Mattamuskeet Apple tree relocated to Galloway Ridge

Good news. While it is true and tragic that the new owners of 302 Country Club Road did indeed cut down what was then the only Mattamuskeet Apple tree west of Lake Mattamuskeet, all is not lost. Anticipating my move, last year I asked Lee Calhoun, author of the book “Old Southern Apples,” to take a cutting from the tree. He did so, grafted it onto a new rootstock, and in December it was planted outside my window at Galloway Ridge.

I checked yesterday, and the buds are beginning push out from the slender stalk. So, I have incentive to watch my Weeping Mattamuskeet Apple Tree (weeping over the loss of its mother) grow, flower, and bear delicious apples. And, like the fellow in one of O. Henry's short stories, I expect to live until the new trunk dies of old age and its last leaf drops.

Incidentally, 2006 marks the 50th anniversary of Memory Mitchell’s and my association with the Department of Archives and History (it will always be a "Department" to us).

H.G. Jones
3000 Galloway Ridge
Pittsboro, NC 27312

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H.G. Jones is the former curator of the North Carolina Collection at UNC-Chapel Hill and the former director of the North Carolina Department of History and Archives