Germantown and Farmersville have long histories with tobacco. In the 1880s, Germantown was making 3 million cigars a year and 1,120 pounds was grown locally. Hundreds of workers in Germantown and Farmersville were employed by farms, tobacco warehouses, and cigar makers.

While cigar-making and local warehouses declined around 1915, local tobacco farming as a profitable crop continued well into the 1970s.

Many in the community have memories of the labor-intensive process of raising tobacco. Throughout this story we will share some reactions to the tobacco planter photo above from Facebook.

Carol Shade - Spent a few springs on one of those planting tobacco on our family farm. I remember the tobacco beds would be steamed, covered in a cheesecloth type fabric before planting.

Israel McIntosh - Worked in tobacco some when it was a common crop around Germantown. It is almost a year round job.

Robert Crolley - We only had a 5 acre plot for tobacco, but it seemed to be way more work than all the other crops! Even hay and straw!

Tobacco Business

This clip from the Dayton Daily News shows Farmersville businessmen were investing in a tobacco warehouse in 1912.

The photo above from the Germantown Historical Society collection shows a “Gunckel’s Special” cigar box, a local cigar-making enterprise.

The local economy was tied to good tobacco growing seasons and the story above in the Journal Herald shows how a great crop was cause for celebration.

The building that is now the Veterans Memorial Museum was a tobacco warehouse around 1865-1949.

A paper written by a Miami University geography professor in 1972, stated that cigar filler tobacco enabled the Miami Valley region to be the most important producing area in Ohio from approximately 1880 to 1940

End of Local Tobacco Warehouses

Tobacco was connected to one of Germantown’s biggest tragedies. While tobacco farming continued well into the 1970s, the last working tobacco warehouse in Germantown burned in 1967.

This front page story in the Dayton Daily News started with, “Tobacco juice poured down Cherry St. and cigar smoke filled the air at the scene of a fire Saturday that wiped out three industrial buildings and a house here. There was no official damage estimate, but it was believed to be well over one million dollars.”

As the fire spread and six crews were called to the scene, local volunteers rushed to support the firefighters. The story notes that Mrs. Sidebottom had taken her four small children to help prepare food. Sadly, when she returned her house on Main Street had burned. The neighbors had pulled her furniture into the street.

The Hard Work of Tobacco Farming

In 1930 Ohio had 15,220 farms growing nearly 50,000 acres of tobacco. By 2002, the Ohio Census of Agriculture by the USDA counted 1,845 farms and 5,764 acres. By then, Montgomery County was reporting 5 farms and 3 acres of tobacco.

But in 1964, when Don Michael of Jackson Township was raising tobacco, there were still 6,972 tobacco farms in Montgomery County, farming 12,185 acres.

Michael raised Pennsylvania Narrow Leaf, a tobacco that was used for cigar wrappers. In the 1960s, farmers were given limits on the tobacco they could raise to stabilize prices. Michael raised about 10 acres, which was what his family was allotted as a “base.”

Farmers grew tobacco from seed in raised beds and then transferred them to the field with a planter (shown above).

The seeds were tiny, “like gold” said Linda Stebbins-Suttman who grew tobacco on Farmersville-West Carrollton Road in the early 1970s. See the image above of seeds on display at the Historical Society.

The tobacco seeds had to be planted in sterilized dirt. Michael remembers a steam engine coming to the farm in the 1950s to sterilize their tobacco beds, which were sized to the large pan of the steamer.

After the seeds were planted, they needed careful tending and were covered in a mesh canvas to prevent outside weeds from getting to the plants.

Around mid-May, after the last frost, farmers would take their plants to the fields. As the leaves grew, the fields required daily hoeing for weeds, hand topping of the plants to help the leaves grow taller and removal of suckers that grew on the mature leaves.

Stebbins-Suttman recalls the unpleasant work of removing tobacco worms by hand, “We twisted their heads off and threw them in a bucket.” A memory shared by others in the community:

Sherry Wallace My grandpa made a tobacco worm sandwich every year. Mustard. Onion. Salt pepper! We watched him eat that sandwich…. Never saw him take that worm out but we know he never really ate it! Every year when they “topped” tobacco he did this!

Wally Stiver when I was 6 or 7 years old my grandpa used to trick me into believing he bit the heads off them I thought if grandpa can do it I could do it better I found a big fat juicy one needless to say the head come right off and the juice straight in my mouth. My mom said I turned about three shades of green and I hung over the wagon tongue for about 20 minutes throwing up.

Tobacco Harvest

Harvesting the tobacco was as time-consuming as growing it. Michael said they would cut the leaves in the field in early August and put them on a wagon, then take them to their tobacco shed.

The tobacco leaves were sticky and “made your hair gooey,” noted Linda Stebbins-Suttman.

In the shed, farmers would spear each leaf onto a tobacco lathe, a long strip of hardwood tipped with a metal point. About 5-6 plants worth of leaves would fit on each lathe. The leaves would be carefully packed into the rafters of the barn down to right above the floor to dry until November.

Kevin Gross I worked for Billy Rodgers and his whole family even his father Bernie Rodgers at 88 years old would spear tobacco and hand up his first tractor hand crank allies Chalmers still ran with steel wheels loved working with them the best bosses I ever had.

Linda Barnhart. My mom and oldest brother used to ride the tobacco planter and put the young plants in the ground. We younger kids would follow behind and be sure the dirt got put around them. I always wanted to be one to ride the planter but was told I was too young and small. Raising tobacco was hard work. In the winter we kids, there were 6 of us, would have to strip the tobacco leaves and lay them in a press for packing. I personally hated raising tobacco but knew it brought income for the family farm.

After the leaves were dry, Michael said you waited for a rainy day to add some moisture back in the leaves so they were pliable for packing. This was known as “in case.” He said they would stack the leaves and cover them to “rick it up” until they were ready to strip the tobacco.

The next step was to strip the leaves from the stems. Many farmers had a “strip house” building or section of their barn with a stove to keep the tobacco warm and pliable.

The leaves went in a container, usually a wooden box to be pressed with a board. Large farms were visited by tobacco buyers who offered a price per pound. Smaller growers would take their tobacco to a market in Miamisburg where you would lay your tobacco out on a table to sell.

Janet Hawvermale - My husband’s family raised tobacco for over 50 years. My job after we were married, was to follow the planter with his mom and Katheryn Woleab planting to catch the missed or broken ones! I sure got plenty of steps in, and large collection of arrowheads, some stone knives, and hammers. To tobacco farmers it was a 13 month job, from steaming the beds, pulling plants and putting them into boxes to take to field and plant. Then came hoeing, worm control, suckering, cutting, filling wagons with cut plants/brought to barns, spearing, and hanging in the sheds. BOY, did I hate being on ground handing up!! Constant rain of dirt and dust and an occasional worm! But it was an extra income for farmers (Cash crop).

As tobacco use became less popular and more families left farms in the 1970s and 1980s to take off-farm jobs, the daily manual labor of tobacco became unfeasible. The USDA Census of Agriculture had 45 farms growing tobacco in Montgomery County in 1982 and only 9 by 1987.

Most farmers put their acres in corn or soybeans. The allotted base for each farm shrunk as it was unused, and now farms need to apply to the Ohio Department of Agriculture for a license to grow tobacco commercially.

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