12/01/2025
The story of Marshall Cletis Byles:
I remember those years as if theyâre still under my fingernailsâsoil, struggle, and the sharp scent of tomato vines. In the early 1930s, back home in Logan, West Virginia, money was thin as onion skin. The Great Depression didnât spare any of us, and I was staring down a $6,000 mortgage that felt heavier than a wagonload of coal.
Iâd always had a knack for tomatoesâbig, flavorful onesâand I began to wonder what might happen if I tried crossing some of the best types I could get my hands on. So I set to work, season after season, carefully cross-pollinating beefsteaks, German Johnsons, and a couple of beautiful foreign varietiesâone Italian, one English. It was slow, patient work, and the outcome wasnât guaranteed. But each year, the plants grew a little stronger, the fruit a little larger, until one day I saw a tomato that made me stop in my tracks. Massive, meaty, and as sweet as anything Iâd ever tasted.
Word spread quickly. Folks didnât have much money, but they sure understood value, and those seedlings promised harvests that could feed a family. I priced them at a dollar apieceâa bold move in those lean yearsâbut people bought them anyway. One seedling at a time, the dollars stacked up. And then came the day I walked into the bank and laid down enough earnings to wipe out that $6,000 mortgage in full.
That moment felt like lifting a stone off my chest. Iâd grown my freedom right out of the ground. And thatâs why I named the tomato what I didâMortgage Lifter. Because thatâs exactly what it was, for me and for many others who planted it. A tomato that paid its own way. A tomato that helped people breathe a little easier. A tomato that, in its own humble way, succeeded against the oddsâjust like the folks who grew it.
