Lewelling Family

last updated 23 Sep 2023

I found Lewelling Vineyards winery when doing genealogy research. I went to check out my Great Great Great Grandfather, John Lewelling's, vineyard in St. Helena, Napa Valley. He started it in 1864 and provided grapes to some of the top wineries in the area for over 150 years.
During the 1870's and 1880's the vineyards of the St. Helena area established a reputation for producing some of the finest wines in the United States, a reputation that is now acknowledged world-wide and is attributed to the unique combination of soils and climate.

I found John's vineyard up a dusty back road and was taking a picture of his bust in front of the old victorian mansion when a guy came up and asked if he could help me. I told him John was my Great Great Great Grandfather and he said "mine too", You've got to come down to the winery and meet uncle Dave. What winery, I didn't know about it.

Janice Lewelling Wight, John Lewelling's great-granddaughter, and her husband Russ Wight built a home on the family property in 1950 and quickly became involved in operating and replanting the vineyard and with their family added a winery in the late 1990's. Janice's granddaughter started her own label, Hayfork, with cabernet and some other varieties in 2019.

They have limited distribution, but my brother does more entertaining than I do so started ordering a case directly from them and shares some of it with me.

It is a highly rated wine and I live in Davis, which is hot in the summer, so I started looking into how to properly store it and expanded my research to include other areas of the wine business see the links above.

I graduated from the University of California at Davis in math and always kicked myself for not taking "Introduction to Viticulture and Enology" from the top grape growing and wine making research department in the country.
Dave Wight also graduated from UC Davis where he studied enology (wine making) prior to creating the winery.

More about Lewellings: See Lewellings at cafamilies.org

The Lewellings are descended from Thomas (Llewellyn) Lewallen (1645 - 1732). He immigrated from Wales to Frederick County, Virginia in 1663.
In 1876 2 of Thomas' great grandsons, Shadrack and Meshack Lewelling moved to Randolph County, North Carolina.

Robert King and Sara Lewelling (John's oldest child) McBride andestors. See My Great Grandfather, Lewis Leroy King, was raised by the Lewellings when his father Robert King and Mother Sarah Lewelling died in their 30's.
He moved to Roseville and established an orchard ("Cherry Glen") south of Roseville with of 11,000 fruit trees, consisting of cherries, peaches, apricots, plums, almonds and figs. This area is now known as the Cherry Glenn Addition to Roseville. He also set out forty acres, known as the Elm Court Subdivision, to grow table grapes. In 1890 he built his beautiful residence, Elm Court, which was the home of several generations of Kings.

Henderson and Seth Lewelling, John's brothers were also West Coast pioneers Henderson moved to Oregon in 1847 and Seth joined him 3 years later. They were pioneering nurserymen.
Today Henderson is known as the Father of the Pacific Fruit Industry.
Seth was responsible for propagating the Bing cherry. (The bing accounts for 2/3 of cherry sales today.)

See the story of Henderson's encounter with indians on the Oregon Trail.