Boston Fruit Company

The Boston Fruit Company (1885-1899) was a fruit production and import business based in the port of Boston, Massachusetts. Andrew W. Preston and nine others established the firm to ship bananas and other fruit from the West Indes to north-eastern America. At the time, the banana was "considered a rare and delicious treat" in the United States. The major challenge for all banana importers was to get the highly perishable fruit to the American market before it spoiled." Ship captain Lorenzo Dow Baker served as president of the company and manager of the tropical division. By 1895 "the corporation own[ed] nearly 40,000 acres, included in 35 plantations, and deep-water frontage [in Jamaica] in the harbors of Port Antonio and Port Morant. They owned their own lines of steamships, which they operated between those ports and Boston, Philadelphia and Baltimore. Besides carrying their own fruits, they carried some outside freight, and afford passenger accommodations for many tourists visiting the West-India Islands."

In Boston, "Long Wharf [was] the headquarters of the tropical fruit trade, and here the Boston Fruit Company, an association of Boston merchants and West India fruit-growers, receive their cargoes of bananas, cocoanuts, oranges, lemons, and kindred fruits." In 1888 "a recent Boston paper, referring to new tropical fruits for that market, [said]: 'Two new varieties of tropical fruit will be introduced into this market by the middle of May, by the Boston Fruit Company; namely, mangoes and the avocado pear. The latter, which is ordinary pear shaped, is as large as an English pound pear, and weighs from one to two pounds. When ripe the fruit is generally green, but sometimes it is streaked. After they have been gathered a few days they become soft arid may be eaten with pepper and salt. The avocado tastes somewhat like butter or marrow and hence it is called vegetable marrow.'"

By 1890 "the Boston Fruit Company has got fully into work for the season, and steamers are now running regularly between Jamaica and Boston. As yet the cargoes are principally confined to bananas and cocoanuts. During April this company imported 9,077 cases and 44,202 boxes of oranges, and 39,354 boxes of lemons, together with 163,779 bunches of bananas."

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