Does anyone in this august readership/contributor pool know of any organization that has compiled a history of the New Jersey cranberry industry?
My curiosity stems from having worked on the bogs during one college summer vacation. I previously posted that it was in '59. I was wrong. It was in '60, the summer of the conventions that nominated Kennedy and Nixon, and the year AFTER the big year of the "cranberryless Thanksgiving" due to a toxic herbicide (aminotriazole) having found its way into a variety of cranberry products. It was toxic to rats (fed incredibly high doses) and was suspected of being able to cause thyroid gland tumors in people. My boss was the dad of a friend of mine at college and I heard that the next couple of years were rather bleak and depressing in the cranberry business. In any event, I'm trying to track down information on the family (Joe and Lib Palmer and son Hugh - from Tuckerton) and get a handle on which of the many bogs Joe managed were his own and which were managed on contract with Ocean Spray. I'm thinking that he owned some bogs on the east bank of Wading River - north, as I recall - of the bridge on the road from New Gretna to Batsto. Anyone familiar with bogs - maybe no longer actively managed due to creeping salinity problems - in that area?
There was some speculation that some of the really old cranbogs started out as natural bogs that the Lenape had harvested and finally were "tamed" for subsistence and ultimately commercially by the colonists with peripheral ditching and provision of appropriate drainage and flooding gates.
Anyway, I'm curious about the history of the industry as well as its present status.
By the bye - My first thyroid tumor was removed in '78 and just three years ago I finally had the whole damned thing removed. Related to toxic contamination of cranberries? We'll never know.
Best t'ye,
Dave
My curiosity stems from having worked on the bogs during one college summer vacation. I previously posted that it was in '59. I was wrong. It was in '60, the summer of the conventions that nominated Kennedy and Nixon, and the year AFTER the big year of the "cranberryless Thanksgiving" due to a toxic herbicide (aminotriazole) having found its way into a variety of cranberry products. It was toxic to rats (fed incredibly high doses) and was suspected of being able to cause thyroid gland tumors in people. My boss was the dad of a friend of mine at college and I heard that the next couple of years were rather bleak and depressing in the cranberry business. In any event, I'm trying to track down information on the family (Joe and Lib Palmer and son Hugh - from Tuckerton) and get a handle on which of the many bogs Joe managed were his own and which were managed on contract with Ocean Spray. I'm thinking that he owned some bogs on the east bank of Wading River - north, as I recall - of the bridge on the road from New Gretna to Batsto. Anyone familiar with bogs - maybe no longer actively managed due to creeping salinity problems - in that area?
There was some speculation that some of the really old cranbogs started out as natural bogs that the Lenape had harvested and finally were "tamed" for subsistence and ultimately commercially by the colonists with peripheral ditching and provision of appropriate drainage and flooding gates.
Anyway, I'm curious about the history of the industry as well as its present status.
By the bye - My first thyroid tumor was removed in '78 and just three years ago I finally had the whole damned thing removed. Related to toxic contamination of cranberries? We'll never know.
Best t'ye,
Dave
