Clark County History: Old Apple Tree

Scientists sequencing the DNA of apples, pears and prunes place them in the rose family along with other edible fruits. Fruit trees from Europe first arrived in America in the 1600s. Tradition has it that between 1628 and 1639 John Endicott planted a pear tree, potentially making it the first of the rose family transplanted in the New World. It survives today. William Fitzhugh in 1686 documented the first apple orchard of 2,500 mostly grafted trees.

In 1826, apple seeds arrived at the Hudson’s Bay Company’s Fort Vancouver stowed in the pocket of Lt. Aemilius Simpson, cousin of George Simpson, head of the company’s Columbia District. At a dinner party the evening before leaving England for Fort Vancouver, he’d tucked apple and grape seeds into the pocket of his dinner jacket.

Arriving months later at the fort, John McLoughlin, Hudson’s Bay Company chief factor, invited his boss’s cousin to dine. Donning the seed-ladened dinner jacket for the affair, the lieutenant retrieved the seed cache during dinner. Once revealed, Simpson recalled aloud his story, which was passed down through McLoughlin’s family. According to J.W. McLoughlin Harvey, a descendant, a young woman wrapped the seeds in paper and gave them to Simpson with the hope he might plant them because no apples existed in the new country.

No contemporary documentation supports Lt. Simpson’s story, but later reports do. In 1829, Henry Bingham, a Hawaiian missionary, wrote a friend he met then Capt. Aemilius Simpson, the head of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s Pacific coastal trade. The captain, who was there conducting company business, said he had planted the apple and grape seeds at the fort. Twelve years later, enchanted by the orchard, Narcissa Whitman tells of walking the orchard and garden for pleasure and recounts Simpson’s tale without naming him.

History isn’t clear about where the first seeds were planted or by whom. But, it’s likely that one of the fort gardeners, William Bruce or Pierre Pambrun, cultivated the seeds to create the first apple orchard in the Oregon Territory.

Whitman leaves the impression that the orchard and garden stood side by side. In 1844, Henry Peers drew a stockade area map showing the garden west of the orchard. Richard Covington’s 1851 map shows the orchard but no garden. Perhaps he combined the two.

The garden reappears in an 1854 lithograph of Fort Vancouver separate from the orchard. The 1860 British American Joint Boundary Commission Survey appears to have been taken while the photographer stood in the orchard. It shows Officer’s Row and the Grant House in the distance.

While it’s impossible to know precisely where the orchard grew and who planted it, we know only one tree survived. It eventually established itself as the oldest in the Northwest.

It hadn’t born fruit for decades, and in 2020, dying leaves appeared. The Columbian reported arborists examined it, finding the cambium layer unable to transfer water and nutrients to the leaves. The Old Apple Tree was dead.

As the apple seed bearer, many credit Simpson for starting the apple business in Washington. Although he brought grape seeds, which were likely contemporaneously planted, no one credits him with starting the local wine industry.

Martin Middlewood is editor of the Clark County Historical Society Annual. Reach him at ClarkCoHist@gmail.com.