THE APPLES OF NEW YORK. n 



usually surrounded with festoons of quartered fruit which had been 

 patiently strung on tow strings, or the prepared fruit was spread on 

 racks above or on papers beneath the stove. 



Commercial Orchards. The development of domestic and for- 

 eign commerce in apples and apple products, such as dried apples, 

 cider, apple brandy and vinegar, naturally first assumed importance 

 in New York in the vicinity of New York city because this was the 

 metropolis and a seaport. Speaking of the beginning of the foreign 

 trade of this country in fruits Taylor remarks : l ' Trade in this 

 fruit with the West Indies probably developed early in the eighteenth 

 century, though we have no record of shipments till 1741, when it 

 is stated apples were exported from New England to the West Indies 

 in considerable abundance. No transatlantic shipment has been 

 disclosed earlier than that of a package of Newtown Pippins of the 

 crop of 1758 sent to Benjamin Franklin while in London. The 

 sight and taste of these brought to John Bartram, of Philadelphia, an 

 order for grafts of the variety from Franklin's friend Collinson, 

 who said of the fruit he ate : ' What comes from you are delicious 

 fruit if our sun will ripen them to such perfection.' Subsequently 

 a considerable trade must have resulted, for in 1773 it was stated by 

 the younger Collinson, that while the English apple crop had failed 

 that year, American apples had been found an admirable substitute, 

 some of the merchants having imported great quantities of them. 

 * * Statistics on the subject are lacking until 1821, when the 

 total export of fruit included in the treasury statement consisted of 

 68,443 bushels of apples, valued at $39,966." 



It was not till after the first quarter of the nineteenth century had 

 passed that commercial apple culture began to be developed in New 

 York to any considerable extent above the southern part of the 

 Hudson valley. 



According to Mr. W. D. Barns of Middlehope, the planting of com- 

 mercial apple orchards did not receive much attention in Ulster county 

 till 1820 to 1825, although Robert Pell of Esopus had about 20 acres of 

 bearing Newtown Pippin trees from which he exported fruit as early as 

 from 1825 to 1830. Along the Hudson where the fruit could be easily 

 transported to New York city by boat the trade included a large number 

 of summer and fall apples as well as winter varieties. They were shipped, 



M. c., 311. 



