Cannabis in 18th-century Augusta County? Absolutely!

By Nancy Sorrells
Source: newsleader.com


This woodcut from an almanac shows fiber production on an American farm. The man just 
outside the barn is using a break to crush the stems of a fiber plant – either flax or hemp – 
in order to remove the plants' outer husk. The man standing in the open barn door area is 
working on the next stage of fiber processing, which is called scutching. / Courtesy of Nancy Sorrells

When I recently read about the marijuana plants being secretly cultivated by trespassers at the Frontier Culture Museum, I couldn’t help but smile a little bit at the historic irony. For you see, a place that interprets the Shenandoah Valley frontier might actually want to grow cannabis on its 18th century farm if it could be done legally! That’s what Augusta County farmers did in the 1760s and 1770s to the tune of big dollars.

Of course, the cannabis plant that was grown on the frontier differed from those being illegally grown at the Frontier Culture Museum in the fact that it contained much lower percentages of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) than those plants grown today as a recreational drug that people use to get high. In much the same way was as there are different varieties of roses or corn, there are different varieties of cannabis. Most of the 2,000 or so cannabis varieties contain less than .3 percent THC while those grown for recreational use have anywhere from 2 to 20 percent THC in the final product.

So, back to the cannabis plant grown in Augusta County known as hemp. This plant was grown for the fibers in its stalk which, when properly prepared, could be used to make rope or cloth, especially sailcloth on ships. In fact, the word canvas actually comes from the word cannabis.

The cultivation of cannabis as a fiber plant is thousands and thousands of years old. In a time when a country with the biggest navy ruled the world, the cultivation of hemp was huge – being used as the fibrous caulk to seal spaces between boards for watertight ship building, as ropes for rigging, and as the sails themselves. Christopher Columbus’ ships contained hemp.

Because of a combination of factors, Augusta County turned out to be a perfect place to cultivate hemp starting in the late 1750s. Before that time, the Valley had a mixed farming economy with wheat, rye, oats, and corn being grown and cattle, hogs, and sheep being the main livestock. Unlike the rest of Virginia, tobacco was not grown in great quantities. This was not because tobacco did not grow well here, because it did. It was more a matter of how to get the finished product to the seaboard markets.

So, when the Virginia government started offering subsidies to help offset poor tobacco prices and encourage international trade, Augusta County farmers jumped at the opportunity to carve out a place for hemp production within their mixed farming routine. The Virginia legislature paid farmers four shillings per hundredweight of hemp harvested, and added two more shillings for each hundredweight shipped to England. The incentive was tailor made for the Valley farmers who had come from the north of Ireland and knew fiber production. In Ireland, their main agricultural cash crop came from turning flax into linen. They knew how to grow and process flax and turn this fiber crop into a finished product. The process for turning hemp into a useful fiber was almost identical.

Hemp plants were pulled out by the roots in the fall and laid out in the fields to rot (called rhetting) after being repeatedly wet by the weather. The process, which took as long as three months, broke down the gums and hard outside layers of the plant stems to reveal the inner fibers. Once this was finished, the plants were broken on a wooden break. At this point the hemp was called gross hemp and was sometimes sold at this stage for someone else to process further into rope or cloth. However most Valley farmers took the processing at least one step further and scutched their hemp to remove all of the pieces of bark. The product was now called neat hemp. The final processing stage was called hackling, where the fibers were pulled through a series of metal spikes in order to straighten the long fibers and orient them all in the same direction. If you are interested in seeing this process in detail, the Frontier Museum does process flax into linen.

Two sources of information help us understand the importance of hemp to the farming economy of Augusta County. First the court order books of the time record the men who turned in hemp to receive their government subsidy. These men were issued hemp certificates that could be used to pay taxes. A bundle of about 100 certificates presented in lieu of cash for taxes still is preserved in the Augusta County courthouse.

The first known response to government encouraged hemp cultivation by Augusta County farmers is in November 1759, when James Craig received his bounty for 687 pounds of cleaned hemp. Two years later Thomas Lewis, the son of area founder John Lewis, turned in 3,393 pounds of “winter rotted, clean bright hemp” in February 1762.

Both Craig and Lewis received a tidy profit from their hemp venture. It took six tons of harvested hemp to produce a ton of marketable hemp. An acre yielded about 500 pounds of hemp, so Craig would have had about eight acres under cultivation and Lewis about 40 acres. In 1760, neat hemp brought anywhere from 25 to 26 shillings per 100 pounds. Add in the bounty of four shillings per hundred pounds, and Craig made a profit of 9 pounds and Lewis gained 45 pounds. However, during this period the hemp had to be taken by wagon to Philadelphia, which would probably have reduced their profits by as much as 10 percent, according to historians.

During the American Revolution the need for hemp skyrocketed and Augusta County farmers led the nation in production. Of course, the processed hemp was no longer shipped in England, but rather used for the American war effort where the demand for sailcloth, canvas, sacks, and rope was intense for both the army and the navy.

Again the government stepped in to subsidize production. I find it ironic in this day where the political rhetoric is so tinged with smaller government and privatization statements that the success of our very founding was based so heavily on government help. In the Valley, for instance, the main hindrance to increased hemp production had always been transportation costs.

So, Virginia stepped in and subsidized those costs. Farmers had only to take their product to a local collection point and government officials took over from there with government hired wagons and drivers. In Staunton, the new Virginia government paid for the construction of a sail cloth factory so manufacture could take place where the product was grown.

The result was that Augusta County hemp production doubled during the American Revolution. Between 1776 and 1783, about 16,000 acres of hemp were cultivated in the Valley of Virginia, with Augusta leading the way with 9,000 acres being grown. Botetourt was second and Frederick was third. In Augusta somewhere between 700 and 750 farmers, or one in ten, jumped on the bandwagon.

When the state more or less took over the hemp trade it forever altered Augusta County’s trade patterns – orienting them more toward Richmond. Before the Revolution, most of Augusta’s trade went to Philadelphia.

So, from 1776 onward, Augusta was oriented more east than north with its trade and communication patterns. During the Revolution, hemp and butter headed to Richmond in large quantities. The return load always contained salt, an essential that is not found naturally in the Shenandoah Valley, and other commercial manufactured goods.

The rise of hemp production had one other lasting effect on Augusta County, when in the the 1760s that large numbers of enslaved African-Americans appeared. There were some African-Americans before that but in low numbers and many were free.