Turnips and Judge Leonard/Learned

 Google “record breaking turnip” and you turn up plenty of references to Canadian Damien Allard’s 29-kilogram monster that he grew in 2021. That’s 63.9 pounds and the heaviest turnip according to Guinness World Records. Meanwhile, according to Guinness, the longest turnip is just over 15 feet, a record growth achieved by Joe Atherton of the UK in 2022.

Those are some big turnips. But why, you ask, are you writing about turnips?

It all goes back to why I haven’t posted much here lately. Not to worry, I am still doing plenty of history stuff with the Bethlehem Historical Association. But what’s really got me going lately is writing short stories that are inspired by strange little newspaper clippings, like this one about Judge Leonard’s turnip.

“Large Turnip – We have had brought to our office a turnip raised on the farm of Judge Leonard, of Bethlehem, which we think, for size, will be difficult to beat at this time. It measured 17 inches in circumference, and weighed 5 lbs. 6 oz. The seed was sown May 10^th. Who can turn-up a larger turnip that this?” The Coeymans Herald, August 11, 1875

Clips like this often catch my eye while I am researching completely unrelated topics (this time it happened to be Nellie Bly.)

Now, I know who Judge Leonard was. I know where his house and farm were. I know all kinds of interesting tidbits about him and his family, and even some of the tenant farmers that worked his land. Because you know the Judge himself is not out there tilling the fields.*

But I don’t know anything about this turnip situation. And I have questions that will never be answered factually.

Why did someone show up at the newspaper office with a really big vegetable? Was it a dare? A challenge? Was this someone just passing by with said turnip, maybe on the way to market or something, and they thought the editor would like to look at it?

Can you imagine a rustic farmer marching in and plunking a big turnip down on the editor’s desk? I’m thinking about a grumpy Lou Grant character sitting at a plain wooden desk that has lots of handwritten papers all over the top of it. There’s an ink well and a steel nibbed pen on the desk. Maybe there’s a printing press clunking in the background and another desk where a clerk is hunched over a tray of type setting individual letters for the next day’s newspaper.

Maybe the turnip lands hard and spills the ink all over the papers obliterating something important. Maybe the rustic farmer and the Lou Grant editor get into a big argument. Maybe they have a big laugh. Maybe the encounter starts a big turnip growing competition that all the local farmers get in on. Maybe the farmer is a woman who had been told she didn’t know anything about turnip farming. Maybe she’s an aspiring journalist and her name is Mary Tyler Moore.

Ok, you see how this goes. It is so much fun to imagine the “real story.”

Here are a couple of examples of ones I’ve tackled so far.

“A female blacksmith arrived last week. Charley Brust is responsible and happy.”

This clip was published November 29, 1884 in the Altamont Enterprise under the Guilderland Center section. A female blacksmith! In my story, I named her Maisie Baxter.

“Mr. Garrett Hotaling is having hard luck, having recently lost a horse and a hog. Its an old saying, “Those that have must lose.” Blessed be nothing, Garry.”

This one was published in the November 18, 1892 issue of the Altamont Enterprise in the Voorheesville Section. “Blessed be nothing.” That’s harsh. What does it even mean? Poor Garry! My Garry encounters a lady reporter who shouts that at him after getting knocked down by Garry’s runaway horse.

Maybe one of these days I’ll get these stories together and share them with all of you.

This picture of William Law Learned is from Howell & Tenny's Bicentennial History of
Albany County by way of the Find a Grave website.

* The article refers to Judge Leonard. I am very confident that this is actually Judge William Law Learned. Spelling was not anyone’s specialty in the 1800s.

While there are plenty of references to the Leonard family in Bethlehem, none of them, as far as I can tell, were judges. In an 1870 gazetteer (basically a phone directory without the phone) for Bethlehem, Southwick Leonard was the proprietor of the Bethlehem Hotel at Adams Station. Isaac was a farmer, also at Adams Station. And William L. Learned of Cedar Hill was a lawyer and farmer.

Now, pop over here and take a look at a very long and flowery biography of Judge Learned.

https://accessgenealogy.com/connecticut/biography-of-william-l-learned.htm

Buried in there, you can see where he was first appointed, then elected for a 14 year term, as a Justice of the Supreme Court in 1870. This bio specifically references the case of a Mr. Lowenstein who murdered a Mr. Weston. Well, there is an article in the February 26, 1874 Coeymans Herald detailing the Verdict handed down by Judge Leonard in the Lowenstein case. It’s got to be the same judge.

One little tidbit, while looking at the 1870 Agriculture Census, Ancestry interpreted the handwriting as W. L. Leonard. When you go to the actual page, the handwriting clearly says Learned. Learned (Leonard) by the way, had 200 acres and reported on his Irish potatoes, butter and hay. No turnips listed.

And after all this writing about turnips, and as your reward for reading this far down on the blog, as a kid, I found it hilarious when mom would joke that her New Hampshire farming ancestors grew “lettuce, turnip and pea.”