Just prior to the American Revolution the tobacco industry began to expand rapidly south of the James River, especially to the south and west of Petersburg. One observer declared in 1769 that the Petersburg warehouses contained more tobacco than all the rest of the warehouses on the James or the York River. It was estimated that 20,000 hogsheads were being produced annually in that region alone. A considerable amount of tobacco was also being grown in the lower region of the Valley of Virginia.
As the tobacco industry continued to expand into Piedmont Virginia, there was a gradual decline in the Tidewater area. The increase in population naturally caused a continual expansion of the tobacco industry from its meager beginnings at Jamestown, but this was not the major cause. The primary cause was the wasteful cultivation methods practiced by the planters. To obtain the greatest yield from his land the planter raised three or four consecutive crops of tobacco in one field, then moved on to virgin fields. This practice was begun on a relatively large scale as early as 1632 when a planting restriction of 1,500 plants per person was enacted, causing many planters to leave their estates in search of better land in an effort to increase the quality of their tobacco. As cheap virgin soil became scarce, planters left their lands in Tidewater to take up fresh acreage in the Piedmont, or they stayed at home and grew grain, some corn but mostly wheat.
We can only generalize as to when and how extensive this substitution of wheat for tobacco may have been. There are those who believe that a permanent shift away from tobacco began as early as 1720 on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, while others state that it did not start until about ten years later. As early as 1759 all of the best lands in Virginia were reported to have been taken, and by the time of the Revolution the supply was said to have been completely exhausted. In 1771 there were rumors that at least one hundred of the principal Virginia planters had given up the tobacco culture entirely and converted their plantations to something more profitable. However, it is generally agreed that tobacco was not abandoned extensively in Tidewater before the Revolution.
The first appreciable decline came during the Revolution and this trend continued until the tobacco was almost completely abandoned in Tidewater in the nineteenth century. The rise in demand for foodstuffs during the war caused planters to shift from tobacco in increasing numbers. Many of them only reduced their tobacco crop at first, but later abandoned it completely. After the Revolution wheat was substituted for tobacco quite extensively, but owing to the expansion into the Piedmont, Virginia's post-war tobacco production soon equalled that of the prewar years. Tobacco was still grown in Tidewater Virginia and some beyond the western boundary of the Piedmont, but by this time Tidewater had ceased to be the "tobacco country" of previous years.
The production of tobacco continued to increase in the Piedmont and decrease in Tidewater, and Piedmont Virginia became more firmly established as Virginia's tobacco belt. This change was due partly to the fact that the virgin and fertile soils of the West kept tobacco prices so low that it could not be profitably produced on the manured worn out soils in the East. Tidewater was becoming full of old tobacco fields covered with young pine trees and the industry became concentrated largely in middle and southern Virginia. By 1800 Piedmont Virginia had definitely become the major tobacco producing area.
Old Tobacco Warehouse, built 1680 at Urbanna, Virginia
Courtesy of Mrs. H. I. Worthington
The mild species of tobacco which Rolfe imported from the West Indies.
