Yesterday and Today : Tales of apples and orchards led to solving family mystery
Posted on Wednesday, October 15, 2008
This week let us consider the history of the apple industry as it happened in Benton County. I had mentioned earlier that in the 1840 s a wealthy Indian woman planted the first apple trees and worked through the 1850 s to develop a large orchard. The almost complete cessation of agricultural development during the Civil War and the loss of her slaves left her orchards in dire need of reworking. A early settler, H. S. Mundell, purchased and restored her orchards. Freighters with wagon trains with as many as 40 wagons were hauling apples into Kansas and Texas.
Other farmers and businessmen saw an opportunity. Farmers were always looking for a better return on their labor. Also, perhaps some of the young drivers of the freight wagons were bringing back tales of adventure and the sight of other villages and towns. By the 1880 s, there were several hundred acres of apple trees with more apples than the local freighters could haul. Some farmers took their apples into towns as far away as they wanted or could drive them. Marketing their crop in this way was very limited as the typical wagon held only 30 to 40 bushels. Many apples rotted on the ground because there was no market for them or transportation to get them to a market.
Then Frisco built the first in county railroad lines across the south part of the county. Now the farmer had only to get his apples to Rogers. In the next 10 years the number of acres in apple orchards increased to thousands of acres. Every farmer had his own favorite kind of what is said to be 300 different available varieties of apples. And need we say that from one year to another he could not switch from a Pippin to an August Red ? The dozens of varieties being grown made it difficult for a large buyer to make up the desired freight car load of one variety.
By 1901, Benton County had the largest apple yield of any county in the history of the United States. Arkansas captured all major prizes in the horticultural division of the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis. (Our mother's family attended that fair. Probably the only photo that exists of mom and her three living sisters was made there. ) At the 1915 Pan Pacific Exposition in San Francisco Arkansas apples won hundreds of prizes.
Along with transporting the best of the apples to the far off markets the use of the lesser quality apples were being used in the largest brandy distillery and largest vinegar plants west of the Mississippi. Apple evaporators were another side line of the industry. Every town had three or four evaporators.
In the early 1900 s, the need of disease and bug controlling sprays became necessary. Also, by this time some growers were increasing the quantity and quality of their crop by using the relatively unknown expensive fertilizers. By the 1920 s the diseases and bugs had become immune to the sprays. The grower was now having to use the costly an labor intensive sprays several times for each crop. The largest known crop had been grown in 1919. And so began the demise of the apple industry in Benton County. By 1930 most of the orchards had been removed with the land diverting to the growth of other crops.
I had the pleasure of watching one family story come to light. As often happened in the years after Mom moved back to Pea Ridge, we had a family genealogy gathering one Sunday during which a visitor knocked on Mom's front door. This particular Sunday it was a woman from southern Missouri. I thought I could tell that Mom was holding back some memory until the woman told Mom this tale from her own family. She told of how her grandmother had moved to Missouri as a young woman. A neighbor there had an apple orchard from which he offered the young woman any of the " fallen"apples. Later and, for some unknown reason, he tried to withdraw the offer. Whereupon the young woman informed him that she would take as many apples as she wanted because "You are my pa ! You took my mother's inheritance money and ran off with her baby sister to come up here and plant this orchard. "Two riddles were solved. The woman had verification for her genealogy project. Mom's older cousin was the great-grandmother of the Sunday visitor. And mom had her own riddle solved of why an older cousin had always been the favored granddaughter of her grandparents. Early 1900 s Pea Ridge Peyton Place !
Editor's note: Helen Pitts Arnn, the sister of long-time TIMES columnist Joe "Pea Patch"Pitts, writes her recollections of growing up in the Pea Ridge / Garfield area.
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