36 INTRODUCTION. 



D.C., began planting vines with the intent to make wine. His 

 vineyard was situated on the banks of Rock Creek, where he col- 

 lected many foreign and native varieties of grapes. He published 

 in 1823 a Memoir on the Cultivation of the Vine in America, 

 and the Best Mode of Making Wine, of which a second edition 

 appeared in 1828. After expending much time and money in un- 

 successful attempts to propagate the foreign grape, he abandoned 

 it for the native varieties. Among these the since widely known 

 Catawba, which he found in Maryland, and introduced to public 

 notice, was his favorite. 1 



The French and Spanish settlers of Missouri brought with them 

 grapes and other fruits, which were thence disseminated in Illinois. 

 The settlers of Kentucky, from Virginia and the Carolinas, and 

 those of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, from New England and the 

 Middle States, in the latter part of the eighteenth and the. beginning 

 of the nineteenth centuries, carried with them the seeds of the dif- 

 ferent kinds of fruits, grains, and vegetables they were accustomed 

 to at home, prominent among them being the apple, peach, pear, 

 and cherry, which were at first sown in garden-patches to be trans- 

 planted in a year or two into the first few acres cleared. The 

 soil and climate were congenial. The trees grew thriftily, and in a 

 very few years yielded fruit. The favorite varieties were intro- 

 duced as early as possible by grafting, and, after the planting of 

 orchards, nurseries were established for the dissemination of the 

 varieties. A method of propagating desirable kinds much used by 

 emigrants from the South and West was by suckers. Peaches were 

 raised abundantly from seed, and cultivated without grafting or 

 budding. The pear-blight, and the bitter-rot in the apple, appeared 

 about 1820, and the peach also began to be diseased about the 

 same time. As in the East, we find here few traces of ornamental 

 horticulture among the early settlers. But it was not wholly neg- 

 lected ; for a damask rose bush was living in 1859, which was 

 brought from New Orleans more than a century before that time, 

 and was the first rose bush that ever bloomed in Illinois. 



In 1769 the French settlers on the Illinois River made upwards 

 of one hundred hogsheads of strong wine from the wild grape. 2 

 In 1799 an association was established near Lexington, Ky., for 

 the purpose of cultivating the grape, and manufacturing wine. 



i Memoir; New England Farmer, Vol. II. p. 277. 



> Report of U. 8. Commissioner of Patents, 1853, p. 298. 



