The Early Rose Potato
- Don Wickman
- 5 days ago
- 3 min read
Big potato news rocked the world of agriculture in the 1861; a new variety had arrived. Albert Bresee of Hubbardton, Vermont, through cross-breeding of a potato name the Garnet Chili had developed seed of a hybrid he called the Early Rose.
What Bresee accomplished was successfully raising his new variety from seed, instead of utilizing tubers. This produced a plant that retained its characteristics.
Disease prompted new potato varieties. A popular crop in Europe, especially Ireland and the United States, a new pathogen, a fungal disease called late blight, started to devastate potato crops. It proved so serious in Ireland, it caused the Irish potato famine and massive immigration to the United States. The disease also spread to this country and nearly ended potato production.
The Early Rose and its parent, the Garnet Chili, both possessed resistance to late blight.
Bresee sent his new potato to Daniel S. Heffron in Utica, New York to market.
A recognized potato authority, Heffron praised the potato stating, “It has uniformly ripened ten days earlier than the “Early Goodrich,” (another popular early potato in the northeast) produces less small tubers, is equally healthy and productive as that just celebrated variety, and its superior in table quality. It is the best early potato that I have ever grown or seen, all things considered.”
Quite a commendation.
The potato lived up to its claims. Great taste, high yields. One New York grower described planting twenty-eights pounds of Early Rose and those plants yielded an astounding fifty plus bushels, or about 3,000+ pounds!
With that type of praise coupled with positive comments from farmers who were growing the new variety, prices soared for the tubers. The surge in prices were reminiscent of a time in Holland called ‘Tulipmania’ when men paid exorbitant sums for a few special bulbs in the 1630s.
Though Early Rose prices soared, they did not match the wild speculation of tulips. However, they did make the news. One bushel sold at $66 (equivalent to over $1500 in 2025) and sellers refused offers of $130. Eminent minister and activist Henry Ward Beecher actually wrote an essay for Best’s Potato Book published in 1870. The title of the essay? “Potato Mania.”
The Early Rose proved extremely popular in the Adirondacks especially for being so early to harvest. The Elizabethtown Post & Gazette republished a portion of an article from the American Agriculturalist that stated the variety “gave potato-growers new hope, coming as it did, with an assurance that the crop was not destined to utterly disappear.”
It is said “all good things com to end.” And that was true of the popularity of the Early Rose potato. The man responsible for the slow decline was Massachusetts raised Luther Burbank. He followed the potato path of Albert Bresee, in cross-breeding potatoes, one of which was an Early Rose.
In the fall, he dug up the tubers of a promising looking plant and as he later recalled, ”As quick as I dug knew I had a prize.” He named the new variety the Burbank Russet.
The potato grew in popularity locally, but after Burbank moved to California, it failed to gain a big market immediately, but that changed as farmers discovered its excellent characteristics of flavor and size.
When farmers irrigated Burbank Russet potato fields in Idaho, the potato thrived and yielded heavily. Then, with the advent of fast-food French fries, production soared. Now this potato accounts for 70% of the crop used in fries. So, when you bite into a French fry, thank not only Luther Burbank, but Albert Bresee.
When Bresee died on May 3, 1904 of heart failure at age eighty-two, he died on the same farm in which he was born. The Fair Haven Era summed up his life with a simple headline of his death notice. It read ”Originator of Early Rose Potato Dead.” The Early Rose remains his legacy, though neither Hubbardton or the State of Vermont has erected any marker regarding his history.
