Today in the orchard
I never know what will turn up when I open a package this time of year. I assume it’s going to be a bunch of apples and then, it’s not. I opened one box yesterday and found two jars of honey sent from a former member of our apple CSA. A thank you gift for all the apples over the years. Thank you!
Another I opened yesterday was a crocheted potholder with a Black Oxford apple in the center. Wow! This was from Paula Gray who I’d met in Massachusetts earlier this fall and whose relative was Nathaniel Haskell, the one credited with having found the first Black Oxford tree 240 years ago in Paris, ME. Meeting Paula was a highlight of my trip to the New England Botanic Garden at Tower Hill in Boylston. She came up to me and introduced herself. We agreed on a trade: she’d send me family information on Nathaniel Haskell, and I’d send her a box of Black Oxfords. She’d never tried one.
According to Paula, Nathaniel was Capt. Nathaniel Haskell, born in Hampton Falls, NH in 1742. He married Deborah Bailey of Falmouth, ME. At age thirty-three Nathaniel joined the “31st regiment of Foot,” in Cumberland County, ME. He died in New Gloucester, not far from Falmouth, in 1794.
Nathaniel’s daughter, Dorothy, born 1768 in New Gloucester, married Edmund Knight, and they lived in Poland, Otisfield and Paris, Maine. Dorothy died in 1848. According to Paula, “I don’t know if Nathaniel ever lived for a time in Paris, ME, but his daughter Dorothy (my grandmother) and his daughter Jemma lived there for decades.”
Sometime around 1790 the seedling that became known as Black Oxford was supposedly found by Nathaniel on the Valentine farm in Paris. Using 1790 as the date, that would have made Dorothy twenty-two years old and, by that time she could have married Edmund Knight and been living in Paris. Captain Nathaniel Haskell would have been forty-eight. Was he visiting his daughter? Was he living for a time with her and her young family?
Paula’s note inspired me to do more research. Evidently Nathaniel and Deborah had 12 children, one of whom was also named Nathaniel who was born in 1764 and would have been twenty-six in 1790 when the seedling was discovered. The son, Nathaniel married Sarah Stevens, and they had a son, also named Nathaniel, who was born in Paris in 1789. Perhaps Paula’s suspicion is correct - Captain Nathaniel Haskell never lived in Paris. It seems more likely that the Nathaniel Haskell of Black-Oxford-fame was his son Nathaniel who was living in Paris in 1789.
I went to the basement and selected a dozen Black Oxford apples and packed them up to send to Paula. I’ll put them in the mail tomorrow.