NR-008Ingredient Atlas entry · Fruit

Blueberries

Vaccinium corymbosum (highbush) and Vaccinium angustifolium (wild or lowbush), from the heather family, Ericaceae

A French explorer on one meal a day, a banished preacher, a government botanist, a cranberry grower and the woodsmen of the New Jersey pines all found something in this small blue fruit. The star berries sent to feed hungry children are harder to find.

  • Part used: the fruit
  • Given as fruit, powder, juice or extract
  • Often a single serving
Version 1.5
Blueberries ripening on the branch

Manna for the winter

Lake Huron, July 1615. Samuel de Champlain's party eats one meal a day, and the food is running out.1

He had set out on 9 July with an interpreter, his own man and ten Native men, in two canoes too full to take anyone else.1 They went up the Ottawa River, crossed Lake Nipissing and came down the French River. Champlain saw only rock, not ten acres fit to plough.1 "It is true," he wrote, "as I have stated above, that there was no lack of blueberries and raspberries; for otherwise we should have been in danger of starvation."1

Near the lake they met three hundred men of a people the French named the High Hairs. Their hair was dressed very high, and better combed than a French courtier's. They wore no breechcloths. Their bodies were cut with patterns, their faces painted, their noses pierced and their ears fringed with beads. Their name would later be spelled Ottawa.1

Champlain gave their chief a hatchet, and the chief was as pleased "as if I had made him some rich gift". With charcoal on a piece of bark, he drew Champlain a map of his country. His people had come to dry blueberries "to serve them as manna in the winter when they can no longer find anything."1

Earlier, Champlain had noted an Algonquin people who dried the berries for winter "just as we do plums in France for Lent."1 In time the berries would become a trade good, a farm crop and a lab rat's dinner.

Sweet as plum cake

In January 1636 the magistrates of Massachusetts sent an officer to seize the preacher Roger Williams and ship him to England. He had been banished that autumn, most of all for insisting that magistrates had no right "to deal in matters of conscience and religion." By the time the officer came he was gone, and that spring he founded Providence.2

Seven years later he sailed for England after all, to win a charter for Providence.2 On the voyage he drew up, "in a rude lumpe at Sea," a phrasebook of his Native neighbours' language, A Key into the Language of America.3 It is full of food. Williams had walked nearly a hundred miles through the woods with some two hundred Native men, each with a little basket of parched corn meal on his back. "With a spoonfull of this meale and a spoonfull of water from the Brooke," he wrote, "have I made many a good dinner and supper."3, 4

Attitaash were Williams's hurtleberries, "sweete like Currants".3, 5 Dried, they were sautaash, and they kept all year. Beaten to powder and mixed with the parched meal, they made sautauthig, "as sweet to them as plum or spice cake to the English."3

A generation later the berries were a trade. John Josselyn, who spent eight years at his brother's plantation in Maine, found the Indians drying them in the sun and selling them to the English by the bushel.5 The English put them in puddings instead of currants. In a basin of milk with sugar and spice, they were "a most excellent Summer Dish". For cold stomachs they went into sack, a Spanish wine. Josselyn thought them good, too, "to allay the burning heat of Feavers".5

Five shovelfuls of loam

Most people believed the blueberry could not be cultivated. Four state experiment stations had tried to grow it as a fruit and got nowhere.6

Frederick Coville, a government botanist in Washington, had a farm in the middle of the problem. In May 1905 he had paid $400 for forty acres near Greenfield, New Hampshire, so that his four children would learn the country skills he grew up with. The pastures around it were full of wild blueberries, and within a year they had his attention.6, 7

In July 1908, after three summers of casual looking and three weeks of hard searching, he found his bush in an "old, brushy, mountain pasture" on his neighbour Fred Brooks's farm. It stood about seven feet tall, "old and somewhat decrepit", and its berries were more than half an inch across.6, 7

The soil was the puzzle. On 22 December 1908 he potted blueberry seedlings in small drinking glasses, so that he could watch the roots through the sides.6 Half got the soil the department used for its roses, the gardener's mix of "five shovelfuls of loam, one shovelful of cow manure, and a handful of lime." The rest got acid peat. Rose cuttings went into both.6

Forty-four days later the rose in garden soil had about quadrupled its leaves. The rose in peat was barely alive. The blueberries did the opposite. In the rich soil they made almost no new roots, and their old leaves turned purple.6

The blueberry, Coville showed, wanted none of what a good farmer gives a crop. It needed acid soil, and air at its roots. It had no root hairs at all. A fungus lived in its rootlets instead, and by Coville's reckoning the fungus fed it.6 He published it all in 1910.6, 7

Pick, pick

In the pine barrens of New Jersey, the White family grew cranberries. Elizabeth White's father had written the book on them, Cranberry Culture, in 1870. Her own first real job on the farm, at twenty-two, was bushel man, the one the pickers brought their berries to.8, 9

In September 1910 the photographer Lewis Hine came to Whites Bog for the National Child Labor Committee. Families from South Philadelphia were living in shacks there, four weeks into the school year.9 Four-year-old Victoria Borsa was picking beside her brother of seven. "While I was photographing them," the caption reads, "the mother was impatiently urging them to 'pick, pick.'" Salvin Nocito, five, carried two pecks of cranberries "for long distance to the 'bushel-man.'"9

The committee's worry covered blueberry pickers too. Elizabeth White defended the cranberry growers against its charges.8 Later she answered it another way. After its investigation, farm rules kept children under ten out of the bogs. In 1929 she opened a nursery with the Council of Women for Home Missions. Thirty-six children came on the first day. Seven were babies, and there were four baskets to use as cribs.8

A plate with a hole in it

Coville's bulletin reached Elizabeth White, and she saw at once what it could mean for the sandy, acid waste land around her father's bogs.10 In January 1911 she wrote to offer land and help. She and Coville worked together for the next twenty-six years.7, 11

White found the best wild bushes through the woodsmen of the pines, who picked the wild highbush every summer and called it "Swamp Huckleberries".11 She gave them little aluminium plates with a hole five-eighths of an inch across. A berry that slipped through was too small. Each finder got a jar of formalin to keep the sample fresh, a fee for the berries and a wage for leading her to the bush.11

Between 1911 and 1916 they found "an even 100" superior wild bushes, nearly all named for their finders. Each finder hoped theirs would prove the best. Sam Lemmon's bush could hardly be called the Lemmon, so it became Sam. The best of all was found by a man known as Rube Leek. "Leek savors of onions," White explained, "and Rube did not seem an appropriate name for so aristocratic a bush." The happy solution was Rubel, Rube plus the first letter of Leek.11

Size was not enough. Berries with tough skins, watery or mealy flesh, or a habit of cracking in the rain were thrown out, "thousands upon thousands of bearing bushes dug up and burned." Coville crossed the most promising in his Washington greenhouses and sent the seedlings back. Not one in a hundred was worth keeping.11

In 1916 Whitesbog shipped its first cultivated blueberries, about 600 quarts.11 By 1921 Coville could put the change in one line. "Instead of berries the size of peas, like the ordinary wild blueberry, we now have hybrids producing berries the size of Concord grapes."10 In 1936 the growers' cooperative shipped over 600,000 quarts of the berries developed at Whitesbog.11

That year Coville named his last variety Dixi, Latin for "I have spoken". He died in January 1937. In 1992 his varieties still covered three-quarters of America's cultivated blueberry fields.7

Old rats on a rod

In February 1999 the Department of Agriculture's research service ranked foods by ORAC, a test-tube score of antioxidant power. Blueberries came third among the fruits, behind prunes and raisins.12 If the early findings held up, said the service's head, Floyd Horn, people "may be able to reduce risk of diseases of aging", senility included, "simply by adding high-ORAC foods to their diets."12

That September a Boston team led by James Joseph reported on rats nineteen months old, fed blueberry extract for eight weeks. Set on a rod, the blueberry rats held on longer before they fell. Of three extracts tested, only blueberry won back some of the balance lost with age.13 What trials in people have found since is in the Research tab.

By 2007 a recipe column could claim that no other common fruit or vegetable was as loaded with antioxidants.14 In 2012 the department took its ORAC tables down. It said the scores had "no relevance" to human health, and that companies routinely misused them to sell their products.15

The star berries

The same column had a story. The blossom end of each berry forms a five-pointed star, it said, and "the elders of the tribe would tell how the Great Spirit sent 'star berries' to relieve the children's hunger during a time of famine."14 Its words echo, word for word in places, a page on the US Highbush Blueberry Council's website marked "Copyright 2002", which set the story beside a "beef jerky called Sautauthig" made with dried blueberries and meat.14, 16 A California growers' commission and a South Dakota health department tell it still.17

None of them names a nation or a storyteller. The California page cites the council, and the trail ends at the council's page, which names no source.16, 17

The jerky is easier to check. Williams's sautauthig was dried berries and parched corn meal. There was no meat in it.3, 4

Other pages put sautauthig at the first Thanksgiving. "Historians believe the Pilgrims served" it, says a New England history site, quoting what it calls a Plimoth colonist's recipe, boiled "with a gentle fire".18 The passage is real, but it is not about blueberries. John Winthrop the younger, governor of Connecticut, wrote it in 1662 for the scientist Robert Boyle. It describes samp, a porridge of Indian corn.3, 4 The earliest account of the feast is Edward Winslow's letter of December 1621, which tells of fowl, of Massasoit with some ninety men, and of five deer. His list of the country's fruits has grapes, strawberries, gooseberries, raspberries and plums, and no blueberries.19

The same site tells how Maine's sardine canneries lost their Southern markets in the Civil War and switched to canning blueberries for Union troops.18, 20 But Maine had no sardine canneries in the war. George Burnham of Portland tried Eastport's little herring in olive oil in 1867 and gave up, beaten by the herring-oil flavour. The industry took hold at Eastport in the fall of 1875, ten years after the war.21 A war did start it, said one of its founders, Henry Sellmann. It was the Franco-German war of 1870, when the French navy blockaded Germany's ports and cut off the Norwegian herring a New York firm imported from Hamburg as "Russian sardines".21

Still manna in winter

Rube Leek's aristocratic bush is still grown. Fred Brooks's old pasture bush is in the family tree of thirteen of the department's first fifteen varieties.7

And in January, when there is nothing left to pick, you will find the berries in the freezer, doing the job the High Hairs dried them for in 1615. They serve as manna in the winter.1

See what modern trials found

Myths and facts

In the record, or legend?

Every story you will read about this plant, checked against the oldest source we could find.

  • Peoples of the Ottawa River and Lake Huron dried blueberries for the winter, and the berries kept Champlain's party from starving in 1615

    In the record

    Champlain's own account of the journey, printed in 16191

  • Sautauthig was dried berries beaten to powder with parched meal

    In the record

    Roger Williams, 1643. Winthrop's account of 1662 shows that parched meal was made from maize3, 4

  • Native people dried blueberries and sold them to the English by the bushel

    In the record

    Josselyn, 1672, of the 1660s in Maine. That his "bill berries" were mostly blueberries is his editor Tuckerman's reading5

  • Coville showed that the blueberry needs an acid soil

    In the record

    His own experiments, 1906 to 19106

  • The Rubel blueberry was named after Rube Leek

    In the record

    Elizabeth White's own radio talk of 193711

  • Native elders told of "star berries" sent by the Great Spirit to feed hungry children in a famine

    Told, not shown

    No nation or teller is named. The trail ends at the US Highbush Blueberry Council's web page (marked Copyright 2002, archived 2009), which gives no source14, 16, 17

  • Sautauthig was a beef jerky made with dried blueberries and meat

    Legend

    Williams's account of 1643 has berries and parched meal and no meat3, 16

  • The Wampanoag taught the Pilgrims to dry blueberries

    Told, not shown

    No record from the 1620s found. By the 1660s Native people were drying them and selling them to the English5, 16

  • Sautauthig was served at the first Thanksgiving

    Told, not shown

    Winslow's letter of 1621 names fowl and five deer, and no blueberries. The "colonist's letter" quoted for it is Winthrop's description of samp, a corn porridge4, 18, 19

  • Union soldiers were fed canned blueberries in the Civil War

    Told, not shown

    No record from the 1860s found. The pages that tell it give no source18, 20

  • Maine's sardine canneries switched to blueberries when the Civil War cost them their Southern markets

    Legend

    Maine had no sardine canneries in the war. The first try came in 1867 and failed, and the industry began at Eastport in 187521

  • No other common fruit or vegetable has as many antioxidants as blueberries

    Partly

    They scored high in the department's ORAC table of 1999, but prunes and raisins scored higher, and the department withdrew the scores in 201212, 14, 15

In the record means a source from the time, or a scholar quoting one, says it. Likely means a named expert's reasoned identification. Told, not shown means one interested party says it and nothing checks it. Partly means a real event sits under a bigger story. Legend means the earliest source is far too late or missing. Wrong date means the event is real but the popular date doesn't match the record.

Notes

Every fact in the story points to one of these. Where a translation is ours, the note says so.

Show all 21 notes Hide the notes
  1. Samuel de Champlain, Voyages et descouvertures faites en la Nouvelle France (Paris, 1619), in The Works of Samuel de Champlain, general editor H. P. Biggar, vol. III (1615-1618), translated and edited by H. H. Langton and W. F. Ganong (Toronto, The Champlain Society, 1929), pp. 36-46, French text with the English below it. https://archive.org/details/worksofsamueldec03chamuoft . Page numbers read on the page images. P. 36: "On the ninth of the said month [July 1615] I embarked with two others, namely one of our interpreters and my own man, accompanied by ten savages, in the said two canoes, which is all they could carry, inasmuch as they were heavily loaded and encumbered with clothing, which hindered me from taking more men." P. 37: "the river where I had been before, which leads to the Algonquins" (the editors' note: "The Ottawa river"). P. 38, among the Otaguottouemins ("a few Algonquin savages"): "along the streams there are such a great quantity of blueberries, which is a small fruit very good to eat, and many raspberries ... These people who live there dry these fruits for their winter supply, just as we do plums in France for Lent." Ganong's note on p. 38: "Fr. Blue or bluët, a descriptive name applied to the blueberry by Champlain. It is called bluet by the French-Canadians to this day." P. 42: after Lake Nipissing, a river (the editors' note: "French river") of some thirty-five leagues, with "several little rapids, some by portaging, others by running them, as far as Lake Attigouautan" (note: "Lake Huron"); "I did not see in the whole length of it ten acres of arable land, but only rocks and a country somewhat hilly"; "our provisions were beginning to fail, through the bad management of the said savages, who ate so heartily at the start that towards the end very little remained, although we made but one meal a day. It is true, as I have stated above, that there was no lack of blueberries and raspberries; for otherwise we should have been in danger of starvation" (pp. 42-43). Pp. 43-44: "We met with three hundred men of a tribe named by us the Cheveux relevés or 'High Hairs,' because they had them elevated and arranged very high and better combed than our courtiers, and there is no comparison, in spite of the irons and methods these have at their disposal ... They wear no breech cloths, and are much carved about the body in divisions of various patterns. They paint their faces with different colours and have their nostrils pierced and their ears fringed with beads"; "I gave a hatchet to their chief who was as happy and pleased with it as if I had made him some rich gift and, entering into conversation with him, I asked him about his country, which he drew for me with charcoal on a piece of tree-bark. He gave me to understand that they had come to this place to dry the fruit called blueberries, to serve them as manna in the winter when they can no longer find anything." The French (p. 44): "pour faire secherie de ce fruict appellé bluës, pour leur seruir de manne en hyuer, & lors qu'ils ne trouuent plus rien". The editors' note on p. 43: the Huron name of the people "became subsequently Outaouat or Outaouais, whence the name Ottawa". He had left Quebec on 4 July (p. 34); 9 July is the day the canoe party embarked. The party reached the Huron village of Otoüacha "on the first of August" (p. 46), so the meeting falls between 9 July and 1 August. "Ten Native men" is our plain word for Champlain's "ten savages". Champlain names no species of blueberry, and we do not identify one. ↩
  2. "Memoir of Roger Williams", in Roger Williams, A Key into the Language of America (Providence, Rhode Island Historical Society, Collections, vol. I, 1827), pp. 10-11. https://archive.org/details/Ayer_421_N2125_1827 . Read on the page images. P. 10: "that, without doubt, which rendered him most obnoxious, was his insisting that the magistrate had no right to punish for breaches of the first table; or in other words, 'to deal in matters of conscience and religion.' These causes ... finally procured a decree of banishment to be passed against him, in the autumn of 1635 ... in the January following the Governor and Assistants sent an officer to apprehend him and carry him on board a vessel then lying at Nantasket, bound to England. But before the officer arrived, he had removed and gone to Rehoboth ... in the spring he crossed the river, and commenced the settlement of Providence." P. 11: "In 1643, Williams went to England as agent for the colonies at Providence, Rhode Island, and Warwick, to solicit a charter of incorporation". "January 1636" is the January after the autumn of 1635, in the modern reckoning of the year. ↩
  3. Roger Williams, A Key into the Language of America (London, Gregory Dexter, 1643), John Carter Brown Library copy. https://archive.org/details/keyintolanguageo00will_0 . Read on the page images. The opening address, "To my Deare and Welbeloved Friends and Countrey-men, in old and new England" (unpaginated): "I drew the materialls in a rude lumpe at Sea, as a private helpe to my owne memory". Ch. II, "Of Eating and Entertainment", p. 11: "Nokehick. Parch'd meal, which is a readie very wholesome food, which they eate with a little water, hot or cold; I have travelled with neere 200. of them at once, neere 100. miles through the woods, every man carrying a little Basket of this at his back ... With a spoonfull of this meale and a spoonfull of water from the Brooke, have I made many a good dinner and supper"; the next entry is "Aupúmmineanash. The parch'd corne"; and "From this the English call their Samp, which is the Indian corne, beaten and boild, and eaten hot or cold with milke or butter". Ch. XVI, "Of the Earth and Fruits thereof", p. 99: "Attitaash. Hurtle-berries. Of which there are divers sorts sweete like Currants, some opening, some of a binding nature. Saûtaash are these Currants dried by the Natives, and so preserved all the yeare, which they beat to powder, and mingle it with their parcht meale, and make a delicate dish which they cal Sautáuthig; which is as sweet to them as plum or spice cake to the English." Williams does not name the people whose language it is in the title; "his Native neighbours" is ours. ↩
  4. John Winthrop the younger, "Of Maiz" (1662), printed by Fulmer Mood, "John Winthrop, Jr., on Indian Corn", The New England Quarterly 10, no. 1 (March 1937). Project Gutenberg #78645, https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78645 . Mood's introduction: "In January, 1662, John Winthrop, Junior, chanced to be in London on important business for the Connecticut colony, of which he was governor at the time. It was in this very month that Winthrop was elected to membership in the Royal Society"; he wrote the essay on maize at Robert Boyle's request (his letter to Boyle of 29 July 1662). Winthrop on parched corn: "a very Common way of dressing of it is by parching it among the Ashes ... then beate it in their wooden Morters with a long Stone for a pestle, into fine meale, which is a constant food amongst them, both at home, and especially when they travell"; on samp: "the best sort of Food which the English make of this Corne is that they call Sampe ... this is to be boyled or Stued with a gentle Fire, till it be tender, of a fitt consistence, as of Rice so boyled, into which if Milke, or butter be put either with Sugar or without, it is a food very pleasant and wholesome". That Williams's "parch'd meal" was this parched maize meal is our reading of the two texts together (high confidence: Williams lists it beside "the parch'd corne", and Winthrop describes the same travelling food). ↩
  5. John Josselyn, New-Englands Rarities Discovered (London, 1672), pp. 59-60, John Carter Brown Library copy, https://archive.org/details/newenglandsrarit00joss_2 . Read on the page images. "Bill Berries, two kinds, Black and Sky Coloured, which is more frequent. To cool the heat of Feavers, and quench Thirst. They are very good to allay the burning heat of Feavers, and hot Agues, either in Syrup or Conserve. A most excellent Summer Dish. They usually eat of them put into a Bason, with Milk, and sweetned a little more with Sugar and Spice, or for cold Stomachs, in Sack. The Indians dry them in the Sun, and sell them to the English by the Bushell, who make use of them instead of Currence, putting of them into Puddens, both boyled and baked, and into Water Gruel." Edward Tuckerman's edition (Boston, William Veazie, 1865), Project Gutenberg #70111, https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/70111 . Tuckerman's introduction: Josselyn's second voyage was in 1663, to the plantation of his "only brother" Henry Josselyn at Black Point in Scarborough, Maine, "where he tells us he staid eight years, and got together the matter of the book". Tuckerman's note 215 quotes Williams on attitaash and sautaash and adds: "It was, no doubt, those species that we call blueberries which they made most of, and particularly the low blueberry (Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum, Lam.) and the swamp-blueberry (V. corymbosum, L.)." The identification of Williams's "hurtle-berries" and Josselyn's "bill berries" as mostly blueberries is Tuckerman's (1865). We follow it (medium-high confidence). Old uses such as the fever line are told here as history, not as advice. Sack was "any of several white wines imported to England from Spain and the Canary Islands during the 16th and 17th centuries" (Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sack ). ↩
  6. Frederick V. Coville, Experiments in Blueberry Culture, US Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Plant Industry, Bulletin 193 (Washington, 1910), letter of transmittal dated 19 July 1910. https://archive.org/details/experimentsinblu193covi (the scanned copy is the reprint of 18 February 1911). Read on the page images. P. 11: "The two cases here cited demonstrate the fallacy of the popular idea that the blueberry can not be transplanted or cultivated ... Four agricultural experiment stations, those of Maine, Rhode Island, New York, and Michigan, have attempted to grow the blueberry as a fruit, but none of these attempts has resulted in the commercial success of blueberry culture, and the experimental results have been chiefly of a negative character. This outcome appears to have been due to a misunderstanding of the soil requirements of the blueberry, which ... are radically different from those of our common cultivated plants." P. 14: "The writer's interest was attracted to the subject of blueberry culture in 1906"; the soil "used at the United States Department of Agriculture for growing roses ... as mixed by the rose gardener, consisted, according to his specifications, of 'five shovelfuls of loam, one shovelful of cow manure, and a handful of lime'"; the pots were "small 5-ounce drinking glasses", chosen because "the walls of these pots were transparent". P. 15: "On December 22, 1908, six glass pots were filled with the garden soil described above, and a seedling blueberry about an inch in height was transplanted into each"; six more in "a peat mixture known from earlier experiments to be productive of vigorous growth in blueberry plants", which p. 22 calls "the acid peaty soil used in growing blueberries"; rooted rose cuttings in both soils; "In the garden soil the rooted rose cutting, which was of the variety known as Cardinal, made vigorous growth of both root and stem, and in forty-four days ... had about quadrupled its leaf surface. In the blueberry soil the cutting was barely alive" (pp. 15-16). P. 17: "At the end of forty-four days vigorous root growth had taken place in the blueberry soil pots ... In the garden soil, however, almost no root growth was discernible, the old leaves were strongly purpled". The numbered findings in the contents (pp. 5-6): the swamp blueberry "does not thrive in a heavily manured soil", nor "in a soil made sweet by lime"; "for vigorous growth it requires an acid soil"; "The favorite type of acid soil for the swamp blueberry is peat"; it "requires a well-aerated soil", and aeration is good "in sandy soils"; it "is devoid of root hairs"; its rootlets "are inhabited by a fungus, of the sort known technically as an endotrophic mycorrhiza"; and "the presumption is that the mycorrhizal fungus ... transforms the nonavailable nitrogen of peaty soils into a form of nitrogen available for the nourishment of the blueberry plant". P. 80: the parent bush "selected at Greenfield, N. H., in July, 1908, after three summers of cursory observation in the mountains of southern New Hampshire and three weeks of diligent search in the summer of 1908 ... It stood with many other blueberry bushes in an old, brushy, mountain pasture ... It was about 7 feet in height ... The plant was old and somewhat decrepit, the tops on some of the stems being partially dead". Its berries were "a little more than half an inch in diameter" (p. 14). The transmittal letter calls Coville "Botanist in Charge of Taxonomic and Range Investigations". ↩
  7. Charles M. Mainland and Frederick V. Coville, "Coville's Serendipitous Association with Blueberries Leading to the Whitesbog Connection" (Rutgers University, RUcore). https://rucore.libraries.rutgers.edu/rutgers-lib/45986/PDF/1/play/ . A scholars' summary (Tier B) that cites Coville's own papers, among them his 1937 account of the search. Coville "was concerned that his four children (Stanley 11, Katherine 9, Cabot 3, and Frederick 1) would never learn the rural skills that he had acquired in his childhood in central New York"; "He bought 40 acres, and an abandoned house and barn for $400 on May 2, 1905"; "the abundant blueberry populations of, both highbush and lowbush that flourished in the surrounding fields"; "In 1906, less than a year after coming to Greenfield"; "The first outstanding bush for using in crosses was selected in July of 1908 in a pasture of his neighbor, Fred Brooks, for whom it was named ... 'Brooks' became a parent or was in the parentage of 13 of the first 15 USDA releases"; Experiments in Blueberry Culture was published "Nov. 15, 1910"; "The Whitesbog connection began in Jan. 1911 after Elizabeth White had read Experiments in Blueberry Culture and had written to the USDA offering land and assistance"; the "26 year association began in 1911 and continued until Coville's death in 1937"; "'Rubel', named for Rube Leek was selected in 1912, became a cultivar that is still grown today"; "The last Coville release was 'Dixi' in 1936. Dixi, the Latin word meaning, I have spoken, or I am through, was to punctuate his retirement at the end of 1936"; his "untimely death on January 9, 1937"; "These 29 cultivars still accounted for 75% of the commercial U.S. acreage in 1992" (the 15 he released and 14 of his crosses released after his death; highbush acreage, from Moore's 1993 survey). White herself said the 1911 offer was her father's and hers (note 11). ↩
  8. New Jersey Historical Commission, It Happened Here: New Jersey, "Elizabeth White and the Blueberry Business" (classroom unit, Tier C). https://nj.gov/state/historical/assets/pdf/it-happened-here/ihhnj-er-blueberries.pdf . "Her father wrote the definitive report on the crop, 'Cranberry Culture' in 1870"; "In 1893, when Lizzie was 22, she had her first real job on the farm, acting as a 'bushel man'"; "She defended cranberry farmers against charges of child labor abuse"; she was "responding to both the charges of the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC) and the needs of children"; "The NCLC worried about the children of seasonal workers who came from South Philadelphia to pick cranberries and blueberries on south Jersey farms"; with "the Council of Women for Home Missions, White established a daycare and nursing facility at Whitesbog", running from 1929. Its excerpt of Albertine Senske, "A Time to Teach and a Time to Learn", Whitesbog Preservation Trust Newsletter (3rd quarter 2013): "Monday, September 9, 1929 ... Thirty-six children arrived. There were seven infants – but there were only four baskets that could be used as cribs"; "Following the NCLC investigation, farm rules prohibited children under ten from being in the bogs." The 1910 Whites Bog photographs in note 9 show the September cranberry harvest; the unit's line on blueberry pickers covers south Jersey farms in general. What a bushel man did is our reading of the Hine caption in note 9, where a child carries berries to the "bushel-man". ↩
  9. National Child Labor Committee collection, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, photographs at Whites Bog, Browns Mills, New Jersey, September 1910 (captions from the committee's caption cards; the Library attributes the photographs to Lewis Hine). Victoria Borsa: "Victoria Borsa, 1223 Catherine St., Philadelphia. 4 year old berry picker. Brother 7 years old. While I was photographing them, the mother was impatiently urging them to 'pick, pick.' Whites Bog, Brown Mills, N.J." (dated 1910 September, Hine no. 1131), https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2018675447/ . Salvin Nocito: "Salvin Nocito, 5 years old, carries 2 pecks of cranberries for long distance to the 'bushel-man.' Whites Bog, Browns Mills, N.J. Sept. 28, 1910", https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2018674122/ . Rose Biodo, of Annan St., Philadelphia, ten: "This is the fourth week of school and the people here expect to remain two weeks more. Sept. 28, 1910", https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2018673884/ . A group of children "In front of shacks at noon, Florence colony [?], Whites Bog", https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2018673882/ . That these were South Philadelphia families is from the addresses and note 8. The Library's website refuses automated link checks; each record also opens with ?fo=json added to its address. ↩
  10. Frederick V. Coville, Directions for Blueberry Culture, 1921, US Department of Agriculture Bulletin 974 (15 October 1921). https://archive.org/details/directionsforblu974covi . Read on the page images. P. 1: the 1910 bulletin "was widely distributed, and a copy came into the hands of Miss Elizabeth C. White, New Lisbon, N. J. Miss White at once perceived the significance of the experiments and the importance of testing their application to the waste lands surrounding her father's cranberry bogs. An informal agreement of cooperation resulted. In 1913 this was replaced by a formal contract"; the test plantation "is at Whitesbog, 4 miles east of Browns Mills, N. J., in the sandy, peaty, acid soil of the pine barrens". P. 23: "Blueberry breeding has now been carried on for 10 years, with the result that instead of berries the size of peas, like the ordinary wild blueberry, we now have hybrids producing berries the size of Concord grapes." ↩
  11. Elizabeth White, "Taming Blueberries", radio talk for the Garden Club of New Jersey over WOR and the Mutual network, Tuesday 6 July 1937, Radio Garden Club, vol. 6, Digest No. 50 (New Brunswick, N.J.), typed transcript (New Jersey Digital Highway). https://njdigitalhighway.org/sites/default/files/lessons/garden_state/pdf/radio_transcript.pdf . "Blueberry culture began at Whitesbog, New Jersey, in 1911 as a result of an offer made by my father, Joseph J. White, and myself, to cooperate with the United States Department of Agriculture"; "Five years later, in 1916, the first cultivated blueberries, about 600 quarts were shipped from the fields at Whitesbog. Last summer, in 1936, over 600,000 quarts of these berries developed at Whitesbog, were moved by the Blueberry Cooperative Association"; people living in the Pines picked cranberries in the autumn "after they had finished picking and marketing wild Highbush Blueberries of 'Swamp Huckleberries', as they called them" ("of" as transcribed); "My father and I were thus well acquainted with many of these excellent woodsmen"; "We supplied them with little aluminum plates in which a hole five-eights of an inch in diameter served to measure the smallest acceptable berries. They were also given broadmouthed two-ounce jars in which to place the berries and a solution of formalin with which to cover them so that when delivered for inspection several days later they would still present a fresh appearance. An attractive wage was offered for the time spent in guiding me to the bushes, in addition to a fee for delivering the sample berries and marking the bushes"; "From 1911 to 1916 an even 100 superior wild bushes were thus located. After being dug, the top of each bush was cut into five inch lengths"; "Nearly every one of the original bushes was given the name of its discoverer. The people were enthusiastic over the possibility that their bush might be the very best of all and their name become prominent in the future blueberry industry. Thus, we had from the wild the 'Adams' variety, the 'Harding', the 'Grover', and the 'Dunfee' varieties. The fine bush found by Sam Lemmon could not well be called the Lemmon variety, so we named it 'Sam'. What has proved to be the very best bush of all was found by a man known as Rube Leek. Leek savors of onions and Rube did not seem an appropriate name for so aristocratic a bush. A happy solution was 'Rubel', Rube, plus the first letter of Leek"; varieties with "tough skins and weak, watery pulp", "mealy" texture, or that "would crack open when it rained" were discarded, "thousands upon thousands of bearing bushes dug up and burned"; Coville "cross-pollinated them" in the department's greenhouses in Washington and the seedlings "were sent to Whitesbog"; of these "A very few, a small fraction of one percent" were worth keeping. The transcript spells his name "Colville". ↩
  12. Judy McBride, "High-ORAC Foods May Slow Aging", USDA Agricultural Research Service news release, 8 February 1999. https://www.ars.usda.gov/news-events/news/research-news/1999/high-orac-foods-may-slow-aging/ . "ORAC, short for Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity, is a test tube analysis that measures the total antioxidant power of foods"; "'If these findings are borne out in further research, young and middle-aged people may be able to reduce risk of diseases of aging--including senility--simply by adding high-ORAC foods to their diets,' said ARS Administrator Floyd P. Horn"; the table of "ORAC units per 100 grams" lists the fruits as prunes 5770, raisins 2830, blueberries 2400, blackberries 2036. The memory results in this release were for spinach, in rats. ↩
  13. James A. Joseph, Barbara Shukitt-Hale and others, "Reversals of Age-Related Declines in Neuronal Signal Transduction, Cognitive, and Motor Behavioral Deficits with Blueberry, Spinach, or Strawberry Dietary Supplementation", Journal of Neuroscience 19, no. 18 (15 September 1999), 8114-8121, doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.19-18-08114.1999 , PMID 10479711, free at https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6782471/ . The team was at the USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University, Boston. Extracts "fed for 8 weeks to 19-month-old Fischer 344 rats"; the rod walk "requiring the animal to balance on a stationary, horizontal rod"; "For the rod walk, latency to fall was significantly longer in the blueberry group compared to the control"; "supplementation with the blueberry extract improved motor performance on two motor tests that rely on balance and coordination"; "The blueberry-supplemented animals were the only group to show reversals in motor behavioral deficits." What this means for people is the Research tab's subject, not this page's. ↩
  14. Douglas Carpenter, "Recipes: Then & Now, Blueberry Pie", Broad Ripple Gazette, posted 29 June 2007, web copy at https://www.randomripplings.com/issues/2007/20070629/col_12.htm . "No other common fruit or vegetable is as loaded with antioxidants as blueberries"; "A kind of jerky that was consumed year round was made by mixing dried blueberries with meat"; "Native Americans in the Northeast revered blueberries, and folklore developed around them. One such story tells of the blossom end of each berry. It forms the shape of a perfect five-pointed star. The elders of the tribe would tell how the Great Spirit sent 'star berries' to relieve the children's hunger during a time of famine." The column's paragraph on Native lore follows the council's page (note 16), reordered and word for word in places, as in "In food preparation, dried blueberries were added to stews, soups and meats" and "The dried berries were also crushed into a powder and rubbed into meat for flavor". The Wayback Machine could not be reached from our research setup, so older copies of the council's page are unchecked. ↩
  15. Stephen Daniells, "ORAC has 'ongoing value', says expert, as USDA removes online database", NutraIngredients-USA, 13 June 2012, now at https://www.nutraingredients.com/Article/2012/06/13/ORAC-has-ongoing-value-says-expert-as-USDA-removes-online-database/ . The department's Nutrient Data Laboratory "recently removed the USDA ORAC Database for Selected Foods from its website", giving two reasons: "The values indicating antioxidant capacity have no relevance to the effects of specific bioactive compounds, including polyphenols on human health" and "ORAC values are routinely misused by food and dietary supplement manufacturing companies to promote their products and by consumers to guide their food and dietary supplement choices." The former ARS scientist Ronald Prior objected to the removal in a letter quoted in the article. ↩
  16. US Highbush Blueberry Council, "History" (blueberry.org), archived 16 January 2009 by the University of North Texas End of Term web archive. https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/eot2008/20090116213308/http://www.blueberry.org/blueberries.htm . The page's footer reads "Copyright 2002 - U.S. Highbush Blueberry Council". (The archive's server sends an incomplete certificate chain, which some link checkers reject; it opens in a browser.) "The Northeast Native American tribes revered blueberries and much folklore developed around them. The blossom end of each berry, the calyx, forms the shape of a perfect five-pointed star; the elders of the tribe would tell of how the Great Spirit sent 'star berries' to relieve the children's hunger during a famine"; "A beef jerky called Sautauthig (pronounced saw'-taw-teeg), was made with dried blueberries and meat and was consumed year round"; "Their neighbors, the Wampanoag Indians taught the settlers new skills ... The colonists learned from Native Americans how to gather blueberries, dry them under the summer's sun and store them for the winter"; "A beverage made with blueberries was an important staple for Civil War Soldiers. In the 1880s a blueberry canning industry began in the Northeast USA." The page gives no sources. ↩
  17. California Blueberry Commission, "History", https://calblueberry.org/history.html (read November 2026): "Tribal elders recounted how the Great Spirit sent 'star berries' to ease the children's hunger during a famine"; it calls sautauthig "This simple pudding made with blueberries, cracked corn (or samp) and water" and says "many historians believe it was part of the first Thanksgiving feast". South Dakota Department of Health, HealthySD, "Blueberry and cranberry lesson plan", https://healthysd.gov/category/nutrition/blueberry-cranberry-lesson-plan (read November 2026): "Native Americans called blueberries 'star berries' because the blossom end of each berry – the calyx – forms a perfect five-pointed star. Tribal elders recounted how the Great Spirit sent 'star berries' to ease the children's hunger". Neither names a nation or a storyteller. The commission's page ends "Sources 1. www.usgs.gov 2. www.blueberrycouncil.org". ↩
  18. New England Historical Society, "How the Civil War Made the Wild Maine Blueberry Go National" (updated 2026). https://newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/how-civil-war-made-wild-maine-blueberry-go-national/ . "Historians believe the Pilgrims served Sautathig at the first Thanksgiving meal. In a letter, one Plimoth Plantation colonist described how to prepare Sauthauthig …this is to be boyled or stued with a gentle fire, till it be tender, of a fitt consistence, as of Rice so boyled, into which Milke, or butter be put either with sugar or without it, it is a food very pleasant"; "Then came the Civil War. Sardine canneries lost their Southern markets, so they switched to selling canned blueberries to Union troops." No source is given; a reader's comment of 6 April 2018 asks where the Civil War information came from. The quoted passage matches Winthrop's description of samp (note 4). ↩
  19. Edward Winslow, letter of 11 December 1621 ("Plymouth, in New England, this 11th of December, 1621"), printed in A Relation or Journall of the Beginning and Proceedings of the English Plantation Setled at Plimoth (London, 1622), known as Mourt's Relation, edited by Dwight B. Heath as A Journal of the Pilgrims at Plymouth (New York, Corinth Books, 1963). Project Gutenberg #66359, https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/66359 . "Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling ... many of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest king Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five deer"; on the country's fruits, "Here are grapes, white and red, and very sweet and strong also. Strawberries, gooseberries, raspas, etc. Plums of three sorts". Heath's note: "The following is the earliest description of the first Thanksgiving"; his note on "raspas": raspberries. The "etc." means the list is not complete, which is why the verdict is "Told, not shown" and not "Legend". ↩
  20. Wild Blueberry Heritage Center (Columbia Falls, Maine), "Civil War and Blueberry Canning". https://wildblueberryheritagecenter.org/civil-war-and-blueberry-canning/ . "Canned wild blueberries were shipped to Union troops during the Civil War to prevent scurvy and became a food staple largley because of their convenience, ease of storage, and health benefits." It says nothing about sardine canneries, and no source is given. ↩
  21. R. Edward Earll, "The Herring Fishery and the Sardine Industry", in G. Brown Goode, The Fisheries and Fishery Industries of the United States, Section V, vol. I (Washington, 1887), pp. 489-492. https://archive.org/details/fisheriesfishery0501good . Read on the page images. Pp. 489-490: "The first to act in this matter was Mr. George Burnham, of the firm of Burnham & Merrill, of Portland, Me.", who wrote that the idea of using the small herring as a substitute for sardines occurred to him "in 1865", and "In the fall of 1867 I proceeded to Eastport ... I put up the fish in cans similar to those used by the French and used only the best quality of olive oil in preserving them ... I was obliged to abandon the business on account of my inability to get rid of the herring-oil flavor." Pp. 490-491: menhaden were canned in oil in New Jersey by a company incorporated in 1871. P. 491: "About the year 1872 the small herring that were being imported from Germany under the name of 'Russian sardines' suggested the idea of using the herring taken at Eastport as a substitute ... in the fall of 1875 Mr. Henry Sellmann and Mr. Julius Wolff, of New York, began experiments in putting up the herring in oil ... They were successful in finding a method by which a superior quality of sardines could be put up". P. 492, Sellmann's own account: "The Franco-German war in 1870-'71 was the approximate if not the immediate cause of the origin of the American sardine industry"; the "Russian sardines" came "from Hamburg, Germany", and "The fish used for this purpose were small herring taken on the coast of Norway"; and "in consequence of the blockade of German ports by the French navy, the importation of the article from Hamburg had to be abandoned for the time being". The Civil War ended in 1865. Since Earll names Burnham's attempt of 1867 as the first in the United States, Maine had no sardine cannery during the war. Maine did have other canneries then: lobster canning "was made successful" at Eastport in 1843, and U. S. Treat canned lobsters, salmon, halibut and vegetables there from 1852 "for eight or ten years", and "Mr. J. W. Jones began canning in 1856" (Goode, Section V, vol. II, pp. 687-689, read in the text layer). Only the sardine part of the story is ruled out. ↩