Perhaps the largest pear tree in the south is in Williamsburg county. Mr. J.T. Brown, who travels for a Waycross, Ga., nursery, and who has traveled in every southern State, and who has made a life-long sturdy of fruit trees, says that the largest pear tree he has ever seen is one on Rev. Henry Haddock’s place in the Indiantown neighborhood. Mr. Brown was in that section last week, and, hearing of the tree, went to Mr. Haddock’s and requested that gentlemen to show it to him. Mr. Haddock and Mr. Brown proceeded to the tree, and Mr. Brown asked for a rope to measure it, saying that it was undoubtedly the largest pear tree in existence. The tree was measured by the two gentlemen, and it was found to be six and on-half feet in circumference, and measured forty-five feet across the branches. The height was estimated at forty feet. Mr. Haddock has gathered as much as sixty bushed of matured fruit from the tree in one year, besides that picked before the end of the season. Several of Mr. Haddock’s neighbors say that there is no doubt that the tree has borne seventy-five bushels of fruit in a single season.
The most remarkable thing about the tree is that it has never “blighted;” that is, the branches have never died and decayed back to the truck of the tree. Mr. Brown, who is well up upon such matters, and who may be quoted as a reliable authority, says that the fact of the tree having never “blighted” is the most wonderful thing connected with it, as he, in all his career, as a fruit tree salesman, has never before seen a pear tree that has not suffered in this way.
Who can beat this in the way of a pear tree?
The County Record, April 15, 1897
