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Cherry picking used to be a job you could get in Boston; some of the first women to register to vote here did just that
By adamg on Mon, 03/21/2022 - 1:49pm
The Boston City Archives have been poring through Boston voter records from 1920, when women could legally register to vote in Boston for the first time, and tells the story of some of the women from Lower Roxbury and the South End listed on the rolls who worked as cherry pickers helping to make boxes of chocolate-covered cherries at the United Drug Co. factory on Leon Street - now part of Northeastern University's campus.
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Ahem
"Poring through," not "pouring through."
Err, ah ...
Fixed, thanks.
Thanks for sharing this
Interesting history.
Now it's only done for free
in online comments and other low-quality debate spaces. :-P
Where was the Cherry Orchard?
And what kind of orchard was Orchard Park before it was a Lower Roxbury neighborhood and subsequent housing project?
And what kind of orchard was
Those are great questions! I'd also like to know the answers. As a guess I'd say apple orchard for Orchard Park. No idea where the cherries came from.
Pears were not constrained to Dorchester
In addition to the Roxbury Russet apple, the Bartlett Pear gained its name from Roxbury Enoch Bartlett’s orchard which occupied land lying roughly between today’s Bartlett St and Guild St.
My first guess is apples, too. But it looks like we have two strong alternates.
Roxbury Russets...
...make amazing hard cider.
That’s why the Roxbury Russert is here.
Water sources weren’t always plentiful and fresh and “cyder” was the most popular colonial beverage. Cider presses and barrels of cider appear in the wills and probate inventories of most non-urban people of the middling class and above. It was probably the most common beverage at Constitution Hall and would have been consumed from morning through to the end. Also, Leominster’s mythic Johnny Appleseed was popular for his time not because he was bringing seeds for a portable snack, he was bringing a fermentable sugar to frontier locations. He was spreading hooch.
Roxbury’s Parker Hill is named after John Parker. His father Peter Parker was crushed to death while unloading a barrel of cider. No word on whether or not Parker’s cider sense was tingling that day.
https://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.32044024594855?urlappend=%3Bseq=416%3Bow...
Pretty sure it was Bob
Pretty sure it was Bob Bartlett up in Sonoma. He still has family up there
Punters Pub
is where the cherry picking was done most recently, until they sadly closed.