From the Living Museum
Westfield Seek-No-Further
- Origin
- Westfield, Massachusetts, late 18th century
- Era
- Late 18th c.
- Type / use
- Dessert
History & Stories
Classic New England dessert apple with yellow skin, red flush or stripes, and crisp, aromatic, complex sweet-tart flesh of high quality. Unique as a refined early American variety that was highly regarded by the first generations of American pomologists. Late season and good keeper.
Folklore & Name
Named for Westfield, Massachusetts. Classic late-18th-century New England dessert apple highly regarded by early American pomologists.
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
Westfield Seek-No-Further takes its name from Westfield, Massachusetts, in the Connecticut River valley. The UK National Fruit Collection says it originated there and was known in 1796 1. S.A. Beach's The Apples of New York (1905) records that it reached Ohio from Connecticut "as early as 1796," and that it came into New York "with the early settlers more than one hundred years ago" 2.
Beach quotes an 1846 report of the New York State Agricultural Society: "This truly excellent apple originated in Westfield, or its neighborhood, a beautiful meadow town, about ten miles west of Springfield." Along that river, the report went on, it was "the apple, par excellence" of the district, just as Newtown Pippin was on Long Island and Esopus Spitzenburgh in Ulster County, and farmers planted whole orchards of it 2. By 1905, though, Beach found it mostly in old orchards, with few people planting more 2.
What we think: stories & traditions
The best name in the orchard. "Seek-no-further" is an old boast that means you need look no further for a better apple. The name was used for more than one variety, which is why this one carries "Westfield" in front of it. The National Fruit Collection lists names such as Connecticut Seek No Further and New England Seek-no-Further among its synonyms 1.
We have not found who first grew it. The 1846 report's "Westfield, or its neighborhood" 2 is as close as the record gets, and that is honest enough for a farm apple from colonial New England.
Sources
- UK National Fruit Collection, "Westfield Seek-no-Further." www.nationalfruitcollection.org.uk/full2.php?id=6675&fruit=apple
- S.A. Beach, The Apples of New York, Vol. 1 (Albany: J.B. Lyon, 1905), "Westfield Seek-No-Further," pp. 364–366. archive.org/details/applesofnewyork01beaciala/page/364
Curious about Westfield Seek-No-Further?
Email us at drgoss@honeytreeorchard.com.