Kerry Heafner

Several Southern apple varieties have origins in Louisiana. Apples such as Bossier Greening, Felt’s Strawberry, Louisiana, McMullen, Pride of the South, Terral and Woodland are all extinct, according to C. Lee Calhoun in his magnificent book, “Old Southern Apples.” If even one stands a chance of being rediscovered, it is the McMullen apple. It left a blazed trail for us to follow.

Joseph Cullen “Joe” McMullen was born in Kimble County, Texas, in 1844. He eventually married and settled his family in DeSoto Parish near Stonewall. At age 19, McMullen was wounded in the Battle of Mansfield fighting for the Confederate Army. His wounds troubled him for the rest of his life. McMullen was a cotton farmer in his postwar years. And he grew apples.

In 1888, McMullen purchased a bundle of fruit tree whips from a nursery salesman, and some of the whips were apple trees. Seven years later, six of the surviving trees produced a crop of quality apples. McMullen said he thought he had initially purchased seedlings. However, apples rarely breed true from seeds, and all his trees produced the same apple. Joe had most likely purchased root sprouts taken from a single, nongrafted tree.

In 1904, Major Jordan G. Lee Sr., then commissioner of the Louisiana Bureau of Agriculture and Immigration, which would become the Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry, encouraged McMullen to exhibit his apples in the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. By this time, McMullen’s health would not allow long-distance travel, but he arranged to ship his apples to St. Louis. His efforts didn’t go unrewarded. McMullen apples were exhibited along with other fruits from Louisiana and won a bronze medal.

Also in 1904, the McMullen apple was selected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture for inclusion in its collection of watercolor paintings by renowned botanical artist Deborah Griscom Passmore, who contributed more than half of the 7,500 pomological watercolor paintings commissioned by the USDA in 1887. Artist Bertha Heiges contributed a second painting of the McMullen apple in 1905. So, we know exactly what the McMullen apple looked like.

In January 1905, when the Louisiana State Horticultural Society met in Shreveport, John Massengale Nelson Sr., the county agent in DeSoto Parish, gave a presentation on this new Louisiana apple on Joe McMullen’s behalf. In his question-and-answer session, Nelson was asked if the apple may be of commercial value in Louisiana. He reported that McMullen “gathered from five to nine bushels to the tree off six trees and sold them in Shreveport at $1.35 per bushel.” Nurseryman Arthur Clingman of Keithville, just north of Stonewall, spoke highly of McMullen and agreed that while apples may not be a commercial crop in Louisiana, they were certainly a valuable crop for home orchards. Interestingly, Joe McMullen’s apple doesn’t appear in any of Clingman’s catalogs, which were published well into the 1920s.

McMullen died on Feb. 17, 1906, aged 61. Nelson took over propagating the apple for the McMullen family and is listed in an advertisement printed in a Shreveport newspaper as the point of contact for McMullen apple trees: $1 each or $10 per dozen. On Feb. 21, 1908, one of McMullen’s daughters, Harriette Belle “Hettie” McMullen, gave another presentation on the McMullen apple to the Louisiana State Horticultural Society. Hettie McMullen, not quite 18 years old, said a lot that day. She reread Nelson’s paper from three years prior, but also said the original six McMullen apple trees were still healthy and productive and stood about 15 feet tall. Hettie McMullen also reported that 1,000 trees had been grafted in 1906 and, in November of that year, an orchard of 450 of those trees had been established, presumably by Nelson. Finally, she said 2,500 McMullen apple trees were grafted in 1907 and 6,000 trees in 1908. Several trees evidently wound up in LSU’s trial orchard at the Baton Rouge State Experiment Station but had not produced fruit by the time the 1908 orchard report was published as Louisiana Bulletin No. 112, October 1908. Fruit for the photograph in the report was likely obtained from either Nelson or the McMullen Family.

Nelson died on April 30, 1924, aged 77. Hettie McMullen Fincher lived 99 years. When she died on Feb. 2, 1990, so did the location of the orchard and the fates of all those grafted trees. There may still be an old McMullen apple tree hanging on somewhere, if only by root sprouts.

Kerry Heafner, an LSU AgCenter Extension agent focused on horticulture, is based in Ouachita Parish.

This article appears in the spring 2025 edition of Louisiana Agriculture.

This 1904 Passmore painting of the McMullen apple appeared in the USDA Pomological Watercolor Collection. Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress