Hometown History Homework #7: How to Build a Town from Scratch (Vineland, N.J.)
Have you ever set out to do a thing, only for it to turn into the exact opposite of the thing you wanted to do? Then you’d be in good company with Charles K. Landis, the Philadelphia lawyer who set out to build an alcohol-free utopian society in New Jersey, only for it to become a leader in New Jersey winemaking.
How I got here:
In 1758, England’s Royal Society of Arts wanted to incentivize agricultural innovation and cultivation in colonial North America. It offered a cash award of £100 to the first colonial farmer who established vineyards and produced "five tuns of red or white wine of acceptable quality." The initial award was unclaimed by 1762, so the Society upped the bounty to £200 if the goal was reached by 1770.
Eventually wine production did make its way into the British colonies, but it was far outpaced by the production of cider and distilled spirits, especially in New Jersey. Wine production did not play a significant role in New Jersey’s agricultural economy until the mid-1800s.
The short version of the story:
In 1857 a man named Charles Kline Landis bought 20,000 acres of land in Cumberland County, near the town of Millville. Landis wanted to create his own alcohol-free utopian society - a "Temperance Town" - based on agriculture and progressive thinking. This wasn’t exactly a fool's errand: he had done it once before, in Hammonton, N.J. Now Landis was ready to try his hand at utopia-making again, but at an even grander scale. He wrote that he wanted
"...to found a place which, to the greatest possible extent, might be the abode of happy, prosperous and beautiful homes; establish the best of schools; also manufactories, and different industries and churches of different denominations; in short, all things essential to the prosperity of mankind…In fact to make…so desirable a place to live and throw such a halo of beauty as would make people loathe to leave it, and, if they did so, would draw them back again.''
However, it would take a herculean effort from Charles Landis to reach his goal. The land he had purchased was at that time a neglected forest, a “wilderness of a forbidding aspect.” The only inhabitants were woodcutters and backwoods trappers. Most of these early settlers were uneducated, poor, and lived in log cabins with dirt or clay floors. But Landis was undeterred, imagining that, once it had been cleared, the land’s fertile soil, temperate climate and long growing season would help bring about the Utopia he dreamed of.
On August 8th, 1861, Landis drove the stake that would become the center of his soon-to-be-created town (the present-day intersection of Landis Avenue and the Boulevard). Landis hired a work crew, paying them twice the accepted wage for the area. As an entrepreneur, capitalist and land speculator he showed a rare compassion for workers, saying that low wages would hurt the colony because they
"degrade all, rich and poor, giving one class more than sufficient for their needs ... at the expense of the other class who are robbed and impoverished, and deprived of all opportunity for self-improvement.''
To attract settlers to his new town, which he named Vineland, Landis formed his own newspaper, The Vineland Rural. In it he declared that he was "about to build a city, and an agricultural and fruit-growing colony around it." Landis also established a set of rules for Vineland, one of which being that “the sale of liquor would be forbidden unless overturned by majority vote of the town's inhabitants.”
By 1864 the town had grown to roughly 650 houses and 4,000 inhabitants. Landis was overjoyed at the prosperity of his colony, but was dismayed at the fact that most of the new settlers were not farmers. Who could he persuade to move to Vineland and take up his agricultural mission? Landis soon found his ideal target audience: Italian immigrants.
Since founding Vineland, Landis had noticed that the soil was particularly well suited for growing grapes. In fact, in 1865 Thomas Bramwell Welch moved to Vineland and developed the first method for pasturing grape juice to prevent natural fermentation and spoilage. By 1869 he was purchasing locally grown grapes to make “unfermented wine” that was marketed as “Dr. Welch’s Unfermented Wine” and later as “Welch’s Grape Juice.” Landis was convinced that the establishment of vineyards was what was needed to grow Vineland into the Utopia he envisioned. And who knew how to grow grapes better than Italians?
In order to bring experienced Italian grape growers to Vineland, Landis started the first Italian newspaper in the United States, The Echo of Italy. In this paper Landis advertised Vineland, saying he would grant each new resident 20 acres of land provided it was cleared and utilized for the growing of grapes. The newspaper’s editor was Secchi de Carali, an Italian political exile. He and Landis advertised and lobbied for Italians to move to Vineland - Landis himself even traveled to Italy to pitch the idea directly to people. Among the earliest Italian residents to move to Vineland was Carlo Quairoli, who helped document the early years of Italian settlement in Vineland.
Despite Landis' efforts to create an alcohol-free community, Italian immigrants (perhaps predictably?) started producing alcoholic wine by the 1870s (Opps). They joined the efforts of German immigrants who were cultivating grapes and producing wine across southern sections of New Jersey as early as 1865. Over the ensuing decades many Italian and Sicilian immigrants flocked to the eastern part of Vineland, establishing a rich tradition of viniculture in the southern part of the state.
Final Thoughts:
As we all know, history is influenced by the person recording it, in big ways and small. This story of Charles Landis, founder of Vineland, is an excellent example of this. I’ve told you the story of Charles Landis the visionary, the utopian leader, supporter of the working man, and salesman bar none (all true). But I’ve neglected to share the story of Charles Landis, the um…murderer.
As you can imagine, establishing a Utopia requires a certain kind of person. Someone passionate and stubborn: determined to get what they want regardless of the cost. On that point, Landis ran into some trouble. On March 19th, 1875, Landis entered the office of The Vineland Independent and shot the newspaper's editor, Uri Carruth, in the head. The two men had been enemies for some time, and tensions peaked when Carruth published an unflattering article about Landis’ wife.
Carruth died from his wounds, and Charles Landis was tried for murder. Remarkably, Landis was found not-guilty by reason of insanity, and was free to leave Vineland, the society he had painstakingly grown from the ground up. He went on to found yet another New Jersey town, Sea Isle City, and restore his reputation for good. His scandalous murder trial was omitted from Landis’ obituary when he passed away in 1900. (And if you’re interested in the full Landis Murder Trial Story, check out this recent episode from the ladies at Ye Old Crime Podcast)
So if you’re as shocked as I was to learn about Charles Landis’ heel turn, take it as a sign that history is always influenced by its retelling.
Links:
https://westjersey.org/vland.htm
https://discovervinelandhistory.org/
https://atlanticcityweekly.com/the-complex-life-of-charles-k-landis/article_ab932703-da12-5ee7-aa26-a1c425eb347d.html
https://njmonthly.com/articles/jersey-living/visionary-vineland/
https://www.thedailyjournal.com/story/news/history/2015/04/15/local-history-landis-avenue-to-be-heart-and-soul-of-vineland/25814731/
https://www.murderbygaslight.com/2020/07/tragedy-at-vineland.html