Note 119 — Chapter IV · SPECIES OF AMERICAN GRAPES.

Constantine Samuel Rafinesque was born in Galata, a suburb of Constantinople in European Turkey, in 1783. He was of French-German descent, his father being a French merchant of Marseilles, and his mother of Saxon parentage. In 1802 he came to Philadelphia. While here he was busied with mercantile pursuits, occupying a position as clerk, but studied botany out of office hours for amusement. In 1805 he went to Sicily where he spent the next ten years. Here he commenced the extensive series of publications which have made his name so well known to scientists. In 1815 he returned to the United States, traveling about from place to place for some time and finally settling in Lexington, Kentucky, where he became a professor in Transylvania University. He left Lexington in 1825, removing to Philadelphia, where he spent the remainder of his life, dying in poverty in 1840. Rafinesque’s biographer gives 420 differently titled articles on nearly all scientific subjects as the product of his pen. His monograph on grapes, entitled American Manual of the Grape Vine and The Art of Making Wines, etc., was published in Philadelphia in 1830.