Photograph of German Immigrants Working on an Apple Orchard.
California or New York: Unknown year. Photograph measuring 5 ¾ x 7 ¾ inches. Brown Brothers stamps verso; marked verso “apple pickers in orchard/ German immigrants working in Calif orchards/ (Germans)/ up Ny State”. Some marginal tears and wrinkling, missing lower right corner, excellent contrast; overall excellent. Item #List2925
A photograph of a group of people in an apple orchard, identified verso as German immigrant apple pickers. The caption also identifies the location as both “Calif orchards” and “up Ny State”; both locations grow large quantities of apples, though New York grows significantly more. The individuals in the photograph could be farm workers, but they are a multi-generational and mixed-gender group and so could likely be a farming family despite being described merely as “apple pickers”. In fact, Germans made up an outsized portion of immigrant farmers in the early twentieth century; they had an aptitude for farming and created improvements on a number of crops, including apples.[1] Of interest to scholars of European immigrants’ role in American agricultural history.
[1] Theodore Saloutos, “The Immigrant Contribution to American Agriculture,” Agricultural History 50, no. 1 (January 1976): 45–67.
Price: $125.00