THE PEARS OF NEW YORK 51 
Coincident with the establishment of nurseries selling named varieties 
of pears another event of prime importance to pear-growers occurred. 
Pear-blight became epidemic in the orchards along the Hudson, and while 
it must have been noticed before, its ravages at this time brought it 
prominently to the attention of pear-growers. The disease seems to have 
been first mentioned by William Denning who described it in the Trans- 
actions of the Society for the Promotion of Agriculture for 1794 (pt. 2, p. 219) 
in an article on the decay of apple-trees. Denning says that he first saw 
the malady in orchards on the highlands of the Hudson in 1780 attacking 
apples, pears, and quinces. He gives a good description of the disease, 
but says it is caused by a borer in the trunk which he found after much 
labor. From Denning’s discovery until Burrill a hundred years later, in 
1882, discovered a cause of the disease and suggested a preventive, every 
treatise on the pear speculates on the cause and cure of pear-blight, a 
disease which has been and is the terror and despair of growers of this fruit. 
Philadelphia was another center of pear-growing in the early settlements 
of the country. The Quakers, settling in Pennsylvania in 1682, planted 
all of the hardy fruits; which were soon, as we are several times told, a great 
asset to the colony. No results worthy of note seem to have come from 
these early plantings until nearly a half century later when John Bartram ! 
founded, in 1728, what became a famous botanic garden. The Bartram 
Botanic Garden became almost at once the clearing house for native and 
foreign fruits and plants, and to it came several varieties of pears for 
distribution throughout the colonies. Here, the first variety of the pear 
to originate in America of which we have definite record, came into existence. 
This was the Petre pear raised by Bartram, from seeds sent him from 
England by Lady Petre. The seed was planted in 1735 near the stone house 
which Bartram built with his own hands. The tree still stands, somewhat 
stricken with its two centuries, but withal a noble specimen seemingly 
capable of breasting the blows of age for many years to come. 
The pear industry of the eastern United States is confined to the 
regions in which the history of this fruit has been traced, and most if not 
all of the varieties that originated in this country until the middle of the 
nineteenth century came from the importations to these French, Dutch, 
and English settlements. There is little profit, therefore, in attempting to 
trace further the history of pear-culture on the Atlantic seaboard in colonial 
1 For a brief account of the life and work of John Bartram, see The Grapes of New York, page 97. 
