Eponymous Foods: Fruits

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, A production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Frye and I'm Tracy V.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
Wilson. We haven't had an eponymous Foods episode in a minute,
and I just felt like it. It's kind of like
that thing that we've talked about before, where when I
do really really dark stories, it's probably because I'm in
such a good place mentally and emotionally that they're not
a problem, and then when i do really late ones,

(00:37):
it's because I'm overwhelmed with the world.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
So welcome to fruit time. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:41):
I was talked to some friends of mine and I
was like, if you look at our recent episodes, I
feel like Holly's and my coping strategies are opposite, because
Holly's episodes are like strawberries and my episodes are like
we're pouring blood on the draft files.

Speaker 1 (00:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
Yeah, If I can spend some time in a more
in a place of levity, sure, I mean, I'm not
ignoring all the other stuff, No, but I can. If
I wallow in it, I will. I don't know what
will happen.

Speaker 1 (01:17):
It won't be good. So here we are talking about fruit.
This eponymous foods episode kind of dovetails on that strawberry
episode because it is all fruit. So we have a
berry in this one, a poem, and a citrus. They
all have varying degrees of documentation. One of them includes
a naming Whoopsie Daisy, that I find oddly amusing and

(01:40):
just hilarious. And we'll get to all of that.

Speaker 2 (01:44):
Yeah, I only knew one of these was an eponym,
and it was not the first one. Charles Rudolph Boisen
was born July fourteenth, eighteen ninety five, in Lagrange, California.
That's a little more than thirty mins due east of Medesto.
Some write ups indicate that he was an immigrant from Sweden,

(02:05):
but that appears to be incorrect. His father was from Germany,
which might be something that's been confused in the retelling
of this story. In his early life, post school, Rudy
as he was called, enlisted and served in World War One,
and when he got home from the war, he moved
to Coombsville, California in Napa and worked as a farm hand.

(02:28):
And it's there that he started experimenting with cross pollinating berries.
So the exact nature of how he got his original
berry is a little bit lost because this story has
been shared through oral history over the years, rather than
through any notes or documentation on Boyson's part. It's been
told in some different ways, so some suggest that he

(02:50):
was purposely combining berries through cross pollination. Others suggest it
may have been a happy accident of having just planted
different berries near one another, and it is actually highly
likely that there was something in between. Boison was a
very good with plants, and he was also a hobbyist,
so he may have just been trying things out without

(03:12):
really having an idea of an end goal. His wife
told reporters almost a decade after his death, quote, he
did it just for fun. He sprinkled Himalaya BlackBerry bush
with pollen from various related berries and got the boison berry.
But what matters most is that when some of his
berry vines cross pollinated in nineteen twenty three, he recognized

(03:36):
that the resulting fruit was something unique and very delicious.
Boison berries are considered to be a type of BlackBerry,
and like the BlackBerry, it's a bramble fruit, which just
means it comes from a shrub style plant that can
be thorny or bristly, like our recent topic, the strawberry.
It's part of the rose family, and it's a dark

(03:58):
reddish black color and full of flavor. They're usually described
as being juicier or sweeter than a BlackBerry, but with
a tart note that shines through the sweet. Unfortunately, bois
and berries don't have a very long shelf life once
they have been picked, so you don't see them in
grocery stores for very long. It's usually a very brief
window when you can buy them fresh. But they're excellent

(04:21):
for baking and for preserves. That's probably how most people
first encounter them. It is definitely true that Holly had
boisonberry preserves as a kid.

Speaker 1 (04:32):
Yeah, that was like a big favorite in our house
growing up. That's the only way I knew what they were.
Numerous berries are often suggested as the likely or possible
genetic donors to the hybrid that became the boison berry,
including the loganberry, the European BlackBerry, European raspberry, and American dewberry,
and of course, as we mentioned just a moment ago,

(04:54):
his widow mentioned the Himalaya BlackBerry. Recent genetic comparisons have
led to the theory that it's a cross of a
Marion berry and Logan berry. The vine that produced the
berries that Rudy Boysen recognized as new were very hardy.
We'll talk about just how hardy in a bit, and
the fruit itself was much larger than other berries. He

(05:15):
touted it as being as big as a thumb, which
was significantly larger than anything on the market in that
type of berry. Boison contacted the USDA Bureau of Plant Industry,
and specifically a man named George M. Darrow, who was
in charge of the Small Fruit Division, about this newberry,
but he never received a response, and so he just

(05:36):
kind of went on with his life.

Speaker 2 (05:38):
Two years after the berry discovery, in nineteen twenty five,
Boyson moved to Anaheim, California. There he worked on public
park projects for the city, planting trees for a new
twenty acre green space known simply as City Park. That
park would later be renamed Pearson Park, which is the
name it has today. Eventually, Poison was made superintendent of

(06:02):
the park and was paid one hundred and seventy five
dollars a month to care for the new space. Boysen
married a woman named Peggy Bruton, and they had one son,
After they got married, they moved to a property in Fullerton, California,
that was owned by Peggy's mother, and Rudy brought the
berry vines right along with him, planting them at their
new place. Boyson became well known in Anaheim for his

(06:25):
expertise in growing things, and even gave talks about plants
to community groups, including one called Street Trees and their Stories,
which he shared at the Anaheim Toastmasters Club in early
nineteen twenty eight.

Speaker 1 (06:39):
Another city works project that Boyson was involved with in
nineteen twenty eight was the grenification of Anaheim. A write
up in the Los Angeles Times from January twenty second
of that year reads quote, Anaheim will plant forty four
hundred trees in city. The planting of forty four hundred
trees by the city within the next few months, in
accordance with the program adopted by the city council to

(07:02):
make Anaheim one of the most attractive of all Southern cities,
has been announced. Rudolph Boysen, overseer of the City Park,
is in charge of the planting. Early in February. Rudy
also combined his plant knowledge with his involvement in the
American Legion to initiate a program where he prepared floral
arrangements each Memorial Day to be distributed to the grave

(07:24):
sites of the city's veterans. While Boison remained an active
plant enthusiast for his whole life, he had an injury
in nineteen twenty eight that slowed him down and likely
contributed to his berry vines kind of falling by the
wayside in terms of being actively cultivated. He had fallen
down a fire pole while touring a fire station, and

(07:46):
he injured his back. This was probably a factor in
why he wasn't able to really cultivate his berries much
beyond that initial planting. His back issues and other responsibilities
might have just prevented it. He had given away a
lot of his berry plants over the years to friends
and neighbors, so there's no telling how many may have
been producing fruit that were never documented. Yeah, but they

(08:10):
all came out of this one vine which he had
allegedly planted. It's often described as in a ditch on
his mother in law's property. Years after Boyson had written
to George Darrow at the USDA. Darrow found those letters
and he became intrigued about this thumb sized berry that
was described in them. So Barrow decided to find Rudy

(08:31):
Boysen and his plants to assess them. But as Rudy
had moved a couple of times, it just wasn't as
simple as going to the return address on the letters,
and eventually Barrow enlisted the help of another man with
a name that is easily recognizable in the Barry game,
that is, Walter Not. Not was able to locate Boyson's
abandoned vines that had been planted in a ditch on

(08:54):
the Fullerton property, and Not relocated the plants to his
own property to try to get them back to a
more robe state. Nott was able to propagate one hundred
vines from the plans that he had collected in Fullerton.
They became hearty producers of the berry boys and had cultivated.
Nott was the one to give the fruit the name
bois and Berry, but he didn't really cut the fruit's

(09:16):
namesake in on the profits that he made from it.
Knot's berry farm was made possible in part by the
money that Walter Not made from Boison berry sales. Rudy
continued to work for the Parks Department and per the
accounts of family members. He did not harbor any resentment
toward not He focused on his work in Anaheim, establishing

(09:38):
new parks and keeping the existing green spaces filled with
healthy flora. Over time, he aged and his health declined,
and he eventually had mobility issues due to a health
condition that led to the loss of one of his legs.
He died at the age of fifty five on November
twenty fifth of nineteen fifty but he had worked for
the city right up until the end of his life.

Speaker 2 (10:00):
All indications are that Rudy was beloved by the city
of Anaheim. His death was reported in the papers beyond
merely an announcement or an obituary, with many noting that
the chapel where his funeral was held was not big
enough for all the people who came to pay their
respects and say goodbye to him. Two years after he died,

(10:20):
a rite up in the Anaheim Gazette noted that a
victory garden he had planted at the beginning of World
War II for the community and planned out with regular
crop rotations to optimize output, was still going strong, including
boison berries cultivated by Rudy at the start of the
plot's life. Almost a decade after his death, the city

(10:42):
started a week long festival in his name. And to
be clear, that festival featured the berries, but it was
about Rudy. The La Times reported on June fourteenth, nineteen
fifty nine, quote week to honor creator of famed boisonberry.

Speaker 1 (10:57):
Rudy's legacy, Barry has continued to have a very busy life.
In nineteen fifty five, one of Rudy's siblings got permission
to remove the original vine and bring it back to
their home in Merced, California. That plant was very hearty,
and then in nineteen seventy six, that plant which continued

(11:18):
to be very healthy. That's more than twenty years after
that moving was propagated through root division and given from
one family member to another in a shoebox. This transfer
apparently took place at a wedding. Those shoots that were
in the shoe box were planted in Castro Valley, California.
They continue to be prosperous there.

Speaker 2 (11:39):
Then, in twenty seventeen, Rudy's granddaughter, Jeannette boys and Fitzgerald,
was able to get access to her grandfather's original boisonberry plant,
which continued to survive. And produce fruit nearly one hundred
years after it originated. Jeannette and her husband were able
to take clippings from the original plant and propagate them.
Eventually the opening of vineyard Bois and Berry Farm in Orland, California,

(12:04):
where the vines thrive today, and if you want to
own a piece of berry history, you can purchase plants
from them that are propagated from the original boisoberry stock.
During the height of the pandemic, the farm opened up
their property so people could come and pick berries and
get some outside time, noting that their rows were planted

(12:24):
eight feet apart, so it was a way to enjoy
an outing while keeping a safe distance from others. That
picking experience has continued in the years since then, lasting
several weeks beginning in late May.

Speaker 1 (12:38):
Yeah, you only get a few weeks a year because
of that very short time that they stay fresh. But
coming up, we're going to talk about a fruit that
had a bit of a naming accident that I reference
at the top of the show. We'll explain after we
first pause for a sponsor break. The Bartlet pear has

(13:05):
long been a favorite in the United States. It's a
good canning pair it's excellent for eating ripe, and it
also bakes up beautifully. In nineteen twenty one, up Hendrick
wrote of the Bartlet quote, Bartlett leads all other pairs
in number of trees in New York, and vis with
Kiefer for the greatest number in America. Its fruits are

(13:25):
more common and more popular in American markets than those
of any other pair when the characters of the variety
are passed in review, although several poor ones of fruit
and tree appear, the popularity of Bartlet with growers and sellers,
if not with consumers, seems justified. But the story of.

Speaker 2 (13:43):
This particular fruits name is a little wonky, and it
involves a case of mistaken originality and an entry in
the eighteen ninety two book The Bartlet's Ancestral Genealogical Biographical Historical,
comprising an account of the American progenitors of the Bartlett family,
with special reference to the descendants of John Bartlett of

(14:05):
Weymouth and Cumberland, there's an entry for Enoch Bartlett which
reads quote. Enoch Bartlett, who died in eighteen sixty was
born in haverl, Massachusetts, in seventeen seventy nine. He was
a merchant in the truest meaning of the word, and
was an extensive importer of foreign merchandise during the troublous
eighteen twelve period when merchants suffered heavy losses by the

(14:29):
depradations of the enemy on the seas.

Speaker 1 (14:32):
He it was.

Speaker 2 (14:33):
After whom the favorite Bartlet pear was named.

Speaker 1 (14:38):
Enoch did not cultivate that pear. He found it in
eighteen seventeen. He had acquired an estate that had been
previously owned by a man named Thomas Brewer. Brewer had
a number of fruit bearing trees growing on the property,
and Enoch Bartlett was very interested in them. One of
the trees produced a pair unlike any that Bartlett had

(14:59):
ever seen before, so he nurtured it and he started
actively producing and cultivating the fruit. And because he didn't
know anybody else who was growing that same pair, he
named it after himself. An eighteen thirty two write up
in the New England Farmer, which also appeared in numerous
other places, describes a horticultural festival that was staged in

(15:20):
honor of the anniversary of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society. This
event included a lecture on entomology, which talked about pests
in the garden, and it also featured a fruit and
flower display where members could share the literal fruits of
their labors. Listed among them are Enoch Bartlett's Bartlet and
Capumont pears, which are rated in the mention as very fine.

(15:44):
Bartlett did not only cultivate pears. There are many mentions
in local papers in the eighteen hundreds of the many
varieties of apples he produced, which seemed to have been
universally recognized for high quality, as well as nectarines and peaches.
So he had a very good reputation. Yeah, he was
a fruit man that people trusted. In eighteen forty eight,

(16:05):
the newly formed American Pomological Society, which is now the
oldest fruit organization in North America, included the Bartlet pear
in its catalog of fruits available on the North American continent.
It described the Bartlet tree this way quote tree medium
in size, tall, puriform, upright, hardy, very productive, branches, stocky, smooth,

(16:28):
reddish brown, overlaid with an ash gray scarf skin with
few lentisoles. Branchlets short with short internodes, reddish brown, glossy, smooth,
glabrous with conspicuous lenticles, and the fruit of the tree
was written up as quote, skin thin, tender, smooth, often dull,
the surface somewhat uneven color, clear yellow, with a faint

(16:50):
blush on the exposed cheek, more or less dotted with russet,
and often thinly rusted around the basin dots. Many small,
conspicuous greenish russet flesh, fine grained, although slightly granular at
the center, melting buttery, very juicy, venus aromatic quality, very good.

(17:12):
But even before that eighteen forty eight write up, there
had been a realization. In eighteen twenty eight, a fresh
shipment of fruit trees from Europe arrived in New England,
and among them was a pear tree that was just
like the Bartlet in every respect, and it bore identical
fruit to the Bartlet record scratch.

Speaker 2 (17:34):
The Bartlet pear was not a Bartlet at all, but
a variety called a Williams Boncritienne or William's Good Christian.

Speaker 1 (17:42):
The Williams Good Christian was also not the first name
that that pear tree had. It was first known in
England as a stairs pair. That's because the first person
who actually discovered it first at least to the best
of our knowledge, was a school teacher by the name
of Stair, and mister Stair found this pair seventeen sixty five.

(18:02):
The Stair pair was acquired by a nurseryman named Williams,
who distributed it in England as the Williams Pair or
Williams bon Cretienne. In seventeen ninety nine, an importer in
the US named James Carter had several of the Williams
pears shipped across the Atlantic to be planted on the Roxbury,
Massachusetts estate of Thomas Brewer. And it was that a

(18:26):
state that Enoch Bartlett purchased in eighteen seventeen. I just
want to say, in case other Massachusetts people, Roxbury is
not next to haverl That's not really what that original
biographical thing was said. So he was born right, That's
not where the trees were, is what correct? Correct. But

(18:46):
this is a case where that revelation of the paar's
real name, which is funny because people knew initially when
they brought the pair over that it was a Williams,
but that information got lost. It had no impact on
the pear's name in the US because by the time
this mistake was uncovered, so many people had been growing

(19:07):
and purchasing and eating Bartlet pears because of Enoch Bartlet's
reputation that everybody just kind of stuck with it. But
in Europe it is still called a Williams pear. So
if you're from one place or the other and you're traveling,
if you see a Williams or Bartlet pear on the
menu in a market and it's not the one you
call it, it's the same thing. It's the same pair.

Speaker 2 (19:30):
We are about to talk about our final eponymous fruit,
but before we do, we will hear from some of
the sponsors that keep our show going. Okay, our next
food starts with a man whose name will in no

(19:51):
way tip you off to the fruit that is named
for him. Sometimes this is considered a technicality because he
did go through a name change.

Speaker 1 (20:01):
We'll talk about it.

Speaker 2 (20:03):
Vittarrodier was born on May twenty fifth, eighteen thirty nine,
in southern France in a town called Chambonco de la
There isn't a lot of ready information about his early life,
but we do know that as an adult he joined
the Order of Brothers of the Annunciation, and when he
joined the order, he took the name of Brother Marie Clement,
sometimes just going by Clement. Brother Clement was sent to

(20:26):
Algeria to work in the orphanage that his order ran
there in the town of Messergan, that's in the Oran province,
on the north coast of the country, just across the
Alberon Sea from Spain. This was not long after France
had colonized Algeria, which happened in eighteen thirty. At the
beginning of eighteen thirty, Algeria was part of the Ottoman Empire,

(20:48):
ruled by a sultan headquartered in Constantinople. Tunisia and Tripoli
were also under the Sultan's umbrella of power, although the
real day to day rule of each country was carried
out by their own reass But several years earlier, in
eighteen twenty seven, Algeria and France became embroiled in a
feud after the Algerian regent, known as the Day, slapped

(21:10):
a visiting French consul with a flyswatter. That slap did
not come out of nowhere. France was deeply in debt
to Algeria and had been really dragging on repayment, but
that slap gave France the sense of outrage that made
a conquest of this country seemed justified. The actual military
conflict that took place after the French landed on July

(21:31):
fifth of eighteen thirty was extremely short because Algeria really
did not have the means to fight back, So the
day cut a deal with the French to go into exile,
and the Europeans immediately moved in, including setting up monasteries
and religious centers to try to convert the Muslim population
to Christianity, and that is how brother Marie Clement landed there.

(21:55):
Clement's exact interaction with the citrus trees and their fruit
that would eventually bear his name is largely a matter
of lore. Did he discover the fruit, did he cultivate
it through cross breeding? We really have no idea, although
there are definitely versions of the story that paint a
quaint picture of a French monk tending his grove of

(22:16):
citrus on the northern coast of Africa. When did it happen?
Also no clue, Well, some clue. We have a window.
Clement got to Algeria in eighteen ninety two, and the
fruit is a matter of record. Ten years later, in
nineteen oh two, so somewhere during that decade.

Speaker 1 (22:39):
So a clementine, or clementine as it was surely called initially,
and we will get to who named it that in
just a moment, is a small citrus. It's like an orange,
but it's a whole lot sweeter. The size and flavor
make clementines very popular as snacks for kids. They're also
really easy to peel, and they don't have seeds, so
again kid friendly. They tend to be more oval shaped

(23:02):
rather than spherical. That's probably also one of the things
that makes them easy for little hands to handle and peel.
And another big draw for them is that they generally
harvest later than oranges, so they filled this gap where
fresh citrus would normally not be available. They're sometimes called
Christmas oranges for this reason, so you're looking at like

(23:22):
an autumn into early winter harvest. There are actually dozens
of clementine varieties, according to a two thousand and seven
interview with Tracy Kahn, curator of the Citrus Variety Collection
at the University of California, Riverside. That interview appeared in
the Cape Cod Times.

Speaker 2 (23:40):
I had one with my breakfast delicious, although it did
have a couple of seeds in it. Yeah, gsp. It
was believed for a while that clementine's were across between
a tangerine and an ornamental bitter orange known as citrus aurantium,
but today they're considered to be a type of mandarin orange,

(24:01):
usually a mandarin crossed with another sweet orange to create
a fruit that's smaller than other mandarin oranges. Enter another
kind of hazy bit of drama. There's a fairly high
degree of probability that clementines actually originated in China and
were hybridized there, and that likely happened hundreds of years

(24:23):
before any involvement of any French monks in Northern Africa.
But like the purported Algerian origins, there's not any solid information. Yeah,
Algeria definitely claims to be the birthplace, but sody sub
areas in China. The important thing is we all get
delicious fruit and plenty of vitamin C. But the name

(24:46):
clementine Clementine, which is based on clement which was not
the monk's original name but was the one he took
when he took orders, was bestowed on the fruit by
a botanist that was a man named Luis Chaos Prabu,
who is assigned to the French Agricultural Society in Algeria.
He also was making a general study of plants in Algeria.

(25:07):
But once again we are met with a mystery. Did
Brother Clement bring this fruit to Trabeu's attention? The monk
was clearly associated with it, but we don't know what
transpired there and the Clementine, according to the two thousand
and seven book Citrus, a History by Pierre Laslow, won
a gold medal from the Agricultural Society right after Trebu

(25:31):
mentions it, so that is yet another mystery. As for
Brother Clement, he became a Spiritan in nineteen oh three.
That's a religious order of the Catholic Church which was
founded in seventeen o three. It focuses on working with
the poor and with marginalized communities, and that may actually
be the origin point of some of the Clementine War.

(25:53):
It seems that a paper was published and a Spiritan periodical,
and that may be where other biographies are getting their
information regarding the story of Brother Clement and his Little Oranges.
Holly was not able to get a copy of this
to check. Clemal Rodier died in late nineteen oh four.

(26:13):
That was, incidentally his death not long before. Clementines made
their way to North America as a crop. They reportedly
came to the US in nineteen oh nine, and they
were imported initially to Florida and then also to California,
so the two big citrus growers. A nineteen thirty seven
newspaper article that ran in multiple papers claimed that the

(26:35):
very first clementine planted in the US was in Brooksville, Florida.
That write up read quote, the parent tree of all
clementine orange trees in this country thrives in Chinzgate Hill, Brooksville,
home of Colonel and Missus Raymond Robbins, at the approximate
age of twenty years. That article goes on to explain
that doctor Walter T. Swingle of the US Department of

(26:58):
Agriculture received a gift of budwood from Louis Charles Trebou himself,
and that the tree in the Robins's yard was that
very gift. Clementines didn't exactly catch on in an especially
big way in the US, and there weren't a lot
of clementines grown in comparison to other citrus crops. For example,

(27:18):
a newspaper out of Brian, Texas, reported in the autumn
of nineteen thirty two that a new type of orange
was being grown in the area, and that article had
to explain what a clementine was, noting quote. The clementine orange,
also known as an Algerian tangerine, is an early maturing
kid glove orange of hybrid orange, supposedly across between a

(27:41):
sour orange and a tangerine. The fruit becomes edible about
the last week of October and has passed its prime
by January first. The quality of the fruit is excellent,
the strong flavor characteristic of the common tangerine being totally absent.
The size is small one and a half to two inches,
but the skin is very thin and the core inconspicuous.

(28:03):
But even with a lot of writeups appearing telling consumers
that clementines were delicious, We're all going to start growing them,
they really didn't experience a surge in popularity in the
US for decades, and the eventual surge was the result
of an especially bad winter. In nineteen ninety seven, Florida
had an unusually bad freeze that destroyed most of its

(28:25):
citrus production for the year, and to fill the empty
produce sections. Clementines were imported from Spain in Algeria, and
from there clementines have had a steady increase in popularity here.
In two thousand and seven, that was the first year
the US government tracked clementines as a separate entity from
other citrus. Before that, it had fallen under a blanket

(28:48):
category that grouped the less popular citrus types together. But
that year, an estimated one hundred and thirty five thousand
tons of clementines were produced in the US, and according
to the American Farm Bureau Federation report from twenty twenty three,
while citrus production overall in the US has faltered significantly

(29:08):
in recent years, quote, the only citrus fruit category to
show a clear increase in production is the tangerine category,
which includes Tangelo's mandarins, clementines, and traditional tangerines. But they're
clearly seen to a degree as a more luxury choice
when it comes to the produce selection. According to the Packer,

(29:30):
which is part of the Farm Journal Incorporated, clementines have
primarily caught on with higher income households, with thirty two
percent of households that bring in more than a six
figure income eating Clementines and Mandarins, whereas only fifteen percent
of consumers who are in less than twenty five thousand
dollars are purchasing the tiny citrus. It's not exactly surprising,

(29:53):
but it does put the status of Clementine's rising popularity
in perspective.

Speaker 1 (29:58):
And perhaps all because of a monk question mark fruit man.
I have a listener male yeah, which is a reference
to our Gertrude Chandler Warner episode from our listener Susan,

(30:19):
who writes, Hello, Tracy and Holly, I really enjoy listening
to your podcast. I learned something new each time I listen,
and I love the way you present history in such
a lively manner. I was interested in your recent podcast
about the author Gertrude Warner and the box Car children books.
You discuss her use of a golliwog character in the
children's books. By the way, that was only in one
book that she wrote when she was nine years old,

(30:40):
not other children's books. Susan writes, I wanted to let
you know that the golliwog is a racist caricature of
someone who is of African descent. And then they send
the Wikipedia link. Susan says, I grew up in England
as a child and there was a children's show called
Naughty In it the golliwog was a characture of a
black person that lived in the woods and often created mischief.

(31:01):
Even as a child, I thought of it as racist
and distasteful. Many Americans are not familiar with the golliwog,
but I do think if you're gonna mention it in
your podcast, you probably want to also let people know
that this may have been used innocently by Warner, but
is a racist caricature.

Speaker 2 (31:14):
Thank you so much, Susan. Thank you so much, Susan.
I didn't know that, yeah, on following the link and
all of that. I have seen that visual stereotypical image before.

Speaker 1 (31:25):
Exactly, but I didn't have that word attached to Yeah.

Speaker 2 (31:27):
I had never connected it with the word golliwog and
just thought it was like a weird sing songy children
fantasy name. Yeah, same same on now we know so Yeah,
Just to be clear in case anybody hasn't read Box
Car Children and doesn't know, it does not appear in
those books. It's literally just that one story that she
wrote when she was nine, kind of basing it off

(31:49):
a different Yeah, there was a series of books that
became popular in the US.

Speaker 1 (31:54):
Yeah, that Golliwog was part of. Remember, that was the
book that she turned out really quick because she had
lied to her mom that she was writing a book.

Speaker 2 (32:03):
She was writing a book when she was really spending
too much time playing tea party. Yeah, and then she
had to quickly produce results. Right, So there's probably a
little plagiarism in the mix as well. It's a nine
year old, so we cut her some slack. But I'm very,
very glad to know that. So thank you for bringing
it to our attention, Susan. If you would like to
write to us, you can do so at History Podcast

(32:26):
at iHeartRadio dot com. You can also subscribe to the
show on the iHeartRadio app or anywhere you listen to
your favorite shows. Stuff you Missed in History Class is
a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to

(32:47):
your favorite shows.

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Stuff You Missed in History Class News

Follow Us On

Hosts And Creators

Holly Frey

Tracy Wilson

Show Links

Popular Podcasts

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Eponymous Foods: Fruits