Ephraim Wales Bull

Background

Ephraim Wales Bull was born on March 4, 1806 in Boston, Massachussets, the son of Epaphras Bull of Bullsville, New York, and Esther Wales of Dorchester, Massachussets.

Education

Ephraim Bull was a studious child, winning the Franklin medal for scholarship in the Boston public schools at the age of eleven, but was also given to strenuous physical work in his father's vineyard.

Though from the first interested in grape raising, he was when a boy apprenticed to Louis Lauriat, a Boston chemist, to learn the trade of goldbeating, and this, until his reputation as a horticulturist was established many years later, was his profession. While practising it, he raised grapes in his garden on Fayette Street in Boston, and later on a more extensive scale at Concord, Massachussets.

Career

Bull worked chiefly with native stock, rather than the European wine grape, and was led to the use of sexual propagation by reading the classic treatise of Van Mons on raising pears from seed. At that time the "Isabella" was the earliest-ripened grape in the country; yet early as it was it did not always escape an early frost. Having discovered an extraordinarily early-ripening specimen of Vitis labrusca, the northern fox grape, Bull planted the grapes whole, and nursed the seedlings for six years.

On September 10, 1849, he picked the first fruit of these seedlings. For five years more he cared for the vines, reproducing them by cuttings, and continuing to replant the seeds. He obtained an astonishing number of variations by this method, even white grapes appearing from black parents. It is not certain just when Bull realized the superiority of one of the new strains that was to become the famous "Concord. "

He exhibited it on September 3, 1853, at Massachusetts Horticultural Hall. Through a mishap the specimens almost failed to be noted by the judges; when brought to light, however, the new variety proved to be earlier than the "Isabella".

Bull sold this new grape at five dollars a vine, and the first year obtained $3, 200 net income, but when nurseries bought the stock and propagated it for sale, he received almost no further income from the "Concord. " For this reason he hated commercial grape culture, and died embittered.

A member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1855, he was chairman of the committee on agriculture, and the ensuing year occupied the same position in the Massachusetts Senate. From 1856 to 1858 he was a member of the Massachusetts State Board of Agriculture.

He died at the Concord Home for the Aged. Bull was buried in the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, with an epitaph reading, "He Sowed Others Reaped. "

Achievements

• Ephraim Wales Bull's name remains in histroy as the name of a talented horticulturist who made significant contributions into the field of American farming and agriculture. One of his major achievements was in the development of a new variety of popular grape called "Concord", which was extremely hardy, prolific, and phenomenally heavy, handsome, fragrant and juicy; it was both a good table grape and a wine grape. Bull exhibited his new grape to the Massachusetts Horticultural Society and, by 1854, it was successfully put on the market. He produced also the white "Esther, " the "Rockwood, " the "Iona, " and the "August Rose. " He is said to have raised 22, 000 seedlings, and to have saved only twenty-one as worthy of preservation. Bull's achievement were recognized and he was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives and became chair of the Committee on Agriculture. Later he was also elected to the Massachusetts Senate.

Personality

Personally he was eccentric, and a lover of homely philosophy.

Connections

He was married on September 10, 1826, to Mary Elden Walker of Dorchester, Massachussets.

Father:

Epaphras Bull

Mother:

Esther Wales

Wife:

Mary Elden Walker

Friend:

Louis Agassiz

His intimates included Louis Agassiz and Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Friend:

Nathaniel Hawthorne

References

• Ephraim Bull and his Concord grape