Husmann, George

Hermann, Missouri, was the new world home of George Husmann, who is acknowledged as the father of the Missouri wine industry. His fame extends well beyond the State of Missouri.

Husmann was born in 1827 in Meyenburg, Hanover, Germany, and emigrated to the United States with his family at age 9. As a young man, he was one of the first to cultivate grapes in Hermann. Then, with the coming of the Civil War, Husmann served for a time as Quartermaster of the 4th Missouri Infantry Regiment (union). Towards the end of the War, Husmann was elected a delegate to the so-called Drake Convention, called to re-write the Missouri Constitution. Husmann is credited with authoring Missouri’s Emancipation Proclamation, which was adopted by the Drake Convention on January 11, 1865, and was the first legislative act of a former slave-holding state that totally outlawed slavery.

Beginning in 1863, the French wine industry was devastated by an infestation of Phylloxera Vastatrix, a small insect that was, ironically, introduced to Europe through the importation of American vines in the years just before the Civil War. By the 1880’s, 40% of France’s vines had been destroyed, and the plague had spread throughout most of western Europe. George Husmann, by the late 1870’s a professor at the University of Missouri, discovered that certain Missouri grape species, having been developed from wild vines, had an immunity to the Phylloxera insect. Husmann, together with several other Missouri wine experts, were instrumental in the mass export of Missouri root stocks – 10 million of them – which were grafted to French vines, and the French wine industry was thus saved. Most of the vines now growing in France are descended from these Missouri vines.

Husmann moved to Napa Valley, California, in 1881, and became the pre-eminent expert on California viticulture. He died in 1902 in California.

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