Henderson Llewelling

COMMENT OF THE DAY

If Sierra Beauty came from an apple seed discarded by a forty-miner, there’s a good chance he got that apple from [Henderson] Llewelling.

Grateful hat tip to John Henderson for his extended remarks on my review of the Sierra Beauty apple.

(Also for his neologistic "forty-miner.")

John says Llewellen contributed more to the North American apple industry than Johnny Appleseed.

The story follows, lightly edited (and with hyperlinks added by me).

Henderson Llewelling

Born in North Carolina, he migrated with his family and other Quakers to Indiana then Iowa. He operated an orchard and was a stationmaster on the underground railroad.

After a falling out with other Quakers, his family of ten traveled by covered wagon along the Oregon Trail with a second covered wagon filled with boxes of amended soil with more than 700 young fruit and nut trees—apples, pears, peaches, cherries, quince, walnut, and hickory—as well as grape vines and currant and gooseberry bushes.

They mostly travelled alone, since the heavy wagon of trees couldn’t keep up with a wagon train. When the family reached Columbia River, hostile Cayuse warriors started to attack the Lewelling wagon train but suddenly turned peaceful.

When they saw the wagon full of trees, the Cayuse believed that the Great Spirit must live with the family, and instead of attacking them, they helped the Llewellens unload their trees from the wagon so it could cross the river, move the boxes of trees, and reload them onto the wagon on the other side.

West Coast

With a son-in-law, Llewellen soon established the first commercial orchard in the Pacific Northwest, and their grafted trees were used to establish orchards throughout Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia. Within a few years, they sold more than 100,000 trees at the price of $1.00 to $1.50.

The Gold Rush lured Llewelling to California—not for the gold, but to sell fruit to forty-miners. He did well, and in 1854 the Llewelling family established Fruitvale, now a neighborhood of Oakland. 

His adventures weren’t done, however. After almost twenty years of marriage, Henderson’s wife Elizabeth died, and he went a little crazy. In California, he married four wives in quick succession, and then tried to found a free love society in Honduras without his latest wife.

Egg War

The Harmonial Brotherhood had Quaker influences, but also dabbled in spiritualism and vegetarianism. It failed almost before their ship reached Honduras, disharmony being triggered by a fight over eggs.

Henderson Luellen (not sure when the spelling was changed) returned to California a defeated man. He died 18 years later in poverty and estranged from his family.

Hardly known now, he did more for the apple industry in North America by far than Johnny Appleseed, who had a much better publicist.

Llewelling's Wikipedia page suggests "Luellen" was the original family name, and provides other details.

It describes how Llewelling was depicted in a television western hosted by Ronald Reagan.

The Llewelling family in California was the focus of a Master's thesis submitted by Sandra Leland Price in 2011. The author (p. 3 fn. 1) reports that Henderson sold apples for $5 each during the Gold Rush.

Llewelling Cherries

According to the State of North Carolina,

His brother Seth, who accompanied him, introduced the Bing cherry.

John Henderson maintains an apple website, My Grandpap's Apple Orchard, with apple descriptions and history (which I've reviewed).

His unedited story of Henderson Llewelling is attached to my review of the Sierra Beauty apple.

The photograph of Henderson Llewelling in 1855 was originally published in The Centenial History of Oregon (by Joseph Gaston, 1912; v. 1, plate following p. 330). It is in the public domain.

Price's thesis is "The Lewellings: A Microhistory of Family Farming and  Agricultural Development in California, 1850–2010" (Thesis submitted to Sonoma State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies, 2011).