EARLY HISTORY 33 



was a general questioning of methods, and a searching for 

 cause and effect, which prepared the way for the remark- 

 able extension of commercial planting that followed the 

 introduction of the Wilson. 



The close of this period, in 1854, found commercial 

 strawberry culture well extablished in the vicinity of Boston, 

 New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Cincinnati, with 

 scattered plantings in a few outlying districts, notably in 

 western New York. Only a meager beginning had been 

 made; most people still knew only the wild berry. 

 "Strawberries are quite commonly cultivated by private 

 gentlemen," said Chauncey E. Goodrich of Utica, New 

 York, in 1853, " and they make very fine displays of this 

 fruit at our occasional city fairs. But the public supply 

 is mostly from the fields, where they are gathered growing 

 spontaneously." l "Only thirty years since," said Parker 

 Earle of Cobden, Illinois, in 1887, "the growing of straw- 

 berries for market was confined to a few gardeners in the vi- 

 cinity of half a dozen of our larger cities, and means of trans- 

 portation consisted mostly of the market wagon. A few 

 hundred wealthy gentlemen, who had had some country 

 places and kept professional gardeners, grew this luxurious 

 berry for their own tables; and a few market gardeners 

 for market. Outside of this limited culture most of the 

 people of the country knew nothing about the strawberry 

 except what they had gleaned from the fragrant hillsides, 

 where nature had planted them with the daisies and butter- 

 cups." 2 



It is probable that the total quantity of cultivated 

 strawberries marketed in 1854 did not exceed 40,000 

 bushels. If the average yield was thirty bushels to the 



1 U. S. Patent Office Kept., 1853, p. 314. 



2 Rural New Yorker, 1887, p. 128. 



