Ohio History Journal

SPECIAL CROPS IN OHIO BEFORE 1850

 

BY ROBERT LESLIE JONES

 

A noteworthy aspect of agriculture in Ohio before 1850 was

the attention paid to a number of minor crops--rice, cotton, hemp,

flax, clover seed, white beans, castor beans, hops, madder, mustard,

broom corn, cow cabbage, sugar beets, Rohan potatoes and tobacco.

The farmers were actually carrying on an American tradition, for

their colonial ancestors had experimented with most of these

special crops and with others besides. The colonists found that

climatic differences between Europe and the Atlantic seaboard

made it necessary for them to try out every plant of the Old

World on its merits in the New. They universally desired to

develop a staple other than wheat or forest products, and, like

their nineteenth century descendants, they were subjected to a suc-

cession of agricultural crazes. By a process of trial and error they

gradually ran through the entire list of European cultivated plants

and even some East Indian exotics. Commonly enough a crop was

tried generation after generation in one locality without the slight-

est reward, and even oftener a failure in one region seemed merely

to encourage similar ill-starred effort elsewhere. "So extensively

did these experiments go on, and so completely had they been

tried," William Brewer wrote in 1883, "that not a single species of

domestic animal, and but one species of domesticated plant

(sorghum), has been introduced since the Revolutionary War of

sufficient importance to be enumerated in the census tables."1

Pioneers with this colonial background were much less startled

than modern students by Manasseh Cutler's solemn claim of 1787

that the Ohio Country was suited to rice culture. "Where the large

bottoms are interspersed with small streams," he asserted, "they

are well adapted to the growth of rice, which may be produced in

any quantities. . . . It is found, in this country, that stagnant

waters are by no means necessary to the growth of rice; the com-

1 William H. Brewer, "Report on the Cereal Production of the United States,"

Tenth Census of the United States (Washington, 1883), III, 135.

(127)

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128 OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

mon rich bottoms produce this crop in as great perfection as the

best rice swamps of the Southern States."² Either because they

were influenced by Cutler's views or because they were merely

seeking a staple for the western country, the settlers of eastern

Ohio did experiment with rice. It was noticed growing at Marietta

in 1789 and at Gallipolis in 1792, and the Belpre community had

patches of the upland variety for a number of years. Nowhere was

there ever any commercial production.3

Cotton was likewise grown by the New England settlers

around Marietta as early as 1788, but only in small quantities. At

this time cotton had not become a southern staple, and was worth

from  40c to 50c a pound. At first it did fairly well on the bottom

lands, and within a dozen years or so, enough was produced to

make it worth while to erect a crude gin for cleaning it. Un-

fortunately, the fiber was so coarse that it was suitable only for

stockings or rough homespun, and the crop here was rendered

precarious by late spring or early autumn frosts.⁴ In the southern-

most tier of Ohio counties the patch of Green Seed cotton char-

acteristic of the first clearances persisted till at least 1838.⁵ Almost

everywhere else in Ohio cotton culture had by this time long since

come to an end, and nothing more was heard of it till after the

closing of the Mississippi in the early days of the Civil War.⁶

Hemp had been the object of frequent experimentation in the

seventeenth and eighteenth century colonies, sometimes with en-

couragement from legislative bounties, but it had universally

proved a disappointment. Though it had a market overseas, hemp

 

2 William P. Cutler and Julia P. Cutler, Life, Journals and Correspondence of Rev.

Manasseh Cutler, L. L. D. (Cincinnati, 1888), II, 400.

3 Richard S. Edes and William M. Darlington, eds., Journal and Letters of Col.

John May, of Boston, Relative to Two Journeys to the Ohio Country in 1788 and '89

(Cincinnati, 1873), 136; John W. Jordan, "Narrative of John Heckewelder's Journey

to the Wabash in 1792," Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography (Phila-

delphia), XII (1888), 36; Samuel P. Hildreth, Pioneer History; being an Account of

the First Examinations of the Ohio Valley, and the Early Settlement of the Northwest

Territory (Cincinnati, 1848), 393.

4 Journal and Letters of Col. John May, 60, 136; Christian Schultz, Travels on an

Inland Voyage through the States of New-York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, and

Tennessee (New York, 1810), I, 144; E. Dana, Geographical Sketches on the Western

Country (Cincinnati, 1819), 85; Hildreth, Pioneer History, 393.

5 Fortescue Cuming, Sketches of a Tour to the Western Country, through the

States of Ohio and Kentucky, in R. G. Thwaites, ed., Early Western Travels (Cleve-

land, 1904), 154; John Melish, Travels through the United States of America in the

Years 1806 & 1807, and 1809, 1810 & 1811 (Philadelphia, 1816), 356; Caleb At-

water, A History of the State of Ohio, Natural and Civil (Cincinnati, 1838), 89.

6 Ohio State Board of Agriculture, Annual Report for the Year 1862 (Columbus),

xxxvii-xxxviii. Hereafter this authority is cited as Ohio Agricultural Report.

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SPECIAL CROPS IN OHIO BEFORE 1850                  129

 

required so much time that few farmers felt justified in producing

it when their labor would go much farther in growing grain. It

took a day of back-breaking work for a husky man to pull a quar-

ter of an acre. After this, there were the slow processes of leaving

the hemp on the ground to cure, of stripping the leaves from the

stalks, of stacking the bundles, of dew-rotting, and finally and most

difficult, of breaking. In spite of this history, hemp was for a time

an important crop in parts of the new West. The first settlers near

the mouth of the Muskingum grew it in small quantities and had

it manufactured into bags and other coarse cloth by the women

living in garrison.⁷ The shipbuilding begun at Marietta about 1800

provided a local outlet. In 1802, there were two ropewalks at

Marietta, and a traveler was told that hemp was "raised very

plenty here."⁸   Within a few    years, cordage was being manu-

factured much in excess of the needs of the ship builders, and the

surplus was exported to the seaboard by way of the Ohio and the

Mississippi. The ropewalks went out of business in 1808 as a

consequence of the Embargo, and the local market for hemp there-

upon collapsed.⁹ Before the outbreak of the War of 1812, how-

ever, hemp was again in demand at Marietta, and was likewise

being grown for sale near Zanesville, near Chillicothe and on the

bottom lands of the Miami Valley. Most of that not used locally

probably went to the rope and bagging factories at places like

Louisville, for very little raw hemp was exported via the Missis-

sippi at this time.¹⁰ After the end of the War of 1812, hemp lost

its popularity. Skilled labor was unobtainable and unskilled labor

was costly on account of the losses it occasioned. There was no

longer a worthwhile market at the points of production, and with

prices seldom   over $100 a ton, freight, commissions and other

overhead expenses left little profit in shipping to external mar-

 

7 Hildreth, Pioneer History, 392.

8 "Journal of Nathaniel W. Little," The "Old Northwest" Genealogical Quarterly

(Columbus), X (1907), 243.

9 The American Pioneer, a Monthly Periodical, devoted to the Objects of the

Logan Historical Society (Cincinnati), I (1842), 90; Samuel P. Hildreth, Biographical

and Historical Memoirs of the Early Pioneer Settlers of Ohio, with Narratives of In-

cidents and Occurrences in 1775 (Cincinnati, 1852), 309.

10 Melish, Travels through the United States, 432; Chillicothe Supporter, Septem-

ber 22, 1810; Marietta Western Spectator, January 11, 1812; Daniel Drake, Natural

and Statistical View, or Picture of Cincinnati and the Miami Country (Cincinnati,

1815), 55; Patent Office, Report for 1853, Senate Executive Documents, 33 Cong., 1

Sess., No. 27 (Serial 697), 201.

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130    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

kets.11 So, though editors sometimes wistfully advocated hemp

culture, or bemoaned its unpopularity or tried to explain it--

"nothing but a demand for the article has prevented its cultivation

here upon a large scale"12--the farmers were content to let the

Kentuckians and Missourians with their slave labor establish a

virtual monopoly of hemp production in the West. About 1845, it

was estimated that Ohio raised only from 500 to 1,000 tons of

hemp a year, while Kentucky raised about 15,000 and Missouri

from 6,000 to 8,000.13 During the late 1840's most of the Ohio

hemp was grown in Delaware County. "A number of farmers in

the township of Genoa and the southern part of Berkshire," it was

reported in 1848, "raise considerable quantities of hemp annually

for the New York market, and they consider this the most profit-

able crop they raise on their dry bottom       lands."¹⁴ By 1851, hemp

was going out of production even here because the former hired

men were working on the new railroads or were off to California.¹⁵

Flax was everywhere grown by the first settlers for the pur-

pose of making bags, towels, linsey-woolsey and similar articles.

Every farm had its patch, a quarter acre or so, which was sown

in March, harvested in June, and then planted with potatoes.¹⁶ By

1830 coarse linens were replaced by cheap cottons, so that the

cultivation of flax had declined greatly, and was continuing to

decline. By 1850 the only growers of flax            for fiber were "old

matrons" who used it for making thread or towels, and a few

farmers who sold it to the paper mills at from 6c to 8c a pound.l⁷

 

11 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1859, 507-8.

12 Chillicothe Scioto Gazette, December 2, 1829.

13 P. W. Bidwell and J. I. Falconer, History of Agriculture in the Northern United

States (Washington, 1925), 363.

14 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1848, 45.

15 Patent Office, Report for 1851, Senate Executive Documents, 32 Cong., 1 Sess.,

No. 118 (Serial 625), 388.

16 William C. Howells, Recollections of Life in Ohio, from 1813 to 1840 (Cin-

cinnati, 1895), 123.

17 Zanesville Ohio Republican, Spring 1831, in Ohio Agricultural Report for 1859,

491; Atwater, History of the State of Ohio, 89; Ohio Agricultural Report for 1849,

47, 97-8, 202. A Massillon correspondent of the Cultivator gave the following de-

scription of the preparation of flax for the paper mills: "The farmers near Cuyahoga

Falls, in Summit county, are in the practice of growing flax to considerable extent.

When the seed is ripe, they go into the grounds that have been well and smoothly

laid down, and cradle the flax. When it is sufficiently dried, they run it through a

threshing machine which takes off the seed. The stalks or stems are then carried to

a piece of grass-ground and spread out as hay is spread to dry. It there lies till it gets

sufficiently rotten. They then get out their horses, colts and light wagons, and the

boys drive over it; and it being turned once or twice, the sheaves are broken up and

shook out--all of which requires but a few hours work. It is then loaded and carried

to the paper mill, and there sold at twelve dollars per ton, which with the seed makes

it a profitable crop." Cultivator (Albany), n. s. VII (1850), 308.

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SPECIAL CROPS IN OHIO BEFORE 1850                  131

 

Other farmers, however, grew flax with the intention of selling

the seed rather than the fiber. The trade in flaxseed was not new.

Linseed-oil mills had provided a local outlet shortly after the

settlement of the Ohio Country. One such mill at Chillicothe was

offering in 1810 to buy flaxseed; a mill at the same place in 1820

crushed annually 3,000 bushels of flaxseed; and another in Wash-

ington County in 1822 crushed 2,000.18 In addition, the flaxseed

of Ohio was in fair demand before 1830 for shipping abroad,

seemingly mainly to Ireland, though it had a reputation inferior

to the flaxseed of the seaboard states.¹⁹ Flaxseed production grew

in importance after 1830, and especially in the late 1840's. Though

several crop shortages (with a consequent rise in price from about

80?? a bushel to as high as $1.35) had a stimulating influence, the

most important factor was the erection of several new mills. By

1850 the manufacturing of linseed oil at Cincinnati was so well

established that there was a large surplus for export, and Dayton

was crushing annually about 200,000 bushels.²⁰ In the late 1840's,

Preble County was the recognized center of the Ohio flaxseed

industry; it produced between 15,000 and 20,000 bushels in 1845,

and about 80,000 in 1851.21 Several other regions were engaged

in it on a smaller scale. It was said in 1851, for example, that

between Youngstown and Warren there was as much ground sown

to flax as to wheat.²² Growing flaxseed was considered moder-

ately profitable with yields of about ten bushels to the acre and a

price of 85c or 90c a bushel. It had the additional advantage that

the ground was left in good order for fall wheat, the crop which

usually followed. That the yield was not more than ten bushels to

the acre is to be accounted for by the slovenly cultivation which

satisfied most farmers.²³

 

 

18 Chillicothe Supporter, October 6, 1810; Marietta American Friend, September

20, 1822; William T. Utter, The Frontier State, 1803-1825, in Carl Wittke, ed., The

History of the State of Ohio (Columbus, 1941-44), II (1942), 247.

19 Drake, Natural and Statistical View, 55; Ohio Agricultural Report for 1859,

491.

20 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1849, 176; Ohio Cultivator (Columbus), VII

(1851), 23; James Hall, The West; its Soil, Surface and Productions (Cincinnati,

1848), 137.

21 Ohio Cultivator, I (1845), 158; ibid., VIII (1852), 216.

22 Western Agriculturist (Columbus), I (1851), 250.

23 Ohio Cultivator, I (1845), 158; ibid., V (1849), 213; ibid., VII (1851), 38;

Ohio Agricultural Report for 1846, 56; Ohio Agricultural Report for 1849, 176; Ohio

Agricultural Report for 1851, 441.

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132   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

Another special crop was clover seed. This began to be an

article of export in parts of New York about 1800. After the

opening of the Erie Canal it was also of considerable importance

in Ohio. The Ohio seed was in favor at Liverpool because it was

free from "ripple" or "buckweed," which was not the case with its

Pennsylvania competitor.²⁴   There was no difficulty in harvesting

the clover, for the first crop was cut for fodder and the second

allowed to ripen till September, when it was cut for seed, but

threshing out the seed with a flail was exceedingly disagreeable, on

account of the dust. For this reason growing clover seed did not

become really popular till about 1840, when the clover huller or

"concave" came into use. This was merely a shaft covered with

pieces of tin punched full of holes which was rotated inside a

cylinder similarly covered with tin. It was dirty to operate, but

much faster than threshing, for a man and a horse could hull one

bushel of clean clover seed a day. Clover hullers were fairly

common in Ohio by 1850, and were said to be quite reliable.²⁵ It

was doubtless largely owing to their introduction that it could be

stated in 1845 that in Ohio "clover is a profitable crop raised for

seed at four dollars a bushel, more profitable, in fact, than any

kind of grain."²⁶ The greatest clover seed counties of Ohio were

Crawford, Morrow, Hancock and others in their vicinity. Craw-

ford County exported about 15,000 bushels in 1852.27         In the

1850's, the clover seed which was not marketed within the State

went mostly to Kentucky, Tennessee and the sandy areas of Michi-

gan and Indiana, and doubtless the same was true of the 1840's.28

In Washington County white beans were something of a

staple during the 1830's. It was reported in 1836 that "there were

thousands of bushels of white beans raised in the county."²⁹ Here

 

 

24 Ohio Republican, Spring 1831, quoted in Ohio Agricultural Report for 1859,

491.

25 Patent Office, Report for 1851, Senate Executive Documents, 32 Cong., 1 Sess.,

No. 118 (Serial 625), 376; Charles Cist, Cincinnati in 1841: its Early Annals and Fu-

ture Prospects (Cincinnati, 1841), advertisement; Ohio Agricultural Report for 1847,

88; Ohio Agricultural Report for 1849, 28.

26 Western Farmer and Gardener (Cincinnati), V (1844-5), 233.

27 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1852, 178; Ohio Agricultural Report for 1858,

257.

28 Lewis C. Gray and Esther K. Thompson, History of Agriculture in the South-

ern United States to 1860 (Washington, 1933), II, 823; Ohio Agricultural Report

for 1860, Part II, 477.

29 Marietta Gazette, November 11, 1836.

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SPECIAL CROPS IN OHIO BEFORE 1850                  133

 

too, in the 1840's, they were produced "in much greater abundance

than we have seen anywhere else in the state."³⁰ In other parts of

Ohio the potato rot caused many farmers to turn to them after

1843, but not sufficiently to bring about any worthwhile produc-

tion.31 In any case, bean growing was not considered a mark of

good farming, as the following extract shows:

Sometimes we read a book, written in a sort of rambling way, and on

the very bottom of the last page are the words in large letters, "The End,"

thus notifying to the reader that he is through with that book. When I

was a boy living in the eastern part of Ohio well do I remember the rota-

tion of crops in farming. Cost what it would corn would be planted year

after year until the crop would begin to not "pay," as it was termed; then

oats would be sown, followed by wheat and sown in grass seed and if

grass failed, as it often did, the field was plowed up and sown in buck-

wheat; then as a last resort it was planted in beans, and whenever you saw

a field planted in beans, in the words of the instructive author, the beans

meant "the end."³²

Castor beans formed a minor crop in parts of Ohio down to

mid-century. They were in demand at Cincinnati in 1822 for a

new castor-oil factory. They were grown a little later in south-

eastern Ohio, especially in the lower Muskingum Valley, but when,

in the late 1830'S, castor oil dropped from its earlier price of about

$1.00 a gallon to 70c the farmers here turned to wheat. In south-

western Ohio castor beans were grown as far north as Champaign

County in the 1830'S, but the most important region was Clermont

County. The yield here averaged about twenty bushels an acre.

The industry was crippled by the burning in 1839 of the mill at

Cincinnati which furnished the sole outlet.³³ The bean neverthe-

less continued to be experimented with from time to time after

1840. Most of those who tried it were disappointed. Some, like a

group of neighbors in Portage County, found that it did not ripen.

Others, in Franklin County, had much difficulty and expense in

harvesting. The average farmer seems to have been convinced

that it was a crop offering uncertainties and nothing else. In this

 

30 Ohio Cultivator, II (1846), 113.

31 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1849, 202.

32 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1898, 581.

33 Cincinnati Western Spy, May 18, 1822; Marietta American Friend & Marietta

Gazette, April 8, 1825; Marietta Gazette, November 23, 1833; Ohio Cultivator, VI

(1850), 49, 89; Ohio Agricultural Report for 1850, 393.

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134   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

opinion he was supported by the agricultural journals, which

pointed out that a longer growing season than that of most of Ohio

was required to mature the bean. Accordingly, though there was

a new castor-oil mill in operation at Cincinnati in 1849, and though

the offer of seed encouraged some farmers in the Miami and

Scioto valleys to sow fairly large fields of castor beans, little came

of the effort. The center of the industry remained, as always, at

St. Louis, and the product of Ohio was noticed only as a

curiosity.³⁴

Hops were a garden crop of some importance in the pioneer

era, though the amount grown was restricted by the abundance of

wild hops. On the other hand, the erection of breweries created a

market for the cultivated variety. As early as 1806 a Cincinnati

brewer was advertising for 500 pounds. Beginning about 1815

the brewing industry of Pittsburgh and Wheeling encouraged hop

growing in Belmont County. Other counties which had hop yards

of varying size before mid-century were Medina, Lorain and Ash-

tabula. Limited outlets were not solely responsible for the com-

parative smallness of the enterprise wherever it was undertaken.

A good deal of labor was needed, for the hops had to be picked,

carried into the "dry house," and cured by heat from a stove.

Most important, prices fluctuated suddenly and widely within a

range of from 12 1/2C to 50c a pound.³⁵

Till the advent of aniline dyes there was a steady demand

from the dyeing industry for madder, the roots of which were

used to make a scarlet dye. Madder was grown on a small scale

for domestic use at Marietta as early as 1789. Nothing more

concerning it is to be found till 1838, when a farmer at Birming-

ham in Erie County planted nine acres, which he harvested in

1842. The yield was about 2,000 pounds per acre, worth about

15c a pound. The costs of labor were so great that the profits

were only about $200 an acre, that is, $50 an acre for each year

the land was in use. In fact labor was so difficult to obtain that

this pioneer of the industry abandoned it by 1848. Other attempts

 

34 Ohio Cultivator, VI (1850), 17, 89, 281; Department of Agriculture, Year-

book, 1904, House Documents, 58 Cong., 3 Sess., No. 424 (Serial 4880), 293-4.

35 Cincinnati Liberty Hall, August 4, 1806; Ohio Agricultural Report for 1850,

80; Ohio Agricultural Report for 1853, 613; Ohio Agricultural Report for 1866, Part

II, 126; Ohio Agricultural Report for 1868, 257-8.

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SPECIAL CROPS IN OHIO BEFORE 1850                135

 

were made to grow madder near Columbus in the late 1840's, but

these failed on account of the unsuitability of the soil. However,

it seems to have continued to be grown in a few other localities

till the outbreak of the Civil War.³⁶

One of the minor speculations of Ohio farmers was the grow-.

ing of mustard seed. It seems that in the 1830's there was at

Granville a mustard factory which provided a market for mustard

seed produced locally. It was noted in 1844 that there was a con-

siderable demand in Ohio for mustard seed, and that cultivating

it had already been found profitable at several places. In 1845,

there were devoted to this crop about 36 acres of land at or near

Zanesville, 15 acres near Chillicothe, 7 acres near Canton, and a

few other plots amounting in all to probably 12 acres -- a total of

about 70 acres. The average price at this time for seed exported

to New York was 8c a pound and the product of the State was

about 40,000 pounds. The 1848 crop was poor on account of

drought and inexperience, and the price at New York fell to 4 1/2c

or 5c a pound owing to an alteration in the tariff, as a result of

which mustard from abroad was admitted free of duty. In 1847,

there were only a few men left in the business and even these

had given up by 1850.37

During the early 1800's broom corn was a special crop of

some profit in the Connecticut Valley and a little later in the

Mohawk Valley. The date at which it first began to be grown in

Ohio is not determinable. It may have been introduced into the

Miami Valley by the Shakers in Warren County, for their com-

munity had, in 1843, a recognized superiority in the Cincinnati

market over its western competitors in broom making, and for

many years afterwards the broom-corn growers of the Scioto

Valley were obtaining their seed from the Shakers in New

York.³⁸ When, in the early 1840's, broom corn began to attract

 

36 Journal and Letters of Col. John May, 136; Western Farmer and Gardener,

V (1844-5), 59; Ohio Cultivator, VI (1850), 33; Ohio Agricultural Report for 1859,

509.

37 Henry Bushnell, History of Granville, Licking County, Ohio (Columbus, 1890),

284; Western Farmer and Gardener, V (1844-5), 222; Ohio Cultivator, I (1845),

144; ibid., II (1846), 148; ibid., III (1847), 27; ibid., IV (1848), 20; Ohio Agri-

cultural Report for 1850, 393; Patent Office, Report for 1845, Senate Executive Docu-

ments, 29 Cong., 1 Sess., No. 307 (Serial 475), 960-1.

38 Western Farmer and Gardener, IV (1843-4), 96; Ohio Cultivator, VII (1851),

153.

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136   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

attention in Ohio, the chief areas of production were the lower

Muskingum Valley and the Scioto Valley. In Washington County

in 1844 slightly over 100 acres of broom corn were cultivated

under contract to a Marietta broom manufacturer. The next

year this firm had 400 acres under contract and another near

Beverly had 350. The industry in Washington County appears

to have collapsed before 1850, however, as did a smaller-scale one

in adjacent Morgan County.39     The Scioto Valley counties inter-

ested in broom corn were Fairfield, Franklin and Pickaway, with

the last preeminent. In 1846, when about 1,000 acres in Pick-

away County were devoted to broom corn, 426,374 pounds were

exported from Circleville, which was already established as the

leading shipping center.⁴⁰ Broom corn was planted in the Scioto

Valley during May and hoed or cultivated like Indian corn.       It

was cut in August, as soon as the seed had formed and while the

brush was still green. It was then cleaned by machinery, dried

either on scaffolds or in kilns, assorted, and either compressed into

bales for sale or at once manufactured into brooms. These opera

tions made the estimated costs of cultivating broom corn and

preparing it for market about three times those of Indian corn.

It was stated that with the ordinary yield of about a third of a

ton an acre, the profit after allowing for labor and rent would

run from $15 to $30 an acre, depending on prices. These un-

fortunately fluctuated, with the season's production, for the de-

mand for broom corn was inelastic. Though the crop was there-

fore speculative, it was increasing in acreage in the Scioto Valley

about 1850.41 There were two out-of-state markets--Great Britain,

where American broom corn had the advantage of being admitted

duty free, and New York and New England, where Ohio broom

corn had the reputation of being much superior to that of the

Connecticut Valley.⁴²

Several other crops (like a few of those already mentioned)

 

39 Ibid., 1, 1845, 65; Marietta Intelligencer, quoted in ibid., 84; ibid., II (1846),

106; Ohio Agricultural Report for 1848, 89; Ohio Agricultural Report for 1850, 393.

40 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1846, 60; Ohio Agricultural Report for 1852,

189; Henry Howe, Historical Collections of Ohio .... (Cincinnati, 1849), 412.

41 Ohio Cultivator, VII (1851), 153; Ohio Agricultural Report for 1849, 14; Cul-

tivator, n. s. IX (1852), 238.

42 American Agriculturist, quoted in Western Farmer and Gardener, V (1844-5),

146; Ohio Cultivator, I (1845), 65; Bidwell and Falconer, History of Agriculture in

the Northern United States, 246.

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SPECIAL CROPS IN OHIO BEFORE 1850              137

 

deserve notice merely because they gave rise to fads which re-

peated on a smaller scale the frenzy associated with the intro-

duction of the Chinese mulberry as a basis for silkworm culture.⁴³

There was, for example, the cow cabbage, a large variety intended

for forage. Interest in it was mostly whipped up by the editor

of the Farmer's Reporter of Cincinnati. Early in 1831, he recom-

mended the introduction of the plant into the Ohio Valley, and

later in the year claimed that there were specimens growing at Cin-

cinnati no less than five feet high. Despite his efforts, few farm-

ers would have anything to do with cow cabbage, and the name

shortly became a byword for unproved plants probably unsuitable

for Ohio.⁴⁴ A few years later a less ephemeral craze, this time in

sugar beets, arose from newspaper accounts of French successes

in manufacturing sugar from beets. Two firms at least in Ohio

rashly embarked on sugar making, though their proprietors had

not the slightest technical knowledge of the process.    Twenty

acres of sugar beets were grown near Columbus for a local fac-

tory in 1835, and a smaller amount near Granville for another

about the same time. It was impossible to crystallize the sugar

properly by the methods employed, with the result that it tasted

beety, and so was unsaleable. Before 1840 the industry was

abandoned, and such sugar beets as farmers grew were fed to

milch cows. Nothing more was heard of beet-sugar manufactur-

ing in Ohio till after the outbreak of the Civil War.⁴⁵ A third

fad was associated with the Rohan potato, a variety which was

so coarse-grained as to be unfit for the table, but which was ex-

ceedingly productive. Unfortunately its sponsors emphasized only

its phenomenal yields, which, according to them, might reach a

bushel a hill. Many Ohio farmers were enticed into paying high

prices for seed, and then, like their gullible fellows elsewhere in

the United States, were so disappointed in the crop they received

 

 

43 For the history of the silkworm craze in Ohio, see Robert Price, "Morus Mul-

ticaulis, or Silkworms Must Eat," Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

(Columbus), XLV (1936), 265-72.

44 Farmer's Reporter and United States Agriculturist (Cincinnati), I (1830-1), 32;

ibid., II (1831-2), 8; Ohio Agricultural Report for 1859, 506.

45 Ibid., 502-4; Western Farmer and Gardener, II (1840-1), 84; Bushnell, History

of Granville, 284.

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138 OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

that they turned from their venture in disgust. The craze began

in 1838, and ran its course within two years.⁴⁶

Tobacco was the special crop which most nearly duplicated

the frenzy of morus multicaulis.     It had been a garden crop in

the first settlements along the Ohio River; Manasseh Cutler, for

example, found in 1788 that Colonel Ebenezer Zane was already

growing it on the bottom land near Wheeling. Later, immigrants

from Pennsylvania, Virginia, Kentucky and Connecticut brought

with them tobacco seed and a knowledge of suitable cultural

methods. Yet tobacco remained of negligible commercial impor-

tance as late as 1819, the reason assigned being the absence of

slavery.⁴⁷ The tobacco craze in the hilly counties of central and

southeastern Ohio began about 1822, the year definitely given for

its inception in Licking County.⁴⁸ From the smallest of beginnings

it grew rapidly. In Washington County in 1825 it was said that

"the growing of tobacco is at this time more profitable than any

kind of farm produce by ten fold."⁴⁹ A Zanesville correspondent

of the American Farmer, writing on December 7, 1825, stated:

There is a new business just started here, to a prodigious extent and

of great promise, the raising of light or yellow tobacco. Present prices

are from $6 to $40 per cwt., and from seven to nine cwt. are raised on an

acre. . . . It is peculiarly fitted to our light, thin rolling, warm oakhill

soil. . . . The profits of the crop last year were beyond all example. The

farmers netted from 50 to 100 dollars an acre, clear profit. . . .

There is a general tobacco mania. Labour is in demand, and rising in

consequence of it. . . . Our most intelligent, prudent men are preparing to

raise next year from 4 to 40 acres each--some talk of still more.⁵⁰

In the following winter a land speculator at Marietta ad-

vertised that he would "sell any quantity of land very low, . . .

FOR TOBACCO, TO BE GROWN UPON THE SAID

LAND."⁵1 With wheat bringing only 25c or 30c a bushel, it is

no wonder that farmers all over the hilly part of the State thought

 

46 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1859, 502; Arthur H. Cole, "Agricultural Crazes:

a Neglected Chapter in American Economic History," American Economic Review

(Evanston), XVI (1926), 633-4.

47 Cutler and Cutler, Life of Rev. Manasseh Cutler, I, 410; Dana, Geographical

Sketches on the Western Country, 85.

48 Bushnell, History of Granville, 127.

49 Marietta American Friend & Marietta Gazette, August 19, 1825.

50 American Farmer (Baltimore), VII (1825-6), 348-9.

51 Marietta American Friend & Marietta Gazette, March 30, 1826.

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SPECIAL CROPS IN OHIO BEFORE 1850                     139

 

tobacco "the sure road to wealth, and neglected other crops for

that of the 'yellow leaf'."⁵² Tobacco was grown on new land,

amidst the stumps in the deadenings, and a fairly small patch

might bring in considerable cash, for the "spangled" or "yellow-

leaf" variety sown sold for a number of years at higher prices

than other kinds in the Baltimore market. For these reasons

it was extensively cultivated in such counties as Muskingum,

Stark, Belmont, Guernsey, Licking, Perry, Hocking, Fairfield,

Washington, Tuscarawas and Coshocton, and even in some of

those of the Western Reserve. But disappointment soon fol-

lowed. About 1830 so much tobacco was being produced in Ohio

and other regions tributary to Baltimore that there was a glut;

prices fell to 3c and even 2c a pound, and farmers and dealers

who had been counting on an absolute minimum of 4c were ruined.

The consequence was that those in the least favored areas, like

the Western Reserve, soon abandoned tobacco and concentrated

on dairying or other branches of agriculture.⁵³ In eastern Ohio,

however, tobacco growing remained fairly important during the

1830's and 1840's. It was spoken of as the staple, with wheat,

of a group of counties including Morgan, Washington, Belmont,

Perry and Guernsey. Guernsey County produced in the 1840's

an average of 2,000 to 2,500 hogsheads a year, 800 pounds to the

hogshead, and Belmont 12,000 to 14,000 hogsheads. At the small

village of Lowell 600 hogsheads were exported in 1843 and I,000

in 1844.⁵⁴  It would appear that in the Muskingum and Hocking

valleys tobacco was still predominantly associated with newly-

cleared land; in Washington County, for instance, there was a

steady migration to such land on the part of growers.⁵⁵ Tobacco

 

52 [Samuel P. Hildreth], "Ten Days in Ohio: from the Diary of a Naturalist,"

American Journal of Arts and Sciences (New Haven), XXVI (1834), 232.

53 Ibid.; Atwater, History of the State of Ohio, 88; American Farmer, VIII (1826-7),

336; The Hesperian: or Western Monthly Magazine (Columbus), I (1838), 102.

It is curious that the people of eastern Ohio knew little about the ultimate des-

tination of their tobacco in the 1820's. William C. Howells remarked of Harrison

County that "there was great speculation among the people who cultivated it, as to

what it was used for; though the general impression was that it was sent to a Ger-

man market, and used in dyeing." Recollections of Life in Ohio, 134. Actually there

should have been no mystery about it. The cheaper grades were sold in Holland for

local consumption, and the better ones in Bremen and sometimes the other Hanse

cities for export to Sweden and especially Russia, where they were used in manu-

facturing both snuff and smoking tobacco. Marietta American Friend & Marietta

Gazette, March 30, 1826; American Farmer, IX (1827-8), 88.

54 Marietta Intelligencer, July 31, 1845; Ohio Agricultural Report for 1851, 233;

Ohio Agricultural Report for 1853, 561.

55 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1846, 67.

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140   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

encountered several objections as a staple in eastern Ohio, in ad-

dition to the moral one which was not infrequently advanced.

It was liable to considerable variations in yield from year to

year. It required much labor to worm it, to sucker it and to pre-

pare it for market. Most important, prices were never high and

were always erratic. From 1830 to 1840 they ranged from 4c

to 7c a pound and from 1842 to 1846 from 3 1/2c to 6c. It was

stated that the heavy crops of 1844, 1845 and 1846 did not sell

for enough to pay the freight to Baltimore. The low prices of

these and following years, with the ravages of the tobacco worm,

caused more and more farmers to devote their efforts mostly to

wheat.56 Tobacco ruined many dealers--for whom little sympathy

was expressed--and well-nigh ruined many farmers. According

to a Noble County rural economist, "this crop is decidely more

uncertain and less profitable than small grain, and it wears out

the soil fifty per cent faster, as well as renders the land very poor,

and furthermore, as a general thing, where this is the principal

crop, it not only keeps the producer and purchaser, but the general

community, far below the average wealth of grain growing dis-

tracts."⁵⁷ By 1850, it was generally conceded that tobacco grow-

ing in eastern Ohio was an enterprise of dubious merit; indeed, in

this region, tobacco shortly assumed the status of an extra crop

rather than that of a staple.

Western Ohio escaped the tobacco mania of the hill counties

in the 1820's, and owed nothing to it. It was not till 1838 that a

Connecticut Valley emigrant began to plant seed-leaf tobacco in

Miami Township in Montgomery County. Though this was the

beginning of a substantial industry, only 75 pounds of tobacco

were reported in the 1840 census as the product of the Miami

Valley. By 1846 the substantial profits being made by the first

tobacco growing on the "Miami bottoms" of Montgomery County

encouraged a rapid increase in acreage. According to the census,

Montgomery County in 1850 produced 196,971 pounds, and its

neighbors Butler, Clinton, Darke, Miami and Warren 2,500, 1,460,

 

56 J. B. Killebrew, "Report on the Culture and Curing of Tobacco in the United

States," Tenth Census of the United States (Washington, 1883), III, 141-2; Marietta

Intelligencer, June 3, 1847; Ohio Agricultural Report for 1847, 60; Ohio Agricultural

Report for 1852, 318.

⁵⁷ Ibid., 316.

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SPECIAL CROPS IN OHIO BEFORE 1850            141

 

7,132, 2,500 and 2,601 respectively.58 Very little of this tobacco

was other than seed-leaf. Judson Popenoe, a Montgomery County

farmer who wrote in 1862 a detailed essay on tobacco culture,

incorporating his observations of a fifteen-year period, explained

that theretofore other varieties had been found inferior in curing

to seed-leaf, and consequently less saleable. The methods employed

in the Miami Valley differed from those of eastern Ohio. The

crop was not primarily one for new land, but was grown on

black bottoms, second bottoms and heavily-manured uplands. As

the first bottoms produced a rather rank tobacco, and as the up-

lands were somewhat deficient in yield, the favorite soil was that

of the second bottoms. The crop was in general cultivated, har-

vested, cured, bulked and packed, in the fashion prevailing in

Connecticut, whereas eastern Ohio followed Maryland technique.59

About 1850, the Miami Valley tobacco grower was satisfied to

obtain from 3c to 6c a pound for his seed-leaf "all round," that

is, an average price for the good and inferior leaves, though he

might get more if his product was of exceptional quality. The

usual crop was about 1,300 pounds an acre, though the range was

between 1,000 and 1,600 pounds.⁶⁰ Though there was, strictly

speaking, never any tobacco craze in the Miami Valley, the crop

had proved so satisfactory in the late 1840's that in the 1850's its

acreage expanded steadily.

The historian finds a fascination in the rise and decline of

these special crops, but he admits that, except for tobacco, their

importance in Ohio agriculture before 1850 was not very great.

While sometimes experimentation was the mark of initiative, too

often it was a thoughtless following of a popular whim, or a

jealous imitation of a close-mouthed neighbor who was supposed

to be getting rich by trying a novelty. The best farmers seldom

got themselves into a position where everything depended on a

special crop. They agreed with the mature opinion expressed

by an Erie County resident in 1852:

I believe, in nine cases out of ten, those do best who pursue the even

 

58 Killebrew, "Report on the Culture and Curing of Tobacco," 132; Ohio Agri-

cultural Report for 1846, 54.

59 American Agriculturist (New York), XXIII (1863), 108-10.

60 Ohio Cultivator, V (1849), 275; Ohio Agricultural Report for 1852, 306.

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142   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

tenor of their way, taking care to have "a little of all sorts," so that if

one or two kinds fail, there will be others to fall back on--slacking up on

those branches which are overdone, and "letting out a link" on those which

promise better--carefully adopting new improvements, and experimenting,

on a small scale, with a view to new discoveries. Raising extravagant ex-

pectations, by overdrawn estimates, sends many people from one branch

of industry to another, in a sort of jack o'-lantern chase after wealth,

through the bogs and quagmires of disappointment and poverty. Those of

my acquaintances who have for a series of years patiently pursued their

course--carefully doing well whatever they have undertaken, and practising

frugality and sobriety withal--have attained to competence; while those who

have been chasing one scheme after another that held out the promise of

sudden wealth, have "come up," like the Dutchman's hogs, "among the

missing."61

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

61 Patent Office, Report for 1852, Senate Executive Documents, 32 Cong., 2 Sess.,

No. 55, Part II (Serial 667), 247.

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