http://t.tatianastomatobase.com/wiki/Mortgage_Lifter

Edie, there are many here who believe that it was Radiator Charlie Byles who first developed Mortgage Lifter and it was Jeff McCormack at SESE who recorded that story and published it in his catalog and website and it became widespread.

The history behind the Radiator Charlie story I linked to above and all it needs is to be cut and pasted as a link by anyone who wants to or go to Tania's wonderful tomato data base to read it.

Below I've linked to the history of the Estler one.

Chuck Wyatt, who passed away in June of 2002, was a good friend of mine and he was sent information from the Estler family claiming that his family bred it before Charlie did.

At another message site there's a good thread about this as I recall, but GW does not allow for other message sites to be linked to or presented here, so I'll go ahead.

There were newspaper clippings that were sent to Chuck that confirmed that Estler was the first to develop what was called Mortgage Lifter and that's in the link below.

Chuck sent me seeds for it and I've grown it several times and prefer it over any other Mortgage Lifter I've grown, for there are other so called strains, which really aren't strains at all, they just have the name of the person who first SSE listed it attached to it.

The Estler one I prefer b'c it's smoother and I think has better taste.

I'm not sure there's any story here but please accept my condolences on his passing and I'm going to share this with others at other message sites.

Carolyn

Here is a link that might be useful: Mortgage Lifter, Estler

Afew yrs back I was standing talking to the owner of Joyce's Greenhouse near Barboursville W.Va. We had been talking about the sale of different Mortgage Lifter plants for sale in the Huntington area. Some were the Radiator Charlie variety and some were Mr Estler's plants. He directed my attention to an economy van being loaded with tomato plants and told me they were Estler Tomatoes on their way to Southern States store downtown. He went on to say that his business was the only nursery in the area to receive Mr Estlers seed. I have grown them for yrs and would recommend them to anyone. One of my favorites.

Big Pinks, if you look at the link I gave in my post above you'll see that there are several sources where one can buy seeds for the Estler one.

I have all the SSE Yearbooks going back to 1975 ( I joined in 1989) and as far as I can remember, there have always been folks listing it, but then when all the so called strains ( not) came along they kind of displaced the excellence of the Estler one, sadly.

Carolyn

Yes Maam I understand what you are saying but for about a 30 mile radius in the Huntington area where there are prob about a dozen diff greenhouses, only Joyces received seed from Mr Estler. Here and there maybe one or two sold Estlers plants from their own saved seed but mostly they sold Radiator Charlie plants or they sold plants they had purchased from Joyces. This from the man I referenced above. I also saw the local extention agent say the same thing on TV. Wouldnt really be a big deal except that many local gardeners dont realize that they're not all the same.