Our Native Grapes. 87 



The Catawba seemed to Mr. Longworth to be the only variety of native 

 origin worthy of cultivation. In this opinion he has to this day many faith- 

 ful followers in our neighborhood who fully agree with him. 



Along the Ohio river most of the vineyards have been abandoned on ac- 

 count of many years of successive rot making the culture unprofitable. 



With the introduction of the Delaware and Concord, a new impetus 

 seemed to pervade the grape interest, and extensive vineyards were planted, 

 at first only on sandy soil, as no one thought that clay could possibly ripen 

 the fruit, but experiments upon the islands of Lake Erie, where the soil is 

 •of the stiflfest clay and the sub-soil hard lime-rock, opened the eyes of 

 growers to this new fact, and in a few years sand was entirely neglected for 

 the more profitable clay. 



Great enthusiasm now prevailed ; land which would not produce a fair 

 crop of weeds was esteemed to be worth $1,000 per acre for grape culture, 

 and many investments were made by associated capital, as well as private 

 enterprise. With the increased production, however, prices of fruit de- 

 preciated, and dividends became small, cooling the ardor of speculators. 



The careful cultivator, however, was not dismayed by these slight dis- 

 couragements, but diligently toiled on, pruning long, pruning short, testing 

 his ground, testing new varieties, gaining experience, sometimes riding 

 hobbies, often laying down theories afterwards to be abandoned, seldom 

 meeting with total failure, but always on the alert to discover what caused 

 his partial failures and promising himself to profit by past experience. 



Such intelligent, discriminating care and industry have met with suitable 

 reward along our lake shore, and to-day there is not a crop grown in our 

 county .as valuable as grapes for table use; and, indeed, with us there is not 

 a fruit crop so certain. If not overcropped by ignorance of pruning or 

 greediness, a certain quantity can be depended upon annually, providing of 

 course an untimely frost or hailstorm do not destroy them. Thus far in the 

 history of grape culture in our section there has not been a total failure. 

 In 1883 the grape rot among the Concords took the cream off the profit from 

 the section west of the Cuyahoga river, while the eastern part of the countrj'^ 

 gleaned an abundant crop which brought good prices. 



The season of 1884 was a most favorable one, the harvest abundant and 

 quality most excellent, extending throughout our grape belt, which, as far as 

 now developed, is one to two miles wide close along the shore wherever the 

 soil is clay or loam. Experiments with suitable soil, but further from the 

 shore, have usually proved unsatisfactory. Thus we have about forty miles 

 west of the city and fifteen to twenty miles east, which is almost one contin- 

 uous vineyard, intervening spaces filling up rapidly. 



Strange as it may seem there is a narrow belt of about one-half mile wide 

 beginning at the spot where our nation has laid away all that was mortal of 

 her honored Garfield, and extending some six to eight miles east, where the 

 ■Catawba grows and ripens to its greatest perfection. Here are some vine- 

 yards which have been in constant bearing for twenty to thirty years. There 

 are specimens on exhibition at this meeting which were picked from a vine- 



