Boston Fruit Company's "Golden Vale" plantation, Jamaica, ca.1894.
Industry
Fruit production and import
Founded
1885
Defunct
1899
Fate
Merged with United Fruit Company in 1899.
Headquarters
Long Wharf (Boston),
Boston, Massachusetts
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 Indies to north-eastern America.[1][2][3] 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."[4] 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."[5]
^Palmer, Jesse T. "The Banana in Caribbean Trade." Economic Geography, Vol. 8, No. 3, July 1932. doi:10.2307/140436.
^"Andrew W. Preston." Massachusetts of Today: A Memorial of the State, Historical and Biographical, issued for the World's Columbian Exposition at Chicago. Columbia Publishing Company, 1892.
^Morgenroth, Lynda. Boston Firsts: 40 Feats of Innovation and Invention That Happened First in Boston and Helped Make America Great. Boston: Beacon Press, 2007. ISBN 978-0807071304.
^Dupont, Nancy McKenzie. "The German Priest, the Banana Boats, and the Origins of Broadcasting in New Orleans." Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association, Vol. 40, No. 2, Spring 1999. JSTOR 4233577.
^King's how to see Boston. 1895 Google books
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