Wealthy

The Wealthy is an American apple cultivar, and was the earliest to thrive in the Minnesota climate. Horticulturalist Peter Gideon first grew it in 1868, after years of trial and error with various apple varieties. History Before 1868, only crab apples grew reliably in Minnesota. Indigenous peoples in the area harvested other crops, but they did not grow apples. Early White settlers to Minnesota tried to grow apples using seeds and seedlings from their former homes to the east and the south, but their plants died, usually because of the region's harsh winters. In 1853, Peter Gideon moved to Minnesota for health reasons and took a homestead with his family on the shores of Lake Minnetonka, near Excelsior. He had learned fruit-growing as a child, and when he arrived on his new land, he planted a bushel of apple seeds he had brought with him from his former home in Maine, Illinois. In the years that followed, Gideon experimented with apple and fruit growing, planting thousands of trees, but most of his trees died within a few years, if not right away, and none of them bore much fruit. By 1861, Gideon and his family had only one surviving apple tree, a Siberian crab apple, and they were down to their last eight dollars. Determined to find an apple that would grow in Minnesota, Gideon sent the family's last dollars to an apple grower in Bangor, Maine, and got apple seeds and scions in return. Just one of the resulting trees, crossed with Gideon's Siberian crab apple, produced the apple that Gideon later named the Wealthy, after his wife, Wealthy (Hull) Gideon.