Note 168 — Chapter V · THE LEADING VARIETIES OF AMERICAN GRAPES

Jacob Moore was born in Brighton, New York, in 1835. He early engaged in the nursery business and about 1860 began to experiment in hybridizing grapes, his first production of note being Diana Hamburg which proved too tender to be of value in New York. In 1873 he sold the Brighton to its introducer, the grape having come from a union of Diana Hamburg and Concord. In 1882 Moore’s third grape of note, the Diamond, was introduced, its parents being Concord, fertilized by Iona. One other grape completes his list of varieties of this fruit—the Geneva, a Vinifera-Labrusca hybrid from seed planted in the spring of 1874. Beside these grapes, Moore was the originator of the Ruby, Red Cross and Diploma currants and the Bar-seckel pear. Jacob Moore died in January, 1908, having devoted a life to the improvement of fruits and having spent a patrimony of no small amount and all of his earnings in carrying on experiments in horticulture. It saddens one to know that after having devoted a half century to the enrichment of agriculture, poor Moore should have passed his last years in comparative poverty, and that they were embittered with the thought that, unlike the inventor, the producer of new fruits can in no way protect the products of his originality, even though they added millions to the wealth of the country as have his fruits.