Woven peach basket, early-20th century.
Item
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Title
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Woven peach basket, early-20th century.
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Description
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This woven peach basket was manufactured in the early 1900s by African American workers in the Sourland Mountain peach orchards, a large employer for the local Black community, according to the Stoutsburg Sourland African American Museum. Peach baskets were used to collect peaches during harvest, until the San Jose scale peach blight occurred in the late 1800s.
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On top of Sourland Mountain with its highest elevation at 568 feet, the peach industry was said to have been “thriving” around the mid-1800s, until the late 1800s arrived and a peach blight known as the San Jose scale destroyed the orchards and the African American community of farm workers that maintained them (Sourland Conservancy, n.d.). The San Jose scale are tiny crawlers that eat plants and secrete “white, waxy material” that eventually turns black (Hasey et al. 2015). If the infestation goes unaddressed, scales injure and eventually kill the fruit to the entire trees (Hasey et al. 2015).
According to the Stoutsburg Sourland African American Museum, the creator of the basket is Anne Scheier (May 5, 1939-August 12, 2021) of the Moore family. Her father, Spencer Winston Moore Sr. (February 28, 1900-January 17, 1959) operated a grocery store on West Broad Street in Hopewell, NJ offering meats, milk, soaps, canned goods, coffee, and produce (The Hopewell Herald 1942, 2; Find a Grave 2013).
The Sourland region of central New Jersey is the largest contiguous forest between New York City and Philadelphia, a critical 90 square-mile oasis of nature for humans, animals, and plants alike (Heffler 2014, 4). Free and enslaved African Americans were present in this part (and all) of New Jersey since the 1600s where they labored on farms, in factories and homes, and “even made brandy and moonshine” (Katmann 2014, 5).
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Contributor
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Stoutsburg Sourland African American Museum
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Date Created
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(c. 1900-1920)
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Creator
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Scheier, Anne of the Moore family, who owned a store in Hopewell.
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Rights
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This work is believed to be in the Public Domain under the laws of the United States. For more information, see http://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-US/1.0/
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Identifier
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2023.1.6
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Format
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Physical Object
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Extent
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1 item
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Spatial Coverage
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Hillsborough Twp. NJ
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Publisher
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SSAAM
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Is Part Of
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2023.1.14
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Subject
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Sourland Mountain (N.J.)
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Hunterdon County (N.J.)
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Peach.
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African American farmers--History.
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San José scale.
