six.[1] The average length and breadth of the barns appear to have been thirty by twenty, but structures of this kind forty, fifty, and even sixty feet long were not unusual.[2] The use of fire in hastening the process of curing was unknown to the planters of the seventeenth century; this process was left to the operation of the air, which was permitted to circulate freely in the interior of the building. At the end of five or six weeks the tobacco had undergone the desired change, as appeared from the quickness with which the stem snapped when bent.[3] While passing through the various stages of curing, there was danger that the texture of the leaf would suffer from house-burning;[4] and there was also a possibility that it would become husky from repeated sweatings.
When the tobacco had been cured, it was taken down as soon as the moisture in the atmosphere was sufficient to penetrate the leaves and to produce in them such limpness that they could be handled without bruising, in which condition they were stripped from the stalk and assorted according to grade and variety, Oronoco and sweet-scented
- ↑ Records of Henrico County, original vol. 1682-1701, p. 325; Ibid., original vol. 1677-1692, p. 104.
- ↑ Ibid., original vol. 1697-1704, p. 195; Records of York County, vol. 1633-1694, p. 63; Ibid., vol. 1657-1662, p. 96; Ibid., vol. 1664-1672, p. 16, Va. State Library.
- ↑ The following is the only reference to the use of fire in the tobacco barns which I have been able to find in the records of the seventeenth century: “Deposition of Hopkins Davis saith that . . . Thomas Relye sent yr examinant to the tobacco house to make a fire pretending it to be for to make a smuther under the tobacco. Deposition of Thomas Relye that sitting at the tobacco house making peggs his master came to him and told him they had hung the tobacco . . . that there must be a smuther made.” Records of Accomac County, original volume 1671-1673, p. 107. The object of the “smuther” seems to have been merely to smoke the tobacco, probably to free it of horn-worms and other insects.
- ↑ Letters of William Byrd, Oct. 11, 1688.
