Duke Homestead/Tobacco Museum

<- Fence and dogwoods along the homestead path

Today was forecast to be rainy all day and night. Kurt Augustine, who I worked with at Mayo, had recommended that we visit the Tobacco Museum in Durham. Per se, that didn't sound all that inviting on its surface. But a little web research found that North Carolina reported it as the Duke Homestead and Tobacco Museum, which sounded a lot more appealing. After our visit, I must report that we were not disappointed at all.

The homestead in on the northeast side of Durham, and we arrived through a tangle of I40, I85, US15, US501, and a few local roads, the last "Guess Road", designed to confuse the best navigator. The museum was on Duke Homestead Road, making it easy to know we were in the right place, once we found it. Actually, Durham did a pretty good job of providing signs to help guide us.
<- The Duke Homestead and 1st manufacturing barn.

We entered the museum and found that the next guided tour would start in 15 minutes, which gave us time to explore the museum a bit. While the history of smoking tobacco goes back a long way, the salient points presented in the museum are the discovery of the way to produce light colored "bright" tobacco through a charcoal curing procedure, and the decision of the Duke family to give up farming in favor of tobacco manufacture. The first led to Durham becoming the major center of tobacco for many years, and the second led to an organization that owned 90% of the tobacco business, know by the name of American Tobacco, until broken up by the Sherman act, along with other monopolies in the early part of the 20th century.

<- The grading barn, where tobacco was prepared for auction

The tour took us to the old curing barn, and our guide explained the operation of the closed firepit and exhaust tubes designed to warm and dry the barn evenly.

Then to the grading barn, where the dried tobacco mildly rehydrated, then sorted and packed for the auction.


<- Consuelo and "Biscuit" in the manufacturing barn

After that, we visited the 3rd manufacturing barn, where tobacco bought at auction was processed into pipe tobacco, for packaging into 30 pound sacks for shipment. The Dukes gave up most of the farming for concentration on manufacturing around the time of the civil war. The manufacturing barn was now mostly empty, save for a black cat called "Biscuit" who was in charge of rodent detail on the homestead. He apparently was locked into the manufacturing barn since yesterday, and was very glad to see us (or anybody).

We then toured the house where the family was raised. As with many historic sites, it is filled with pieces appropriate to the period, not those owned by the Dukes. It was simply furnished, most likely as it was during their early years. We thought of many questions about the Dukes and their lives while visiting the house.

<- Spittoon display in the museum

Back in the museum, we followed the various trails followed by the tobacco industry in its quest to perfect the manufacture and sale tobacco. We were shown the types and life cycle of Nicotania plants, the history of the various machinery to plant, harvest, process and package the product. Displays of the artifacts used to consume tobacco: pipes, spittoons, ash trays and vending machines. And of course, the various displays of the marketing efforts of the weed, from Bull Durham to the Marlboro man.

The visit reminded me of my younger days, when I smoked cigarettes. It also reminded me of my visit in 1960 to Brown and Williamson in Lexington, where I saw those cigarette manufacturing machines in use. It also reminded me of when I was much younger, traveling through the tents over shade tobacco grown for cigars in the Connecticut River Valley in Massachusetts.