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The apple and the man

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On a cheerful Wednesday in mid October, a friend and I took a detour on our way to farmers market and visited Baldwin Common in Wilmington, Massachusetts.

There we paid our respects to the man who popularized the Baldwin apple. ¶ 

A bronze statute of a man wearing a tricorne hat and a military jacket with epaulettes at the shoulders
A round apple with a warm red blush. A streak of hellow shows through where the blush is faintest

Baldwin is a great apple, once the most celebrated in New England and perhaps America. ¶ 

They are ripe in mid October. A farmer at our weekly market grows them.

On that sunny fall afternoon my hope bordered on certainty that I would buy some Baldwins and share them, and these photos, with you here in triumph and celebration.

For whatever reason this was not to be, and I did not get my Baldwins until this week.

Baldwin

Colonel Loammi Baldwin was a Revolutionary War hero who fought at the Battle of Lexington, Concord, and Menotomy, and later at Trenton with Washington.

After the war he was the chief engineer for the Middlesex Canal, which preceded the Erie Canal as one of the first major public works of the era.

What we now call the Baldwin apple grew near the route of the canal, and a surveyor for that project brought the fruit to Baldwin's attention.

A statue to the man stands in Baldwin Common, a small green park wedged today between busy roads and a parking lot.

Across the sea of traffic, Baldwin's federalist mansion, now a Szechuan restaurant, endures. Next door to it stands an intact segment of his canal.

The statue's pedestal has four sides, each detailing Baldwin's many accomplishments, military and civic.

An aged bronze bas-relief of an apple inside of a wreath of apple leaves is embedded in one side of a granite pedestal. A raised inscription reads, Disseminator of the apple in honor of him called the Baldwin which proceeded from a tree originally growing wild about two miles north of this monument.

An entire side is devoted to Baldwin's pomological legacy.

A raised inscription in bronze that reads as follows: Disseminator of the apple in honor of him called the Baldwin which proceeded from a tree originally growing wild about two miles north of this monument

Disseminator of the apple
in honor of him called the Baldwin
which proceeded from a tree
originally growing wild
about two miles north
of this monument

As the inscription suggests, the apple has a monument of its own.

https://adamapples.blogspot.com/2009/03/big-stone-apple.html
The wreath looks to be of apple leaves.

I had to leave town to get my Baldwins this year, but it was worth it.

Click any image to zoom.

Further reading

Two bicycles lean against a large painted wooden sign that reads "Baldwin Green Common."
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