issue 3: A Special Issue on Food and Agriculture , Autumn 2016 , pp. 405 - 429
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 “John Jacob Thomas,” in Cyclopedia of American Horticulture, ed. Bailey, Liberty Hyde (London, 1907), 1797 Google Scholar.

2 Thomas, John J., “Hints on Describing Fruits,” in Transactions of the New York State Agricultural Society (Albany, 1843), 269 Google Scholar.

3 Ibid., 270.

4 Downing, Andrew J., Fruits and Fruit Trees of America (New York, 1845), vi Google Scholar.

5 De Bow, James D. B., The Seventh Census of the United States: 1850 (Washington, D.C., 1853), 153, lxxxiiiGoogle Scholar; Kennedy, Joseph C. G., Agriculture of the United States: Compiled from the Original Returns of the Eighth Census (Washington, D.C., 1864), 186 Google Scholar.

6 Lyon-Jenness, Cheryl, “Planting a Seed: The Nineteenth-Century Horticultural Boom in America,” Business History Review 78 (Autumn 2004): 381–421 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hedrick, Ulysses P., A History of Horticulture in America to 1860 (Portland, Ore., 1988)Google Scholar; Kevles, Daniel J., “Fruit Nationalism: Horticulture in the United States—From the Revolution to the First Centennial,” in Aurora Torealis, ed. Beretta, Marco, Grandin, Karl, and Lindqvist, Svante (Sagamore Beach, Mass., 2008), 129–46Google Scholar; Pauly, Philip, Fruits and Plains: The Horticultural Transformation of America (Cambridge, Mass., 2007)Google Scholar; Hannickel, Erica, Empire of Vines: Wine Culture in America (Philadelphia, 2013)Google Scholar.

7 Olmstead, Alan L. and Rhode, Paul W., Creating Abundance: Biological Innovation and American Agricultural Development (Cambridge, U.K., 2008)Google Scholar. See also Kevles, Daniel J., “Protections, Privileges, and Patents: Intellectual Property in American Horticulture,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 152 (June 2008): 207–13Google ScholarPubMed; Kevles, Daniel J., “New Blood, New Fruits: Protections for Breeders and Originators, 1789–1930,” in Making and Unmaking Intellectual Property, ed. Biagioli, Mario, Jaszi, Peter, and Woodmansee, Martha (Chicago, 2011)Google Scholar; Fitzgerald, Deborah, The Business of Breeding: Hybrid Corn in Illinois, 1890–1920 (Ithaca, 1990)Google Scholar; and Okie, Tom, “Under the Trees: The Georgia Peach and the Quest for Labor in the Twentieth Century,” Agricultural History 85 (Jan. 2011): 72–101 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed. For more global histories, see Kloppenburg, Jack Ralph Jr., First the Seed: The Political Economy of Plant Biotechnology (Madison, Wisc., 2005)Google Scholar; Schiebinger, Londa, Plants and Empire: Colonial Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World (Cambridge, Mass., 2004)Google Scholar; and Drayton, Richard, Nature's Government: Science, Imperial Britain, and the “Improvement” of the World (New Haven, Conn., 2000), 225–52Google Scholar.

8 For provincial improvisation, see Jaffee, David, A New Nation of Goods: The Material Culture of Early America (Philadelphia, 2010)Google Scholar.

9 Lindley, John, quoted in William Robert Prince, The Pomological Manual, vol. 2 (New York, 1831), viii Google Scholar.

10 Prince & Sons, Catalogue of Fruit and Ornamental Trees and Plants (New York, 1823)Google Scholar.

11 Downing, Fruits and Fruit Trees, 2.

12 Prince, Pomological Manual, vol. 2, 15.

13 Quoted in Leighton, Ann, American Gardens of the Nineteenth Century: “For Comfort and Affluence” (Amherst, Mass., 1987), 65 Google Scholar.

14 Elliott, Franklin R., The Western Fruit Book (New York, 1859), 17 Google Scholar.

15 Asexual propagation techniques involving cuttings, runners, or split tubers are used for dozens of other plants, from strawberries to potatoes.

16 Pauly, Fruits and Plains, 65.

17 Carr, Robert, Periodical Catalogue of Fruit and Ornamental Trees and Shrubs (Philadelphia, 1828), 39 Google Scholar.

18 Bostock, John and Riley, Henry T., eds., The Natural History of Pliny, vol. 3 (London, 1855), 484 Google Scholar.

19 Beach, S. A., The Apples of New York (New York, 1902)Google Scholar; Crosby, Alfred W., Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900–1900 (Westport, Conn., 1986), 157 Google Scholar.

20 Copy of a manuscript letter from Oliver J. Tillson to Helen Miller Gould, daughter of Jay Gould, Oliver Tillson Papers, box 8: “Receipts,” Kroch Library Manuscript and Special Collections, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.

21 Burn Them [pseud.], “What Shall I Do with My Apples,” Religious Intelligencer, 6 Oct. 1827, 299; Kerrigan, William, Johnny Appleseed and the American Orchard: A Cultural History (Baltimore, 2012), 19, 189Google Scholar.

22 Celebration at Flushing of the Birthday of Linnaeus, by the New-York Branch of the Linnaean Society of Paris (New York, 1824), 3–5.

23 Horticultural Society of London (Saint James, U.K., 1828), 65–69.

24 Prince & Sons, Catalogue of Fruit and Ornamental Trees, v–vii.

25 Drayton, Nature's Government, 85–124; Spary, Emma, Utopia's Garden: French Natural History from Old Regime to Revolution (Chicago, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kevles, “New Blood.”

26 McCook, Stuart, States of Nature: Science, Agriculture, and Environment in the Spanish Caribbean, 1760–1940 (Austin, 2002), 77–85 Google Scholar.

27 Jonsson, Fredrik Albritton, The Enlightenment in the Highlands: Natural History and Internal Colonization in the Scottish Enlightenment, 1760–1830 (Chicago, 2005)Google Scholar; Koerner, Lisbet, Linnaeus: Nature and Nation (Cambridge, Mass., 1999), 3, 136Google Scholar; Cooper, Alix, “‘The Possibilities of the Land’: The Inventory of ‘Natural Riches’ in the Early Modern German Territories,” History of Political Economy 35, no. S1 (2003): 129–53Google Scholar.

28 Drayton, Nature's Government, 139.

29 Catalogue of Fruits Cultivated in the Garden of the Horticultural Society of London at Chiswick (London, 1826), vi–vii, 153.

30 Downing, Fruits and Fruit Trees, 106.

31 Ibid., v.

32 Morgan, Joan and Richards, Alison, New Book of Apples (London, 1993), 107 Google Scholar.

33 Knight, Thomas Andrew, Pomona Herefordiensis (London, 1811), iiGoogle Scholar.

34 Thornton, Tamara Plakins, Cultivating Gentlemen: The Meaning of Country Life among the Boston Elite, 1785–1860 (New Haven, Conn., 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On eighteenth-century tree culture, see Sarudy, Barbara Wells, Gardens and Gardening in the Chesapeake (Baltimore, 1998), 39–41, 127–33, 55–88Google Scholar; and Hatch, Peter J., The Fruits and Fruit Trees of Monticello: Thomas Jefferson and the Origins of American Horticulture (Richmond, Va., 1998)Google Scholar.

35 Bushman, Richard, The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities (New York, 1993), 240–57Google Scholar; Jaffee, New Nation of Goods; Kelly, Catherine E., “‘Well Bred Country People’: Sociability, Social Networks, and the Creation of a Provincial Middle Class, 1820–1860,” Journal of the Early Republic 19 (Autumn 1999): 451–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On this transition, see Diamond, David H., “Origins of Pioneer Apple Orchards in the American West: Random Seeding versus Artisan Horticulture,” Agricultural History 84 (Autumn 2010): 423–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 Stilgoe, John R., Borderland: Origins of the American Suburb, 1820–1939 (New Haven, Conn., 1988), 67–93 Google Scholar; Pauly, Fruits and Plains, 53–54; Bullion, Brenda, “Hawthornes and Hemlocks: The Return of the Sacred Grove,” Landscape Journal 2 (Autumn 1983): 114 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For more on refinement, see Hannickel, Empire of Vines, 57–58; Kevles, “Fruit Nationalism,” 132–33; and Schuyler, David, Apostle of Taste: Andrew Jackson Downing, 1815–1852 (Baltimore, 1999)Google Scholar.

37 Beecher, Henry Ward, Plain and Pleasant Talk about Fruits, Flowers and Farming (New York, 1859), v Google Scholar.

38 Downing, Andrew Jackson, “Mr. Downing's Letters from England,” Horticulturist 5 (Nov. 1850): 217 Google Scholar.

39 Jaffee, New Nation of Goods; Kelly, Catherine, In the New England Fashion: Reshaping Women's Lives in the Nineteenth Century (Ithaca, 1999), 10–11 Google Scholar.

40 “Fruit Culture,” Massachusetts Ploughman and New England Journal of Agriculture 9 (8 June 1850): 1.

41 Hedrick, History of Horticulture, 505–16.

42 Samuel Walker and William Kenrick, “Massachusetts Horticultural Society: Exhibition of Fruits,” Horticultural Register and Gardener's Magazine, 1 Sept. 1836, 352.

43 William Kerrigan, “Stealing Apples: Markets, Morality, and the Movement to Criminalize Apple-Pilfering in Antebellum Ohio” (paper presented at annual meeting of Society for Historians of the Early American Republic, St. Louis, July 2013).

44 Longworth's American Almanac (New York, 1837); Doggetts' New York City Directory, 1848–1849 (New York, 1848). See also The Boston Directory (Boston, 1823); and The Boston Directory (Boston, 1848).

45 Lobel, Cindy R., Urban Appetites: Food and Culture in Nineteenth-Century New York (Chicago, 2014), 63 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46 Transactions of the Second Session of the American Pomological Society (Philadelphia, 1852), 74.

47 “Apple Trade at Cincinnati,” Ohio Cultivator 7 (Dec. 1851): 360.

48 Pedder, James, “A Day at the Reybolds in Peach Harvest,” Farmers' Cabinet, and American Herd-book 10 (15 Oct. 1846): 78–79 Google Scholar.

49 Collinson, Michael quoted in Taylor, William A., The Fruit Industry, and the Substitution of Domestic for Foreign-Grown Fruits, with Historical and Descriptive Notes on Ten Varieties of Apple Suitable for the Export Trade (Washington, D.C., 1898), 311 Google Scholar.

50 Taylor, The Fruit Industry, 344.

51 Gates, Paul W., The Farmers Age: Agriculture, 1815–1860 (New York, 1960), 257 Google Scholar.

52 Ibid., 259.

53 Duruz, Willis P., “Notes on the Early History of Horticulture in Oregon: With Special Reference to Fruit-Tree Nurseries,” Agricultural History 15 (Apr. 1941): 88, 97Google Scholar.

54 Floy, Michael, A Guide to the Orchard and Fruit Garden (New York, 1833), iv Google Scholar.

55 W. W. B. “The Williamson Apple,” Genesee Farmer and Gardener's Journal 5 (30 Apr. 1835): 122.

56 On antebellum counterfeiting, see Mihm, Stephen, A Nation of Counterfeiters: Capitalists, Con Men, and the Making of the United States (Cambridge, Mass., 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

57 “Northern Spy,” Genesee Farmer 6 (Feb. 1845): 30.

58 William Prince & Sons, Annual Catalogue of Fruit and Ornamental Trees and Plants (Jamaica, N.Y., 1835), ii Google Scholar.

59 Jaffee, David, “Peddlers of Progress and the Transformation of the Rural North, 1760–1860,” Journal of American History 78 (Sept. 1991): 513 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lyon-Jenness, Cheryl, “A Telling Tirade: What Was the Controversy Surrounding Nineteenth-Century Midwestern Tree Agents Really All About?” Agricultural History 72 (Autumn 1998): 675–707 Google Scholar; “The Weather,” Genesee Farmer 6 (Dec. 1845): 182.

60 Moses Eames Diaries, vol. 1, 14–15 April 1831, Jefferson County Historical Society, Watertown, N.Y.

61 Lears, T. J. Jackson, Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America (New York, 1994), 69 Google Scholar.

62 See, for example, Andrew Jackson Downing to William Darlington (c. 1830), Andrew Jackson Downing Papers, New York State Library, Albany, N.Y.

63 “Pomological Reform,” Horticulturist 2 (Oct. 1847): 175.

64 See Woodburn, Elisabeth, “Horticultural Heritage: The Influence of U.S. Nurserymen,” in Agricultural Literature: Proud Heritage, Future Promise, ed. Fusonie, Alan and Moran, Leila (Washington, D.C., 1977), 109–36Google Scholar; and Bullion, Brenda, “The Agricultural Press: ‘To Improve the Soil and the Mind,’” in The Farm, ed. Benes, Peter (Boston, 1986), 74–94 Google Scholar.

65 Subscriptions for the Cultivator and the Horticulturist (broadside), 1847, Manuscripts and Special Collections, New York State Library, Albany, N.Y.

66 See, for example, Mayer, Jean, Pomona Franconica (Nuremberg, 1776)Google Scholar; and Hooker, William, Pomona Londoniensis (London, 1818)Google Scholar.

67 William Prince & Sons, Annual Catalogue of Fruit, vi.

68 Secord, Anne, “Botany on a Plate: Pleasure and the Power of Pictures in Promoting Early Nineteenth-Century Scientific Knowledge,” Isis 93 (Mar. 2002): 37 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

69 On the sometimes gorgeous, always expensive, and often frustrated efforts of American pomologists to produce images of fruit, see Kevles, Daniel J., “Cultivating Art,” Smithsonian 42 (July/August 2011): 76–82 Google Scholar.

70 Prince, Pomological Manual, vol. 2, title page; Kilbourn, John, The Ohio Gazetteer (Columbus, Ohio, 1831), 108–9Google Scholar.

71 Prince, William R., Pomological Manual, vol. 1 (New York, 1831), 56–57 Google Scholar.

72 Thomas, “Describing Fruits,” 269.

73 Ibid., 272.

74 Emmons, Ebenezer, Agriculture of New York (Albany, 1851), 9 Google Scholar.

75 W. R. Y., “General and Critical Observations on the Cultivation of the Pear,” Gardener's Magazine 4 (June 1828): 107–13.

76 Emmons, Agriculture of New York, 9.

77 New York State Fair, Proceedings of the New-York State Fair and of the Pomological Convention Held at Buffalo, Sept. 1848 (Buffalo, 1848), 2.

78 Ibid.

79 Ibid.

80 Ibid.

81 Ibid.

82 Ibid.

83 North American Pomological Convention, Proceedings of the North American Pomological Convention. Held at Syracuse, September 14th 1849 (Syracuse, 1849), 18.

84 “Proceedings of the National Congress of Fruit Growers,” in Seventh Annual Report of the American Institute of the City of New York (Albany, 1849), 225.

85 New York State Fair, Proceedings, 2.

86 Ibid., 14.

87 Ibid.

88 Ibid., 15.

89 “Proceedings of the National Congress of Fruit Growers,” 216.

90 Devoe, Thomas F., The Market Assistant (New York, 1867), 370 Google Scholar.

91 Barry, Patrick, A Catalogue of Fruits for Cultivation in the United States and Canadas; in Two Divisions. Division First—Embracing those States lying North of the Southern line of Virginia, Tennessee, Missouri, etc., and East of the Rocky Mountains, including the Canadas, Division Second—The States South of the line above named, and West of the Rocky Mountains. Compiled under the Direction of the American Pomological Society (Boston, 1869)Google Scholar.

92 Rivers, Thomas, “Pomological Society,” Florist, Fruitist, and Garden Miscellany 4 (Apr. 1854): 108–9Google Scholar.

93 In 1850, Barry, Patrick edited the horticulture department of the Genesee Farmer. “Fruit Culture,” Massachusetts Ploughman and New England Journal of Agriculture 9 (8 June 1850): 1 Google Scholar.

94 New York State Fair, Proceedings, 11.

95 Proceedings of the Second Congress of Fruit Growers, Convened under the Auspices of the American Institute, in the City of New-York, 1849, (Albany, 1850), 212.

96 “The Largest Nursery in the World,” Hunt's Merchant's Magazine 25 (Sept. 1856): 373–75.

97 Thoreau, Henry David, The Succession of Forest Trees and Wild Apples (Boston, 1887), 60 Google Scholar.

98 New York State Fair, Proceedings, 12.

99 “Proceedings of the Second Congress of Fruit Growers,” 212.

100 Thoreau, Succession of Forest Trees, 69.

101 Ibid.

102 Ibid., 72–78.

103 Nichols, D. A. A., “Best Fruit for Market Purposes,” Genesee Farmer 21 (Feb. 1860): 59 Google Scholar.

104 Moreover, as Barbara Hahn has shown, some plant “varieties” have no basis in genetic difference; Bright Tobacco, the kind of tobacco used to make cigarettes, often assumed to be a variety, is a product of soils and processing. Hahn, Barbara, Making Tobacco Bright: Creating an American Commodity, 1617–1937 (Baltimore, 2011)Google Scholar.

105 Trubek, Amy, The Taste of Place: A Cultural Journey into Terroir (Berkeley, 2008)Google Scholar.