Blackberries were perceived by the ancient cultures as being a wild plant, and historical accounts for a backyard culture of blackberry bushes are few. The Greeks used the blackberry as a remedy for Gout, and the Romans made a tea from the leaves of the blackberry plant to treat various illnesses.
John Bartram, the early American explorer, botanist, and writer founded the first United States Botanical Garden, in 1728. In the early American colonies, William Bartram in his book, Travels, noted that General Oglethorpe was sent to the colony of Georgia in 1733 to investigate the possibility of establishing various temperate and subtropical plants which might "prove valuable for Georgia farms and orchards." William Bartram noted further in his book, Travels, that he his father, John Bartram, were sent to explore the Southern colonies that included East Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas, and Alabama to take an inventory of plants growing there after the Spanish were expelled by the English. Bartram reported that just outside of Mobile, Alabama, it "grows here five or six feet high, rambling like Brier vines over the fences and shrubs."
Much of the first modern Blackberry farming variety development was done in America, beginning with Judge Logan of California in 1880, and the release and introduction of the Loganberry.
The Boysenberry was developed from a natural selection saved from the abandoned farm of Mr. Rudolf Boysen by USDA member George Darrow, along with Walter Knott, a California fruit and berry enthusiast, whose wife began making berry preserves, and that farm later became the famous Knotts Berry Farm, located near the Walt Disney amusement park in California.