The grapes of New York

by U. P. Hedrick

Chief of the experiments which Legaux’s partial success in vine-growing stimulated was carried on in Kentucky by The Kentucky Vineyard Society of which John James Dufour, a Swiss, was leader.[26] It was to this Company that Legaux had sent the fifteen hundred cuttings mentioned above as going to Kentucky. Before founding his grape colony, Dufour had made a tour of inspection of all the vineyards that he could hear of in what then constituted the United States. His account of what he saw, given in his book The Vine Dresser’s Guide, is the most accurate statement we have of grape-growing in America at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

Dufour’s account, pages 18-24, runs as follows: “I went to see all the vines growing that I could hear of, even as far as Kaskaskia, on the borders of the Mississippi; because I was told, by an inhabitant of that town, whom I met with at Philadelphia, that the Jesuits had there a very successful vineyard, when that country belonged to the French, and were afterwards ordered by the French government to destroy it, for fear the culture of the grapes should spread in America and hurt the wine trade of France. As I had seen but discouraging plantations of vines on that side of the Alleghany, and as the object of my journey to America, was purposely to learn what could be done in that line of business; I was desirous to see if the west would afford more encouragement. I resolved therefore on a visit to see if any remains of the Jesuits’ vines were still in being, and what sort of grapes they were; supposing very naturally, that if they had succeeded as well as tradition reported, some of them might possibly be found in some of the gardens there. But I found only the spot where that vineyard had been planted, in a well selected place, on the side of a hill to the north east of the town, under a cliff. No good grapes, however were found either there, or in any of the gardens of the country. * * * In my journeying down the Ohio, I found at Marietta a Frenchman, who was making several barrels of wine every year, out of grapes that were growing wild, and abundantly, on the heads of the Islands of the Ohio River, known by the name of Sand grapes, because they grow best on the gravels; a few plants of which are now growing in one of our vineyards, given by the Harmonites under the name of red juice. * * * The various attempts at vineyards that I heard of, which I went to see, at Monticello, President Jefferson’s place; which, in 1799, I perceived had been abandoned, or left without any care for three or four years before, which proved evidently, that it had not been profitable: At Spring Mill, on the Schuylkill, near Philadelphia, planted by Mr. Legaux, a French gentleman, and afterwards supported by a wealthy Society formed by subscription, at that City, for the express purpose of trying to extend the culture of the grape. I saw that vineyard in 1796, 1799 and 1806. On the estate of Mr. Caroll, of Carollton, below Baltimore, in Maryland; whither I went on purpose from Philadelphia in 1796, there was a small vineyard kept by a French vinedresser, and where they had tried a few sorts of the indigenous grapes. At the Southern Liberties of Philadelphia, I saw in 1806, a plantation of a large assortment of the best species of French grapes; which a French vinedresser had brought over the Atlantic. They were at their 2d or 3d years: they had not been attacked by the sickness: their nurse was yet full of hope.—In 1796, I saw also, near the Susquehannah river, not far from Middletown, a vineyard that had been planted by a German; but who having died sometime before, the vineyard had been wholly neglected. I was told, it had produced some wine; but it had suffered so much delapidation, that I could not recognize the species of grapes.”

With full knowledge of the failures of the past in growing grapes, and after his disheartening visits to a score or more of worthless vineyards planted with the grapes of his native country, Dufour embarked in the Kentucky Vineyard Society enterprise and gave the Old World grapes a thorough trial on an extensive scale, with an abundance of capital, and, to care for the vines, as skilled labor as could be obtained in the vineyards of Europe. As was the case with all past undertakings of the kind so this one proved a failure. In the words of Dufour “a sickness took hold of all our vines except a few stocks of Cape and Madeira grapes.” The promoters became disheartened and the vineyard after being cultivated for several years was abandoned.

Members of the colony, thinking that a more favorable location might be found elsewhere in the valley of the Ohio, settled at Vevay, Indiana, in 1802. Dufour and several of his relatives were granted the privilege of purchasing lands with extended credit by an act of Congress May 1st, 1802. They purchased 2500 acres at the location of the new colony in Indiana and began anew the culture of the vine. For a time there was an element of prosperity in the enterprise but the vines became diseased and died, only one sort, the Cape or Alexander, gave returns for the care bestowed and by 1835 the Vevay vineyards ceased to exist. Could Dufour have foreseen the value of the native grapes for cultivation and devoted the capital and energy spent on European sorts to the best wild plants from the woods, grape culture in America would have been put forward half a century.

Other experiments with Old World grapes were tried in 1803 by the Harmonists, a religious-socialistic community founded in Germany, but which finally settled in America. After temporary sojourns in other settlements, the Harmonists founded a permanent colony in Pennsylvania near Pittsburg. Here they planted ten acres of European grapes and grew them with but temporary success, if any, for Dufour in 1826 visited the colony and says: “None of the imported grapes do well there except the Black Juice, of which I saw but one plant; it is too small a bearer to be worth nursing.”[27] Again there was disaster to an extensive experiment in the hands of skilled men. Besides having tried grape culture in Pennsylvania, the Harmonists made plantations at New Harmony, Indiana, where they settled for a time; but exact accounts of this experiment are wanting.

One other of the many organized attempts to grow the foreign grapes needs mention. When the Napoleonic wars were over a number of Bonaparte’s exiled officers came to America. They were impoverished, and in order to help them, as well as to insure their becoming permanent settlers in the United States, the exiles were organized by American sympathizers into a society for the cultivation of the vine and the olive. The society was organized in the early fall of 1816 in Philadelphia and the remainder of the year was spent in prospecting for a suitable location for the venture. The colony finally decided to settle on the Tombigbee river in Alabama and petitioned Congress for a grant of land in that region. In the end the refugees obtained a grant from Congress of four contiguous townships, each six miles square[28] for the culture of the vine and the olive.

In 1817, an installment of one hundred and fifty French settlers left Philadelphia taking with them an assortment of grape and olive plants. December 12, 1821, Charles Villars, one of the company, reported to the American government[29] that there were then in the colony eighty-one actual planters, 327 persons all told, with 1100 acres in full cultivation, including 10,000 vines and that the company had spent about $160,000 in the venture. Villars tells in full of the ups and downs of the Society. It was apparent from the start that the olive could not be grown. The history of the vineyards on the Tombigbee, as he tells it, is but a record of misfortune. All efforts to cultivate the foreign vines resulted only in failure. The few vines that the vintners made grow yielded a scant crop of miserable quality which could not be made into wine because of ripening in the heat of summer. The land was not adapted to growing grapes. The Society, meeting failure at every turn, finally disbanded and the colonists were scattered. For a half century after, there were records in the southern agricultural literature of the attempts of stragglers or descendants of this colony to grow European grapes in the South. Yet these grapes are not now cultivated in this region, which seemingly has the climate and the soil of France.

The history of these French settlers on the Tombigbee is a most pathetic one.[30] Many of the leaders had been officers of high rank in Napoleon’s armies unaccustomed to field work and the hardships of a new country. Here, in a rough and hardly explored country, part of which was overflowed half of the year, visited by all the sicknesses inherent to such a location, they passed several years in their attempts to grow European grapes. Failure was predestined because of natural obstacles which by this time were apparent, and was foreshadowed by so many previous unsuccessful attempts that it would seem that this culminating tragedy in growing European grapes could have been prevented. The certain failure of the attempt makes all the more pathetic the story of the Vine and Olive Colony on the Tombigbee.[31]

In closing the record of the Old World grape in America a few of the later individual attempts to grow this grape must be recounted.

Three generations of Princes experimented with European grapes at the famous Linnæan Botanic Garden, Flushing, Long Island. Wm. R. Prince[32] author of A Treatise on the Vine, devoted his life to promoting the culture of the grape in America. He tried all of the European sorts obtainable, “reared” as he tells us, “from plants imported direct from the most celebrated collections in France, Germany, Italy, the Crimea, Madeira, etc.; and above two hundred varieties are the identical kinds which were cultivated at the Royal Garden of the Luxembourg at Paris, an establishment formed by royal patronage for the purpose of concentrating all the most valuable fruits of France, and testing their respective merits.”[33] After nearly a half century of experimentation he gave up the culture of foreign grapes and largely devoted the last years of his life to growing and disseminating native varieties, exercising, probably, a greater influence on the culture of American grapes than any other of the many men who have helped improve the grapes of this country.