Marco Mangos and the Olds Sisters

Life was hard for the early settlers of Marco Island in the early 1900s - they mostly lived off the land. There was an abundance of food and just like the natives before them, they fished, hunted and gathered whatever edible plants around them provided. 

Many local residents grew tomatoes, eggplants, cabbages and other vegetable crops for local consumption. Families kept small groves of avocados, grapefruits, guavas, bananas, coconuts, lime, and sapodillas.

It was the entrepreneurial Olds Family who specialized in mangos. They crated and shipped to markets in Key West and Fort Myers, taking orders for “fancy varieties of East Indian Mangos for summer delivery.” They also sold “budded” mango trees. After their father left in 1916, the Olds girls, Saloma and Rosalie, took over the family fruit business.

With a little bit of research on the history of mangos in Florida, I learned they were first introduced into Florida’s Cape Sable in 1833. The Olds mango variety was referred to as the “East Indian” variety. This variety was very popular and was considered to be very sweet, very juicy and of medium size.

It is the peak of mango season in Southwest Florida and on Marco Island. Stepping back in time when the Olds lived in Caxambas Village one can imagine, as we do now, that mango tree limbs were weighted to the ground with hundreds of mangos.

Being very business minded I would imagine the Olds sisters, not wanting to waste the bounty of a mango tree, may have pickled them and made delicious jams or jellies. Once mangos are ripe, you need to find ways to enjoy them. 

Mango pie is an old-fashioned traditional way of enjoying ripened mangos. Sugar was expensive and had to come from the outside so the Olds sisters would likely have used local honey.

Mango marmalade or jelly would have been popular and pickled mango is a good recipe to preserve an “almost ripe” mango. Chutney is another recipe that utilizes a little sugar or honey and vinegar then adding a few pods of red pepper and a clove of garlic. It mimics the taste and smell of “East India Mango Chutney.” 

The Olds sisters also sold “budded mango” trees. If my interpretation is correct, a budded mango tree is a mango grown by grafting. It is an advanced and very effective method of “cloning” a mango.

The Olds sisters did not sell mango trees grown from seeds. In the early 1900s, most people planted the seed of the delicious mango fruit a neighbor gave them. It probably bore them an identical looking tree but the fruit was filled with fiber attached to a large seed – hardly edible, except for the birds!

Bud grafting a mango tree is the combination of two trees to create one, more favorable tree. To simplify the explanation, wood or a piece of the “desired mango” called “scion,” is inserted into a lower part of the existing tree (bad mango variety). The inserted wood or “scion” produces a stem, branch and fruit on the grafted tree. Mangos grown from seeds tend to be fibrous and lacking the flavor and juiciness from cultivated and grafted mango trees.

The Olds sisters were true entrepreneurs and were very sophisticated in growing their mangos. Their mangos might have tasted like a hybrid of melon, peach, apricot and nectarines with a bit of honey and very juicy – the perfect mango!

Don’t forget to stop by the exhibit “Camera Girl: Saloma Olds Marco Island” at the Marco Island Historical Museum. It focuses on the photography and diary entries of Saloma Olds who, between the ages of 14 and 15, completed two compelling diaries detailing life on Marco Island between 1913 and 1915. It is free to the public and continues through June 25th.