Slap Swamp native J.D. Peterson was an inventor, horseman and creative genius.
J.D. Peterson
Man of Many Talents Bill thompson PHOTOS Peterson Family STORY
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ack when tobacco was king, the castle was an old building where the sticky green weed was turned into marketable golden leaves. There was certainly nothing royal looking about those barns, no spires or parapets. They were simple structures, usually wooden with a tin roof and a shed on at least one side. It wasn’t the building that created the alchemy; it was the fire inside, a flame fed by wood cut from the surrounding forests and fed into an incinerator with flues that encircled the floor of the barn. The curing process necessitated constant attention to create just the right amount of heat at the right time. There was someone at the barn all day and all night feeding the fire, or adjusting ventilation. It was time-consuming, back-breaking work. Then along came a fellow named J.D. Peterson. He didn’t look like royalty but he had a tremendous influence on the tobacco industry that was so much a part of the lives of the kingdom. On November 7, 1946, J.D. drove to Washington, D.C. to register his new invention with the U.S. Patent Office. He drove there to personally show the 10 | 954 | Spring & Summer 2020
drawing to “whoever needed to see it.” What he showed them was a design for an oil burning tobacco curing system (liquid fuel burner). Peterson’s patent 2,512,964 was granted on June 27, 1950. It would change tobacco farming and, consequently, the lives of hundreds of families that depended on the crop to make their livelihood. The kingdom had a prince. This man who had such an influence on the kingdom of tobacco was not of royal lineage. He grew up in Slap Swamp, an area near Wannanish, a town within the town of Lake Waccamaw. When he was about 10 years old his family moved to Wilmington, where he immediately went to work delivering The Wilmington Star newspaper and doing other odd jobs. When he was 12 years old (long before child labor laws) he began an apprenticeship at Hanover Iron Works while going to school at night. But he never finished his formal education. At age 13, he took his newly acquired skills to the “big paying jobs up north.” Because
