10 STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



ing- town of Bristol, Mr. Farley says: "I have it upon what I 

 consider good authority, that the ancestral tree of the hightop- 

 sweetings, once so common and productive on the farms in the 

 Walpole District, formerly a part of Bristol, was brought from the 

 south shore of Massachusetts, probably Hanover, one hundred 

 years ago, by a member of the Woodward family (ship carpenters) 

 which emigrated from there. Those trees are rapidly passing' 

 away." 



The following facts have been kindly furnished by Dr. 0. St. C. 

 O'Brien of Pemaquid Falls, Bristol, an indefatigable student of the 

 history of that interesting locality, (the settlement of which was 

 effected in 1607,) tending to show that the first fruit trees culti- 

 vated in Maine, or probably, in New England, were at that point. 



"There are the remains of some very old apple trees on both 

 sides of the Pemaquid river, but nobody with whom I have talked 

 has any tradition as to when they were planted, or by whom. I 

 am credibly informed that some sixty years ago there were the 

 remains of apple trees to be seen on what is called the ' Michael 

 field,* at Pemaquid Falls. This is the place where Michael Clary, 

 or McClary, was murdered by O'Neil, in 1788, whence it derives 

 its name ; it is also the spot where Thomas Gyles was murdered 

 by the Indians in 1689." [Judge Gyles was attacked and slain by 

 the Indians while at work with his sons in his own field.] 



" The oldest tree, now living and bearing apples, in the town of 

 Bristol, is on the farm of David Chamberlain, Esq. 'It is,' Mr, 

 ChamLerlain says, ' certainly known to be over two hundred years 

 old.' It is a tree of very large size, and still bears a few small, 

 Bour apples. Fifty years ago it bore a large crop regularly every 

 other year. It was a very large tree in 1745." * 



" I have seen the remains of very old apple trees on the ' Point 

 of Land' on the Damariscotta river, where Darius Wentworth 

 lives, also in the woods directly west of Bristol Mills, where old 

 cellars and the traces of cultivation are well-marked, but where 

 the timber is now of considerable size. No one seems to know 

 anything about their origin. I have no doubt they are the traces 

 of the homes and plantations of- settlers, who were driven away 

 by the Indians, or who deserted them during the Revolutionary 

 War." 



* Mr. Chamberlain is a member of this Society, and a gentleman of unquestioned in- 

 telligence and veracity. His statements, made to me personally, and more fully than in 

 Dr. O'Brien's letter, are substantiated by the most satisfactory evidence — Sec. 



