Currants victim of blister rust eradication program

There are few black currants in New Hampshire. My mother-in-law said, or at least strongly implied, that the men who came around in the late 1920s and pulled out all of her bushes were rude, overbearing and entirely unsympathetic toward a farm wife who wanted her berry bushes, especially the gooseberries. If they explained the reasons, she didn’t believe them, as most people of the time couldn’t see any connection between currants and pine trees. She might have been right about the men’s attitude, but the bushes were eradicated in a mandated statewide program between 1916 and 1967, a long, hard fight against white pine blister rust, an invasive disease that was threatening the state’s timber. Blister rust requires two hosts. While it doesn’t seriously affect the berries, it does affect white pines. When it was determined that one of those hosts was currants, and possibly gooseberries, towns were asked to help in the eradication.