FOOTPRINTS IN THE VALLEY
By: Iris H. Naylor
Can you imagine a time when all you could see for miles and miles in the southern part of Hunterdon County was peach trees?
Peaches were big business for everyone, not just the farmers. The industry required laborers to plant the seedlings, hoe the weeds, pick the fruit and pack the fruit. Basket manufacturers were needed to supply the carriers for the peaches. The railroads put on special trains during the harvest season to transport to the markets so that peaches picked one day would arrive at the markets in Philadelphia and New York early the next morning. Shippers were rewarded with a free round-trip ticket to New York City in 1884 for every 500 baskets of peaches that were shipped over the Belvidere-Delaware Railroad. It was said that 52,013 baskets of peaches were shipped from the Lambertville station in 1885
The Butterfoss cannery in Lambertville employed a large number of men, women and children and shipped all over the world. Twenty thousand cans of peaches were processed in 1870. In addition, Mr. Butterfoss had stockpiled 150 bushels of peach stones, to be used for fuel, and a barrel of peach brandy, made from the peach peelings.
Then there were the nurseries. Dr. George H. Larison planted 3,000 trees on his farm near Sergeantsville and started a nursery in 1852. Six years later, a farm in the Rosemont area was offered for sale that contained a peach orchard with 1,500 trees. The Case brothers advertised in 1867 that they had a thousand young peach trees on their farm a mile from the Stockton depot and wished to sell the season’s plentiful crop of peaches.
Joseph B. Reading, a former Stockton resident, reported in 1875 that his new home at Princess Anne, Md., was shipping 2 million baskets of peaches to large canning factories in Baltimore. Another ex-Stocktonian, Garret S. Bellis, reported that his thousand acres in Littleton, N.C., contained vast peach orchards.
Charles C. Bowne of Delaware Township advertised that he had 20,000 peach trees for sale in March 1881 and, a week later, Jacob S. Dalrymple advertised that he had 20,000 peach trees for sale at his Stockton Nurseries.
J. B. Sherman of Stockton reported peaches stolen from his orchard and the Stockton correspondent to The Beacon warned would-be thieves that Mr. Sherman "keeps a double-barreled gun and will be on the watch hereafter." Hiram Deats had a large part of his farm at Brookville planted with peach trees in 1887. That same year newspapers reported that a paper peach basket had been invented that would "lessen the hardships of the new law requiring prepayment for all baskets in the hands of dealers or housekeepers." Peach growers were unhappy in 1887 because the commission merchants had made the decision not to return "empties" to the peach farmers. This would cut down on the farmer’s profit and may have been one of the reasons that peach exchanges began springing up, enabling the farmers to act as their own commission merchants.
An advertisement began showing up in the weekly newspapers in 1887 for a machine that would "evaporate" peaches. For a modest investment of $500 or $1,000, the American Manufacturing Co. would supply the celebrated American Evaporator (Inclined Flue) with which the farmer could begin business on his farm or in a village with the help of a work force of boys and girls to prepare the fruit for the machines. A factory "operated under reasonable management after our instructions" was guaranteed to pay the costs of the business and earn a dividend of 50 to 200 percent. What farmers could resist? There were good years and bad years. Sometimes the weather wouldn’t cooperate and the crop was small; sometimes the crop was so big that the market was glutted and prices dropped. Sometimes the price paid for the peaches did not cover the expenses. The ground on which the peach trees were planted became exhausted and the trees would not yield. The San Jose scale appeared and the peach borer killed the rest of the trees. By 1902 the career of the peach grower in Hunterdon County was on the decline and miles and miles of peach trees were gone from the area.