The Melon Miracle

By Beth Yarbrough

The story at Bradford Farms just outside Sumter, South Carolina, continues to evolve, and I never tire of sharing it. If you have never heard it, I offer it here.

“I grew my first patch of Bradford melons when I was 5 years old. This watermelon is like a kiss from Heaven to me.” Nat Bradford

Funny how those kisses work. Even most of us who know better tend to hurry through our days (weeks months and years) without noticing a grand design of any sort, but Heaven was having none of that in the case of Nat Bradford and his South Carolina watermelon patch, the history of which began with an act of kindness aboard a prison ship bound for the West Indies in the year 1783. That is when a Revolutionary War soldier named John Franklin Lawson found himself captured aboard a British boat, headed for who knew what. Enroute, the ship’s captain handed Lawson a slice of watermelon that was sweeter and jucier than any other melon he had ever tasted. It would make a great story to stop right here and say that the melon epiphany overshadowed the prison stay, but probably not – and besides that, this story doesn’t need any help. It does fine all by itself.

What did happen is that Lawson eventually came back home to Georgia with a pocket full of those magical watermelon seeds, saved from the very slice that he ate onboard ship that day. He planted them in Georgia, and the Lawson Watermelon was born, another nice tale on its own, unless you want to fast forward a few decades to South Carolina – and we do – because this gets even better. So protective was John Lawson of his prized melons that he only shared the seeds with a select small handful of friends and family. A few of those seeds made their way to a man named Nathaniel Napoleon Bradford of Sumter County, South Carolina who took the Lawson Melon somewhere around the year 1850 and turned it into an entirely new (and even better) variety, if such a thing was possible – and it was. Bradford crossed the Lawson with another local watermelon rock star, and the Bradford Watermelon was born.

At that point, we now know that Heaven was just getting warmed up. The popularity of the Bradford spread like wildfire, with seeds being distributed and sold nationwide. So solid was the Bradford’s perch at the top of the watermelon heap that it was noted in scientific journals and seed catalogs of the day as the best of the best.

And then it disappeared. The last trace of it that any of today’s heirloom seed experts could find was in 1922 when the last commercial crop was planted in Augusta, Georgia and sale of the seeds was discontinued. What the world did not know, however, was that Nathaniel Bradford’s family had never let go of their original seed stock. They had been growing it right along, year after year, on the family farm in Sumter County, being careful to keep the crops isolated by at least a mile from any other melons being grown in order to prevent cross-pollination. This, as it turns out, was their saving grace.

While there are dozens of accounts of the story from that point, I think the best one belongs to Nat Bradford himself who picks up the tale just after the turn of the 21st century.

Read and enjoy it right here

And speaking of enjoyment, on my first trip to Sumter a few years ago, Nat and his wife Bettie greeted me at the edge of the family farm with a Bradford Watermelon of my very own, hand selected and freshly harvested just hours earlier from the field where it was grown. Nat and I fussed and dithered with how best to load it for my drive back to North Carolina, finally settling on a pair of foil-lined canvas totes that I just happened to have in the back of my SUV. Their square corners slipped perfectly over each end and overlapped, keeping my big 30-pound emerald jewel from moving even an inch on the way home. And Nat, if you’re reading this, allow me to speak on behalf of a grateful South to say that your melons are not only a kiss from Heaven to you – they are a kiss to all of us as well.

Meet Nat Bradford and his family and his watermelons via this segment from CBS Sunday Morning.

Photo by Beth Yarbrough.

Have you ordered your copy of this handy little guide yet? It’s a great resource for anyone interested in historic preservation.