Background note
In January 1793, Peter Legaux submitted a plan the American Philosophical Society for "the establishment of the Vine culture
in Pennsylvania by means of public subscription, authorized and protected by Government." In 1785, Legaux, a Francophone
emigrant from Saint Domingue, purchased Mount Joy, the former estate of Anthony Morris overlooking the Schuylkill River at
Spring Mill, 13 miles northwest of Philadelphia, and began farming.
From early in his residence at Spring Mill, Legaux appears to have conceived his farm as a place to promote advanced agricultural
practices, including viticulture, and he indulged a variety of scientific interests that earned him election to the American
Philosophical Society in July 1789. Legaux read works on electricity, assisted Jean Pierre Blanchard on the first manned
balloon flight in America in 1793, and he donated a book on the history of Surinam, yet to his peers he was been best known
for his careful meteorological observations at Spring Mill. From as early as 1787, Legaux built upon the work of Rittenhouse
and Rush. The traveler François Alexandre Rochefoucauld-Liancourt found Legaux to be "dissatisfied with everyone" and regarded
him as a "worthless and litigious man," but Legaux was acquainted with a wide and important circle, including Thomas Jefferson,
Peter Stephen Duponceau, Stephen Girard, and John Vaughan, and carried some weight within the robust French community in Philadelphia.
Following Legaux's proposal to the APS, the Pennsylvania legislature passed an act authorizing the incorporation of a company
for promoting culture of the vine. A subscription was raised and shares issued to some of Philadelphia's most important merchants
and friends of improvement, from Robert Morris and Benjamin Rush to Bohl Bohlen, Israel Whelen, John Wachsmuth, and Benjamin
Franklin Bache, as well as the French minister, Citizen Gênet. Sales, however, did not meet expectations, and the project
languished until April 1800, when the Pennsylvania Commissioners for the Cultivation of the Vine liberalized the original
act to stimulate stock sales. After a public notice was placed in the Pennsylvania Gazette in April 1800, encouraging the formation of a company to encourage viticulture in the state and to train vine dressers, 1,000
shares were made available at $20 each.
Having issued over 550 shares, Gov. Thomas McKean, a subscriber himself, directed that the Vine Company be incorporated in
January 1802, and in June of the following year, Legaux was hired as superintendant of the vineyards at a rate of $300 per
year. He oversaw the daily operations, the planting, grafting, weeding, and harvesting, and communicated regularly with the
officers of society, including Peter Stephen Duponceau, Benjamin Say, Mathew Carey, Stephen Girard, Bernard McMahon, and Thomas
Hodgson.
Legaux experimented with different varieties of grape and different techniques of raising them, but the Company was never
as profitable as hoped. It failed to make its debts and its vineyards were seized and sold at public auction in 1822. Legaux
thereafter remained at Spring Mill, farming and recording the weather, but was less in the public eye. Shortly after recapitulating
the events of 1826 with a note on the deaths of his "dear friends and the friends of the human kind," John Adams and Thomas
Jefferson, Legaux fell ill with fever. In January 1827, he scrawled a journal entry "I am very sick... Like Death... and
in Great Suffrances from head to feet &c &c and can do Nothing Except to horribly Complain against Nature & God!!!!!!" His
last entry was made at the end of March. He was survived by his wife Catherine Bosler and their three daughters.
Scope and content
The Journals of the Vine Company of Pennsylvania consist of four volumes documenting the daily work performed under the auspices
of Peter Legaux at the Company's vineyards at Spring Mills, Pennsylvania, America's first commercial winery. Terse, written
in Legaux's Frenchified English (and rarely in French), Legaux was a meticulous recorder of the work on the vines performed
by his hired hands and vine cutters, and kept careful meteorlogical records. He also recorded communications from the officers
of the Vine Company.
Legaux's notoriously abrupt personality occasionally makes itself known, complaining frequently about the poor condition of
his vineyards, the need for better weeding and tending the vines and, on occasion, about the officers of the Company. After
a visit by Bernard McMahon in 1810, for example, Legaux was asked to , but felt that
The journals contain a good deal of detailed information about pests and weather conditions as they affected crops, and some
information regarding Legaux's experimentation with different varieties of grape and methods of plating and tending them.
Other details are even more revealing:
in the following years, it is asbolutly necessary where the Grapes Begain to come ripe to hired two mens for the Nights, one
to warren in the one Night and the other one other night with one Good Dog, until the fruit is converted in vine or Brandy
or disposed of by the officiers of the Vine Compy. It will do very well also to put several trapes in to the vineyards &c
this fruit is soo tempting that it is impossible to garde him from the rapacity of the people, notwithstanding that I did
give present of mine to every of my Neigbourgs (September 25, 1810).
Legaux's contractual relations with the Vine Company are documented in some detail in ntries for March 3-12, 1810. His intitial
appointment as Superintendent is tipped into the inside cover of volume 1. Equally interesting are Legaux's dispute with
Bernard McMahon (see August 7, 1813) regarding the sale of 3,000 vine cuttings.
The last of the four volumes in the collection is a weather and farm diary maintained by Legaux after the failure of the Vine
Company until his death in 1827. The journals were bequeathed to William J. Duane, politician and son of William Duane, however
Duane records that Legaux's executor (and son-in-law), John Righter, failed to deliver the volume covering the period Aug.
1, 1814-July 31, 1822. Duane wrote that he "did not think it discreet to coerce."
Arrangement
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Volume I. Vine Company of Pennsylvania Records
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June 4, 1803-October 17, 1805
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194p.
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Volume II. Vine Company of Pennsylvania Records
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October 18, 1805-August 12, 1809
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176p.
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Volume III. Vine Company of Pennsylvania Records
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August 12, 1809-July 31, 1814
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196p.
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Volume IV. Peter Legaux Journal
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August 1, 1822-March 31, 1827
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294p.
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Administrative information
Restrictions
None.
Provenance
Gift of William J. Duane (to whom Legaux bequeathed it), 1866.
Preferred citation
Cite as: Peter Legaux, Journal of the Vine Company of Pennsylvania, American Philosophical Society.
Alternate formats
The journals have been microfilmed (Film 1467, reel 3).
Additional information
Related material
The APS houses two sets of meteorological observations made by Legaux at Spring Mill:
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Meteorological Observations, 1820-1821. Call no. 551.5 L52
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Observations météorologiques faites à Springmill, 1787-1800. Call no. 551.5 M65
In the Printed Materials Department are two important broadsides:
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Meteorological observations made at Springmill ...; Dec. 1787 (Philadelphia, 1788). Call no.: 506.73Am4mc
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Meteorological observations made at Springmill ...; May 1789 (Philadelphia, 1789). Call no.: 506.73Am4mc
References
In October 1792 Legaux donated a copy of Moses Pereira de Leon, Essai Historique sur la Colonie de Surinam (Paramaribo, 1788). Call no.988 P41e
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