Finger Lakes history · regional story
Ontario County counted its fruit one row at a time
The 1930 agricultural census puts apples and grapes in the same Ontario County table, with different dates and units for what grew and what was harvested.
Ontario County’s fruit did not fit into one number. In the 1930 agricultural census, the county reported 286,521 bearing apple trees and 397,034 bushels of apples harvested. The table counts the trees in 1930; the harvest belongs to 1929. Fifteenth Census of the United States: Agriculture, 1930, New York county tables.
The grape rows use another unit. They give 946,953 bearing vines and 4,240,452 pounds harvested. There were 682 farms reporting grapes, compared with 2,559 reporting apples. The table does not tell us how many farms grew both. Fifteenth Census of the United States: Agriculture, 1930, New York county tables.
At the top sits a larger figure: 14,689 acres. It combines orchard fruits, vineyards and planted nut trees. Calling all of that vineyard land would give grapes acreage the census did not assign to them. Fifteenth Census of the United States: Agriculture, 1930, New York county tables.
These are county totals. They cannot be divided among Naples, Canandaigua Lake and the rest of Ontario County without more records. They offer a scale for a farming landscape; they do not name the people who pruned, picked or packed its fruit. Fifteenth Census of the United States: Agriculture, 1930, New York county tables.
Sources & research notes
Review status: Developing history. Human editorial review is pending.
Written and source-checked with AI assistance under an owner-authorized editorial process. This is not a personal review by Riley or an independent historian. Sources and unresolved questions are listed below; corrections are welcome.
- What the records establish
- The original county table supplies the stated acreage category, crop counts and reporting-farm totals with their printed units.
- What remains uncertain
- No watershed allocation, individual farm, variety, work crew, wage, ownership or marketing route has been established from this table. Reporting categories are not interchangeable with workers or households.
- What we are researching next
- Locate township-level schedules and grower, packer or shipping records before assigning the county totals to particular lakes, people or businesses.
Sources
- Fifteenth Census of the United States: Agriculture, 1930, New York county tables — United States Bureau of the Census; 1930 enumeration; publication date not established from retained chapter. Locator: Printed 284 / PDF 46; Printed 286 / PDF 48. Exact sub-passages registered separately; titles/columns/units checked against the retained source. Accessed October 22, 2026.