WHITESBOG, NJ - Much of our ability today to domestically grow one of America’s most popular berries can be traced to one woman who was determined to, essentially, create an industry.

“In the early 20th century, people didn’t think blueberries could be domesticated,” Mark Villata, Executive Director for the U.S. Highbush Blueberry Council, tells me.

But the daughter of a New Jersey farmer, Mark says, was determined to grow a flourishing industry for cultivated blueberries.

Elizabeth White could possibly be called the mother of the modern blueberry, having teamed up with USDA botanist Frederick Coville to do what others didn't think possible.

“When I was a girl, I used to hunt the largest and best flavored berries and dream of a field full of bushes as great,” Elizabeth was once quoted saying as she described the passion that drove her.

“Elizabeth was a woman ahead of her time – a marketer, businesswoman, and horticulturalist who preferred joining business meetings to spending time in the kitchen,” Joe Darlington, Elizabeth’s great nephew, explains of her.

Together, Elizabeth and Frederick worked to identify wild plants with the most desirable properties, crossbreeding the bushes and creating vibrant new blueberry varieties. In 1916, after just five years of working together, the two harvested and sold the first commercial crop of blueberries out of Whitesbog, NJ, in 1916.

Joe recalls, “Her family often worried that she worked too hard, and got annoyed with her for missing Thanksgiving dinner because she was out with the locals collecting blueberry plants.” A story many founders and leaders in the industry can probably relate to, but unheard of for women of Elizabeth’s time.

Her determination, however, led to a category that defied even one of the hardest hits America’s economy had to endure, Joe explains.

“Elizabeth was very proud that the blueberry industry grew during the Depression, when very little else was growing,” he describes as one of Elizabeth’s great achievements. “She was known for her work ethic and business/horticulture savvy.”

Her determination formed an industry that, today, thrives as one of America’s favorite berries. Not only was Elizabeth the first to even conceptualize such an idea, but also the first to use innovative ag techniques.

“She was also very proud of being the first to sell blueberries under a cellophane cover instead of paper,” Mark adds to the already impressive list of her achievements.

From a little girl who favored plants as Christmas gifts and dreamed of blueberry fields before they really existed, to one of the produce industry’s first women leaders of agriculture, Elizabeth’s legacy continues to have a strong foothold in the industry she helped imagine.

Mark tells me that not only does her name live on in a varietal blueberry name, but also that her family continues to maintain what she started.

“Elizabeth’s great-nephew, Joe Darlington, and his wife Brenda operate a farm at Whitesbog Village in Pemberton Township, N. J. where they actively cultivate the oldest field of ‘Elizabeth’ variety blueberries,” Mark says of Joe’s keeping Elizabeth’s legacy alive and active in the industry.

From a girl dreaming of fields of blueberries to taming them to become one of America’s favorites, Elizabeth White serves as a strong reminder for me of what women can do in this industry.

U.S. Highbush Blueberry Council