Francis Peabody Sharp

Francis Peabody Sharp (3 September 1823 – 12 December 1903) was a Canadian pomologist and businessman. He pioneered the controlled hybridization of apples to create new varieties suited to short seasons and cold winters. He owned large orchard and plant nursery businesses in the province of New Brunswick from which he shipped to Canada and the United States.

Family background and early life

Sharp's father was Adam Boyle Sharp, a businessman and landowner. Adam Sharp owned a store in Upper Woodstock, New Brunswick and was manager of the local bank branch, as well as serving as justice of the peace and captain in the militia. Francis Peabody Sharp's mother, Maria Peabody, was Adam Sharp's second wife. She was a granddaughter of Captain Francis Peabody, a veteran of the Seven Years' War and one of the founders of the English settlement at Maugerville on the Saint John River.

Francis Peabody Sharp attended grammar school and worked in his father's store. He devoted himself to the study of horticulture, particularly fruit growing, acquiring an extensive library of books and agricultural publications.

Apple breeding

In 1844 he started a plant nursery and an orchard with 100 apple trees which he planted on land acquired from his father, with the goal of developing apple varieties adapted to New Brunswick's cold winters and short growing season. He did this by planting potentially hardy varieties and putting into practice the new methods of controlled hybridization which he had studied.

Crimson Beauty (top) from a 1909 Brown Brothers Nursery catalogueSharp created a hybrid between the New Brunswicker and the Fameuse, an old variety grown in Quebec. By grafting scions of the Fameuse onto hardy rootstocks, he created trees that could be crossed with the New Brunswicker in a controlled manner to produce hybrid seeds. The result, in 1866, was a solid red early apple, the "first true hybrid apple from a controlled cross-breeding experiment", that he named "Crimson Beauty".

In 1896 he presented a paper on his techniques to the Farmers' and Dairymens' Association of New Brunswick, but wrote to his daughter, Minnie Bell Sharp, that "it is remarkable for what is left out", noting that "my discoveries would so greatly cheapen production of apples as to injure our own sales". The businesses were unable to pay the mortgages on the land Sharp had acquired, and some of the holdings had to be sold off. The remaining property then passed to Franklin's two youngest sisters, and most of it was sold in 1904. The youngest son, Humboldt, became a nursery manager in British Columbia. The two youngest daughters, Lizzie and Harriet Jane, inherited the family properties, most of which were sold off after Lizzie died in 1904. Francis Peabody Sharp died on 12 December 1903 and his widow Maria Sharp died on 29 March 1904.