Micah Rood’s Apples

A sombre tradition concerns the Micah Rood apples, or bloody hearts, that made their appearance in Franklin Connecticut, but are now widely cultivated in other towns and States. They are sweet of flavor, fragrant, handsomely red outside, and while m ost of the flesh is white, there is at the core a red spot that represents human blood. Near the end of the seventeenth century there lived in Franklin a farmer named Micah Rood, who was regarded by his neighbors as of rather a worthless sort, fond of lei sure yet fond of money. In the early days of the colony trading was done mostly by roving peddlers, and while these gentry gained modestly in their dealings with people who were of the narrowest means, they sometimes carried sums that would excite the cup idity of men less moral than the New Englanders. One day a peddler, making the rounds of the settlements, was found dead on the Rood farm, with a gash in his head and his pack empty. Rood was suspected, and either knowledge of this suspicion or the proddi ngs of his conscience forced him into strict seclusion. If he had robbed the man, he had small good of his plunder, for he spent money no more freely than before. Indeed, he became neglectful of his farm, and his house fell into disrepair. That year the t ree beneath which the peddler had died did a strange thing: it put forth red apples instead of yellow, each with a blood stain at its heart, as if in witness against the murderer; and the gossips would have it that the decay of the farm and the air of mis fortune that clouded the life of Micah Rood in his last days were the results of his victim’s curse. Rood died without revealing his secret, if he had any, but his tree lived, and its fruit has been grafted on hundreds of other orchards.

From: Myths and Legends of Flowers, Trees, Fruits, and Plants, by Charles M. Skinner, c. 1911 by J.B. Lippincott Company