“There were vineyards … as early as 1886 at the area of Pee Dee and [N.C.] 22,” wrote Betsy Lindau in her Southern Pines Centennial book, “The 1st Hundred Years.” Lindau went on to write, “This would seem to refer to Dr. “[Baldwin] von Herff’s experimental farm in that vicinity.” Von Herff was a German chemist who left the country during World War I.
Dr. William Swett started the Niagara Vineyards in southeastern Moore County in 1891. He decided to grow a relatively new variety of white (or green) grape that had begun to grow in popularity throughout the country — the Niagara grape.
Two men named C.L. Hoag and B.W. Clark, of Niagara County, N.Y., developed the Niagara grape beginning in 1868, by crossbreeding purple Concord and white Cassady grapes. The Niagara vines bore their first fruit in 1872, and the Niagara Grape Co. began selling the grapes commercially in 1882. The grapes became popular, particularly in the making of grape juice, and the company retained ownership of the entire stock of Niagara vines for many years.
In time, peaches (and in the Cameron area, dewberries) supplanted grapes as the fruit of choice among Moore County growers. But the grapes that Swett shipped out from Moore County gave the community of Niagara its name.
William S. Powell, in “The North Carolina Gazetteer,” wrote that the community of Niagara was established about 1904 by “Northern interests.” It may be true that the first significant settlement of the community came that late — but local people had already been referring to the area where Swett grew his grapes as “Niagara” for years before that.
