The Baldwin apple is a bright red winter apple, very good in quality, and easily shipped. It was for many years the most popular apple in New England, New York, and for export from America. Binomial name Malus domestica Borkh. ...

Accordinging to S. A. Beach's Apples of New York, the Baldwin originated soon after 1740 as a chance seedling on the farm of Mr. John Ball, Wilmington, Massachusetts, and for about 40 years thereafter its cultivation was confined to that immediate neighborhood. The farm eventually came into the possession of a Mr. Butters, who gave the name Woodpecker to the apple because the tree was frequented by woodpeckers. The apple was long known locally as the Woodpecker or Pecker. It was also called the Butters. Deacon Samuel Thompson, a surveyor of Woburn, Massachusetts, brought it to the attention of Col. Loammi Baldwin of the same town, by whom it was propagated and more widely introduced in Eastern Massachusetts as early as 1784. From Col. Baldwin's interest in the variety it came to be called the Baldwin. In 1817 the original tree was still alive but it perished between 1817 and 1832. Wilmington is a town located in Middlesex County, Massachusetts. ... Woburn is a city located in Middlesex County, Massachusetts. ... Colonel Loammi Baldwin was an American politician, engineer, surveyor and a soldier in the American Revolutionary War. ...

A monument to the Baldwin apple now marks the location (near today's Chestnut street). The monument's inscription reads: This Pillar Erected in 1895 By The RUMFORD HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION Incorporated April 28, 1877. Marks the estate where in 1793 Samuel Thompson, Esq., while locating the line of the Middlesex Canal, discovered the first Pecker apple tree.

References

• S. A. Beach, The Apples of New York, J. B. Lyon, Albany, 1905.