McLEAN COUNTY HISTORY & GENEALOGY NEWS
By Euleen Rickard
The traditional ways of preparing tobacco for market and selling it in warehouses are going by the board. In the fall, though some tobacco could be seen hanging in barns, much was cut, hung on racks and covered with plastic to dry outside. And on many farms it was sold directly from the farm. The sights and sounds of the tobacco market are slipping away.
The Owensboro Messenger reported that burley sales got off to a quiet start, “almost eerily quiet.” There were no auctioneers and only a few farmers and officials going through the Owensboro House where once there was high activity and noise. “The warehouse was using a computerized buying system that recorded the sales prices for each bale.” Auctioneers did sell dark tobacco at the Planter’s Tobacco Warehouse.
In the early days of Kentucky, agriculture was the mainstay of its existence and tobacco was the primary cash crop. Following the Civil War, production of tobacco increased with burley winning acclaim for its sweeteners that were good for plug tobacco, a popular product at the time. Plug tobacco was popular until the era of World War I when cigarettes became the choice kind. Burley tobacco was used in cigarettes so Kentucky continued growing it and today remains one of the nation’s major burley producing states.
When America was discovered, the explorers found that the Indians had been growing tobacco for centuries. It was cherished as a gift from the spirit world and was used in rituals as a way to communicate with spirits. It was used in peace making ceremonies as an expression of friendship. Smoking the peace pipe is a documented historical fact.
The Europeans tried smoking and found that it was relaxing and soon it was used for pleasure. In the 1500s, little by little, it was introduced around the world, with the affluent everywhere indulging in its pleasure. World War I found Americans smoking “tailor made” and “roll your own” cigarettes. Men and women were “rolling” cigarettes until the end of the 1930s depression when it seemed a zillion brands of cigarettes and pipe tobaccos hit the market. Cartons of Lucky Strikes, Camels, Old Golds Chesterfields and other brands were sent to the soldiers during World War II and cigarettes were given as prizes on game shows and in carnival contests.
As early as 1902 remedies for “kicking the habit” were offered. Sears, Roebuck and Company in their catalog sold a product that was “A Sure Cure for the Tobacco Habit.” The same year the great baseball player Honus Wagner ordered the American Tobacco Company to take his picture off their “Sweet Caporal” cigarette packs, fearing that they would lead children to smoke. This caused a shortage of the Honus Wagner cards and in today’s baseball card market it is the most valuable card of all time, worth almost a half million dollars.
In McLean County, growing tobacco was a family endeavor. Men prepared the plant beds and men, women and children worked, pulling and setting fields of plants, then suckering and tending them though the summer and cutting, housing, curing and finally stripping and taking the tobacco to market. Until the 1950s tobacco was the main “cash crop” for the average farmer in McLean County and living for some was “fat or lean” depending on a good or bad year for tobacco.
In a recent article in the Messenger-Inquirer Billy Reid owner and operator of Reid’s Orchard in Owensboro recalled, “My great-grandfather came from Scotland. He had two brothers who had tobacco factories in Livermore.” Most of the towns of McLean County had warehouses. In the early days of basketball in Sacramento the team played in the tobacco warehouse.
Jim Beller has donated a wooden tobacco peg that was used for setting tobacco by hand and there are a small number of tobacco related pictures on file at the museum. If you have tobacco-related memorabilia or old pictures of tobacco fields, tobacco being stripped, tobacco warehouses or wagons loaded for market the museum would like to have them and will copy and return original pictures.