Victorian Culture - Oh that Noxious Weed! Cigars in the 19th Century

[BettyO]

I love Victorian cultural history as well as CW/Assassination history and like Laurie and others feel that we can learn an awful lot by studying the social/cultural history of our particular period in history.

Just found this wonderful site on - of all things, cigars or "cheroots" or "Seegars" as our Victorian brethern called them. Since Mr. Surratt sold these at Surratt Tavern (and more or less JWB, and the rest of the boys) probably enjoyed them - I thought I'd post the link..... it's a great site with many interesting facts/points regarding the "noxious weed" as abstainers referred to tobacco.

http://cigarhistory.info/Cigar_History/H...-1862.html

For instance, I never knew this about matches!

"1832 A French chemistry student, Charles Sauria, added phosphorus to the friction match creating the first strike-anywhere type. He was unable to raise money to patent his idea and it was almost immediately copied by the Germans, and quickly spread throughout Europe. Matches sputter and spark and are somewhat dangerous to clothing and furniture."

[L Verge]

Great site. Google "match safes" and learn about the various (now high-priced) containers that were crafted to hold those matches safely in gentlemen's pockets. Just two matches rubbing together could start a fire. My husband and I used to collect these containers - he preferred the pocket ones, and I preferred the china, glass, and metal ones that sat on tables or hung on walls.

P.S. Early matches were called Lucifers or vestas.

The heat is making me silly today, so I'm going to post something silly that I found in one of my Victorian grandmother's books:

Where can a man buy a cap for his knee.
Or a key for the lock of his hair?
Can you call his eyes an academy
Because there are pupils there?

In the crown of your head, what jewels are found?
What travels the bridge of your nose?
If you wanted to shingle the roof of your mouth,
could you use the nails in your toes?

Can you sit in the shade of the palm of your hand?
Or beat on the drum of your ear?
Can you eat the corn that grows on your toe?
Well, why not grow corn on your ear?

Can the crook in your elbow be sent to jail?
If so, just what did it do?
Where can I sharpen my shoulder blades?
I'll be darned if I know, do you?

[Gene C]

That was good

[RJNorton]

I second Gene!

[L Verge]

From the cigar history that Betty posted, this item brought back fond memories (that weren't fond while they were happening).

1834± About this time, US tobacco farmers began selling their crops to leaf warehouses rather than making the cigars themselves. Local warehouses grew in importance selling to larger warehouses in cities, or directly to traveling buyers representing factories. Large commercial warehouses began springing up in New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore.

Up until the late-1980s, my grandmother and mother owned two tobacco farms worked by tenants. Each year, the seasoned crops were sent to markets nearby where the various tobacco companies would bid on the hands of tobacco, based on variety and quality. I'm sure you all have seen pictures of those huge warehouses with rows upon rows of stacked tobacco and bidders and auctioneers moving swiftly up and down setting prices. The chant of the auctioneer was something that I could never mimic.

However, it was the few minutes that came after the line moved on that used to embarrass the heck out of me. Knowing that the final price of the tobacco would mean either a prosperous year ahead for the tenant or a lean year (at our farms, the tenants received a house to live in, equipment and fertilizers to grow the crop, and 60% of the profit), my mother would find the owner of the warehouse (most of whom she had known her whole life) and "convince" him to raise the price a few cents on each pound.

Being too young to understand economics, it just seemed to me that my mother had become a beggar - and it was mortifying.

Those wonderful old warehouses have gone the way of tobacco production in Southern Maryland. I used to be a smoker, but I know the dangers it entails and do not promote the habit. However, I miss seeing the beds of young tobacco seedlings in the early spring, watching the planting, picking off tobacco worms (vicious looking devils!), gathering the blooms for altar flowers or topping the tobacco in the blazing sun of summer, and watching the cutting and hanging of the stalks and leaves in late-August or early-September. I especially miss those wonderful old warehouses and their unique sounds and smells.

Thanks for the chance to reminisce. Hopefully some of our Southern posters here have the same memories.

[maharba]

I seem to recall that Lincoln both drank hard liquor and smoked. That he would enjoy a fine cigar with others at the end of a court case. I think his partner Bill Herndon went even better: he was a member of a Temperance society, but given to overindulgence in alcohol, at times.

[Gene C]

Your half right.
Herndon at times was a member of a temperance society, and during his lifetime the enticements of alcohol were more than he could effectively deal with.
Lincoln on the other hand did not indulge in either tobacco or alcoholic beverages.
General Grant enjoyed both.

[RJNorton]

Friend Robert L. Wilson wrote that he “never Saw Mr Lincoln drink, he often told me he never drank, had no desire for the drink, nor the companionship of drinking men.” Attorney Joseph Gillespie recalled “He was a remarkably temperate man; eschewing every indulgence not so much as it seemed to me, from principle as from a want of appetites. I never heard him declaim against the use of tobacco or other stimulants although he never indulged in them.”

Most contemporaries testified that Mr. Lincoln seldom if ever drank liquor. Aide William O. Stoddard recalled that “At the table, when his attention was especially called to some rare wine, I have seen Mr. Lincoln barely touch his lips to his glass, ‘just to see what it was,’ but there was no perceptible diminution of its contests.” However, friend Milton Hay said: “He drank lager beer for some time on the advice of a physician. My impression is that he had run down from cold or something and needed building up, and was told to drink lager. He did drink it for quite a while, and that is about the only thing I know that he ever drank.” The practice didn’t continue in the White House. “He was one of the most abstemious of men: the pleasures of the table had few attractions for him,” wrote Milton’s nephew, John Hay. “He drank little or no wine; not that he remained always on principle a total abstainer, as he was during a par of his early life, in the favor of the ‘Washingtonian’ reform, but he never cared for wine or liquors of any sort, and never used tobacco.”

SOURCE:

http://abrahamlincolnsclassroom.org/abra...ns-health/

[HerbS]

I drank on occasion and never smoked,but I did have fun!I enjoyed sports too much to ruin my health and reputation! Ice water tastes just fine to me!Do think I can compare myself to Lincoln? NO!

[Eva Elisabeth]

Albert Beveridge recalled the following dialogue between Lincoln and Stephen Douglas: At a reception hosting Douglas during the congressional campaigns of 1854, Lincoln declined a drink, whereupon Douglas exclaimed: "Why! are you a member of the Temperance Society?" Lincoln replied: "No! I am not a member of any Temperance Society ... but I am temperate in this, that I don't drink anything."

And when hearing that Lincoln only served "Adam's ale" (cold water) to the committee (headed by George Ashmun, on May 19, 1860) notifying him of his nomination as presidential candidate of the Republican Party, a journalist and temperance advocate inquired of Lincoln's temperance sentiments. In a letter, Lincoln stated: "Having kept house sixteen years, and having never held the 'cup' to the lips of my friends then, my judgment was that I should not, in my new position, change my habit in this respect."

Historian D. Donald added the remark to the second incident that right before this visit, the Lincolns had a struggle over whether liquor should be served to the visitors.

[maharba]

Stephen Douglas at one of their debates said that the very first time he saw him Abraham Lincoln was serving whiskey in a tavern. And Lincoln did have a license to sell whiskey from his store. When Lincoln was shot and they inventoried his personal effects, he had snuff with him in one of his pockets. I think too much is made of 'the evils of drink and tobacco'. And it's fair to say that he was very moderate in using both.

[Eva Elisabeth]

(12-17-2015 08:22 PM)maharba Wrote:  Stephen Douglas at one of their debates said that the very first time he saw him Abraham Lincoln was serving whiskey in a tavern. And Lincoln did have a license to sell whiskey from his store. When Lincoln was shot and they inventoried his personal effects, he had snuff with him in one of his pockets. I think too much is made of 'the evils of drink and tobacco'. And it's fair to say that he was very moderate in using both.

Abraham Lincoln got to know Douglas when they served together in the state legislature in the late1830s in Vandalia.
http://abrahamlincolnsclassroom.org/abra...a-douglas/
What is your source for Lincoln working in a tavern then, respectively what is Douglas' o-quote? And for the stuff in his pockets at the assassination? Here's the LOC list (no stuff):
http://www.loc.gov/item/scsm001049/

[L Verge]

(12-17-2015 09:00 PM)Eva Elisabeth Wrote:  

(12-17-2015 08:22 PM)maharba Wrote:  Stephen Douglas at one of their debates said that the very first time he saw him Abraham Lincoln was serving whiskey in a tavern. And Lincoln did have a license to sell whiskey from his store. When Lincoln was shot and they inventoried his personal effects, he had snuff with him in one of his pockets. I think too much is made of 'the evils of drink and tobacco'. And it's fair to say that he was very moderate in using both.

Abraham Lincoln got to know Douglas when they served together in the state legislature in the late1830s in Vandalia.
http://abrahamlincolnsclassroom.org/abra...a-douglas/
What is your source for Lincoln working in a tavern then, respectively what is Douglas' o-quote? And for the stuff in his pockets at the assassination? Here's the LOC list (no stuff):
http://www.loc.gov/item/scsm001049/

...And I would love to own that watch fob and button!