The person who worked at Burpee and knew Teddy Jones e-mailed me personally and that's how I got the information. He did not say that it was the worst tomato ever as you wrote above, and nor did I. He said it was scraggly and disease prone by which I inferred common foliage diseases/
Teddy Jones was used as one parent for both Big Boy F1 and Better Boy F1, for taste only as Dr. Schifross told me.
In the late 30's Burpee was sending folks into the midwest to look for some new varieties and they found this TJ one and paid the person $24 for ALL seeds and rights to the variety and that allowed him to build a greenhouse.
That's the way it was.
The initial story about Teddy Jones was in a National Gardening magazine many years ago and I tracked down Dr. Schifriss at Rutgers, where he had moved from Burpee. And we had many nice chats although he was hard to understand at first b'c he spoke with such an accent.
He spent one summer with Glenn Drowns of Sandhill Preservation working on squash genetics and varieties b'c that was really his main interest, and I guess he was lonely, his wife was back in NJ, and he knew I had tomato background and called me quite a bit. A really nice man.
It was George Ball,the current owner of Burpee, who told me that when John Peto left Burpee he took TJ seeds with him and then bred Better Boy F1 in CA when he set up Petoseed.
Hope that helps.
Edited to add, per your psot above, that I don't know anyone except for the folks at Burpee , and of course Dr. Schifriss, who ever tasted TJ b'c the seeds were very closely held until John Peto left Burpee and set up Petoseed. And I don't have a clue what caused him to make that move and take some TJ seeds with him. neither Dr. S or George Ball ever spoke about that and quite frankly I never asked.
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Carolyn
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