THE CHERRIES OF NEW YORK 59 



CHERRIES IN NEW YORK 



Though settled at about the same time and having a more congenial 

 climate, New York made progress in fruit-growing more slowly than 

 Massachusetts. The early Dutch settlers in New York were transient 

 traders and not home makers. Actual settlement with homes in view 

 did not begin until after the historical bargain in which thrifty Peter 

 Minuit had acquired Manhattan Island for $24.00 and the country became 

 New Amsterdam. But troublesome times followed under the rule of 

 Minuit, Wouter Van Twiller and Kieft, quarrels and actual war, or the 

 fear of it, with colonists to the north and south as well as with the savages, 

 preventing the planting of orchards and farms until in 1647 when the 

 reins of government were taken in hand by Peter Stuyvesant. 



Governor Stuyvesant was a farmer as well as a soldier and there is 

 something in history and much in tradition of the Bowery Farm, which 

 flourished on the site of the present Bowery in New York. This farm was 

 planted and tended by " Peter, the Headstrong " when he was not dis- 

 puting with his burgomasters, watching the Yankees and fighting Swedes 

 and Indians. The orchards and gardens, according to all accounts, were 

 remarkably fine and were kept in a high state of cultivation. Stuyvesant 

 founded the farm during the stormy times of his governorship but did 

 not live on it until the English took possession of New Amsterdam in 

 1 664 when he retired to the land and devoted the eighteen remaining years 

 of his life to agriculture. From the neighboring colonies and from abroad 

 he brought many fruits, flowers, farm and truck crops. Fruits came to 

 him also from Holland and were disseminated from his orchard up the 

 Hudson. 



The cherry was one of the fruits much grown by the Dutch. It would 

 be wearisome and would serve little purpose even to attempt a cursory 

 review of the literature of colonial days in New York showing the spread 

 and the extent of fruit culture by the Dutch. Travel up the Hudson 

 and its branches was easy and within a century after the settlement of 

 New York by the Dutch, cherries were not only cultivated by the whites, 

 according to the records of travelers, naturalists and missionaries, but 

 were rudely tilled by the Indians. 



For a long time after its introduction in New York, the cherry, in 

 common with other fruits, was grown as a species — varieties and budded 

 or grafted trees were probably not known. Fruit-growing as an industry 

 began in New York and in America, with the establishment of a nursery 



