20 THE GRAPES OF NEW YORK. 



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."' Again there was disaster to an extensive experiment in 

 the hands of skilled men. Besides having tried grape culture in Pennsyl- 

 vania, 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 Bona- 

 parte'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- 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^ that there were then in the colony eighty-one actual 

 planters, 327 persons all told, with iioo 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 vine- 

 yards 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 tm-n, finally disbanded and the colonists were scattered. For a 



' Dufour, John James. Vine Dresser's Guide: 307. 1S26. 



^ U. S. Statutes at Large. 3:374. 



^ American State Papers, Public Lands, 3 :3o6. 



