I’m always interested in connections between things that seem to be completely unconnected, and if you look through history enough you’re bound to find various connections. For example, I was looking through some old notes I have and found this information about the history of grapes in America:

In the 1840s, Ephraim Wales Bull, of Concorde, New Hampshire, started working on developing a new kind of grape. At that point there were no American grapes that were good tasting, and his idea was to crossbreed various kinds of grapes to end up with something that was good to eat and drink. After about 10 years of experimenting, he announced the development of the Concorde grape, America’s first commercial grape.

And what is the connection to literature? Bull’s test garden was located next door to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s residence, and Bull was friends with Henry David Thoreau. Back then the world was a much smaller place, especially in New England.

Another connection between the worlds of literature and of food comes from the book Moby Dick. At one point the author explains the nobility of the whaling profession, and he says that while there was no royal blood that ran through the veins of whalers, they had connections to one of the founding fathers:

The grandmother of Benjamin Franklin was Mary Morrel; afterwards, by marriage, Mary Folger, one of the old settlers of Nantucket, and the ancestress to a long line of Folgers and harpooneers–all kith and kin to noble Benjamin–this day darting the barbed iron from one side of the world to the other.

By the time Melville wrote Moby Dick sperm whales had been hunted to extinction in the Atlantic Ocean.  New England whaling ships commonly sailed on a three-year trip that took them around the southern tip of South America and up into the North Pacific. In 1849, after the news of the discovery of gold in California reached New England, a group of young Folger men decided to set sail not for whalebone but for gold.

They reached California a year later, but the gold mining business never panned out for the Folgers. Some of the brothers eventually returned East and the remainder went into other businesses, including–of course–the coffee business. Fourteen-year-old Jim Folger first found work in a coffee and spice mill, and later opened a store selling coffee to gold miners. He rejoined the coffee and spice mill, took over the firm, and then unfortunately went bankrupt. It took him over 10 years to pay off the debts for the mill, but in the end he did and expanded his sales of coffee across the country.  Today Folgers is a name associated with coffee, long after the New England whaling business has faded away.