"He Sowed; Others Reaped": Ephraim Wales Bulland the Origins of the ‘Concord’ Grape

Edmund A. Schofield

While Emerson and his colleagues were designing a philosophy for the uniqueneeds of an expanding nation, one of their townsmen was quietly developing agrape to match the demands of its rigorous physical environment

The Origins and Spread of "The Vine"In their peregrinations over the ages, thegrape and mankind have crossed paths, haveeven trod the same path, many times. Eastand West, for millennia, they have followedsimilar routes of history, myth, and ro-

mance-first in the Northern Hemisphere, inAsia, in Europe, in North America, and then,within the last few centuries, in the SouthernHemisphere as well. Companion to mankindfrom dimmest antiquity, the grape has beenone of mankind’s most important, most es-teemed fruits.

In the West, the story of the grape has beenlargely the story of Vitis vinifera Linnxus-"the vine"-from which all cultivated varie-ties of grapes were derived before Europeanscame to North America. Cultivation of thevine-called viticulture-is a very ancientart: from earliest times and in every country,wherever it would thrive, the vine has beencultivated with care, especially here in theWest. What wheat is to other cereals the vineis to other fruits-the most important inWestern eyes, as rice is in Eastern eyes. Asia

Minor, somewhere between and south of theBlack and Caspian seas, apparently is itshome. From Asia Minor, its culture spreadboth west and east.

In early history viticulture was carried outlargely to supply grapes for winemaking.Long before the beginning of the Christian

era, grapes and wine were of considerableimportance to Middle Eastern and Mediterra-nean peoples. Thousands of years ago theEgyptians were well acquaintcd with the useand properties of wine, which their traditionssay were revealed to them by Osiris. Theirchief vineyards were planted on the banks ofthe Nile. Joseph’s dream, described in Gene-sis, gives evidence that the vine was culti-vated in Egypt at least eighteen hundred yearsbefore Christ. Grape seeds have been foundwith mummies in Egyptian tombs that are atleast three thousand years old, and details ofgrape growing appear in mosaics of the FourthDynasty of Egypt (2440 B.C.) and later.

Viticulture was practiced very early inPalestine ("And Noah began to be a husband-man, and planted a vineyard."-Genesis9:20). By 600 B.c., the Phoenicians probablyhad carried varieties of wine grapes to Greece,which were carried thence to Rome and on tosouthern France. Hundreds of varieties noware cultivated in the vineyards of the wine-growing country there. Ancient records showthat the Chinese had vineyards of nativegrapes at least one thousand years beforeChrist. During the second century B.C., Vitisvinifera was introduced into China fromwestern Asia, by way of Persia and India.

Viticulture flourished in Greece duringHomer’s time. It was Dionysus, god of revelryand protector of the vine, who gave them the

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vine, they say, and taught them viticulture.Viticulture must have been introduced veryearly into Italy also, by the Greeks. TheRoman writers Virgil, Cato, the Plinys, Varro,and Columella describe numerous varietiesof the vine, list many types of wine, and givedirections for training and pruning vines andfor making wine.

For a time the Romans seemed to preferGrecian wines to their own; not until aboutthe first century of the Christian era didItalian wines begin to find favor in their ownland. In Virgil’s time the varieties in cultiva-tion seem to have been exceedingly numer-ous ; and the varied methods of training andculture now in use in Italy are in many casesidentical to those that Columella and otherRoman writers described.

Because viticulture was so important inRoman life, it is often referred to in Romanpoetry, such as Virgil’s Georgics. Bacchus,god of the vine, whom the Romans identifiedwith Dionysus, was enormously popular atPompeii, which was destroyed in A.D. 79 bythe eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Archxolo-gists have found the sites of many vineyardsat Pompeii, some of them surprisingly large.They have found also numerous wall paint-ings of the vine, countless wine shops, andinnumerable amphoras. All of this arch~ol-ogical evidence attests to the importance ofthe grape as a staple of daily life in Pompeiiand verifies the information on viticulturegiven in the writings of Pliny the Elder, Cato,Varro, and Columella.

During Roman times grape culture ex-tended inland from the coast, moving up theRhone River valley of France and as far northas the Rhine and Moselle valleys. By thesecond century A.D. the Romans had takenthe vine to Germany.

Well before the second century, raisin andtable grapes had spread around the easternend of the Mediterranean Sea to the countriesof North Africa. Because the customs andreligions of North Africa differed from thoseof the northern coast of the Mediterranean,the raisin and table grapes on the one hand,

and the wine varieties, on the other, spreadalong different routes.

Centuries later, when Europeans colo-nized lands around the globe, the grape wasalways among the plants they took along. Inthe fifteenth century viticulture became es-tablished in Madeira and the Canary Islands.Later it spread to South Africa, Australia, andSouth America. The first wine grapes werebrought to California from Mexico late in theeighteenth century. During the first half ofthe next century grape growing and wine-making became established in California andexpanded rapidly between I8G0 and 1900.

Grapes and Their UsesMost grapes (Vitis spp.) are coarse, woodyvines that cling to their supports by means oftendrils. Some species native to arid regionsare almost-erect shrubs rather than vines.Grapes are members of the Vitaceae, or Viti-dacex (the Grape, or Vine, Family). The genusname Vitis, which is the classical Latin namefor the grape, was conferred by CarolusLinnxus. Over the years Vitis has been vari-

ously defined to include or exclude the generaCissus and Ampelopsis, from which it is dis-tinguished on the basis of small differences infloral structure. (Cissus was the Greek namefor the ivy, and Ampelopsis, the name createdby Michaux, comes from the Greek ampelos,the vine-i.e., the grape-and opsis,appearance.) Vitis is widespread in the North-ern Hemisphere, especially in the temperateregions. Defined strictly, it includes aroundsixty species; when Ampelopsis and Cissusare included, it consists of some two hundredfifty species.As noted, grapes may be cultivated for any

of a number of purposes: for making wine, forexample; for eating out of hand as "tablegrapes"; for drying as currants and raisins; forpreserving as jams, jellies, and preserves or fornonalcoholic beverages; and, latterly-owingto the elegance and rich color of the leaves ofsome grapes or to the shade they afford-asornamentals, perhaps one of their leastknown uses.

Several species recommend themselves asornamentals:

Vitis coigneti~, known as the gloryvine, is a hand-some, fast-growing, climbing vine. Its very large,heavy leaves reach ten inches in diameter and turnred in the fall. Probably the fastest growing of thegrapes, gloryvine is ideal as a screen, its shootsincreasing their length by as much as fifty feet in asingle season, and a single plant of Vitis coignetia?can cover a thousand square feet of trellis in a fewyears. It produces inconspicuous and inediblefruits. Hardy to Zone 5, Vitis coigneti~ was intro-duced into the United States from Japan by theArnold Arboretum in 1875.

Vitis amurensis, the Amur grape, is a vigorous vinenative to the Amur River region of eastem Asia.Hardy to Zone 4, it is grown as an ornamental.Producing black fruit, Vitis amurensis comes intoits own in the fall, when its coarse foliage turnscrimson to purplish. Introduced to horticulturearound 1854, this species is hardier than Vitiscoignetia?.Vitis cahfornica, the California grape, is hardy toZone 7. It is native to the West Coast, from Oregonto California and like Vitis amurensis is effective inthe fall, its coarse leaves tuming red at that season.Although rather dry, its glaucous-white fruits are,nonetheless, pleasant-tasting.Vitis riparia, the riverbank grape, is a very hardy,high-climbing vine that is native to a large area ofthe United States. /It is hardy to Zone 2.) Vitisriparia produces purple-black fruit that are coveredwith a dense bloom, and it bears leaves with lus-trous, bright-green undersides. Its staminate flow-ers are fragrant, but they are too small to be effec-tive ornamentally.

Grapes of the New WorldNorth America has been called a naturalvineyard: the first record of the continent isalso a record of its grapes, which grow wild inthe greatest profusion in the wooded parts ofthe continent, from the Great Lakes to theGulf of Mexico and from the Atlantic to thePacific. When the early explorers visitedNorth America, wild grapevines were soprominent that the region was repeatedlycalled "Vineland." Leif Ericson, for example,reached our northeastern shores in about theyear 1000. "Farther south and westerly theywent," says Justin Winsor’s narrative, "andgoing up a river came to an expanse of water,where on the shores they built huts to lodge infor the winter, and sent out exploring parties.

In one of these ... a native of that part ofEurope where grapes grew ... found vineshung with their fruit, which induced Leif tocall the country Vineland." The Englishcolonists found the coast of what is now NewEngland to be profuse in grapes. In 1621,Edward Winslow wrote that in New England"are grapes, white and red, and very sweet andstrong also."

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Governor’s Island, in Boston Harbor, wasgranted to Governor John Winthrop in 1632on condition that he plant a vineyard or or-chard on it. The island early became known as"The Governour’s Garden." In the MiddleAtlantic region, the native grapes also at-tracted the attention of colonists and travel-ers. In Virginia in 1607-09, for example,Captain John Smith saw "[o]f vines, greatabundance in many parts, that climbe thetoppes of the highest trees in some places, butthese beare but fewe grapes. But by the riversand Savage habitations where they are notovershadowed from the sunne, they are cov-ered with fruit, though never pruined normanured." The Spanish colonists of Floridaand the French voyageurs were attracted bythe abundance of grapes. Even as far north asMichigan the voyageurs found the banks ofstreams festooned with grapevines.

John Adlum’s vineyard near Georgetownin the District of Columbia, which wasplanted in 1820, first successfully producedgrapes on the Atlantic coast. His introductionof the ’Catawba’ into general culture wouldeventually yield valuable new cultivars. In1860, nine-tenths of the 5,600 acres of vine-yard established east of the Rocky Mountainswere ’Catawba’ grapes.The Mission Fathers in California were the

first to grow successfully a variety (’Mission’)of Vitis vinifera in what is now the UnitedStates; they brought it to San Diego in 1769.’Mission’ remained the leading variety grownuntil 1860, when European varieties wereintroduced. Between 1860 and 1870 in Cali-fornia there was a rapid increase in the acre-age of varieties derived from native Americangrapes. It was during this time that the culti-

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var ’Concord’ became the leading commer-cially grown grape of American origin.The vine of Europe and of history, Vitis

vinifera has always led a precarious existencewhenever it was introduced into the easternUnited States. It has been supplanted there byderivatives of the native species-Vitis la-brusca (the northern fox grape), Vitis a?sti-valis (the summer grape), and Vitis rotundi fo-lia (the southern fox grape)-and by theirhybrids with Vitis vinifera. Being essentiallytable fruits, the American grapes are quitedifferent from their Old World counterpart,which, as has been said, is a wine fruit. Thus,European writings historically have dealtwith "the vine," American writings with"grapes." But early American writings alsodealt with the vine and with wine; it was notuntil the middle of the last century that thenative grape began to be appreciated andunderstood as a table grape.

Each species, native or introduced, hasmany varieties, is best adapted to specificregions of the country, and is managed ac-cording to its own special requirements. The"vinifera grapes," or "European grapes," asthey are sometimes called, are grown in Cali-fornia and other areas with mild climates and,as said, descend from Vitis vinifera. They arecultivated in vast quantities in all majorgrape-growing regions of the world excepteastern North America. Some of the Ameri-can varieties have been introduced intoFrance and other countries that became in-fested with phylloxera in the latter half of thenineteenth century, to serve as stocks for thebetter kinds of European vines, because theirroots suffer less injury from attacks of thisinsect than do European species.

Vitis labrusca produces purple-black fruitand has leaves that are dark green above. It isa rampant grower, ranging widely throughoutthe eastern United States, from New Englandto Georgia, Tennessee, and southern Indiana,and is hardy to Zone 5. Vitis labrusca is theparent of most of the American grapes now incultivation and is the mainstay of grape-growing east of the Rocky Mountains, with

the most extensive plantings near the south-ern shores of the Great Lakes.

’Concord’ may be the most famous Ameri-can cultivar; it is certainly the most widelygrown. Because of its wide adaptability it isproduced in almost every grape-growing stateof the Union. Although often considered aspure Vitis labrusca, it more likely is a hybridof that species with another species. In fact,most of the older American grapes are

thought to involve more than one species.Therefore, "Vitis labruscana L. H. Bailey," aname used in some horticultural literature,has been applied to American grape cultivarsof Vitis labrusca parentage.

’Concord’: A Hardy Grape for AmericanVineyardsThe story of ’Concord’ is one of the moreinteresting chapters in the history of NorthAmerican viticulture. While not the first oronly important cultivar developed in Amer-ica, ’Concord’ may well be the most notewor-thy. It and Ephraim Wales Bull, its originator,are the protagonists of the account that fol-lows. The past has been a long prologue totheir story.

Ephraim Wales Bull came to serious grape-growing and to the town of Concord, Massa-chusetts-after which his cultivar was

named-in a roundabout way. He was born inBoston on March 4, 1806, the day on whichThomas Jefferson was inaugurated for hissecond term as president. The farmhouse inwhich he was born stood in the area of Wash-ington Street that would later become knownas "Newspaper Row," around the corner anda mere five hundred feet from the house onMilk Street where Benjamin Franklin wasborn almost precisely a century before.Ephraim was the eldest son of Epaphras Bull,a silversmith who had left the hamlet of Bull’sPastures (now Bullsville), New York, forBoston. His family was descended from Cap-tain Thomas Bull, who had come to Americain 1635 on the ship Hopewell.

Boston was, in those days, a large, thrivingtown, and Washington Street, now one of the

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principal and most congested thoroughfaresin the "Hub," was a village highway. Cowsgrazed on Boston Common. Behind the Bulls’house was a large garden where youngEphraim indulged a love of horticulture,experimenting in grape growing, among otherthings.A studious child, Ephraim received the

Franklin medal at school in 1817, when hewas only eleven years old. In 1821 he was ap-prenticed to Louis Lauriat in the trade of gold-beating-the beating of gold into leaf, thenmuch in demand by bookbinders and gilders.At about this time his family moved to nearbyDorchester, Massachusetts. While pursuinghis trade as goldbeater, young Bull devoted allhis spare time to horticultural pursuits, par-ticularly to small-scale grape growing, in hishome garden. (Bull raised the varieties ’Isa-bella’, ’Catawba’, and ’Sweetwater’.) Thiswas the period during which ’Isabella’ wasfirst grown in Boston.

In 1826 Bull acquired a shop of his own, andon September 10 of that year he married MaryEllen Walker, a relative of President JamesWalker of Harvard College. After their mar-riage the Bulls moved back to Boston, takinga small house on Fayette Street, in the SouthEnd. Bull was by now a first-class gold-beater,working long hours in a hot, dusty shop onCornhill (near modern Government Center).He continued to indulge his interest in horti-culture during his off hours, in the smallgarden garden behind his house.

Eventually, Bull developed lung trouble,and his doctor advised him to live in fresh airand away from Boston’s chill east winds. InAugust 1836, therefore, he quit Boston, buy-ing seventeen acres of land in Concord, atown located some twenty miles northwestof Boston. There the Bulls lived in a littlewhite house on the road to Lexington.Though he continued his trade as goldbeaterin a tiny shop behind his home, Bull lovedfarming more. Whenever the gold businessslumped he would have time to putter in hisgarden. His passion by now was the grape, and

the ’Isabella’, ’Catawba’, and ’Sweetwater’grapes he had cultivated in Boston had comewith him to Concord. He was unable to ripenthe grapes in open culture, however, even infavorable seasons. This was due, he said, to"the late spring and early autumn frosts,which we are liable to in this deep valley ofConcord." "

Bull had moved to an interesting townduring an interesting period of Americanhistory. Concord was hardly a typical ruralvillage. There, where "the shot heard ’roundthe world" was fired in 1775, the AmericanRevolutionary War had begun. Decades latera social movement, American Transcenden-talism, took root and flourished in Concordaround the writer and philosopher RalphWaldo Emerson. The land on which EphraimBull had settled made him next-door neighborto the Bronson Alcotts and later to the writerNathaniel Hawthorne, with whom he wassoon on friendly terms. During the years ofstruggle before he discovered the famousgrape, Bull was assisted and encouraged bythese and other neighbors and townsmen,many of whom were members of the Emer-son-Thoreau-Alcott Transcendentalistgroup. In strategic ways, many of which willnever be known in full detail, Bull workedalongside his Transcendentalist friends whenantislavery agitation reached its peak inConcord just before the Civil War.

Hawthorne’s son, Julian, recalled Bull inhis book, Hawthorne and His Circle. "An-other neighbor of ours," he wrote,

hardly less known to fame [than the Transcenden-talists], though in a widely different line of useful-ness, makes a very distinct picture in my mind;this was Ephraim Wales Bull, the inventor of theConcord Grape. He was as eccentric as his name;but he was a genuine and substantial man, and myfather took a great liking to him, which wasreciprocated. He was short and powerful, withlong arms, and a big head covered with bushy hairand a jungle beard, from which looked out a pairof eyes singularly bnlliant and penetrating. Hehad brains to thmk with, as well as strong andskilful hands to work with.... He often came over

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and sat with my father in the summer house onthe hill, and there talked about politics, sociology(though under some other name, probably), mor-als, and human nature, with an occasional lectureon grape culture.

In 1841 Bull bought the Eben Dow farm,which adjoined his property, setting outmany trees, shrubs, and vines. The farm’s soilwas sandy, and a south-facing slope suggestedto Bull great possibilities for grape growing.Determined to develop an earlier-ripeninggrape that would be hardy in Massachusetts,he obtained from every available quartervines having local reputations for excellence.(He knew about Jean Baptiste Van Mons’success in raising pears from seeds and con-cluded that the same process could be appliedto grapes.) Again he was disappointed butpersevered-eventually turning to wild vineshe found growing nearby.He had been watching carefully an early-

ripening native of the northern fox grape,Vitis labrusca, growing in a distant part of hisgarden, noticing, when it fruited at the end ofAugust 1843, that it possessed at least some ofthe essential qualities he sought. The grapewas of good quality, and the idea immediatelyoccurred to him that another generationwould be a still greater improvement. Heremoved and planted it near his ’Catawba’vine, by which it was probably pollinated.Bull (he informs us) planted the resultinggrapes from the wild vine "whole, into theground, skin and all, at a depth of two inches,and covered the row with boards.

"I nursed these seedlings six years," heinforms us further, "and of the large numberobtained only one that proved worth keeping.On the tenth of September 1849, I was en-abled to pick a bunch of grapes, and when Ishowed them to a neighbor who tasted them,he exclaimed, "Why this is better than Isa-bella’ !" "

"I looked about to see what I could findamong our wildings," Bull would reminiscelater. "The next thing was to find the best andearliest grape for seed, and this I found in an

Ephraim Wales Bull in 1861. From Transactions ofthe Massachusetts Horticultural Society for theYear 1908.

accidental seedling at the foot of the hill. Thecrop was abundant, and of very good qualityfor a wild grape. I sowed the seed in theautumn of 1843. Among them the Concordwas the only one worth saving."The exact source of the accidental seedling

is obscure. Bull had bought his house inConcord in 1836. That year, he told LibertyHyde Bailey decades later, boys brought upfrom the Concord River some wild grapes andscattered them about the place. A seedlingappeared in a corner of the garden, evidentlythe offspring of these truant grapes.The stray seedling grew at the base of what

is now called Revolutionary Ridge, an inter-esting landform so named for the key role ithad played in the battle between the Ameri-cans and the British on April 19, 1775. Ex-tending a mile or so eastward from the center

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of Concord, this sandy, gravelly ridge is akame delta that was deposited some ten totwenty thousand years ago in Glacial LakeConcord by meltwater rushing from the re-treating continental ice sheet. British troops,advancing from Lexington to Concord NorthBridge along the road that parallels the Ridge,passed Bull’s cottage en route to the bridge,and passed it again during their ignominiousretreat to Lexington and Boston. The Concor-dians, knowing their native terrain far betterthan did the alien British, who kept mainly tothe public highway, travelled across lots, onthe far (north and eastern) side of the Ridge,rushing from the Bridge to Meriam’s Corner,a fork in the road located only three hundredyards east of Bull’s cottage, at the eastern tipof Revolutionary Ridge. There the Americansambushed the British troops. In one of hisromance fragments, the posthumously pub-lished "Septimius Felton," Nathaniel Haw-thorne makes Revolutionary Ridge the sceneof a duel between Felton and a British soldier.

’Concord’ Makes Its DebutIn 1849, Bull paid a visit to the editorialoffices of the Boston Cultivator, telling itseditor, Samuel W. Cole, that he had a new andpromising seedling black grape that hewished to exchange for one of ’Diana’, whichthe Cultivator had offered for sale to its read-ers. Cole, who owned a nursery in Chelsea,had his foreman set the cutting out. It soonfruited, but little was made of it. Bull hadstipulated that it was not to be propagated forsale.

In the spring of 1853, Bull took the limitedstock propagated at Cole’s nursery, havingdecided that the best way to publicize the newcultivar would be to exhibit it at Horticul-tural Hall in Boston, during that fall’s meet-ing of the Massachusetts Horticultural Soci-ety. Accordingly, ’Concord’ was exhibited forthe first time on September 3, 1853, threeyears after it had produced its first fruit.

It is said that, through some mixup, the’Concord’ originally was exhibited among the

vegetables and was nearly overlooked by thejudges. In the perhaps embellished account ofa journalist, when the show opened and Bull’snew grape had not arrived,

two members of the Society went out to Concordand said, "Where are those grapes you promised tosend inr" "

Quite taken aback, Bull stammered, "I did sendthem in, by a neighbor. I was too sick to make thetrip myself, but I sent them just as I said I would."Very much puzzled, the committee went back

to the horticultural show. They rummagedaround and found the grapes hidden in a pile ofsquashes and turnips and other vegetables. Onelook and they knew they had something. Theylooked at the big round, juicy fruit that had rip-ened fully two weeks before any other grape andthen snitched a couple to eat. They smacked theirlips and said, "I’ll bet he girdled the vines-webetter make sure there’s no trickery here." "

So back to Concord they hastened, notebooksin hand, and gave poor Mr. Bull quite a going over.But he showed them the vines and some otherclusters-far bigger and better than those he hadsent to the show.Once convinced, the committee announced to

the world that, at last, a grape had been developedthat would grow in New England-bigger andbetter than any grown before.

The next issue of Hovey’s Magazine ofHorticulture reported that, "Mr. Bull’s new,early and delicious native variety, was exhib-ited before the Massachusetts HorticulturalSociety, on Saturday the third of September,fully ripe, being more than two weeks beforethe Diana was mature. It has not only provedby far the earliest grape we have, but also oneof the most delicious, having in place of themusky flavor of Isabella, the rich aroma of theCatawba, with which, probably its parent wassomewhat fertilized. Specimens were exhib-ited before the committee who say it fullymaintains the high character heretoforegiven it." "

"We are gratified to announce," Hovey’scontinued, "that Mr. Bull has decided to offerit for sale in April next, and has placed theentire stock in the hands of Messrs. Hovey &Co. for disposal.... It will be called theCONCORD grape, having been raised in thetown of that name, very near the spot so

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memorable in the annals of our history, andknown as the Concord battle ground."When Hovey & Company introduced it in

the spring of 1854, it attracted considerableattention and was placed on the grape list ofthe American Pomological Society as one ofthe "new varieties which promise well." Itattracted still more attention in 1855. Thenext few years found ’Concord’ in the cata-logs of every nursery in the country, and itspread rapidly throughout most of the easternand midwestem states. Within the brief pe-riod of a year, ’Concord’ was growing in theMiddle West. One source, George Hus-mannn, states that in the winter of 1855 hesecured buds of ’Concord’ at Hermann, Mis-souri, from James G. Soulard of Galena, Illi-nois-half way across the continent. In 1858 8’Concord’ was placed on the regular list ofrecommended varieties by the AmericanPomological Society, where it remains.

Bull himself took a hand in promoting’Concord’. In August 1854, for example, he

corresponded with a Dr. J. C. Bennett of GreatFalls, Iowa, who he hoped would market’Concord’ in Iowa. "The Charter Oak and theConcord are entirely different in all respects,"Bull wrote.

The Charter Oak is very large in berry thoughsmall in bunch, coarse, foxy, and wild. The Con-cord is as handsome in the bunch as a blackhamburgh [the variety ’Black Hamburg’] and aslarge, delicate, full of juice, andhas a rich aroma-and as unlike a wild grape as possible. It is hardyin wood and foliage and berry, which is not thecase either with the Catawber [’Catawba’] or Isa-bella with me-both being infected by rot thisvery season, while the Concord is wholly freefrom any of these things.

By 1860, vineyards of ’Concord’ had beenplanted in Chautauqua County, New York. In1865 it was awarded the Greeley prize andcalled, prophetically, "the grape for the mil-lions." During this period horticultural socie-ties would maintain frequent contact withone another about new fruit varieties andcultural practices; by 1867 the Ohio Horticul-

The original "Concord" grape vine, still growing af ternearl y a century and a half. Photograph by the author.

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tural Society was writing about the extensiveplantings of the "noble Concord" in Ohio andMissouri. Within fifteen years of its introduc-tion, thousands of acres of vineyards had beenplanted to ’Concord’ all over the country. Bythe mid-1870s more ’Concord’ had beenplanted in the Northeast than all other varie-ties put together. It had become the outstand-ing grape for both fresh and processed use.Fruit was shipped from the grapc belts of theLake Erie region to most of the major cities ofthe United States.

"The Greeley Affair"In 1866, journalist Horace ("Go West, youngman! Go West!") Greeley, editor of the NewYork Tribune, offered a prize of one hundreddollars "for the best grape for general cultiva-tion." ’Concord’ won. When the winner wasannounced before the Farmers’ Club of theAmerican Institute of New York City inOctobcr of that year, there was unanimousapplause from the audience. Many membersof the public later would express strong oppo-sition, however, among them Horace Grceleyhimself! A Dr. E. Ware Sylvester describedthe controversy at a Farmers’ Club meeting inMarch 1869 (Horace Greeley was in atten-dance), sparking a lively exchange:

An effort has been in progress to discover amongour native grapes, one which in healthfulness,hardiness and productiveness, should be adaptedto the wants of the million. To this end the prizeof $100 was, years ago, offered by Horace Greeley,and other prizes have since been awarded. You arewell aware that the Greeley prize was given to theConcord. This brought out a torrent of abusemainly from those interested in other vines, andeven Dr. Greeley, with his usual kindly feelings,thought it best to apply a Tribune soothingplasterto the wounded head of Iona island. [The cultivar’Iona’ was developed by Dr. C. W. Grant of IonaIsland, New York, which is situated in theHudson River about forty miles north of NewYork City.] To the base insinuations which weremade in the public prints, the members of theGreeley committee made no reply, and makenone now; they were willing that time and expe-rience the great regulators of agricultural mat-ters, should justify, as they were sure to do, theaward of the committee.

Dr. Sylvester proceeded to cite a largenumber of authorities, statements of farmers,nurserymen, vineyardists, and vintners in allparts of the country, showing that ’Concord’was more successful and gave more satisfac-tion than any other grape. Horace Greeleythen spoke:

As thc prizc I offcrcd has bccn directly alluded toby Dr. Sylvester, I may say that with the award ofthat committee I had nothing at all to do. Whenthey came to their decision I paid over the $100.But the end I had in view was not attained by thatinvestigation. I intended to stimulate the produc-tion of new and better vines, and hoped somegrape would be brought out having the hardinessand adaptability to soils and climates of theConcord, good bearing qualities, and, what theConcord wants, high and delicate flavor. But theaward was to the Concord, and I could never seewhat that man ]not Bull, but William H. Gold-smith of Newark, New Jersey, who recently hadexhibited the ’Concord’ at a fruit show of theAmerican Institute of the City of New York],whoever he was, did to deserve his $100. TheConcord was widely cultivated, and all my moneydid was to advertise a grape already known; thusimprovement was not stimulated, but ratherchecked. I am a little discouraged by the result,and do not propose to offer another bank note fora plate of common grapes. To my taste the Con-cord has no quality superior to the wild woodgrape of my boyhood. [Greeley grew up in NewHampshire.] I admit that it is hardy and prolific;but after all, is it much of a frui t? I hope others willtake up this matter, and at length brin out a grapehardy, productive, adaptive and highly flavored.P. T. Quinn responded to Greeley’s re-

marks :

As a member of that committee, a word of expla-nation may be in order. There were two commit-tees. The first decided on the Iona, and Dr. Grantclaimed the award as the originator of the Iona.But there was a protest, a delay, a change in thepersonnelle of the comrruttee, and the feelingwith those who made the final award was that agrape like the lona, known only to a few amateurs,did not come up to the requirements of Mr.Greeley, and should not receive the money.

Greeley responded that

What I complain of is the eagerness of the com-mittee. I did not care if they waited five years, andthus gave grape culturists a chance to enter newvarieties. How do we know but Caywood’s grape,

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for instance, the Walter, is as hardy and wellsuited to different soils as the Concord? If theprize were now open the Walter might take it foraught I know.

Dr. Sylvester countered that

Two years or more have elapsed since that award,and has any grape risen up that could contest thepalm with the Concord? This last fall, did notConcord receive the silver cup at Cincinnati forbeing the best wine grape, and the best tablegrape?

A Mr. Fuller assured Greeley that hismoney had not been wasted:

While I agree with Mr. Greeley as to the qualitiesof the Concord, yet I must say that he never putout $100 that has done more good to the farmersof this country. It arrested attention everywhere,

and people began to buy Concord vines who neverbought before. Ithas been the means of planting avine in 10,000, yes, 100,000 yards and gardens. Ofcourse we are not to rest in the Concord; but it isso much better than no grape, besides it affordsthe best sort of a stepping-stone to somethingsuperior.

Despite his harsh remarks, Greeley is saidto have relented, calling the ’Concord’ "agrape for the millions."

"

Life after ’Concord’Bull’s success with ’Concord’ did not end hisexperimenting. On the contrary, it led him togrow twenty-two thousand seedlings over aperiod of thirty-seven years, of which he se-lected twenty-one for introduction. A whitegrape, which he believed to be the most beau-tiful he could produce, he named ’Esther’ inhonor of his mother, for example; another,later production he named ’Cottage’, out oflove for his home, the little house whichsurvives to this day as "The Grapevine Cot-tage" ; yet another, ’Rockwood’, he namedafter his lifelong friend, Judge Ebenezer Rock-wood Hoar. ’Iona’ and ’August Rose’ wereamong his later introductions. Many seed-lings he left unnamed. At one time he had onehundred twenty-five vines that he thought

were worth saving; but, growing more criti-cal, he discarded most of them.

Marshall P. Wilder, a noted nineteenthcentury horticulturist, stated that, "Had Mr.Bull done nothing else for the benefit ofmankind, than originate the Concord grape,his name would be held in grateful remem-brance, while the fruit of the vine shall coolthe parched tongue, or the juice make glad theheart of man." Judge Hoar asserted that "hadBull conferred such a public benefit as origi-nating the Concord grape in the Old World,the government would have conferred itsrecognition upon him, whereas in his owncountry what he had given years of patientstudy and toil to attain, was accepted as amere matter of course." "

Ephraim Wales Bull received scant pecuni-ary reward for his work after selling stock toHovey & Company. He had sold ’Concord’vines directly at five dollars apiece during thefirst year, receiving a total of $3,200 in netincome, but almost nothing thereafter be-cause the commercial nurseries were propa-gating and selling it to the public in vastquantities and paying no royalties to Bull.He did garner many honors nonetheless: hewas invited to lecture at Harvard on grape

A corner of Ephraim Wales Bull’s house, showingBull’s workshed. Courtesy of the Concord FreePublic Library.

14 ’

Monument to the ’Concord’ grape and EphraimWales Bull erected in front of the Grapevine Cot-tage and the original ’Concord’ grapevine by thetown of Concord.

growing, for example; he was elected a

member of the Massachusetts House ofRepresentatives from Concord and waschairman of the committee on agriculture; helater held the same position in the Massa-chusetts Senate; and he was appointed to theMassachusetts State Board of Agriculture.The Massachusetts Horticultural Society

awarded him three medals for the productionof the ’Concord’ grape and the best seedlinggrapes, including, in December 1873, a goldmedal "for the production of the best hardyseedling grape, the Concord, which hasproved, after a thorough trial, so universallyadapted to general cultivation throughout theUnited States, and the most reliable grape forvineyard cultivation in Massachusetts."Later, he became an honorary member of theSociety.

Bull deserved to benefit handsomely fromhis dedicated and painstaking work in devel-oping’Concord’, but nearly all profits from itwent to the commercial nurseries. Had hislater cultivars been properly introduced theymight have brought him wealth, but because’Concord’ had failed to be profitable, he hatedcommercial grape culture and, refusing to put tthem on the market properly, grew disap-pointed and embittered.

Thus, Bull had to be content with lesstangible rewards: much respect and affectionat home and a modest fame abroad. He sawhis’Concord’spread over the continent, leav-ing great wealth in its wake, while he, itsoriginator, grew more and more impover-ished. From a simple, frank, neighborly manhe became a suspicious recluse, spending hisdays tending plants in a small greenhousebehind his cottage. This became the chief sol-ace of his lonely later life.

Ephraim Wales Bull died on September 26,1895. The epitaph on his grave is an aptdescription of his life: "HE sowED; OTHERSREAPED." "

The True Place of ’Concord’Today, a century and a half after it was devel-oped, ’Concord’ remains the preeminentgrape of the eastern United States. It is welladapted to conditions in that part of the coun-try, whereas the European varieties are not.According to a recent survey, more than sev-enty percent of the grapes produced in thenortheastern, north central, and northwest-ern states are of this cultivar. As a progenitorof many other cultivars’Concord’ has an evengreater claim to fame. Among the morefamiliar cultivars of ’Concord’ parentage are’Worden’, ’Martha’, ’Cottage’, ’Niagara’, ’Dia-mond’, ’Moore’s Early’, ’Highland’, ’Cole-rain’, ’Brighton’, and ’Black Eagle’. A score ofothers are either directly or indirectly linkedto the family tree of ’Concord’.

Other claims have been made for the’Concord’, some of them patently false orexaggerated-although no doubt made in

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good faith-some of them true. Local folk-lore, for example, claims that ’Concord’ andvarieties derived from it "saved the vineyardsof Europe":

Cuttings of ’Concord’ went to Europe directlyfrom Ephraim Wales Bull’s own vineyard in thelate 1870s or early 1880s, when the phylloxerawas devastating the vineyards of France. An agentof the Emperor Napoleon came to America toinvestigate American grapes. The agent visitedBull in Concord and was presented with a bunchof ’Concord’ cuttings.

The phylloxera is an insect, Phylloxeraviti folia? Fitch, that is indigenous to the east-ern and central United States. Imported intoEurope between 1858 and 1863 on Americanvines taken there for grafting purposes, it hassince reached almost every vine-growingcountry in the world. The first definite recordthat the phylloxera had reached Europe wasmade in 1863, in England; soon thereafter itwas identified in France, through whose vine-yards it spread rapidly. Within twenty-fiveyears it had destroyed nearly one-third ofFrance’s vineyards-in all, more than two andone-half million acres. By 1885 the phyllox-era had extended to most other grape-produc-ing countries of Europe and had reachedAlgeria, Australia, and southern Africa. It wasfirst discovered in California in 1880, butthere is evidence it had reached that statemore than twenty years earlier, having beenintroduced along with American vines fromeast of the Rocky Mountains.The truth is that ’Concord’-like Vitis 7a-

brusca in general-is only slightly resistantto the phylloxera. Other American speciesand cultivars derived from them are notablyresistant to the phylloxera, however; it is

these that provided stocks for susceptiblevines in Europe and elsewhere, not ’Concord’or its descendants. In any event, the folkloreis in error on at least one other score: "theEmperor Napoleon" died decades before hisagent is alleged to have visited Bull, and thereis no evidence that the French government ofthe time dispatched an agent or agents toobtain ’Concord’ from Ephraim Wales Bull.Representatives of the French government,led by Pierre Viala, did visit other Americans sduring those bleak years for French viticul-ture, however, even visiting William GilsonFarlow of Harvard University, who was acryptogamic botanist, but they would havehad little or no reason to visit Bull.

Nevertheless, ’Concord’ holds a venerableplace in American viticulture. After nearlyone hundred fifty years, it is still propagatedand planted from coast to coast, and its end innowhere near. Until ’Concord’ appeared,grape growing in eastern North America hadbeen difficult at best. Bull, by developing’Concord’, proved that native species couldbe employed in viticulture, and that viticul-ture could be made profitable in eastern

North America. ’Concord’ was only one steptoward the improvement of the grape, but itwas a crucial step. Bull’s success promptedmany further efforts to adapt viticulture tothe trying demands of the New World.

NoteBecause this article is an early version of part of a larger,ongoing project centered on the history of the ’Concord’grape, some of the interpretations and conclusions mustremain tentative.

Edmund A. Schofield is editor of Arnoldia.