Spilling Over the Sides
Theodore Roosevelt's Love of Peaches 🍑
Welcome to August, and happy National Peach Month! Peaches have long been my favorite fruit, going back to my first job making peach milkshakes at Chick-fil-a. You can imagine my delight when I learned Theodore Roosevelt also loved peaches!
In this Missing Pieces issue, I’ll share all the fun records I discovered in the Theodore Roosevelt Digital Library about TR’s passion for peaches. In the spirit of TR, I’d encourage you to go to the kitchen, make yourself a bowl of peaches and cream, and come back to read this post.
“Well Piled Up with Fruit”
TR’s friends and family must have known of his love for peaches because there are a number of letters in the digital library of TR specifically thanking someone for sending him peaches or letters noting peaches had been sent to TR. The most interesting was a 1905 letter from a man in Georgia named J. E. Tate who wrote:
“I take as much pleasure in sending you this crate of peaches as I did in voting for you; although I am a little lonesome at times, politically, being the only white man, with one exception, that voted for you in this county [Elbert County, Georgia near the border of South Carolina].”
I imagine TR was particularly grateful for all the times he received peaches from others like those from Tate since he had a voracious appetite for them. His valet James Amos remembers that peaches and cream were TR’s favorite meal for breakfast:
“[O]ne of his favorite dishes was peaches and cream. This he liked in abundance. I have a plate [at] home in which Mr. Roosevelt used to have his peaches and cream served. It’s a good, generous dish, about the size of an ordinary soup plate. And his idea of a dish of peaches and cream was this plate well piled up with the fruit.”
In fact, one of TR’s biographers, Edmund Morris, considers TR’s passion for peaches one of his vices. As he wrote in an essay on the twenty-sixth president, “He piled his dessert plate with so many peaches that the cream spilled over the sides.”
Even several days after being shot in 1912, TR still wanted peaches for breakfast. Gerald Helferich retells the scene in Theodore Roosevelt and the Assassin:
“On Friday, his fourth day in the hospital, the Colonel awoke at seven fifteen. When his breakfast of three soft-boiled eggs was presented, he complained, ‘That’s nothing for a strong man. I want some fresh country sausage and peaches. Plenty of them too.’”
Source: National Park Service/Sagamore Hill Collection Archives
TR even grew peaches at his home, Sagamore Hill. As the National Park Service notes on its section about the Sagamore Hill Garden, the Roosevelts grew a number of fruits, vegetables, and flowers, which were cared for by their gardener, Alfred Davis, known to the children at “Mr. Let It Be.”
TR speaks fondly of the family garden in his correspondence, including in a 1901 letter to his son Ted: “The weather has been lovely here. The cherry trees are in full bloom, the peaches trees just opening, while the apples will not be out for ten days.”
A Luxury TR Couldn’t Do Without
The twenty-sixth president even liked peaches of the canned variety. In preparing for his African safari in 1909, TR considered canned peaches an extravagance he couldn’t do without as he mentions in a 1908 letter to Edward North Buxton:
“I have allowed myself to order certain luxuries that are just a little bulky – that is, canned Boston baked beans, canned tomatoes, and canned peaches, because I know from old experience on the round-up how useful all three are.”
(And if you’re wondering, TR used a fish-shaped can opener to open those peaches on the safari that you can see here.)
Michael R. Canfield similarly notes in Theodore Roosevelt in the Field: “Many foods from the Old World—like French plums and marmalade—were struck from [Frederick Courteney] Selous’s lists by Roosevelt in favor of New World alternatives like California peaches and strawberry jam.”
TR himself even uses canned peaches as a literary allusion in his own writing. In a May 1918 article entitled “My Life as a Naturalist,” TR offers a correlation between natural history and canned peaches:
“I don’t suppose that most men can tell why their minds are attracted to certain studies any more than why their tastes are attracted by certain fruits. Certainly, I can no more explain why I like ‘natural history’ than why I like California canned peaches; nor why I do not care for that enormous brand of natural history which deals with invertebrates any more than why I do not care for brandied peaches.”
Although I enjoyed all of these peachy records, by far my favorite peach-related item in the digital library was a letter from thirteen-year-old TR to his sister Anna “Bamie” in 1872. In it he notes the food he ate while traveling to Lenox, Massachusetts: “For lunch in the cars I had 8 sandwitches [sic] and 24 peaches.”
While it’s clear our twenty-sixth president passionate was an aficionado of peaches—he ate 24 on one train ride!—I am left wondering about how his penchant for peaches developed.
Since his mother, Martha “Mittie” Bulloch Roosevelt, was from Georgia, I wonder if Georgia peaches—known for being some of the juiciest and sweetest peaches—were some of the first peaches TR had.
Personally, Georgia peaches are my favorite kind of peaches, especially those from Lane Southern Orchards in Fort Valley, Georgia—the heart of Peach County, Georgia. And although we’re saying goodbye to peach season this year, I’m already looking forward to getting some fresh peaches next year though I probably won’t eat 24 in one sitting!
“Lane Southern Orchards is a century-old farming operation in the heart of Peach County, Georgia. Georgia is known across the country as the Peach State. While Georgia grows less than 10 percent of all the fresh peaches cultivated nationwide, peach eaters know Georgia is where the flavor is! Georgia's red clay soils and ridiculous hot summer nights create the perfect environment for flavor! Our peaches make the difference for us. Sweet, Georgia peaches . . . we have been blessed to be able to cultivate them. Our attention to detail ensures we get the right peaches to the right customer. We hand pick and hand pack every single peach. And that's a pretty big deal considering we can pack 825,000 to 1.2 million 25-pound boxes in a season, which runs from mid-May through August. ~Wendy R. Barton, marketing director at Lane Southern Orchards
Source: Packages for Performance: Dobeckmun. Courtesy of Science History Institute.
Hooray for peaches!
Love the pictures! Do we know if he liked white or yellow peaches better?