HISTORICAL COMMENTS BY GEORGE CHEVALLIER

Fruit Growing on the Eastern Shore

The first fruit grown and sold commercially on the Eastern Shore was the peach. Peach trees were prolific around the Shore and spawned some companies that existed for a hundred years. Two of these were Harrison’s in Berlin and Allen’s in Salisbury. The box pictured above was patented in 1871 in Philadelphia. It held brass tokens on the spindles in different denominations denoting the quantity of peaches picked. Each denomination was of a different shape for two reasons. The first was that most of the pickers could not read so they had to remember what shape denoted each quantity. The second was to secure the tokens since a lot of people didn’t have pockets or, if they did, they might have had holes in them. Since the tokens represented money to them for their labor, it was very important not to lose them. These “field cash registers” and peaches went by the wayside during the 1890’s when the peach blight devastated the industry and gave way to another.

It was around this time that strawberries became the major fruit crop. Practically every farm had a portion of their holdings in strawberries. The pickers were paid by cardboard tickets called “chits”. It seems every farm on the Eastern Shore is represented by these cardboard chits. The only place that used brass tokens for picking strawberries was the west side of Wicomico County. There are examples of cardboard chits, but the majority are brass. Some growers had many denominations. I have some as high as 100. The reason for this is economics. The soil on the west side of the county is conducive to strawberries becoming ripe two weeks before anywhere else. This gave the growers a tremendous advantage over other growers with the lucrative markets in the cities. They could charge whatever they wanted for about two weeks because they were the only game in town, so to speak. This allowed the growers to buy the brass tokens. The tokens also wore better than the cardboard, but I suspect that the ego factor of having brass tokens figured largely in their decision. Not many strawberries come from the west side any more, but, if you are lucky enough to get some, they are the finest strawberries in the world, red all the way through and have a taste to die for.

I bought some this year that the seller claimed were “organically grown”. They were a far cry from the naturally grown berries I remember. The years I worked in Nanticoke are fondly remembered by the delicious strawberries I brought home. I always had to buy two quarts to get one home. The smell and taste took possession of me, and I simply couldn’t resist eating one – and then another, etc..

Allen’s entered the strawberry business in a different way. They sold strawberry plants all over the country from their catalog. One of their catalogs from 1915 is pictured above. The extensive land that formerly held peach trees and then grew strawberry plants is now the land that Salisbury University resides upon.