When folks bring up “the good ol’ days” as they reminisce about how things used to be, it often comes with feelings of nostalgia. You know – when times were simpler and less complicated.
Some may remember summer afternoons shelling beans on the front porch or squeezing lemons for sugary lemonade.
But whoever recalls sweating in a tobacco field, topping or priming as you made your way up and down the endless rows may have a different perspective about how “good” those days were.
There is no doubt that Vance County – indeed, all of the area once known as Granville County – has a long, rich history with tobacco. Tobacco paid the bills, literally, for a lot of farmers and played a tremendous role in the area’s economy.
People moving south from Virginia brought their “red” tobacco with them when they settled in this area, said local historian Mark Pace. It was cured differently and they used it for snuff, for chewing and for smoking in their pipes.
Fast forward to post-American Revolution days and Granville County not only had ideal soil for growing tobacco, but it also had lots of plantations that had lots of enslaved people.
“There was a crop here and there was a labor supply,” Pace said on Thursday’s TownTalk segment of Around Old Granville. He and WIZS’s Bill Harris chatted about the history of tobacco, their own memories about growing up in an area where the crop has played – and continues to play – such a vital role.
When the railroad came through in the 1830’s, it provided a way for tobacco farmers to get their product to market, whether it was Richmond, Baltimore or to the coast where it would be shipped overseas.
And tobacco was just as important as the railroad to Henderson’s prosperity, Pace said.
“There was a time in the 1880’s,” Pace said, “when Henderson, North Carolina was the world’s largest tobacco market,” moving something like 6.5 million pounds of tobacco from warehouses to manufacturers.
J.P. Taylor, one of the biggest in the world, was located in Henderson.
By 1878, there were close to a dozen tobacco warehouses in Henderson, and the second week in August, they’d come alive with activity. That’s when the tobacco markets opened and the air all around was filled with that unmistakable aroma of the cured golden leaf.
The local newspaper plumped up to rival the size of the Sunday New York Times, Pace said, with local businesses placing ads to get the attention of tobacconists and farmers alike during the market.
“Tobacco farmers got paid once,” Pace said. “That’s when you took your tobacco to market.”
Generations of families helped plant, cultivate, tend, prime and barn tobacco – it was important to the whole family that the crop be successful.
Pace said he remembers kids getting out of school early because they needed to help get the tobacco in; when the tobacco season was late, the opening of school was delayed, he said.
“It all revolved around tobacco,” Pace added.
Farmers worried about one thing or another during the season – weather, worms, wilt – and they continued to worry when the leaf was in the curing barn because of the risk of fire.
Farmers who were able to get their crop to market, however, could see the results of their considerable labor get auctioned off bundle by 500-pound bundle.
Buyers representing the major manufacturers were bidding and farmers were listening, hoping for top dollar.
But changes were in the offing, especially after the U.S. Surgeon General’s 1964 report that smoking causes cancer.
And when the price of tobacco fell, producers planted more tobacco to make up the difference. That led to a glut on the market, and the government stepped in to limit how much tobacco farmers could produce. At first, it was based on acreage, Pace said, but it changed from acreage to poundage to account for the fact that the crop grew better on some land than on other.
Tobacco auctions and warehouses largely went away, with the trend emerging to contract directly with tobacco manufacturers.
“The end of the price support program brought about the demise of the tobacco warehouse,” Pace noted.
The tobacco auctioneer’s chant will be in the air in Oxford next Sunday, Sept. 27 at the Tobacco Research Station on Providence Road. The Granville County Museum and Historical Society is hosting its second annual Mock Tobacco Auction on the grounds of the research station and Pace said folks can see – and hear – what auctions were all about.
Auctions will take place at the top of the hour during the afternoon event, which is a fundraiser for the museum.
N.C. Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler will be a featured guest.
Admission is free to attend, with a suggested donation of $5 per person – $10 per family.
There will be plenty of vendors and food items, and there will even be a tobacco tying contest.
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