Built with Tobacco

By Patrick County Historical Society

To understand the importance of tobacco in the settling and survival of the American colonies is to learn that tobacco was the principal medium of exchange in colonial days. In other words, folks got paid in tobacco - sheriffs, clerks, other county officials, and even ministers. Alexander Gordon, one of the early preachers who served the Critz area before it became Patrick County, received a salary of 1,600 pounds of tobacco for the year. Dues to the established church that he pastored were assessed in tobacco also, 33 pounds for each of 856 “tithables” in one parish. Although replaced for the most part by US currency by the time Patrick County was formed in 1791, tobacco remained a major cash crop.

Tobacco grown in the eastern Piedmont section of the Blue Ridge and along the southern border of the state was considered the best in the early days, as well as when flue-cured tobacco became the norm. Flue-curing, as opposed to air-curing used with other types of tobacco products, involved heating the green leaves in log tobacco barns until it achieved a rich, golden color and that sweet – to any farmer, chewer, or smoker - aroma. Until the mid-20th century, farmers did this with wood fires. At the base of the barn were usually two flues, hence the name, extending the length of the dirt floor of the barn. Farmers took care to watch the temperature in their barns very closely so as not to overheat the leaves while making sure the fire didn’t get away and burn the barn down, possibly causing the loss of a whole year’s income.

As anyone who has ever worked in tobacco can attest, the lengthy process of getting it ready for market required more work than most people would be willing to endure these days. From readying the soil in late winter, starting seedlings in “plant beds” in early spring, then planting, “suckering,” controlling pests, topping, priming, curing, and, finally, hauling it to be auctioned at tobacco warehouses in the fall, was a very labor-intensive enterprise. One observer called it “the 13-month crop,” not so far from the truth. Flue-curing involved picking tobacco leaves in several “primings” rather than cutting the whole stalk down late in the season. The first priming was hardest because it involved bending down to pick only the lowest few leaves, but all the harvesting was hot, grimy work. Smelly tobacco gum from the leaves would stick to skin and clothing alike. In the old days, workers picked as many green leaves as they could carry under one arm and then loaded these onto “tobacco slides” that were pulled by mules between rows. Though tractors arrived in the 20th century to ease some of the workload, a few farmers were still using mules to help with harvesting as late as the 1960s. And pity the poor mule that got rambunctious and tore through some rows of tobacco. This was real money lost for his owner, so anger and a few choice words for the offending animal were to be expected.

At the barn, the leaves were tied on thin, often hand- hewn, wooden sticks. Women were often the best and fastest at this process with young children “handing leaves” to them. Then, it was hung on horizontal poles running the length of the barns. This “housing” of tobacco was often left to young, lanky fellows who sometimes had to work 15-20 feet off the ground while straddling those long poles as it was handed up to them.

Interestingly, most of the tobacco used in the first one hundred years of Patrick County was chewed, not smoked. Chewing tobacco came in twists and plugs, often flavored with licorice, honey, molasses and spices, which also helped the leaves to bind together. The lack of good roads and other viable forms of transportation led to the establishment of even factories within Patrick County by 1860. These processed the local products into plug or twist tobacco. Before that, hogsheads – large barrels with a shaft in the center - were sometimes rolled by mules or oxen to markets as far away as Lynchburg, Virginia, without any certainty of a fair price.

Two of these manufacturers, Thomas Jefferson Penn, and R.J. Reynolds, eventually became well-known around the world, though both ended up moving to areas where railroads provided better transportation. The Penn family business was located in the Penn’s Store area in the easternmost section of the county. Their ancestral home that became known as the “Pink House” is yet standing near where US 58 crosses into Henry County. These “tobacco” Penns, who were descendants of Colonel Abram Penn of Revolutionary War fame, eventually moved to Danville and then to Reidsville, NC. There, they joined the huge American Tobacco Company whose most famous brand was “Lucky Strike” cigarettes. Thomas Jefferson Penn, Jr. built a large, lavishly decorated mansion known as “Chinqua-Penn” near Reidsville that became a popular tourist destination after both he and his wife had died. Many years later, a very ornate, three-seat carriage from Chinqua-Penn Plantation came up for auction at an estate sale. Fortunately, a life member of the Patrick County Historical Society purchased this “Cadillac” of carriages and donated it to the Historical Society’s museum, but only after having it completely restored.

The more well-known Richard Joshua Reynolds was born and raised at Rock Spring Plantation, near Critz, in 1850. He moved to the small town of Winston, North Carolina in 1874 where he started a small factory and began selling his own brands. (Only some decades later, did “Winston” combine with what was once the Moravian village of “Salem” to become “Winston-Salem.”) With the advent of new cigarette manufacturing techniques, the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company grew into one of the largest corporations in the world. From “Browns’ Mule” and a hundred other brands of chewing tobacco, his business had branched out into smoking varieties. His popular “Prince Albert” pipe tobacco, developed in 1907, could be used for “roll your own” cigarettes as well. Then, the famous “Camel” cigarettes became a best seller, primarily due to R.J.’s adoption of modern advertising techniques. Described as the “Joy Smoke,” the Prince Albert product featured the very dignified looking husband of the popular Queen Victoria of England on its labels. Camel cigarette packages pictured a dromedary, or single-humped camel, to go along with its exotic Turkish blend of tobacco. In reality, the model for one of the most popular brands of all time was a circus camel named “Old Joe” that had caught R.J.’s eye when passing through Winston. Then followed such catchy phrases expressing loyalty to the brand as “I’d walk a mile for a Camel,” as opposed to smoking some lesser brand.

R.J. Reynolds made money, millions, in fact, but he kept his down-home humility, apparently, while helping his family and friends prosper with him. Reportedly, he paid and treated his workers, both white and black, better than most industrialists of the early 20th century. With some of that money, one of R. J.’s daughters, Nancy Susan, had the family home place restored in 1970 and, eventually, donated the house and some 700 acres of land to Virginia Tech. Most likely built by enslaved African Americans in the late 1840s, the restored home became a national historic landmark in the 1970s. Known now as the Reynolds Homestead, Virginia Tech operates the site as a modern educational-cultural center and an impressive forestry research station while tours of the historic home are available through the summer months into early fall– all funded in large part by “tobacco money” from Nancy Susan Reynolds’ endowment.

These days, fields of tobacco are somewhat rare, but those old log barns where famers camped out on late summer nights to watch over the curing fires still haunt many back roads of old Patrick. With health concerns and restrictions on advertising and tobacco use, it is no longer that reliable a cash crop that so many of those same farmers used to help their families make ends meet. Tobacco’s legacy abides, however - not all good, but not all bad either. Those big, green, sticky leaves turned” golden” upon being cured and turned into “gold” in another form when sold. Yes, tobacco provided many folks with a livelihood in Patrick County in years past while contributing to the growth and development of the area along with of much of the South.