Cranston Historical Society

Years before the Cranston Historical Society purchased the Joy Homestead (1959) and the Gov. Sprague Mansion (1966) and turned them into museums of Colonial and Victorian life, the members began to preserve local history by publishing a weekly column on some of the city’s historic sites, people and buildings.

The series of articles was named Echoes of Cranston History and featured pieces researched and written by several of the members including Gladys Brayton and Wilfred Stone. The column ran several times a month from 1950 (just one year after the Society was created) until 1958. Taken together, these 50 plus articles still serve as a valuable resource for anyone interested in Cranston’s history.
 

Here is a sample:

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Pippin Orchard
By Gladys Brayton

As published in the Cranston Herald on Oct. 18, 1951

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If you were to buy apples today you would never think to ask for a Pippin, but one hundred and fifty years ago it was a variety of such importance it gave its name to a part of Cranston, Pippen Orchard.

Looking at a photograph of the first Greening apple tree, which grew on the Drowne Farm in Foster, it seemed a good idea to try to get a picture of that first Pippin tree at Pippin Orchard. It proved easier said than done. Our picture at the head of the article shows some of the last Pippin trees instead of the first. But with it goes quite a bit of local interest.
 

When our English forefathers came to America they were not water consumers. In fact they didn’t consider water healthy as a beverage and were even surprised that it did not make them sick. So the first thing they did was to set out orchards so that they could make cider. This was even given to babies (which may account for some of those numerous small graves in old burial lots.)
 

These orchards were started from seeds (if you remember Johnny Appleseed) or cuttings which the early settlers brought with them. Fruit from seedlings never came true to the original stock so evidently the apple called the Pippin was one of those happy mistakes Nature sometimes makes. It was a yellowish green apple, we are told, specked with red and had just the right tart flavor and tang to give zest to cider or apple pies or a spicy apple slump. Some fifty or more varieties were developed from it.

Apples did not do as well in the southern part of the Colony in the early days but there was a belt farther inland where the farmers were much more successful and Applehouse Hill and Pippin Orchard up along Scituate Avenue were in this belt.

 

PLENTY OF APPLES
By the early nineteenth century the orchards in Cranston were at the height of their yield and cargo lists of ships sailing for the West Indies show they carried cider and vinegar and apples from these local orchards.

We have only tradition to place these first Pippin orchards. One claim that comes down through the Knight family, says the first orchard was on the “Pippin Orchard Farm” and was on the corner of Pippin Orchard Road and Scituate Avenue. There is only an empty lot there now but at the turn of this century a member of this family remembers one tree still standing there that was
known as the sole survivor of the original Pippin Orchard.

A rival claim comes down, by tradition through the Potter family, that the Potter Farm had the first orchard of this variety. At least our picture above proves they have the last.

Both farms are very old.

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KNIGHT FARM
The Knight or Pippin Orchard Farm lies on both sides of Scituate Avenue just beyond the new Pippin Orchard School, which is said to be about the center of the three square miles of territory known as Pippin Orchard. It was built for the descendants of Laten Knight who gave his name to the Laten Knight that runs from Pippin Orchard Road to Hope Road.

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POTTER FARM
The Potter Farm is on Pippin Orchard Road just north of the new school. There are two houses on this farm, one on either side of a lane. The newer one is occupied by Henry Kenyon and his family, the present owners. They are descendants of the David W. Potter who built it some seventy-five years ago.

The other house, the Kenyons think, is around a hundred years older than that. There is no date on the house as is sometimes found on a chimney stone or a beam but at the head of the lane is an old family burial lot which must have gone with it. The graves are all marked with field stones except the last two at the end of the row. These two mark the graves of Col. Barzilla Knight and his wife Eleanor.
 

His bears the date of his death, 1812. Records show he was married in 1776. So it is possible that Barzilla Knight or his family were the ones who built this quaint old house with its boxwood sentinel by the front door, now grown so large it almost hides the delicate brass knocker. As we are told the life of an apple tree is from fifty to one hundred and fifty years perhaps this orchard belonged to this Revolutionary soldier.