Taming the Wild Grape

Taming the Wild Grape is the story behind one man’s dream to create a legacy in the newly settled land of Ohio in the 1800s. Following the Revolutionary War, Josiah Pelton was aware that his farm in Killingworth, Connecticut, could no longer support him and his wife, let alone allow each of their sons a place to prosper. His purchase of 6,605 acres in the Western Reserve prompted Josiah to embark on a six-hundred-mile journey with his son Jesse so that they could inspect the land and begin clearing it. When Josiah returned to Connecticut to bring the rest of his family west, Jesse, at the age of twenty-two, was left behind in the wilderness-his only companion a young man hired to help with the heavy work of felling trees and uprooting the wild grape vines that covered the land. Josiah and his sons worked tirelessly to make their farms productive, and as more settlers arrived in the township of Gustavus, Josiah turned his attention to creating a community. Through personal tragedies as well as those of his fellow settlers, the ever-present threats of Indian attack, adverse weather conditions, and the War of 1812, Josiah’s dream took shape.