This is from the Heirloom Seeds website:

HEIRLOOM SEEDS GARDEN TRIVIA : The Pilgrims considered growing tomatoes an abomination - equal to dancing, card playing and theater going. Those caught with the fruit were often displayed in the public square and ridiculed!

Thank goodness this didn't continue to present day

Wow--thank goodness I was not part of that! I probably would have been shunned for growing tomatoes

Is that because they thought they were poisonous?

Or because those libidinous Frenchies called them "pommes d'amour" (apples of love)?

I read somewhere that the British paid George Washington's cook to poison him, so the cook made a dish using "those poisonous tomatoes" and then ran away before George ate it. It might be an urban legend!

maybe they thought tomatoes caused the girls to make eyes at boys!

or that tomatoes would cross pollinate with something else they were growing and ruin the seed?

or that tomatoes would make your eyelashes fall out or your nosehairs grow long or your eyebrows turn green?

Wouldn't it be potatoes that made girls make eyes at boys?

well, yes that would make more sense of course!