The Vine and Olive Land Grants of Alabama: Geographical Ideal Versus Reality

Southeastern Geographer Vol. XX, No. 2, November 1980, pp. 120-133 THE VINE AND OLIVE LAND GRANTS OF ALABAMA: GEOGRAPHICAL IDEAL VERSUS REALITY Thomas A. Rumney Parts of the American South, particularly the portions of the Old Southwest Territory which became the states of Alabama and Mississippi , were settled somewhat later than areas to the west along the Mississippi River. As late as the War of 1812, much of this Old Southwest was controlled by powerful Indian tribes such as the Creeks and Choctaws. Little actual "American" settlement, especially in the Alabama area, took place before 1815. (1) What limited settlement that had occurred in the Alabama country was associated with subsistence agriculture. Cotton was a minor crop. Alabama, however, was soon to take on the economic characteristics, especially staples agriculture, that was typical of the Lower South. (2) There were, nonetheless, anomalies of settlement pattern and economic development in the Lower South during its frontier period which were predicated upon perceptions of landscape and land use different from cotton planting. One such anomaly was the Vine and Olive Land Grants in Alabama. The encouragement of viticulture and experimentation with native and imported grapes were part of the general settlement of what was to be the southern United States almost from the time of the first English colonies. The Virginia Company imported vines and vignerons into Virginia as early as 1610, and viticulture was also part of the initial regional plan of colonial administrators to develop economically the Carolina colonies. (3) These early plants were seldom implemented, but efforts at cultivating grape vines, native and imported, did not stop. During the first 60 years of the nineteenth century, several experiments in viticulture were tried throughout the South, including those encouraged by the state agricultura society of North Carolina and several privately financed attempts in Georgia. (4) Few such attempts at viticulture in the South were undertaken on the scale of the Vine and Olive Land Grants in west-central Alabama. Their potential for development was perceived Dr. Rumney is Assistant Professor of Geography at Keene State College in Keene, NH 03431. Vol. XX, No. 2 121 at a level out of all proportion to the actual environmental conditions of the area. The studies that have been done on these grants, including those of Bobbs and Smith, have not examined them in terms of specific land use analysis, land tenure, and the geographic elements related to the aggregate success of settlement efforts. This paper seeks answers to these unanswered questions about the Vine and Olive Land Grants. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND. After the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, many Bonapartists fled France for the United States, settling primarily near Philadelphia. Some ofthese refugees subsequently petitioned Congress to establish an agricultural settlement where grape vines and olive trees would be cultivated, and on March 3, 1817, Congress passed "An Act to set apart and dispose of certain public lands for the encouragement and cultivation of the vine and olive." (5) Several potential settlement sites along the Ohio River were suggested to the group by other French émigrés. An expedition inspected Gallipolis, a French settlement in southeastern Ohio, and Vevay, a French-Swiss settlement in southeastern Indiana based originally (starting from 1804) but unsuccessfully on vine cultivation. (6) A consensus of the group's leaders, however, directed that it would be best to settle lands located between 32° and 36° North latitude, the same latitude as Crete, Tunisia, or Cyprus. (7) The colonists presumed that because grape vines and especially olive trees grew well at these latitudes around the Mediterranean, they would also flourish at similar latitudes in the United States. After rejecting other locations, the colonists, with their preconceived image of the dominant and determinant effects of latitude on grapes and olives, decided on lands in Alabama. The proximity of French-speaking settlements in Mobile and New Orleans probably also influenced their decision. Led by Marshall Grouchy, a Waterloo survivor, General Desnoettes, and others, this group was granted in 1818 a total of 92,160 acres in four townships of the Mississippi Territory near the confluence of the Black Warrior and Tombigbee rivers, in what is now west-central Alabama. (S) Some 347...