When was tobacco grown in the US, specifically mid-Maryland

by idkmelo

Newspaper articles state that tobacco was grown in a small settlement near me, and I was wondering if this can date the age of the settlement? Sources imply that the settlement was settled sometime before 1787. Was tobacco still being grown in the mid-1700s?

Takeoffdpantsnjaket

If you mean "settlement" as in a town we can likely date that through legal sources as towns in the Chesapeake were made for court and law and as a direct result of the heavy growth of tobacco there, which required space and with water access for trade gave little need for towns.

If you mean an estate land records and journals are best for sourcing that.

If you want to DM me the specific name I'll check into what I can find and get back to you, but it's cool if you'd rather not - I can certainly understand that feeling.

On tobacco: In 1612 a guy named Rolfe planted it in Jamestown in response to the European craze for tobacco which was met entirely by the Spanish. Tobacco was so expensive that early pipes had incredibly small bowls (the "bowl" is the part of a smoking pipe that holds the tobacco). A small amount would be packed into the bowl, lit and inhaled, then held until totally absorbed in the lungs. It wasn't until the 17th century when the cultivation from the British Colonies dropped the price considerably that we start to see larger pipes (and more specifically bowls) come into use and the smoking of tobacco took the leisurely form that modern pipe smokers enjoy, as it was no longer as "wasteful" to allow the bowl to smolder between hits.

In the first decade or so of growth, tobacco growth in Virginia exploded. Lord Baltimore suggested the settlements in Maryland in 1624 should grow a diverse set of crops; however due to the perfect climate and soil as well as the high demand, tobacco very quickly became the most important crop. So much so that one of the only colonies to become a state that officially labeled a crop as currency was Maryland, and the crop was tobacco (meaning it was literally money). Not.much changed until post revolution when other crops were grown more heavily, but tobacco only took a smaller role and was never stopped. At the end of the 20th century (as close to today as we go here), tobacco was still cultivated in Maryland.

E for clarity