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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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