The spread, History, Culture and Development of Coffee in America

Coffee was first drunk in North America in 1688, and coffee houses soon appeared in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and other towns.

The Boston riots of 1773 were planned in a cafe called the Green Dragon. Both the New York Stock Exchange and the Bank of New York were founded in coffeehouses, in what is now known as the financial district of Wall Street.

Coffee was first grown in the United States in the 1720s, a process that is perhaps the most fascinating and romantic story in coffee history.

Gabriel was a French naval officer serving on the island of Matiric, and on a business trip to Paris in 1720, with the help of others and a wealth of personal charm, he acquired a coffee tree and brought it back with him on his ship. To keep it warm and protected from salt water, he placed the tree in a glass box on the deck.

The voyage was full of accidents, perhaps at least as described in Gabriel's diary. The ship was attacked by Tunisian pirates and caught in a storm so strong that trees needed to be tied down. Our hero has a fierce fight with an enemy who deliberately hurts the tree out of jealousy. In the fight, a branch is torn off, but the whole tree survives.

The sea finally calmed down, ships stopped, and drinking water began to be distributed regularly. Gabriel's precious water, obtained by preference, was used on the coffee tree, which eventually reached Martinique, where it was replanted on Pribel Island, surrounded by thorn hedges and guarded by slaves.

It began to grow and reproduce, and by 1726 the first harvest had arrived. History records that by 1777 there were 18 to 19 million coffee trees on Martinique, and a cash crop that could be grown in the New World appeared in due course.

But it was the Dutch who really popularized coffee in Central and South America, where coffee is now the dominant continental cash crop.

Coffee first arrived in the Dutch colony of Suriname in 1718, and was subsequently cultivated for the first time in many parts of French Guiana and the Pará region of Brazil.

In 1730, the British introduced coffee to Jamaica, where the Blue Mountains now produce the world's most famous and expensive coffee.

By 1825, South and Central America were already on their way to coffee. Another important aspect of this time is that coffee was first grown in Hawaii at this time, producing the only American coffee and one of the finest.