The Contribution of Continental Emigrants: the Germans

After the Huguenots, the continental emigrants most often associated with experimental viticulture in America were German-speaking Protestants of the many varieties native to Switzerland, Austria, and the different German states. Some had been uprooted by the wars of Louis XIV, whose national aims were mixed with the cause of Catholicism against Protestantism. Others were put in motion simply by the attractions of the New World, often compounded by persecution at home Pietists, Palatines, Mennonites, Mystics, Moravians, Salzburgers, and others came to the English colonies in such numbers that by the Revolution, it has been esti-

mated, there were some quarter of a million inhabitants of German blood in the colonies.^[101]

The first settlement of German Protestants, in this case the people then called Pietists, was made under the auspices of William Penn at Germantown in Pennsylvania in 1683. Winemaking was part of the original intention of the settlers; Francis Pastorius, the leader of the colony, brought vines with him, but they were accidentally spoiled by sea water after they had already arrived in Delaware Bay.^[102] No doubt some experiments were made; as late as 1700 Pastorius wrote that the people of Germantown were "especially anxious to advance the cultivation of the vine."^[103] But the promise of the town seal, showing a grapevine, a flax blossom, and a weaver's shuttle, was not fully realized: Germantown's weaving prospered, but its wine industry did not.

A second German community was established in 1709 by Protestant refugees from the Rhenish Palatinate (the Rheinpfalz as it is now called), devastated by the War of the Spanish Succession. Thousands of these Germans, from one of the most famous viticultural regions of Europe, had made their way to England, where the English were sympathetic but sorely perplexed to know what to do with them. One answer was to export them to the colonies, usually with the thought of putting to work their talents as winegrowers: had they not come from the very heart of the German wine country? So it was with the group sent over in 1709 under Pastor Joshua von Kocherthal. The gentlemen of the Board of Trade and Plantations proposed that the Palatines, as they were called, should be sent to Virginia or other regions of the continent (they were evidently not very particular) "where the air is clear and healthful" in order to make wine.^[104] Kocherthal reported to the board from America that the country was certainly fit for winemaking and that the long history of failure was owing only to "inexperience and want of skill." He mentions Beverley's work in Virginia, which was attracting much notice, and he adds the interesting detail that the Pennsylvania Germans had devised methods for grape growing better suited to American conditions than those of the French.^[105] The first contingent of Palatines—more than 2,000 of them—was, however, settled on the Hudson River at Newburgh rather than in Virginia or Pennsylvania. They had a hard struggle to get established, and the official instructions were for them to produce supplies for the English navy rather than wine. Under the circumstances viticulture does not seem to have been seriously tried, though the region is one that must have reminded many of the Palatines of their native Rhineland.^[106]

A second contingent of Palatines was sent to the North Carolina coast in company with a number of Swiss emigrants under the charge of Baron Christopher de Graffenried of Bern and of the Swiss traveller Louis Michel: the interests of both men seem to have been largely speculative.^[107] The possibility of growing wine was one of the inducements held out to the members of this group, who founded the settlement of New Bern in 1710. Probably some experiments were made, without enough promise to encourage sustained work. New Bern thus provides the model for two later German-speaking colonies in the South already noticed, that of the

Swiss and French at Purrysburgh in South Carolina in 1732 and that of the Salzburgers just across the Savannah River from Purrysburgh, at Ebenezer in Georgia. In both places the manufacture of silk and the production of wine had been part of the original intention, but in both winegrowing was quickly dropped.

One might conclude from this summary account of French and German contributions to early colonial winegrowing that they failed quite as emphatically as the English. Practically speaking, no doubt they did. No continuing, substantial production of wine developed out of any of the trials made by French, German, or Swiss—not to mention those of the Italian Mazzei or the Portuguese Jew De Lyon. But their participation in the early efforts to grow wine in this country helps to make it clear that the consistent failure was not owing to ignorance of established methods. The English may not have known what they were about, but the others brought with them a long tradition. Another, more positive point, is that despite the uniform failure of all who tried winegrowing in the American colonies, it was especially the continental immigrants rather than the English who kept on trying. Their matter-of-course relation to wine as a daily necessity of diet was of incalculable importance in finally establishing an industry. The best-known names in the winegrowing trade that did eventually develop in this country are the names of non-English families, who fulfilled a promise that their ancestors could not, but whose ancestors gave the example. The Germans seem to predominate—Kohler, Frohling, Muench, Husmann, Krug, Gundlach, and Dreyfus come to mind at once. But then, in this country, the Germans always outnumbered the French, who were never enthusiastic about emigration without the stimulus of religious persecution. However, the French are part of it too: Pellier, Lefranc, Vignes, and Champlin are only a few of the French names on the list of successful pioneers. The Italians now seem to be almost synonymous with winemaking in America, especially in California, but theirs is really a later story. Enough to say now that without the diffusive influence of Germans and French, the idea of winegrowing in America would not have persisted as it did, nor would the actual achievement have taken the form that it has now.