History of the Endicott Pear Tree. 255 



to have sufficient knowledge of horticulture to answer these 

 questions, and shall therefore proceed at once to give the fam- 

 ily tradition, prefacing the account simply with the remark, 

 that respect for the memory and character of our ancestors, 

 (who were an honest, upright, reliable race, — conservative in 

 their feelings, and very Thomases in their natures,} will forbid 

 us to relinquish it, even should it be found to conflict with 

 any theory in science. As soon would we believe the ^h'ude 

 and spiny character, ^^ which some writers have been fond 

 of ascribing to the old gentleman himself, ^^ seems to denote" 

 HIM " a native of the soil," as it would prove his pear tree to 

 have originated in it. We are the more unwilling to relin- 

 quish it on such grounds, when we reflect that science has 

 also been arrayed even against sacred history ; and with its aid 



" Some drill and bore 

 The solid earlh, and from the strata there 

 Extract a register, by which we learn, 

 That He who made it, and revealed its date 

 To Moses, was mistaken in its age." 



This tree stands, as we suppose is pretty generally known, 

 upon the farm granted Governor Endicott in 1632, in that 

 part of Danvers now known as Danvers Port, and is stated 

 by the family to be a tree of his original orchard which he 

 planted here, and from which the farm, at that early period, 

 derived its name. Its fruit is a variety of the Bo7i Chretien. 

 The earliest authentic account we have of the name of this 

 place, is in 1643, when the governor, in a letter to Gov. Win- 

 throp, says, "the maid is now going along with us to Orchard, 

 where yr sonne shall be heartilie welcome." This orchard 

 was situated on the southern side of a gentle slope of land, 

 and sheltered by it somewhat from the piercing northerly and 

 northwest winds. The surrounding soil is a light loemfi, with 

 a substratum of yellow clay. For six consecutive genera- 

 tions, extending over a space of 184 years, say from 1632 

 to 1816, the governor and his descendants lived upon and 

 cultivated this farm, and which they held solely by the orig- 

 inal grant until 1828, a period of 196 years ! during which 

 time this tree was never lost sight of by them ; — before the 

 eyes of one generation were closed upon it, those of another 



