Agoston Haraszthy (1812-1869)
Agoston Haraszthy was born August 30, 1812 at Futak in Bacska County, Hungary, the only son of the nobleman, Charles Haraszthy de Bacska and Anna nee Halasz. He received his commission in the Royal Hungarian Guards of Francis I, Emperor of Austria-Hungary in 1830. Returning to the family estate after service in the Guard, Haraszthy assumed the office of County Lord Lieutenant and delegate to the Diet in Pozsony. During this time in the Diet, he developed a close friendship with the Transylvania reformer, Baron Wesselenyi and the future Hungarian 1848 revolutionary hero, Louis Kossuth.
In 1834 he married Eleanora Dedinsky, of a Polish noble family which had settled in Hungary after the Polish Revolution of 183 1. A year later, their son, Geza was born. By 1840, Haraszthy was feeling the heat of the Austrian Emperor; Wesselenyi and Kossuth had been arrested in 1837 charged with treason. Sensing that he was a marked man, Haraszthy travelled through Europe, England and on to New York. Entertained by the wealthy of New York, he travelled throughout the state and was impressed by the magnificent Niagara Falls.
Invited to Washington by Daniel Webster and other leading Democrats, he was introduced to President Tyler to discuss commercial relations between the US and Hungary. During 1840-41, Haraszthy was the darling of the Washington social season in his full dress Hungarian Guard uniform:
Everyone admired my heavily gold braided and richly trimmed dolman ... invited to a Presidential soiree, I was informed that the President would like me to wear my dress uniform because many ladies invited would be curious to see it.Continuing his American tour, he travelled through Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and as far west as the territories of Wisconsin , Iowa and Kansas. Impressed by what he saw he purchased a small plot along the Wisconsin river and then in partnership with Robert Bryant, an English aristocrat immigrant, bought 10,000 acres from the US Government for a townsite.
Fearing that he would be arrested when he returned to Hungary, Haraszthy gained the good offices of U.S. General Lewis Cass along with a guarantee of safe-conduct for one year. Upon his return to Hungary in early 1842, he convinced his father to liquidate the ancestral estate and have the entire family emigrate to America. The Haraszthy holdings along with his wife's substantial dowry wealth, made them among the best capitalized immigrants of the 19th century. Sauk City, Wisconsin, Returning to Wisconsin in the fall of 1942, the family set to in earnest building the town of Szdptaj [Beautiful View]. Roads, bridges, a sawmill, gristmill and brickyard were soon built. He established a general store which stocked not only necessities of life on the frontier but also luxury items from New York, London, Amsterdam and Paris. He encouraged other European immigrants, mainly from Germany, and helped finance their setup. Agricultural experiments led to success in sheep raising and growing hops. His farms secured contracts to supply grain to nearby Fort Winnebago. He established the first steamboat transport company on the Wisconsin River.
In spite of these successes, Haraszthy was disappointed in not being able to establish the high quality vineyards of his native Hungary. By 1848 the Haraszthy family decided to answer the common call to California. Again liquidating their holdings, the now expanded family left their town on Christmas Day 1948. Szeptaj was later renamed Sauk City by its residents.
The family now consisted of Haraszthy, his wife, six children, his father and stepmother, and Thomas W. Sutherland, the former U.S. Attorney for Wisconsin Territory who was now Haraszthy's stepbrother. In Kansas Territory Haraszthy formed a wagon train of approximately sixty immigrants for the trek to California. As wagon master, Haraszthy led the wain safely to California, arriving in late December of 1849. Stopping at Warner Hot Springs, the earlier encampment site of the Mormon Battalion, the family rested for a while.
Colonel Jonathan Warner apprised Haraszthy of the agriculture and politics of this San Diego area. The population of San Diego village was then about 650 people: mainly vaqueros, jump ship Yankee sailors and a few Mormon soldiers. Purchasing a plot adjacent to San Luis Rey Mission, Haraszthy with sons Attila and Arpad first planted a large fruit orchard. With local friends, he bought 160 acres in Mission Valley and planted peach and cherry trees with stock sent from New York State.
Haraszthy also became involved in San Diego business and politics. In partnership with Don Juan Bandini, he set-up the first regularly scheduled omnibus transit system and established a livery stable. He established a very profitable butcher shop. With other real estate speculators, Haraszthy established the subdivision of Middletown; there, Haraszthy Street existed until the early 1960s when it was wiped from the map by the construction of Interstate 5.
March 1850 is the date of charter for San Diego County. In the first election that same month, Haraszthy was elected sheriff for the county. In May 1850, San Diego City was incorporated and Agoston Haraszthy was chosen to be the first City Marshall; his father, Charles, was elected Magistrate and Land Commissioner; his step-brother, Tom Sutherland became San Diego's first City Attorney.
Agoston Haraszthy was a tough cop. He cleaned up the waterfront. Drunken sailors, gamblers and other undesirables were encouraged to make haste for the goldfields of Northern California. Siding with American and Mexican ranchers against native Indian farmers in the collection of taxes, he touched off the Indian uprising led by Antonio Garra. After the revolt was put down, Garra was tried and hanged.
In 1851 Haraszthy was elected to the State Assembly and resigned his other San Diego offices. in the legislature then meeting in Vallejo, he succeeded in getting funding for the expansion of San Diego Harbor and the county's first public hospital. He was successful in blocking the establishment of a state telegraph monopoly based in and controlled from San Francisco. He was the first to introduce the legislation to divide California into two states: North and South. That bill died in the State Senate because of powerful interests in Northern California.
While in the legislature, Haraszthy traveled throughout the Bay Area looking for land more suitable to agriculture and horticulture than the subtropical desert of San Diego County. In early 1852 he purchased 2 10 acres near San Francisco's Mission Dolores. At the end of the Assembly Session, he sold all his holdings in San Diego and moved the family north; except for a few short trips, Haraszthy's San Diego period was over.
The end of the San Diego period was just the beginning of Agoston Haraszthy's contribution to American and Californian history. Consider the following:
His biographer, Theodore Schoenman, wrote this of Haraszthy:
- He is identified as the Father of the California Wine Industry.
- Haraszthy introduced the "Zinfandel" red wine grape and the "Muscat of Alexandria" raisin grape.
- He invented an efficient gold refining process and was founding partner in the Eureka Gold
- Silver Refining Co.; EG&SR Co was one of the major contract refiners for the San Francisco Mint.
- Haraszthy was appointed Assayer of the Mint in 1855 because of his fine reputation of fairness and honesty.
- Haraszthy developed the first very large, high quality grape vineyard at Crystal Springs in San Mateo County.
- In 1857 while visiting General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo at the General's Lachrima Montis estate, Haraszthy was introduced to the Sonoma Valley with its weather, topography and soil so similar to his Hungarian homeland's high quality vineyards.
- in Sonoma he established his Szeptaj Estate (Buena Vista). The Buena Vista Winery is today a State Park and historical site.
- In 1861 Haraszthy was appointed to a California commission to improve agriculture methods and to collect vines and fruit tree stocks in Europe.
- During the 1861 five month European tour with son Arpad, Haraszthy purchased (with his own money) 100,000 grapevines representing 1,400 varieties along with small selected lots of planting stock for olives, almonds, pomegranates, oranges, lemons and chestnuts. The tour included visits to France, present day Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece and Egypt.
- Upon his return in 1862, Harper & Bros., NY, published his report: Grape Culture, Wines and Wine Making with Notes upon Agriculture and Horticulture. The book remained the wine making classic authority in the English language until well into the 20th century.
- The Haraszthy family planted vineyards for European immigrant friends and wine growers including Charles Krug, Emile Dreser and Jacob Grundlach.
- In 1863 sons Attila and Arpad Haraszthy were married in a double ceremony to General Vallejo's twin daughters, Natalie and Jovita.
- Later, the French and German wine industry was rescued from the devastation of a root blight by returning to Europe California blight resistant root stock that Haraszthy had originally brought to America.
- Agoston Haraszthy died on July 6, 1869 near his estate Hacienda San Antonio at Corinto Nicaragua. His family believed that he fell into a river while attempting to cross and that he was dragged away by an alligator. The body was never found, but that and the Nicaragua period is a whole other adventure story.
Born aristocrat, yet frontiersman at heart, he was equally at home in the elegant ducal salons of Europe or the gaudy nouveaux riches of San Francisco... Playing Bach and Beethoven while enforcing the law of the frontier, he was a soldier, law student, author, sheriff, metallurgist, land promoter, steamboater, saw mill operator, wagon train master, politician, lobbyist, humanist, visionary, but most of all..."The Father of California Viticulture".[from the House of Hungary, Balboa Park]Another Haraszthy sketch from San Diego Originals by Theodore W. Fuller
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