Winter Meeting. 193 



THE NIXONITE APPLE. 



Hopewell, 'Mo., September lo, 1903. 

 Rev. H. W. Cook, Potosi, ^lo. : 



Dear Sir — Referring' to the conversation, we had a few clays 

 ago concerning what is known as the Nixonite apple, I will try to 

 give you as briefly as possible w^hat I know to be the true origin of 

 the apple. 



In 1854 (I was then a boy of fifteen) my father, the late John 

 Evens, of this place, became owner of the lands on which was a 

 small orchard of 15 or 20 trees; a few acres of cleared land, but no 

 house or fences (it is in Sec. 6, T. 36, R. 3. E. and now occupied by 

 ■Mr. A. F. Nixon). Father had some men at work in the lead mines 

 nearby and a Mr. Wm. P. Nixon was in charge. Father 'had a house 

 built near this orchard and Mr. Nixon moved into it, fenced up the 

 old field, trimm.ed up the apple trees, so that he controlled all the 

 fruit. In 1856, during the time the I. M. R. R. was being built, the 

 trees were loaded with fruit and large quantities were brought to 

 father's store for sale. Father called them the Nixonite simply 

 because Mr. Nixon lived on the place and no one had a name for the 

 apple. There were other varieties there; some of the trees bore a 

 large red striped sw^eet apple which mother and the women of the 

 neighborhood esteemed highly for apple butter. The Nixonite was 

 considered a good cooking apple, but was too sour to eat. Capt. Fred 

 Will of Potosi took considerable interest in fruit growing; he sent 

 some of the Nixonite apples to Norman J. Colman and others of 

 St. Louis. They pronounced it a seedling of little value. As to- 

 origin of the apple, Mr. Alexander Begutte, an old man of 90 years- 

 or over, tells me that he was married in 1837 and moved into a little 

 log house that stood on the place ; that the trees were then there 

 and bearing apples and were of good size. Miss Biddie Begutte, an 

 old maiden lady living with him, says Robert Cain (of near the Clear 

 Creek farm), an aged man who died several years ago (likely you 

 knew him) told her that a man named Davis settled the place when 

 he, Cain, was a small boy and that he assisted Davis in setting out 

 the trees ; that they dug them up in the dififerent mines near by,, 

 mostly at what is known now as the Sand diggings ; the land at that 

 time belonged to the late John Perry, at one time a large land owner 

 in this county. 



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