184 THE SMALL FRUITS OF NEW YORK 



While Captain Lovett was attempting to subdue the wild subjects, 

 only to find them untamable, two contemporaries had better success. Each 

 found a plant less vicious and bearing abundantly fruits of larger size and 

 better quality than the average run of vagrant plants of woods and fields. 

 These, in turn, they brought under cultivation, and whether the plants 

 were more manageable, or the men who found them more skillful in intro- 

 ducing them to garden civilization, both succeeded where Captain Lovett 

 failed. The men were Lewis A. Seacor, New Rochelle, New York, who 

 discovered the Lawton blackberry; and Eliphalet Thayer, who introduced 

 the Dorchester. These were the first named varieties, and as such merit 

 a fuller historical discussion than can be given in the brief historical notices 

 in the chapter on varieties. Dorchester is usually said to be the first cul- 

 tivated blackberry. It was the first named sort, but Lawton first came 

 under cultivation as will appear in the histories which follow. 



The accounts of the origin of the Lawton vary as given in the several 

 horticultural magazines of the times but the facts seem to be these: In 

 1834, Lewis A. Seacor, New Rochelle, New York, found on the farm of a 

 neighbor a clump of blackberries which bore fruits of large size and of 

 different shape and flavor than any he had hitherto seen. Some four or 

 five years later he transplanted several bushes from this cltimp to his 

 garden. From these he supplied his neighbors with plants, and Seacor's 

 blackberry became generally known in the vicinity of New Rochelle. 

 Sometime in the late forties, William Lawton, also living in New Rochelle, 

 became interested in this blackberry and began its sale under the name 

 New Rochelle. Fortunately we have the story of the introduction of the 

 new fruit as Lawton gave it in August 1853, at a meeting in New York of 

 the Farmers' Club of the American Institute. Lawton's^ account is so 

 interesting and profitable that it is reproduced at some length. 



" ' This Blackberry — to which I have before called the attention of the 

 Club — has been cultivated in small quantities for several years in New 

 Rochelle, Westchester county, where I now reside. I have not been able 

 to ascertain who first discovered the plant, and brought it into garden 

 culture, but am informed it was found on the road-side, and from thence 

 introduced into the neighboring gardens. As it came to me without any 

 name to distinguish it from the Wild Bramble, I beg leave to introduce 

 it to the notice of the Club as the New Rochelle blackberry, and at the 

 same time present as a specimen a few quarts of the fruit, gathered this 

 morning, precisely as they came from the bushes, without being selected. 



^ Gen. Farmer 15:157. 1854. 



