THE PEACHES OF NEW YORK 99 



grower to engage in the liquor business seems to have been a certain Mr. 

 Bayley in Accomack County, Virginia, the tip of the Peninsula, who in 

 1 8 14 planted 63,000 trees which six years later yielded fifteen gallons of 

 brandy per 100 trees, worth $2 per gallon — not profitable unless the 

 seed were sown in rows, as was probably the case, and the seedlings per- 

 mitted to crowd rather closely.^ One of the first large orchards planted 

 in this region to supply city peach-markets was that of a Mr. Cassidy who 

 set an orchard of 50,000 trees in Cecil County, Maryland, about 1830.* 

 The product of this orchard went to market in sailboats and large wagons. 

 The industry was not in full swing in this region until the fifties when 

 orchards were planted all along the water courses in Cecil, Kent and Queen 

 Anne counties, making a continuous forest of peach-trees two miles back 

 from the rivers.' 



The peach -industry in Delaware seems to have begun, according to Mr. 

 Charles Wright,'' in 1832 at Delaware City, when a twenty-acre orchard of 

 budded trees was set by Messrs. Reeves and Ridgeway, which by 1836 had 

 increased to 1 10 acres. The receipts from this orchard in a single season were 

 as much as $16,000, the fruit bringing in Philadelphia from $1.25 to $3 per 

 three-peck basket. Other notable orchards of these early times mentioned 

 by Mr. Wright are those of Major Philip Reybold and Sons who, beginning 

 in 1835, by 1846 had 117,720 trees on 1090 acres near Delaware City 

 from which 63,344 baskets of peaches were shipped in August, 1845; in 

 Kent County, John Reed began planting as early as 1829 and several years 

 later had 10,000 trees of Red Cheek Melocotons. In 1848 the peach- 

 crop in Delaware was estimated at 5,000,000 baskets, chiefly from New 

 Castle County. Peach -yellows, first a serious pest around Philadelphia 

 about 1800, became epidemic in northern Delaware in 1842 and, little by 

 little, the center of the peach-industry shifted southward from Middle- 

 town in the late sixties to Smyrna; a few years later it had reached Wyoming 

 and in the nineties it was as far south as Bridgeville. 



It is interesting to follow the ups and downs of the peach-industry 

 in the Peninsula. Epidemics of yellows, a succession of cold winters, 

 over-production, transportation difficulties or expense, San Jose scale, 

 have all been factors powerful enough at various times to make or mar the 



' Wright, Charles Cyc. of Am. Hort. 3:1240. 1900. 

 ' Gould, H. P. Md. Sta. Bui. 72:130. 1901. 



' .Shallcross, J. T. Md. Hort. Soc. Rpt. 1:17. 1898. 



'Wright Charles Or. o/>lm. //or/. 3:1238. 1900. 



