The Fall Jeneting: Check of vintage orchards leads to 1800’s apple variety

Gazette Reporter

An unusually shaped apple, considered one of the best in the 1800s for both canning and cooking but lost since the early 1900s, has been rediscovered in Whitman County.

David Benscoter of Chatteroy has been hunting extinct apple varieties in Whitman County and believes he has discovered one. The apple, known as the “Fall Jeneting,” is one of the apples with “ridges.”

The apple also has knobs on both the top and bottom. A watercolor painting is shown from 1901, and the photo was taken shortly after one of the apples was picked in Whitman County on Oct. 12.

Benscoter’s search for extinct apple varieties in Whitman County began in the fall of 2012 when he discovered that the major newspaper for the county in the early 1900s, The Colfax Gazette, printed the names of all apple varieties submitted to the county fair.

He reviewed Gazettes from 1900 to 1910 that revealed at least four apples, now considered extinct, were growing in the county at that time. Those varieties included the Walbridge, Lankford, Whitman and Babbitt apples.

Benscoter’s investigation then turned to matching the names of the people submitting the extinct apples to names on old county plat maps. Cemetery records as well as census information from the early 1900s led to several living relatives of the people submitting apples to the fair.

“These relatives were interviewed and the exact location of homesteads and orchards was obtained,” Benscoter said.

Last spring and summer articles on the search of extinct apples in Whitman County appeared in the Gazette and the newsletter for the historical society.

“This generated a flurry of letters and calls with more information on the location of old apple trees,” he said.

In October, 15 locations were visited and sample apples were taken from 20 trees.

After Benscoter took pictures and recorded the locations of all the apples picked, apples from three trees were sent to an expert on apple identification, Shaun Shepherd of the Home Orchard Society in Oregon.

Benscoter said two of the sample varieties closely resembled the extinct Walbridge apple. The third variety was submitted for identification because of its unusual shape.

Shepherd replied with two findings. First, the apples resembling the Walbridge were not Walbridge. He could not identify them.

However, Shepherd said he met with Joanie Cooper, president of the Home Orchard Society, to study the unusually shaped apple.

“It’s definitely the Fall Jeneting,” Shepherd said on Oct. 23. “We don’t often get a match as good. The flesh is the right color and the flavor is as described.”

Benscoter searched apple varieties available at orchards and nurseries in the United States, Australia and Canada growing heritage apples, and revealed that none of them grew the Fall Jeneting.

“The Fall Jeneting was once popular in western New York state, by 1905 it was rarely planted,” said Dan Bussey, orchard manager and apple historian for the Seed Savers Exchange in Decorah, Iowa. “It likely was still available until the early 1920s elsewhere. So it would be assumable that it’s been commercially extinct for close to 100 years.”

Apple expert John Bunker of FEDCO trees and one of the premier “apple detectives” in the U.S. said last year that identified a tree in Maine as a Fall Jeneting.

“It may or may not be the same apple as the one you have,” he told Benscoter. “Apple names got used and altered and switched around rather liberally over the generations.”

Bunker agreed to exchange fruit with Benscoter next year to determine if the trees are the same.

Benscoter said there is evidence that the Fall Jeneting was growing in Whitman County in the early 1900s. Lists of county fair prize winners listed in the early 1900s Colfax Gazettes did not have any Fall Jeneting apples listed, but several with similar names.

The Fall Jeneting is listed in books and pamphlets from the 1800s as “Fruit is large, oblate, slightly conic, almost ribbed, pale greenish yellow, with a blush. Flesh is whitish, tender, juicy, brisk subacid.”

Benscoter said it’s easy to see why the Fall Jeneting fell out of favor with growers.

“Although it is a delicious apple, it only lasts a few weeks after harvest before it begins to lose its crispness and turns mealy,” he said.

“In addition, while known as an excellent canning apple, it is very difficult to peel. The apple’s ribbed and knobby shape prevents effective use of a peeler. And as the 1900s progressed, fewer and fewer people canned apples at home.”

Next spring, cuttings, known as scions, will be taken from the Fall Jeneting and grafted onto rootstock to create more trees. Scions also will be shipped to nurseries around the country so the tree can be made available to everyone, Benscoter said.

Benscoter’s hunt for extinct apples in Whitman County received a boost in late October when Mimi Matson provided a copy of a flyer for apple tree nursery stock available from a nursery located in Oakesdale in 1902.

He said Matson explained that the Hanford Nursery was started by her great-grandfather, Edwin Hanford. Hanford is best known for building the Hanford House, also known as the Hanford Castle, on a hill just outside Oakesdale. The house is on the National Register of Historic Places. Handford had an orchard of 180 acres as well as 40 acres of small fruits and nursery stock.

Benscoter compared the nursery flyer to a list of extinct apples. He found that at least three of the apple trees sold by Hanford are now extinct.

In early November, Terri Gravelle and Paul Mathews, current owners of the Hanford Castle, led Benscoter on a tour of the home and surrounding orchards below the home. The greenbelt still has many living plum trees and approximately 20 apple trees.

“Most of the trees had dropped their apples by then and the few apples that clung to were about 30 feet high as the orchard has not been pruned for decades,” Benscoter said.

Next fall, Benscoter said he will continue the search for extinct apples and will go not only to the Hanford House, but all over Whitman County.

For more information, contact Benscoter at dbens23@gmail.com.