A complete story on the origin of the early varieties of tobacco would
be a very significant contribution, since very little is known about
them. Most writers agree that the tobacco cultivated by the English
settlers was not the same _Nicotiana rustica_ grown by the Indians, but
_Nicotiana tabacum_, the type found growing in South America and the
West Indies. The difference between these two types was profound, both
in taste and size. The plant native to Virginia was small, growing to a
height of only two or three feet, whereas _Nicotiana tabacum_ grew from
six to nine feet tall. As to taste, George Arents remarked, "the same
difference in taste exists between these two species, as between a crab
apple and an Albemarle pippin."
All during the colonial period tobacco was classified into two main
varieties, Oronoco and sweet-scented. Oronoco had a large porous
pointed leaf and was strong in taste. Sweet-scented was milder, the
leaf was rounder and the fibers were finer. We are also told that
sweet-scented grew mostly in the lower parts of Virginia, along the
York and James rivers, and later on the Rappahannock and on the
southside of the Potomac. Oronoco was generally planted up the
Chesapeake Bay area and in the back settlements on the strong land
along all the rivers.
Oronoco is thought to have originated in the vicinity of the Orinoco
River valley in Venezuela. After being brought to a different
environment and climate in Virginia, various varieties or strains of
Oronoco were developed or came about naturally. In the late 1600's a
very fair and bright large Oronoco, Prior, and Kite's Foot were
mentioned. As the years passed planters came to distinguish other
varieties such as Hudson, Frederick, Thick-Joint, Shoe-string,
Thickset, Blue Pryor, Medley Pryor, White Stem, Townsend, Long Green,
Little Frederic, and Browne Oronoco.
A type of tobacco referred to locally as "yellow", had been growing on
the poor, thin, and sandy soils in and around Pittsylvania County,
Virginia, and Caswell County, North Carolina since the early 1820's. It
was just another one of the many local varieties and attracted little
attention until a very lucky accident occurred in 1839. A Negro slave
on the Slade farm in Caswell County, North Carolina, fell asleep while
fire-curing tobacco. Upon awakening, he quickly piled some dry wood on
the dying embers; the sudden drying heat from the revived fires
produced a profound effect--this particular barn of tobacco cured a
bright yellow. This accident produced a curing technique that soon
became known throughout the surrounding area in Virginia and North
Carolina. This tobacco became known as "Bright-Tobacco", and this area
the "Bright-Tobacco Belt".
The many variations were due to the different environments, cultural
practices, methods of curing and breeding; and each of these variations
was given a name because of some particular quality it possessed, or
was given the name of a person or place. The difference in the
composition of the "Bright-Tobacco" grown in the poor sandy soil, such
as that found in Pittsylvania County, caused the tobacco to cure
bright. This so-called new type of tobacco was of the old Virginia
Oronoco and if grown on heavier soils, it produced a much heavier
bodied tobacco and would not make the same response when flue-cured.
Only the tobacco grown in the soils such as that in the "Bright-Tobacco
Belt" cured bright, which indicates that it was the soil and not the
variety that caused the tobacco to be bright when cured.
The origin and development of sweet-scented tobacco remains somewhat of
a mystery, and we can only make conjectures as to what happened. Some
authorities hold that the present day Maryland tobacco is descended
from the sweet-scented of the Colonial days, while others believe it to
be a descendant of Oronoco. It seems quite possible that there was only
one variety of _Nicotiana tabacum_ when John Rolfe first began his
experiments, and there is reason to believe that this first tobacco was
sweet-scented. The name Oronoco probably came after the name
sweet-scented had already been established. It also appears that
sweet-scented disappeared as soon as the soils along the James, York,
Rappahannock, and Potomac rivers were exhausted.
George Arents, probably the foremost authority on the history of
tobacco, in referring to Rolfe's first shipment to England wrote, "So
fragrant was the leaf that it almost at once began to be known as
'sweet-scented.'" Ralph Hamor, in 1614, declared that the colony grew
tobacco equal to that of Trinidad, "sweet and pleasant." Jerome E.
Brooks wrote that Rolfe's importation of tobacco seed resulted in the
famous Virginia sweet-scented leaf.
Once the cultivation began to spread into the areas away from the sandy
loam along the James and York rivers, the type of soil necessary for
the production of the sweet-scented, other varieties began to develop.
In 1688 John Clayton wrote, "I have observed, that that which is called
Pine-wood Land tho' it be a sandy soil, even the sweet-scented Tobacco
that grows thereon, is large and porous, agreeable to Aranoko Tobacco;
it smokes as coursely as Aranoko." While on his visit to Virginia,
Clayton visited a poor, worn-out plantation along the James River. The
owner, a widow, complained to him that her land would produce only four
or five leaves of tobacco per plant. Clayton suggested that one of the
bogs on the plantation be drained and planted in tobacco. A few years
later Clayton happened to meet this same lady in London, selling the
first crop of tobacco grown on the drained bog. She related to Clayton
that the product was "so very large, that it was suspected to be of the
Aranoko kind...."
In 1724 Hugh Jones observed that the farther a person went northward
from the York or southward from the James, the poorer the quality of
the sweet-scented tobacco, "but this maybe (I believe) attributed in
some Measure to the Seed and Management, as well as to the Land and
Latitude." John Custis in a letter to Philip Perry in 1737 wrote that
he grew Oronoco on the Eastern Shore of Virginia using the same seed as
he did for his sweet-scented York crop. It appears that as the sandy
loam necessary for the growing of sweet-scented tobacco became
exhausted and the planters expanded into the heavy fertile soils, the
tobacco became the strong, coarse Oronoco. As virgin soil became
scarce, Oronoco was no longer confined to the richest soils, nor was it
thought to be less sweet-scented than its rivals. Toward the end of the
eighteenth century tobacco inspectors found it so difficult to
distinguish the various types, that they classed all tobacco as
Oronoco. Thus it seems quite possible that both Oronoco and
sweet-scented were originally one variety which became two, primarily
because of the different soil composition.