Hubbardston Nonesuch

Hubbardston Nonesuch is generally considered to be one of the most popular

apples of the late 19th century, especially in New England. Its name is taken from

the town of Hubbardston, Massachusetts, which is located about 50 miles west of

Boston in Worcester County. Most sources simply give 1832 as the date of

introduction and leave it at that, but an 1875 report to the Massachusetts

Horticultural Society traces the apple back to a seedling tree grown on a farm

settled by a Barzillai Gleason near Hubbardston. A nurseryman in Newton,

Massachusetts, received scions from the tree, and started distributing the tree

sometime before 1830.

However, it’s often a good idea not to blindly accept the general consensus. I

say this because George Stilphen’s reference The Apples of Maine (1993), itself

adapted from a 1911 thesis submitted by Frederick Bradford to the University of

Maine, suggests a completely different date and place of origin.

Briefly, Stilphen and Bradford claim that the apple we know today as

Hubbardston was brought as scions (dormant cuttings) from Charlton,

Massachusetts (another town in central Massachusetts) to Foxcroft, Maine, by one

Samuel Chamberlain. This was sometime between 1810 and 1814. The scions

reportedly came from a variety possibly grown as early as 1730 under the name

‘Red Luxury’ in the towns of Charlton and Southbridge, Massachusetts, and in

Thompson, Connecticut. This would have been about a century before

Hubbardston was even settled or incorporated as a town.

‘Red Luxury’ as an apple name is long-since gone and forgotten, but the

early growers in Maine didn’t care too much about names, so long as the apple was

worthwhile. In fact, another Chamberlain—Calvin this time—was said to have

even propagated and sold the variety as ‘Yellow Baldwin’, no doubt playing off the

popularity of the ubiquitous Baldwin apple.

So there you have the two competing theories. Most people don’t find this

sort of apple detective work as fascinating as I do, but try to think of it as “apple

genealogy” and you’ll understand why some curious folks like to dig as deep as

possible into the background and breeding of a particular variety.

I also get a kick out of apple names: both ‘Red Luxury’ and ‘Hubbardston

Nonesuch’ create such big expectations! Does the apple deliver? Well, that’s a

matter of opinion. I grew up eating and enjoying Hubbardston when it was

available from the orchard in October, but personally I’ve never considered it one

of my favorite varieties. That said, it’s a large, good-looking, crisp eating apple

that’s mildly sweet and not too tart—really, a 19th -century forerunner of the

“Crisp” apples you might find in the supermarket today. It also is useful for

culinary purposes and in a cider blend. In other words, Hubardston doesn’t need

me to turn cartwheels and wax poetic over the flavor. And, perhaps most

importantly, it was seen as an apple that ripened at an ideal time of the

season—after the early tart ephemeral varieties, but ideal for all uses before the

richer, later-ripening, and longer-storing apples had developed their peak flavor,

around the end of the calendar year.