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| History Days July 2008 |
Martha Stewart and the northern spy
By Morgan Wesson, correspondent
Daily Messenger
Posted Dec 02, 2008 @ 10:40 AM
Bloomfield, N.Y. —
It was a single line in a Martha Stewart Living magazine article on apples, an almost offhand mention of the origin of the northern spy.
But it was not quite right, so the East Bloomfield Historical Society launched a campaign to get a media empire to add one tiny detail.
After much ado, the magazine agreed to a clarification — of sorts.
But this story about the guardians of small-town history taking on the Martha Stewart machine is not quite over, and may never be. It rambles through early
American history and into the world of plant genetics and the process of grafting to yield new fruit varieties.
It all began when Michele Fagan, a rare-book dealer, spotted the error on pages 162 and 163 of the October issue of Martha Stewart’s signature magazine. It
read “Northern Spy: A classic that originated in Connecticut around 1800. Its flesh is very juicy, crisp, tender and sweet.”
Sounds delicious, except for that Connecticut part.
“That’s just monumentally not true,” said Michele. “It originated here! We have proof.”
A 200-year-old seed
John Miller owns Miller Nurseries, a 200-acre operation in Canandaigua that sells semi-dwarf northern spy stock. He thinks the magazine goofed.
“It’s an East Bloomfield apple. Absolutely,” said Miller. “That seed (from Connecticut) was planted in East Bloomfield. Who cares where it came from?”
Well, it pains him to say it, but John Gibbs, a state Department of Environmental Conservation forester, cares — and he backs the magazine. The apple seed
that produced the first northern spy seedling was carried to East Bloomfield from Connecticut. From it, sprang the first plant that was grafted to East
Bloomfield root stock.
“You are making a graft, but it’s the genetic material from the original seed,” insisted Gibbs, sadly, for his grandmother made great apple pies, always with
northern spies. She lovingly wrapped the apples individually in newspaper at harvest time and stashed them in the attic so her grandson could have his
favorite pie all winter.
Crediting Connecticut poses a problem, too.
“Most of our apples here in the U.S. actually came from Europe,” Gibbs added.
Miller has sold lots of plants and trees to Martha Stewart for her TV show over the years. But client or not, Miller said, you have to respect what the pioneers
did to make the northern spy.
“They are a tricky variety,” he said. “They are heavy one year and light the next. But they are a prize apple.”
To defend East Bloomfield’s prize apple, Fagan called in the historical society’s director, retired Coast Guard Master Chief William Burlingame, who fired off
a letter to magazine headquarters in Manhattan, where it was misplaced for awhile before finally being read.
Burlingame disputed the Connecticut reference and enclosed proof to the contrary, including history from a 100-year-old book, “Apples of New York.”
“We are very proud of our contribution to the apple industry, and as you can understand many of our citizens were very concerned about this
misrepresentation,” he wrote in his request for a correction.
An apology, a clarification
Martha Stewart Living’s apple article team may have copied information on the northern spy apple from a farm field guide from the 500-acre Tree-Mendous
Farms in Eau Claire, Mich., without confirming all the history in it. Tree-Mendous Farm owner Herb Teichman, 78, takes responsibility for the field guide the
magazine’s crew picked up on a three-day visit to his farm.
To check out the history error, he turned to his primary apple history source, “Apples of New York,” which Burlingame, Fagan and Miller all use.
“It’s a New York apple,” Teichman said. “Apologize for me to the people there. I think I know how they must feel about this.”
In 1941, Teichman helped his dad harvest the first-ever bushel of red haven peaches. He wouldn’t want anyone to make a mistake about where those first
peaches came from, he said.
After due consideration, Martha Stewart Living says it will print this clarification, provided here by the magazine’s Corporate Communication Officer
Elizabeth Estroff, in its January issue:
“In our October 2008 issue, in the story ‘A Slice of History,’ we attributed the origin of the northern spy apple to Connecticut. That is only part of the story.
Heman Chapin brought seed from Salisbury, Conn. to East Bloomfield, New York about 1800. They were planted there. The original tree died before it could
bear fruit, but grafts from it were planted by Heman’s brother-in-law, Roswell Humphrey, who raised the first northern spy apples in East Bloomfield, New York.”
That was not enough clarification for Michele Fagan. It does not temper or remove the word “origin.” She sent an e-mail to Martha Stewart Living:
“Please consider modifying your correction to state that the apple originated and was created in East Bloomfield, not simply raised here. Roswell Humphrey
did more than just water the tree. He grew additional seedlings, grafted several species, cross pollinated, planted in unique soil to our area and truly created
a new species of apple. ... On our town signs there is an apple with our motto, ‘Home of the Northern Spy Apple.’ So it’s no wonder we have had a very strong
reaction. We are, after all, New Yorkers.”
Martha Stewart herself is off on a book tour and unavailable for comment. Technically, Stewart too is a New Yorker, living in the downstate town of Bedford.
However, “she used to live in Connecticut,” Estroff noted.
Making of an apple
If you simply cast apple seeds into the ground, as Johnny Appleseed did, they grow into different apple varieties, not the apple they came from, due to local
pollination and soil conditions, insisted Herb Teichman, regardless of the genetics in the seed.
The northern spy saga calls to mind the apple grower’s lonely bet when grafting seedlings and the long vigil until the first fruit. Imagine how Chapin felt when
his first seedling tree died. But Roswell Humphrey saved it, grafting it in time. Roswell worked at the Chapin orchard off Boughton Road nearly 200 years ago.
An official marker still stands there.
“He got pretty lucky,” said John Miller. “It takes a lot of years and a lot of time,” to do what Humphrey finally did with the northern spy.
The tree he produced took between 10 and 20 years to bear fruit, Miller said. Today’s apple farmers use dwarf plant root stock to speed up this process.
The future of apples rests with people like Cornell University professor Susan Brown. She creates new species of apples using genetic hybridization, a
technique so new that there is no fruit generated by it in stores. But just wait.
“We’ll have quite a few new apple varieties in the near future,” she promised.
After reading the Martha Stewart Living clarification, Brown mused: “She’s got a perhaps technically correct retraction. That is not in the spirit it should be. It
(nature) is essentially a genetic lottery. When I make a cross, I control the pollen brought to it. A bee in Connecticut created that (first northern spy) seed. But
the person who raised it and appreciated the attributes of the fruit and named it is to be credited.”
That would be Chapin and Humphrey.
If the Martha Stewart Living matter does not simmer down, there is talk of contacting state representatives in Albany for help. But it my not come to that.
East Bloomfield’s highest official, town Supervisor Dorothy “Dodie” Huber, a onetime landscaper, has a peace offering.
“It concerns me that our apple was misrepresented in the article,” she said. “As always, we are indebted to the historical society for being the watchdog of
history on this. We will always welcome the staff of Martha Stewart Living to share this history with us and relax over a warm piece of apple pie.”
| Martha Stewart Northern Spy Correction |
| The Academy |
