234 FRUIT-GROWING 



apples in a section of the country that is 

 famous for fine fruit of this type. Personally 

 I like the Baldwin and enjoy its rather mild 

 quality, but it is a sort that is better suited 

 to northern climates and with us it becomes 

 almost a fall apple. 



It is one of the very old commercial sorts 

 and dates back beyond the time of the revolu- 

 tion — the American Revolution. (They are 

 becoming so common these days that we must 

 differentiate.) About 1740 the Baldwin came 

 up as a chance seedling on the farm of John 

 Ball, "Wilmington, near Lowell, Massachusetts, 

 and for forty years its cultivation was confined 

 to that immediate neighborhood. Later a Mr. 

 Butters bought the Ball farm and gave to the 

 apple the name of "Woodpecker" because 

 birds of that variety seemed to take particular 

 delight in hammering on the original tree. We 

 might say that they were the first "knockers" 

 of that variety. Deacon Samuel Thompson, a 

 surveyor of Woburn, brought the apple to the 

 attention of Colonel Baldwin, of the same town ; 

 the Colonel recognized its value and propagat- 

 ed and sold trees of the variety as early as 1784. 

 It took its name from him. It was not until the 

 middle of the last century that the Baldwin 

 became a prominent commercial variety — a 

 hundred years after it first produced fruit. 



For the Northern States it is still one of the 



