Tobacco's Roots Run Deep in The Piedmont

Source from:  WSLS 10/11/2010

Tobacco, for good and ill, shaped the history and culture of Piedmont Virginia and North Carolina. Its reach extends back to colonial times. Tobacco was the first real cash crop. English colonists grew it and shipped it back home. They planted it everywhere, even along the streets in Jamestown. Colonists used it at times as currency to pay wages and debts - and even to pay for brides coming from England. Many settlers, often of English extraction, came west from the Tidewater areas in search of land not yet exhausted by the crop. They raised other crops, such as wheat, beans, corn and vegetables, to keep their families fed. But tobacco could be sold for cash, and it was their ticket out of subsistence farming. By 1899, federal records show there were 203,000 acres of all classes of tobacco harvested in North Carolina - the nation's largest tobacco-growing state - and 184,000 in Virginia. In 1946, 811,800 acres were harvested in North Carolina and 147,900 in Virginia. By 2010, that number had dropped to an estimated 167,600 acres in North Carolina and 18,750 in Virginia. However, it should be noted that yields per acre have increased over the years. Contrary to statewide and national trends, Pittsylvania County - Virginia's largest tobacco-growing county - has seen its acreage increase some during the past several years. Take this year's number of acres planted. It came to 5,199, an increase from 4,736 in 2009. But just to the north in Campbell County, federal figures for acres planted show a situation more akin to national and statewide trends. In 2010, 12 producers planted approximately 100 acres of tobacco. By contrast, in 2002 - two years before the tobacco buyout, which many growers around the country took as their chance to retire - there were nearly 100 producers with approximately 1,200 acres. Many growers deliver their cured tobacco to receiving stations in nearby Danville, a city once called "the world's best tobacco market." The city has a district filled with tobacco warehouses. Tobacco's roots run deep in the Lynchburg area too. John Lynch was the grandson of Christopher Clark, a Louisa tobacco planter who brought his family to the Campbell County area near where his grandson would one day found a city: Lynchburg. Lynch, known principally for operating a ferry across the James River, also built a tobacco warehouse on the river's south side, according to James Elson's "Lynchburg, Virginia: The First Two Hundred Years, 1786-1986." Lynch would go on to build more tobacco warehouses, as did others. Lynchburg became a tobacco hub. In early years, hogsheads of the leaves were transported from Lynchburg to Richmond by batteaux on the James River and Kanawha Canal. Lynchburg had its own tobacco market, as well as factories where tobacco products were made. In "Lynchburg and Its Neighbors," Rosa Faulkner Yancey wrote, "It is certain Lynchburg reeked of tobacco from one end to the other." Tobacco was "the lifeblood of Central Virginia," in Elson's words, and it became a mainstay of Lynchburg's economy. At one point during the 1800s, Lynchburg was the second wealthiest town per capita in the nation. Enditem