Good old Mother Earth News, still composting after all these years, has published Tom Brown's account of heritage-apple hunting in North Carolina.
Brown is a fruit detective after the manner of Southern heirloom hound Lee Calhoun, knocking on doors and searching newspaper archives to locate old apples and budwood.
Here's one I never heard of: Black Beauty, so called because its extreme susceptibility to sooty blotch renders it as black as coal (if not sprayed) when ripe.