Fall apples and crisp recipe

“Native Americans appropriated what they liked, cultivating apples extensively. There are between 25 to 30 kinds of wild apples grown throughout the world with seven kinds in the U.S. Most wild apples are crab apples with small, sour, hard fruit. The crab apple is the ancestor of many of the varieties of apples grown today.

Prehistory:

Carbonized remains of apples have been found by archeologists in prehistoric lake dwellings in Switzerland, dating back to the Iron Age. There is also evidence to show that apples were eaten and preserved by slicing and sun drying during the Stone Age in Europe.

1st Century

In earliest writings of China, Egypt, and Babylon, records were found that mentioned that man understood the art of budding and grafting fruit trees as long as twenty centuries ago.

15th Century

1470 - In the Old Saxon manuscripts there are numerous mentions of apples and cider. Bartholomeus Anglicus, who's Encyclopedia was one of the earliest printed books containing botanical information, gives a chapter on the Apple. He says:

"Malus the Appyll tree is a tree yt bereth apples and is a grete tree in itself. . . it is more short than other trees of the wood wyth knottes and rinelyd Rynde. And makyth shadowe wythe thicke bowes and branches: and fayr with dyurs blossomes, and floures of swetnesse and Iykynge: with goode fruyte and noble. And is gracious in syght and in taste and vertuous in medecyne . . . some beryth sourysh fruyte and harde, and some ryght soure and some ryght swete, with a good savoure and mery.'"

16th Century

Dr. John Caius (1510-1573), physician to Edward VI, Mary I, and Queen Elizabeth I, in his Boke of Counseille against the Sweatynge Sicknesse advises the patient to 'smele to an old swete apple to recover his strengthe.' Queen Elizabeth called him "the most learned physician of his age."

In William Shakespeare's (1564-1616) time, apples when served at dessert were usually accompanied by caraway, as we may read in Henry IV, where Shallow invites Falstaff to 'a pippin and a dish of caraway,' In a still earlier Booke of Nurture, it is directed 'After mete pepyns, caraway in comfyts.' The custom of serving roast apples with a little saucer of caraways is still kept up at Trinity College, Cambridge, and at some of the old-fashioned London Livery dinners, just as in Shakespeare's days.

17th Century

When the English colonists arrived in North America they found only crab apples. Crab apple trees are the only native apples to the United States. European settlers arrived and brought with them their English customs and favorite fruits. In colonial time, apples were called winter banana or melt-in-the-mouth.

1622 - Most historians fail to mention that those early orchards produced very few apples because there were no honey bees.  Historical information indicates that colonies of honey bees were shipped from England and landed in the Colony of Virginia early in 1622. One or more shipments were made to Massachusetts between 1630 and 1633, others probably between 1633 and 1638. The Indians called the honeybees "English flies" and/or “white man’s flies.” A description of New York in 1670 claimed:

"You shall scarce see a house, but the South side is begirt with Hives of Bees."

1623 - William Blackstone arrived in Massachusetts from Europe. Historians write that he carried a bag of apple seeds (also called "pips") with him and soon planted an orchard on Beacon Hill in Boston. He later moved to Rhode Island and also planted orchards. According to the Biography of Reverend William Blackstone, The Pioneer of Boston and His Ancestors and Descendents by Nathaniel Brewster Blackstone:

"As for the apple seeds he used to develop his orchards, it is probable that he was foresighted enough to retrieve and save every apple core (which naturally contains seeds) he could find, or otherwise come by. Certainly most ships were stocked with apples along with other foodstuffs, therefore, it is doubtful that he brought them with him in 1623 because this kind of living was most likely not his original intention. He would have probably only brought with him his ministerial necessities."

1628 - John Endicott (1558-1665), one of the early colonial governors of Massachusetts Bay Colony, was commissioned to begin a new colony at Massachusetts Bay by the English chartered company that established the original Massachusetts Bay colony in New England. Early in 1629 the Boston Bay Company placed an order for apple seeds from England. According to historians, among the possessions brought were either apple seeds or seedling apple trees (history is very confused about this).

Among the articles “to provide to be sent to New England” by the Massachusetts Company, in 1629, are the following: “Vine-planters, wheat, rye, barley, oats, a hogshead of each in the ear: beans, pease, stones of all sorts of fruits, as peaches, plums, filberts, cherries: pear, apple, quince kernels: pomegranates, woad seed, saffron heads, liquorice seed, madder roots, potatoes, hop-roots, hemp seed, flax seed, currant plants, and madder seeds.” These seeds and roots were afterwards sent, and, according to accounts, sprung up and flourished. The mode of cultivating and manuring the soil by means of fish, was practiced at first as at Plymouth. Owning, however, to the scarcity of certain kinds, such as cod and bass, it was forbidden in 1639 to use these for that purpose.

1632 - April 2, 1632, Conants Island in Boston Harbor was granted to John Winthrop (1588-1649), the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The name of the island was changed to The Governour’s Garden. For this gift, he promised to plant an orchard and a vineyard there, and agreed to pay yearly a fifth of the fruits forever to the governor, whoever he might be. In 1634, the rent was changed by the General Court to:

“A hogshead of the best wyne that shall grow there to be paide yearly, after the death of the said John Winthrop and noething before.” A few years afterwards, the rent was changed to “two bushels of apples every yeare one bushel to the Governour & another to the Generall Court in winter, — the same to bee of the best apples there growing.” The records of the General Court in 1640 show that “Mr. Winthrop, Senior, paid in his bushel of apples."

1640 - By the 1640’s, orchards were well established. Nearly all land owners planted apple trees.

18th Century

1737 - Robert Prince in 1737 established the first commercial apple tree nursery in America called William Prince Nursery in Flushing, New York. The nursery survived under four generations of the Prince family until just after the Civil War. Prince's Nursery gathered trees and plants from around the world for resale, and became renowned through the American colony for its exotic wares.

1775 - The British who occupied Long Island during the Revolutionary War (1775-1783) had considered the William Prince Nursery so important that they put an armed guard around the nursery to protect it.

1779 - In 1779, Marquis de Lafayette entertained George Washington, general of the Continental Army, for dinner in 1779 under the shade of an old apple tree to map out Revolutionary War strategy against the British. Lafayette returned in 1824, during his tour of the United States, and was presented with a cane carved from this tree. The tree blew down in 1821

1789 - George Washington, six months after he became the new nation's first president, made a trip by barge to visit the William Prince Nursery. He was accompanied by Vice President John Adams and others. Washington was not overly impressed, perhaps because the nursery had not yet fully recovered from the war or perhaps because his Virginia standards were so high. In his diary for Oct. 10, he notes:

"I set off from New York, about nine oclock in my barge, to visit Mr. Princes fruit gardens and shrubberies at Flushing. These gardens, except in the number of young fruit trees, did not answer my expectations. The shrubs were trifling and the flowers not numerous.''”