Tobacco in Colonial Virginia was released in a series of booklets as part of the celebration of the 350th anniversary of Virginia in 1957. G. Melvin Herndon used a variety of historical sources to tell the tale of Virginia’s early history with tobacco. He explores the introduction, spread, cultivation, warehousing, transportation, inspection, and sale of tobacco.

The native tobacco of North America was Nicotiana rustica, which was not the ‘Spanish variety’, and was inferior to it for smoking. One of the colonists, William Strachey, described Nicotiana rustica like this:

“It is not of the best kynd, it is but poore and weake, and of a byting tast, it grows not fully a yard above the ground, bearing a little yellowe flower, like to hennebane, the leaves are short and thick, somewhat round at the upper end…”

John Rolfe aimed to change this. He managed to import seeds of Nicotiana tabacum and began growing it in Virginia in 1612. It quickly expanded and became tremendously important to the colonies. There were several reasons tobacco did so well once they started using Nicotiana tabacum:

  • It grew well in Virginia
  • England already wanted tobacco, so there was a market for it
  • England put regulations in place to ban imports of tobacco from anywhere else, and also banned growing tobacco in England. Virginia was the source for England’s tobacco, partly to prop up the colony in a way that would let it succeed and expand.

The methods used to grow tobacco depleted the soil, so planters moved in search of new land to use, which led to people spreading across the land looking for new places to plant.

One of the interesting difficulties for planters was getting their tobacco to ships so it could be sent to England. Leaves were placed into hogsheads, which were essentially large, strong barrels. Hogsheads got larger over time – early hogsheads held about 300 pounds of tobacco and later hogsheads held over 1,000 pounds. To move these big barrels to ocean-going ships, planters had a few options: they could use a wagon, they could put it on a boat and send it down a river to the ocean, or they could use animals to roll the barrel the whole way. Each of these methods had significant drawbacks; getting your tobacco to market was rife with problems.

In Jamestown, they discovered that their method of curing tobacco leaves by piling them up and covering them with hay could be improved, so they switched to stringing leaves on lines and hanging them in barns to cure. In the early 1800s, fire curing became popular.

The quality of tobacco varied greatly, so inspection systems were needed to ensure that buyers were receiving the quality of leaf they anticipated. Herndon’s section on inspections is worth reading to understand how quality was determined and guaranteed.

Tobacco in Colonial Virginia is an excellent resource for understanding the basics of tobacco’s beginnings in the United States. Herndon’s work is well-researched and is packed with information for a booklet of its size.

Tobacco in Colonial Virginia is in the public domain and can be read for free on Project Gutenberg.