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

[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.