And by the start of the 20th century, the ``vegetable'' - for so it was declared for trade purposes by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1893 - had taken such hold that South Jersey's landscape was dotted with scores of canneries, including one in Camden run by a man whose name became associated with an empire built on condensed soup: Joseph Campbell.
* The tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum), like the potato, is a New World native that made its way into Old World cuisine via explorers in the early 16th century.
In North America, however, the tomato's relationship to the poisonous nightshade family made it suspect. What changed attitudes is not clear - this is where the Col. Johnson myth comes in - but by the 1830s, the red fruit had become a common sight in the markets.
It also was canned and processed into preserves, ketchup and other products.
``Almost every country village [in South Jersey] had a cannery'' in the early decades of this century, said James Turk, executive director of the Salem County Historical Society.
``The cradle of the tomato-processing industry'' was in South Jersey, said Steve Garrison, a specialist in vegetable crops at the Rutgers University Cooperative Extension/Bridgeton.
Garrison, who picked tomatoes as a boy on a family farm in Pittsgrove, rattled off the names of such processors as Heinz, P.J. Ritter, Pritchard, DelMonte and Deerfield. Turk mentioned such brand names as Aldine Beauties, Dolphin from Alloway, and Defy the World from Quinton.
Though the canneries packed other fruits and vegetables, many made their names with tomatoes. Such was the case of Joseph Campbell, who went into business with Abraham Anderson in Camden in 1869 and marketed ``The Celebrated Beefsteak Tomato.''
Now there is only one tomato processor left in the state - Violet Packing Co. in Williamstown, where the Sclafani family cans tomatoes under its own name and makes Don Pepino pizza and spaghetti sauce.
