E. Cyrus Miller Loved Apples: Autumn is apple season. Everyone seems to have their favorite apple. Apples grow well in Williamsburg and Haydenville and have for years and years. Early in the 20th century, the Miller Family owned the Hillside Orchards in Haydenville, Massachusetts. The original apple trees were set out by father and son, Edwin Miller and E. Cyrus Miller, and the profitable and productive orchards remained in the family until March 1924.
E. Cyrus Miller knew his business. Williamsburg’s 1946 town history tells us that the annual yield of apples was from 10,000 to 30,000 bushels—produced from about 3, 300 early and winter apple trees. The four or five year-round employees were supplemented by fifty to sixty workers at the height of the season. And the orchard was the site of apple experimentation, working with the Massachusetts State College (now UMASS) classes in pomology.
In the March 1912 issue of “Western New England”, Mr. Miller, who was a Grange member and a state board lecturer, offers his services as an apple specialist and consulting orchardist, promising that “with our soil, climate, varieties and markets, and …modern methods of growing apples, New England can beat the world in the production of this fruit.” He is very clear—he can help.
In that same issue of that periodical published by the Springfield Board of Trade devoted to topics of interest in Western Massachusetts, Mr. Miller has a feature article on “Orcharding for Big Profits.” The editor notes that: “Mr. Miller typifies the up-to-date successful orchardists who are needed in every section of New England to demonstrate as successful growers the unrivaled opportunities for fruit raising for all comers.” E. Cyrus Miller’s article talks about the “merits of the apple tree as an asset to the famer of western New England, second only to the dairy cow…” He believes that apples are the way of the future as a food and a commodity and wants farmers to jump on the bandwagon and businessmen to invest. He sums up his feelings that “orcharding is truly the most perfect union of the useful and the beautiful which the earth knows.” Yes E. Cyrus Miller loved apples.
The Miller advertisement is from Volume 2 of Dr. Charles H. Wheeler’s Haydenville Records scrapbooks, one of fifteen scrapbooks of town activities which he compiled mostly during the 1940s and 1950s. Preservation copies are part of the Local History Collection in the Meekins Library. Daria D’Arienzo, Meekins Archivist and current photographer. #throwbackthursday; #tbt.
Posted to 9/26/2024
