The Bing cherry was first cultivated in Oregon, in a nursery orchard that spanned what is now downtown Milwaukie.
In 1847, Henderson Luelling brought 700 fruit trees by oxcart from Iowa to the Willamette Valley, where he established the first commerical nursery in the Northwest. He was soon joined by his brother, Seth Lewelling, who later changed the spelling of his name and eventually took ownership of the nursery. Among Lewelling’s employees was an orchard foreman named Ah Bing.
Much of the little we know about Bing’s life comes from Florence Ledding, Seth Lewelling’s stepdaughter, who was interviewed in 1939 about the history of the area. She described Bing as six feet tall. Unlike the majority of Oregon’s early Chinese migrants, who hailed from Guangdong province in southeast China, Bing was Manchurian, from northeast China.
Bing was among a wave of Chinese immigrants to Oregon during the second half of the 19th century. In 1880, approximately 10,000 Chinese lived in Oregon, representing about 5 percent of the state’s population. Lewelling’s nursery employed about 30 of these men, including Bing.
We are not entirely sure when Bing began working for Lewelling. But among Lewelling’s ledgers, which are preserved at the Oregon Historical Society, an entry on March 11, 1875 reads: “Bing commenced work this morning at $1.00 per day.” That figure is crossed out, and was amended to read what looks like 26 “per month.” (We hope to more closely review his ledgers, but this was the earliest reference to Bing that we found.)
In the 1880 census, Bing is listed among the four Chinese workers living with the Lewelling family. He was 34 at the time.
According to Ledding, Bing worked closely with Lewelling on grafting, propagating and growing the trees. The Bing cherry, a cross between the Black Republican and Napoleon cherries, was developed in either the 1870s or 1880s in a row of experimental seedlings under Bing’s care. Someone suggested Lewelling name the new cherry after himself, but a Lewelling cherry already existed. “Name this for Bing,” Ledding recalled her stepfather saying. “It’s a big cherry, and Bing’s big, and anyway it’s in his row, so that shall be its name.”
We are not sure when the Bing cherry first went to market. The Seth Luelling & Son Milwaukie Nursery Catalogue from 1878 (at OHS) lists 16 varieties of cherry trees for sale, but not the Bing.
An article in the Jan. 20, 1892 Oregonian mentions a “Byng” cherry [sic] developed by Luelling's nursery "six or eight years ago,” which would place its origin in 1885-1887.
By the 1890s, the cherry was become popular. The Oregonian's Oct. 5, 1892 edition contained a mention of Lewelling and his “famous Bing cherries.” In 1893, Lewelling exhibited Bing cherries at the Chicago World's Fair that were described as four inches around and the largest cherries in the world.
Based on several retellings and old maps, we believe the original Bing cherry tree was located in front of what is now the Milwaukie Masonic Lodge, just north of the intersection of Harrison and Main streets, quite near where we lower our New Year’s Eve cherry today! It was cut down in 1912 when Main Street was extended north.
Bing’s namesake cherry was created in the years before a crisis of anti-Chinese hate speech and violence swept the West Coast. In 1882, Congress passed the federal Chinese Exclusion Act, which banned the immigration of Chinese laborers to the United States. In 1885, city leaders in Tacoma, Washington, drove the Chinese population from town and burned their homes. In 1886, U.S. Army troops from the Vancouver barracks were sent to Seattle to quell the anti-Chinese unrest.
In Oregon City, on Feb. 22, 1886, a mob of about 40 men gathered in front of the old McLoughlin House, then known as the Phoenix Hotel, and voted to expel Chinese residents—mostly mill workers—from the town. The mob physically evicted Chinese lodgers from their beds and marched them to the Eighth Street dock, where they departed on the steamboat Latona, past Milwaukie, to Portland. The following year, the murder of 34 Chinese miners in eastern Oregon became known as the Hells Canyon Massacre.
In 1940, Ledding told the Oregon Daily Journal that "during the Chinese riots in Oregon and Washington, Bing and other Chinese lived in our home." She blamed the Chinese Exclusion Act and its impact as the reason Bing left the country.
We are not sure when Bing returned to China. He does not appear in the 1900 Milwaukie census, and records from the 1890 census have been lost. Stories from the Lewelling family have stated that he left in the 1890s, but news articles from the time period provide conflicting accounts.
A report from the Hood River Glacier claims that “Sam Bing,” “the person who whom the Bing cherry was named” left for China in December 1904 “to live on his accumulated capital” after spending 33 years in the U.S.
An article in The Oregonian from Dec. 9, 1904, mentions that Bing “left Portland but a short time ago to live the remainder of his years in China, made comfortable by the small fortune accumulated by him while in the service of Mr. Luelling. [sic]”
Another Oregonian article from Jan. 11, 1905, describes the departure for China of a Mr. Chung, who had been a co-worker of Bing in Milwaukie. The two men worked together for Lewelling many years, the article states, “and in time came to have sole charge. Besides raising valuable crops of ordinary fruits, they experimented and raised seedlings, especially cherry seedlings.” That article reports that Bing returned to China “nine years ago,” placing his return in 1896.
It’s also possible the 1896 date was when Bing left the Lewelling farm, as Seth Lewelling died in 1896.
And there’s one more intriguing bit of evidence suggesting Bing remained in the United States into the 20th century. The March 1907 edition of the horticulturalist magazine Better Fruit includes a photo from J.H. Reid’s Packing Housing in Milwaukie (at left) that identifies the man on the far left as “Bing, the originator of the Bing cherry.”
In time, the name Bing became famous in the horticultural community, and as Bing cherry plantings increased, the Bing became popular with consumers. Today, the Bing cherry is the one of the most produced varieties of sweet cherry in the United States.
We continue to research and learn what we can about Bing, and will update this story as we put together more pieces of his life.