Note 23 — Chapter I · THE OLD WORLD GRAPE
Reading edition
Legaux’s paper is found as a treatise on the cultivation of the vine in The True American of March 24, 1800. The article contains about 2000 words, the main part of it being “A Statement of the Expense and Income of a Vineyard, Made on Four Acres of Land, situated in Pennsylvania, in the 40th Degree of Latitude.”
Of Legaux’s life, little is known, other than that he was a French vine-grower with an experimental vineyard, as he says in the above article, at “Spring Mill, 13 miles N. N. W. from Philadelphia.” Johnson speaks of Legaux as a philanthropist; McMahon calls him a “gentleman of Worth and Science”; while Rafinesque accuses him of fraud and deception in the matter of calling the native grapes Bland and Alexander, Madeira and Cape.
Judging the man from his article in The True American and from the words of his contemporaries, he was a capable, enthusiastic and intelligent grape-grower. His philanthropy is more doubtful. It is true that he distributed many grape plants but as he himself says to “fellow citizens possessing pecuniary means.” That he practiced deceit in the matter of the introduction of the Alexander as the Cape is probable. However, his deceit, if such it were, may be forgotten and he should be remembered as the chief disseminator of the Alexander, the first distinctive American variety of commercial value.