Published by The History Press
Charleston, SC 29403
www.historypress.net
Copyright 2015 by W.W. Billy Yeargin Jr. with Christopher Evans Bickers
All rights reserved
Front cover, top: Burley fields during harvest, near Vilas, North Carolina. Photo by Joe McNeil.
Bottom: A burley-growing couple in Greene County, Tennessee. Photo by Bob Hurley.
First published 2015
e-book edition 2015
ISBN 978.1.62585.498.8
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015931114
print edition ISBN 978.1.62619.960.6
Notice: The information in this book is true and complete to the best of our knowledge. It is offered without guarantee on the part of the authors or The History Press. The authors and The History Press disclaim all liability in connection with the use of this book.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form whatsoever without prior written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
PREFACE
When Clisbe Austin and Silas Bernard, two farmers from the Greeneville, Tennessee area, brought the first burley tobacco seed to Greene County in 1887 and convinced other local farmers to plant it, they probably had no idea that they had launched a commodity that would form the backbone of the agricultural economy in the region for over one hundred years.
Now, though burley tobacco seems to have passed its peak, it still is an important part of the lives of hill country farmers. In this book, we have tried to document this dramatic story through historical investigation but more particularly through the words of veteran burley growers who place the dry historical facts into a human perspective. We have also included a section on growers efforts to ensure a stable market for their product, a section on the effects of deregulation of burley marketing and a history of the university research station in Greeneville. In addition, we have included a bonus section on the history of the auction market as a means of selling all types of tobacco.
We hope you enjoy it. We have received a great deal of assistance from a number of sources, most especially from the Burley Stabilization Corporation and its chief executive officer, Daniel Green, and president, George Marks. Greens predecessor, the late Charles Finch, helped considerably in the development of the project and is remembered gratefully. We also thank the staff of the University of Tennessee Research & Education Center at Greeneville for all the assistance it has provided.
Lets include two sad notes: One of our featured farmersJohnny Shipley of Greene County, Tennesseepassed away before this book made it to the printer. Additionally, one of our contributors, Bob Hurley, also of Greene County, died unexpectedly before he was able to write the piece he planned to do for us. But he contributed several fine photographs. We were very happy to meet both in connection with this book, and both will be missed.
THE BIRTH OF BURlEY IN THE HILL COUNTRY
It is not the only type of tobacco ever grown in the foothills of the Appalachians and the headwaters of the Tennessee River. It wasnt even the first. But when burleyor white burley, as it was called back thenmade its appearance in the 1880s, it quickly displayed characteristics that made it a near-perfect cash crop for farmers in the mountains, ridges and valleys of east Tennessee, southwest Virginia and western North Carolina.
And that wasnt its geographic limitation. Indeed, the history of tobacco in these states is one of burley slowly migrating from the hills to the central basin of Tennessee, where it has taken its rightful place in that areas agriculture.
But lets go back to the beginning. A cash crop was mightily needed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the hill country. Except for the occasional dairy farm, there was hardly any agricultural enterprise that could generate cash for off-farm purchases in this area, characterized as it was by small farms, small fields and, in many cases, steep slopes.
But other types of tobacco just didnt fill the need. Dark tobacco was grown extensively in the early years. And for fifteen or twenty years near the end of the nineteenth century, hill country farmers tried hard to make flue-cured tobacco work in this environment. They werent able to, but as the twentieth century got started, more and more of them enjoyed success with burley.
Two boys and a goat enjoy a break from tobacco in Greene County, Tennessee, in the early 1970s. Photo by Bob Hurley.
Robert Shipley of Watauga County, North Carolina, a farmer who was born in 1912 and remembers that era better than almost anybody, describes the economic situation at the time.
Before burley arrived, most of our people were employed in what we would call subsistence farming, he said in interviews in 2011 and 2013. They were self-sufficient in food and produced pretty much what they ate. They killed hogs for their meat supply and would sometimes kill cattle for beef. Everybody had a garden, and it was standard practice to preserve and can produce. Sometimes you didnt have to do even that. You could keep potatoes and cabbage for a long period of time just by burying them. So our folks didnt go hungry: they just werent used to having a lot of money.
That changed after farmers learned about the potential of burley. It soon proved to be the only realistic choice as a cash crop, says Shipley. We didnt have any other dependable cash crop in this area. That was the big reason that burley spread in the mountains.
But adoption wasnt immediate, Shipley remembers. It didnt really get going until a federal program was developed to stabilize production and marketing: It led to an increase in price, so that farmers who grew it had some money left over after paying their expenses of growing tobacco. It was a good change, definitely. From that time, tobacco paid taxes and supported the schools and churches of this land.
For all practical purposes, the new white burley didnt appear in the Tennessee-Carolina-Virginia hill country until 1887, when two farmers, Clisbe Austin and Silas Bernard, procured some of the new seed and brought it to the Greeneville area. They convinced many of the local farmers to plant burley rather than attempting to compete in growing flue-cured tobacco with growers in North Carolina and other states to the east. But flue-cured was in much greater demand than burley, and up until 1916, burley plantings were largely limited to Greene and Washington Counties. After that, when demand for burley was spurred by the popularity of the Camel brand cigarette, its growth spread throughout most of the state.
A burley-growing couple shows pride in a good crop in Greene County, Tennessee, in the early 1970s. Photo by Bob Hurley.
It eventually reached the dark tobaccoproducing areas of middle Tennessee. George Marks of Clarksville, Tennessee, remembers, This area traditionally produced dark tobacco, but we didnt start producing burley until after World War II. Burley came here at a good time. So many farmers were looking for an alternative to dark tobacco, and a lot took up burley then. If you wanted to make [up] for the loss of dark demand or to expand, it was the only way.
