Mike, I noticed your post isn't getting a response here -- have you tried the fruit & orchards forum?

Regina, he's gone much further than that online and Mike, when I saw you'd discussed it with Lon Rombaugh online there was nothing more that I felt I could do in terms of searching/researching for you, but perhaps I should have said that here.

You're absolutely right that someone somewhere has to know those varieties are growing on their own private property and the chances of anyone even being able to ID them, or others from the 1800's is, as you know, exceedingly remote.

Carolyn, actually in the Hudson River area

Unfortunately, yes I have. I've even checked with the germplasm repository at Corvallis, and was able to get root cuttings of a couple of early raspberries, but no sign of these. I'm hoping that since these were among the most popular and most written about in the 1850's, there might be a patch or two with them in it that someone may have gotten from their grandparent's or great grandparent's patch.

With Raspberries being one of those fruits that everyone remembers fondly going out and picking and eating off the cane, it is amazing to me that so few of the old ones have survived. I expect that they have, just that folks 1) don't know that they have them or 2) know it, but aren't big on gardening and computers.

Mike

Mike,

Again, I could just cry.
Would have loved to have been able to help you with this--I spent most of my childhood on my grandparents' dairy farm and they had raspberry rows and patches to the end of eternity, including heirlooms. After my Grandfather died, and Grandma moved to town a couple years ago, the renters "cleared the weed patches," which translates into bulldozing all the heirlooms that had been planted by my great-grandparents.

I guess stupidity runs rampant.