From the Living Museum
Baldwin
- Origin
- Wilmington, Massachusetts, a chance seedling on John Ball's farm around 1740
- Era
- c. 1740
- Type / use
- Dessert · Dual-purpose
From the ArchiveFilm
Watch its story
The Woodpecker Apple
A short narrated history of Baldwin, told through the archive illustrations of our apple collection.
Illustrations: Royal Charles Steadman (1933) and Ellen Isham Schutt (1905), USDA Pomological Watercolor Collection, National Agricultural Library (public domain). Narrated with a synthetic voice.
Watch on YouTubeHistory & Stories
Once the dominant commercial apple of New England and New York for much of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Large, deep red fruit with tough skin and firm, spicy-aromatic flesh. Unique historical importance as the apple that powered the early American commercial fruit industry before being displaced by modern varieties. Still valued by those who appreciate its robust flavor and keeping quality, despite its susceptibility to Baldwin spot and fire blight.
Folklore & Name
Came up as a chance seedling on John Ball's farm near Wilmington, Massachusetts; a later owner of the farm, Mr. Butters, knew it as the Woodpecker 1. Became the dominant commercial apple of 19th-century New England and New York before modern varieties displaced it. The name honors Colonel Baldwin of Woburn, who propagated it 1,2.
Digging into the History
Below my own notes, here is what the old fruit books and today’s collections record about this apple, kept apart from the stories people tell.
What we know
According to S.A. Beach's The Apples of New York (1905), the Baldwin "came up as a chance seedling" soon after 1740 on the farm of John Ball in Wilmington, near Lowell, Massachusetts, and for about forty years was grown only in that neighborhood 1. The UK National Fruit Collection gives the same story: a chance seedling on John Ball's farm about 1740, introduced by Colonel Baldwin about 1780 2.
Beach tells how it got its names. The farm later passed to a Mr. Butters, and the apple was known locally as the Woodpecker, the Pecker, or the Butters. Deacon Samuel Thompson, a surveyor of Woburn, showed it to Colonel Baldwin of the same town, who propagated it in eastern Massachusetts, and it came to be called the Baldwin 1. The original tree was alive in 1817 but died before 1832, and Beach notes that "a monument to the Baldwin apple now marks the location" 1.
By 1852 the horticulturist Hovey called it "the most popular apple of New England," and fifteen hundred barrels had gone to the East Indies in a single season. By 1905 Beach called it "preeminently the leading variety" in the commercial orchards of New York and New England 1.
The competing accounts
- S.A. Beach, 1905 1: a chance seedling on John Ball's farm in Wilmington, Massachusetts, soon after 1740. A later owner, Mr. Butters, called it Woodpecker; Colonel Baldwin of Woburn spread it and gave it its lasting name.
- UK National Fruit Collection 2: the same farm and date, with Colonel Baldwin introducing it about 1780. Neither source gives Mr. Butters a first name or credits him with finding the tree.
Most likely (our judgment, not a certainty): John Ball's farm, around 1740. The two independent sources agree, and Beach drew on 19th-century Massachusetts accounts.
What we think: stories & traditions
The woodpecker tree (tradition). Beach says Mr. Butters named it Woodpecker "because the tree was frequented by woodpeckers" 1. You can picture the old seedling drilled full of holes, its fruit pecked before anyone thought to graft it. Whether the birds came for the apples or for insects in the bark, the story doesn't say.
Why "Baldwin"? The colonel's role is well recorded, but it was the surveyor Thompson who first noticed it 1. Like many old apples, it is named for the man who promoted it, not the farmer who found it.
Sources
- S.A. Beach, The Apples of New York, Vol. 1 (Albany: J.B. Lyon, 1905), "Baldwin," pp. 56–58. archive.org/details/applesofnewyork01beaciala/page/56
- UK National Fruit Collection, "Baldwin." www.nationalfruitcollection.org.uk/full2.php?id=306&fruit=apple
Curious about Baldwin?
Email us at drgoss@honeytreeorchard.com.