THE PEARS OF NEW YORK 5! 



Coincident with the establishment of nurseries selling named varieties 

 of pears another event of prime importance to pear-growers occurred. 

 Pear-blight became epidemic in the orchards along the Hudson, and while 

 it must have been noticed before, its ravages at this time brought it 

 prominently to the attention of pear-growers. The disease seems to have 

 been first mentioned by William Denning who described it in the Trans- 

 actions of the Society for the Promotion of Agriculture for 1794 (pt- 2, p. 219) 

 in an article on the decay of apple-trees. Denning says that he first saw 

 the malady in orchards on the highlands of the Hudson in 1780 attacking 

 apples, pears, and quinces. He gives a good description of the disease, 

 but says it is caused by a borer in the trunk which he found after much 

 labor. From Denning's discovery until Burrill a hundred years later, in 

 1882, discovered a cause of the disease and suggested a preventive, every 

 treatise on the pear speculates on the cause and cure of pear-blight, a 

 disease which has been and is the terror and despair of growers of this fruit. 



Philadelphia was another center of pear-growing in the early settlements 

 of the country. The Quakers, settling in Pennsylvania in 1682, planted 

 all of the hardy fruits; which were soon, as we are several times told, a great 

 asset to the colony. No results worthy of note seem to have come from 

 these early plantings until nearly a half century later when John Bartram ' 

 founded, in 1728, what became a famous botanic garden. The Bartram 

 Botanic Garden became almost at once the clearing house for native and 

 foreign fruits and plants, and to it came several varieties of pears for 

 distribution throughout the colonies. Here, the first variety of the pear 

 to originate in America of which we have definite record, came into existence. 

 This was the Petre pear raised by Bartram, from seeds sent him from 

 England by Lady Petre. The seed was planted in 1735 near the stone house 

 which Bartram built with his own hands. The tree still stands, somewhat 

 stricken with its two centuries, but withal a noble specimen seemingly 

 capable of breasting the blows of age for many years to come. 



The pear industry of the eastern United States is confined to the 

 regions in which the history of this fruit has been traced, and most if not 

 all of the varieties that originated in this country until the middle of the 

 nineteenth century came from the importations to these French, Dutch, 

 and English settlements. There is little profit, therefore, in attempting to 

 trace further the history of pear-culture on the Atlantic seaboard in colonial 



1 For a brief account of the life and work of John Bartram, see The Grapes of New York, page 97. 



