Albert Braswell Jr. spent most of the Second World War on an aircraft carrier in the South Pacific, sharing a bunk with a kid from California’s Central Valley. The care packages from his bunkmate’s family always had fig preserves in them, made from the orchard they grew, and they reminded him of the ones his mother made back home, from the Orient and Kieffer pears that dotted the South Georgia countryside.
When his service was done he came home to Statesboro, started canning his mother’s pear preserves, and sold them out of the back of his truck. In 1946, with one steam kettle and a bushel of local pears, he established Braswell Food Company at 226 N. Zetterower Avenue.
More than seventy-five years later it is still in Statesboro, still cooking in small batches, and still packing in reusable glass. Braswell’s is the country’s number-one seller of pepper jelly, fig preserves, and pear preserves, made with locally grown Vidalia® onions, Southern pears, and figs from that same orchard in California.
