668 Kitchen Garden Esculents of American Origin.  [July, 
adelphia from St. Domingo in 1798, but not to have been sold in 
the markets until 1829. It was used as an article of food in New 
Orleans in 1812.1 The first notice of it in American gardens was 
apparently by Jefferson,’ who notes it in Virginian gardens in 1781.’ 
It was introduced into Salem, Mass., about 1802, by an Italian, but 
he found it difficult to persuade people even to taste the fruit? 
Among American writers on gardening, M’Mahon, 1806, men- 
tions the tomato, but no varieties, as “in much esteem for culi- 
nary purposes ;” Gardiner and Hepburn, 1818, say: “make 
excellent pickles ;’ Fessenden, 1828, quotes from Loudon only ; 
Bridgeman, 1832, says, “ much cultivated for its fruits in soups 
and sauces.” They were first grown in Western New York in 
1825, the seed from Virginia, and in 1830 were not produced by 
the vegetable gardeners about Albany,‘ yet directions for culti- 
vating this fruit appeared in Thorburn’s Gardeners’ Kalendar, 2d 
edition, New York, 1817. Buist writes that as an esculent plant 
in 1828-9 the tomato was almost detested, yet in ten years more 
every variety of pill and panacea was “extract of tomato.” Mr. 
T. S. Gold, secretary of the Connecticut Board of Agriculture, 
writes me that “ we raised our first tomatoes about 1832, only as 
a curiosity, made no use of them though we had heard that the . 
French ate them. They were called love apples.” D. J. Browne,’ 
1854, describes six varieties and says, “ the tomato until within the 
last twenty years was almost wholly unknown in this county as an 
esculent vegetable.” In 1835 they were sold by the dozen in 
Quincy market, Boston” In the Maine Farmer, Oct. 16, 1835, 
in an editorial on tomatoes, they are said to be cultivated in gar- 
dens in Maine, and to be “a useful article of diet, and should be 
found on every man’s table.” In a local lecture in one of the 
Western colleges about this time, a Dr. Bennett refers to the 
tomato or Jerusalem apple as being found in the markets in great 
abundance, and in the New York Farmer of this period, one 
person is mentioned as having planted a large quantity for the 
1 Prairie Farmer, June 28, 1876. 
2 Notes, Trenton, 1803, 54-5. 
*¥Felt’s Annals of Salem, 11, 631. 
+Autobiography of Thurlow Weed. 
® White, Gard. for the South, 312. 
€ Pat. Of. Rep., 1854, 384. 
* Am, Gard. Mag., 1835, 437. 
a "Me. Farmer, Aug. 21, 1835. 
