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Reflections: Kendall County’s own apples were once a valuable cash crop · Kendall County News - Shaw Local

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  Reflections. Kendall County's own apples were once a valuable cash crop. Written
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  by Roger Mateal for Shaw Local News Network. This article is being
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  read by an automated voice brought to you by Everlet. Every autumn,
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  it seems, our fancies turn to apples raw, baked into pies and
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  other pastries dipped in caramel. Americans seem to crave the all. It's
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  a love that dates back more then two and a half centuries,
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  during which time North America's wild crab apple trees were replaced by
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  acres upon acres of hybrid apple imported from the old world. It
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  seems a New Englander, born in I, seven hundred seventy four, encouraged,
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  and then accelerated, America's long and passionate love affair with the Apple.
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  Born in Massachusetts, John Chapman eventually ended up in Pennsylvania, where he
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  sold saplings and appleseeds to families migrating west. Feeling that he wasn't
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  doing enough to spread apple trees to the frontier, he walked through
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  present-day Ohio about 1800, sowing appleseeds into orchards as he went, and
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  along the way he earned the nickname we all learned to know
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  him by Johnny Appleseed. Gradually he moved westward, planting thousands of apples
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  trees across Ohio, Indiana, and western Pennsylvania to aid thousands of settler
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  families moving into those areas. When many arrived in unsettled wild areas,
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  they found to their amazement apple orchards already growing, planted by Chapman.
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  Apple seeds don't breed true to the trees their apples have grown
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  on but Chapman's orchards provided valuable rootstock on which pioneer orchardists grafted
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  cuttings. Planting trees wasn't the only thing Chapman did to earn a
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  place in U.S. History. Although his ragged dress, eccentric ways, and religious
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  turn of mind made him stand out in any crowd, even on
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  the wild western frontier of the new U.S, he eventually earned gratitude
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  for acts other than establishing apple orchards During the War of 1812
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  he quickly covered 30 miles to summon American troops, preventing a British
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  Indian raid on Mansfield, Ohio. Although Chapman died in Fort Wayne, Ohio
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  in eighteen forty five, his contribution to the settlement of they Midwest
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  was assured as settlers carried saplings, cuttings and seeds from his orchards
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  farther and farther west. Some of the may even have ended up
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  here in Kendall County. Whether that is true or not, it is
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  known for a fact that apples were important to the county's economy
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  early in its history. Since they were easy to grow and were
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  a good food source, apples were used in a number of important
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  ways by early settlers. One of the primary was apples were used,
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  beginning in the earliest colonial times, was squeezing them for cider. Cider
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  could be drunk sweet or hard fermented, and was a favorite colonial
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  American drink. Even children drank both sweet and hard cider. Why the
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  popularity? During that era before the germ theory of disease became popular,
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  water supplies were often dangerously polluted, but cider was safe to drink,
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  even when fermented, and besides, hard cider could be more easily transported
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  than the apples themselves, and was
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  a major cash point for early US farmers. Here in Kendall County
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  apples and apple products were big business in the 1800s. The Kendall
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  County Record for august seventeenth, eighteen seventy six, reported Thomas D. Wayne
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  has built an engine house to his cider. Factory. Also bought a
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  new press of the latest pattern and means to make cider on
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  an extensive scale. Ellis Minkler, for whom Minkler Road is named, was
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  a pioneer Kendall County nurseryman and developed his own apple strain, The
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  Minkler Apple. The Kendall County record for September fourth, eighteen eighty nine,
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  noted, Ellis Minkler is giving away apples that weigh a pound each
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  and measure fourteen in in circumference. Minckler's apples were apparently extremely good
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  for making cider. In the fall of 1891, S. B. English extracted
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  252 gallons of cider from just 50 bushels of Minkler apples. Much
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  of the cider pressed in the late 1800s was used to make
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  cider vinegar, which was used to preserve other food products. The Yorkville's
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  Squire Dinghy Pickle Factory used huge quantities of vinegar during its short
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  lifespan, While other, more localized businesses and individuals required vinegar for their
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  own purposes. The Haight added a successful vinegar making facility in
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  the basement of his Oswego business, but even vinegar making could be
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  somewhat hazardous, reported the record on november eleventh, eighteen ninety one In
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  being taken down a cellar steps, a barrel of cider got the
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  best of Henry Case and rolled over him, leaving him flattened out
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  for a day or two, but now he Chas. Regained his normal
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  rotundity. While adults were wrestling with cider barrels, area youngsters had a
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  field day eating as many of the crunchy, juicy fall fruit as
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  the could beg, borrow, or steal. Grumped the Records Oswego correspondent in
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  the fall of eighteen eighty nine. Owing to the making of much
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  cider now, many loads of apples, are being carried through town, and
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  whenever one is spied by the small boys, they swarm upon it,
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  filling their pockets, biting into a few, and The pelting each other
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  with them so that the streets are strewn with apples. Monday as
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  chass. Stefbold was coming along at a trot with a load upon
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  which some boys jumped, and by some means let down the endboard,
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  and the first thing the owner knew was that most of the
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  apples were strewn along the streets the length of a block or
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  more. Today, most of the surviving old local apple orchards are untended,
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  producing few apples and few operate commercially, at least in the sense
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  orchards did 100 years ago, although that seems to be changing a
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  bit with the new farm to table movement. The small but noticeable
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  switch to smaller fruit and vegetable farms is also creating a comeback.
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  But pressing cider and making apple butter and other apple products at
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  home is now more a hobby than a business or necessary for
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  home consumption. But it is fun, if not exactly profitable, to recall
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  the days when horse drawn wagon loads of Minkler apples trundling through
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  the streets were the joyous targets of small, hungry, barefoot boys. Looking
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