62 THE HORTICULTURE OF 



tury; and from them we have derived not only fine 

 fruits and flowers, but the choicest vegetables which 

 are to be seen in any markets of the world. From 

 Wilmington came the world-renowned Baldwin apple, 

 which constitutes the largest portion of the apples ex- 

 ported from our market, filling more than three-fourths 

 of the six hundred thousand barrels that are sent 

 annually abroad. The history of this apple is as fol- 

 lows : * 



WOBIIEN, Sept. 28, 1880. 



MR. WOODMAN: Dear Sir, Your note of the 26th inst. was received, 

 asking me to give you the account my grandfather, Samuel Thompson, Esq. , 

 gave me of the Baldwin apple. In reply I will say he was a surveyor of 

 land, and while he was on duty one fall day in a pasture, in the town of 

 Wilmington, near a road called Butters Row Road, he came across a tree with 

 fine looking apples thereon. The tree was hollow with decay, and a wood- 

 pecker bird found a place for her nest therein. He said he carried home 

 some of the fruit and gave his brother Abijah some of it, and they were so 

 highly pleased with it that they procured a lot of scions from the tree and set 

 them in the trees around their homes, and they soon began to yield fruit; and 

 they gave some to Col. Baldwin, their neighbor, and he valued them so 

 highly he went into them deeply and spread them around among his friends 

 broadcast, and they had no name for them and of course they gave them his 

 name. While they were in the Thompsons' hands they were called Pecker 

 apples, after the old bird. The tree stood in Wilmington, near Butters Row 



Road. 



LEONARD THOMPSON, 



92 years, 4 months. 



Of the Baldwin apple, Deacon Thomas Griggs, of 

 Brookline, now in his ninety-fourth year, writes: 

 " Seventy years ago I employed a man by the name of 

 Tufts, to graft. He came from Woburn and brought 

 scions called the Pecker apple. He said Mr. Baldwin, 

 when surveying for the canal, found a tree on the edge 

 of the wood which was almost killed by woodpeckers, 



* Letter of Col. Leonard Thompson to Hon. Charles Woodman. [See note 

 to Mr. Adams's chapter in Boston Memorial, Vol. IV.] Brooks's Medford, 

 p. 19, places the tree in that town near the Woburn line. See also Ellis's 

 Count Rumford, pp. 375-77. 



