|
||
Once upon a time,
when Tobacco was
King, Farmers had their Day in Smithfield The middle of August used to be huge in the life of this community. It brought the opening of the Smithfield Tobacco Market, and for local farmers and merchants it was "like Christmas." So big was it, that back in the 1950s the Smithfield Chamber of Commerce hosted a celebration called "Farmers Day," which featured a parade even bigger than the annual Christmas parade Downtown. The reason it was so big was the way farmers sold their tobacco in those days. Smithfield's auction warehouses competed for the farmers' business to the extent that they ran full-page advertisements in The Smithfield Herald's Harvest Edition, itself a product of the tobacco market's importance to the local economy. A lot of that faded over the years as marketing moved away from outright warehouse competition: first to a system where a farmer "designated" in advance which warehouse operator would get his tobacco to sell; finally, to the present-day system that bypasses the auction sales altogether as farmers sign contracts with the tobacco companies before they plant their crops. So, as we reminisce about Farmers Day and the newspaper's Harvest Edition, here's a photographic look back at the way things used to be . . . . All photos from
archives of the Johnston County Heritage
Center
Established in 1898, the Smithfield Tobacco
Market got its start with auctions held in
the Banner warehouse. It stood on the north side
of Johnston Street between Third and Fourth
streets until it was destroyed by fire in 1932.
 In 1906 everyone in an extended farm family was called to action to help "barn tobacco." This photograph was taken 113 years ago on the farm of David Henry Massengill near Four Oaks. All the folks, plus the dog and the mule (barely visible at right), are identified in the Heritage Center's archives (use "tobacco barn" in "First Keyword" search function).  The year was 1935 but the scene didn't change much over the years as buyers from the tobacco companies bid on piles of crops brought to market by local farmers. The men in this photo are identified in the Heritage Center's archives (use "Tobacco Market auction" in "First Keyword" search function).  Farmers Day in Smithfield was a harvest-season celebration held in August in the 1940s and 1950s. A highlight was the big parade, shown here in 1955 from a vantage point atop the Howell Theatre on South Third Street.  The mechanical harvester replaced field hands as the preferred means of cropping tobacco after World War II. In this scene, Keith Hall operates a Roanoke model on his Brogden Road farm in 1973.
|
||
|
|
