Campbell, George

Campbell, George (Washington)

(1817–98) horticulturalist, inventor; born in Cherry Valley, N.Y. He moved to Ohio as a child and trained for newspaper work, but from the mid-1850s he turned his full energies to fruit-growing. His wide-ranging experiments with seedlings and crosses fostered the development of American grape-culture. He considered his Campbell Early, which bore its first fruit in 1892, to come the closest to his professed ambition to create the perfect grape.