Elizabeth Coleman White facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Elizabeth Coleman White
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| Born | October 5, 1871 |
| Died | November 11, 1954 (aged 83) |
| Parent(s) | Mary Fenwick Joseph Josiah White |
| Relatives | Barclay White, grandfather |
Elizabeth Coleman White (October 5, 1871 – November 11, 1954) was a New Jersey agricultural specialist who collaborated with Frederick Vernon Coville to develop and commercialize a cultivated blueberry.
Biography
Elizabeth Coleman White was born on October 5, 1871 in New Lisbon, New Jersey. She was the oldest of four daughters of Quaker parents, Mary A. Fenwick and Joseph Josiah White. Elizabeth graduated from the Friends' Central School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1887.
After 1887 she worked in the bogs helping to supervise cranberry pickers at her father's farm. During the winters, White continued her education with courses in first aid, photography, dressmaking, and millinery at Drexel Institute of Art, Science and Industry (now Drexel University). White belonged to several organizations, including being the first woman to become member of the American Cranberry Association and the first woman to receive a citation from the New Jersey Department of Agriculture.
In 1927 she helped organize the New Jersey Blueberry Cooperative Association.
White died of cancer in Whitesbog, New Jersey, on November 27, 1954, at the age of 83. She was cremated at Ewing Crematory in Ewing Township, New Jersey. Her ashes were distributed by airplane over the headwaters of Whitesbog in accordance to her will.
Blueberry Cultivation
White became interested in cultivating and harvesting the wild blueberries that grew around her family's cranberry farm. She wanted to grow them in the land between the cranberry bogs in the summer months of June and July to avoid any conflict with the fall harvest of the cranberries. White contacted United States Department of Agriculture botanist Frederick Coville after reading his publication, “Experiments in Blueberry Culture." Coville was persuaded to help White after she offered her family farm's unused land for Coville to experiment. White was in charge of the land and finding wild blueberry bushes to cultivate while Coville provided scientific plant knowledge.
Multiple factors were considered in the process of selecting which wild blueberries to cultivate, including taste, color, shape, and how long it took to ripen. White recruited local woodsmen to aid her in finding bushes deemed fit, paying them one to three dollars for every bush they found with berries that measured least 5/8 inches. The bushes were then tagged, and later uprooted and grafted by Coville. Of the 120 wild bushes they collected, only two met White and Coville's standards; from these they grew thousands of hybrid bushes, which they selectively bred to produce modern cultivated blueberries. In 1916, White and Coville successfully cultivated the first blueberry crop, selling it under the name Tru-Blu-Berries. White also came up with the idea to package blueberries in cellophane after seeing it used as a candy wrapper.
