Sources

Greeneville Redrying Co. Warehouse
Greeneville, TN
Circa 1930
(Building Certification #1.003)

The scent of tobacco essentially permeates the history and culture of Greeneville, Tennessee. A town once ruled by this aromatic leaf, Greeneville is situated on rolling land beneath the Great Smoky Mountains. It is the town where President Andrew Johnson made his home and the county seat where frontiersman, folk hero and Congressman Davy Crockett was born.

Centuries before the dangers of tobacco were known, it had played an integral part in the growth of the New World. As early as 1612, John Rolfe (who is perhaps most well-known for marrying the legendary Pocahontas) grew the first commercial tobacco. Tobacco grew along the streets and in the marketplace of Jamestown. It was a cash crop, shipped back to England to supply a growing demand. At a time when gold and silver were scarce, a man's wealth was estimated not in pounds sterling, but in pounds of tobacco.

Tobacco moved westward with English settlers and their descendants. It made its way to Greeneville, where remnants of its economic impact can still be seen today in the form of old tobacco warehouses, many of which are now empty or remodeled for new uses.

There was a time, though, when the town bustled with the tobacco business. It was a trading hub for a particular kind called burley tobacco. The warehouses attracted buyers from around the South, who made their way to Greeneville in hopes of striking a favorable deal.

According to local history, Greeneville became a thriving tobacco market thanks to a man named Henry Brown and several other businessmen. The story goes that one day during the 1880s, Brown saw tobacco in the railroad depot awaiting shipment to markets like Abingdon, Virginia, and Bristol, Tennessee.

Brown asked the freight agent why the tobacco couldn't be sold in Greeneville instead. It could—the freight agent is said to have replied—if there were a place growers could bring the tobacco for auction. The town needed a warehouse.

C. Austin—another local businessman who would later go on to found the Austin Co., once one of the world's largest tobacco dealers—realized the town would need more than just one warehouse if it were to become a true market.

Pursuing this idea, Austin leased a warehouse from a group of businessmen and then converted a large stable into a second warehouse, marking the birth of the Greeneville tobacco warehouses. The Greeneville tobacco auctions began in the warehouses in 1889.

According to Community in Transition: Greene County, Tennessee, 1865–1900, a full tobacco warehouse took three days to sell, “even at the pace of bidding on 200 piles of tobacco per hour. […] Greene County became a major tobacco center. Approximately 1,250,000 pounds were sold in 1891 at an average price of thirteen cents per pound. Tobacco, formerly a crop raised for home consumption, was now a money-maker that allowed many farm households to consume more and more store-bought goods.

Families could use the money in ways that invested in their futures, such as providing education for their children. Other businesses, such as banks, sprang up to provide capital. By the 1940s, there were more than a dozen tobacco warehouses in the area.

As the tobacco industry waned and Greeneville's economy evolved, some of the warehouses closed. Only a slab remains for one, built in the 1930s in the western part of town and used by the Greeneville Redrying Co. It was deconstructed brick by brick, beam by beam. Turning House Millworks secured old timbers reclaimed in the process for use by its sister company, Turning House Furniture—ensuring that the rich heritage of Greeneville's tobacco industry lives on through one-of-a-kind, solid wood furniture.

Note: Greeneville's place in the tobacco industry is evidenced by the University of Tennessee locating its agricultural Research & Education Center there. The center's mission is to improve the net return to Tennessee tobacco growers, as well as to other Tennesseans whose work and livelihoods are linked to agriculture.

Sources: Turning House Furniture and http://www.historyisfun.org/Economics-of-Tobacco.htm. http://www.tobacco.org/History/colonialtobacco.html. http://books.google.com/books?idsdo7mBw5UKYC&pgPA50&lpgPA50&dqtobacco+south+industrial+history&sourcebl&otsQDYk4hShKd&sigEIAGkclrY -pZbmHnGDzHTgY6w8&hlen&eiqZHrSZOMGpS8M7-f9dQF&saX&oibook_result&ctresult&resnum3. http://tobacco.tennessee.edu/. http://www.city-data.com/states/Tennessee-History.html. http://encyclopedia.farlex.com/Greeneville,+Tennessee "Burley: A Colorful History" undated newspaper article in the Greeneville-Greene County Library "Bob Austin dies at 71," undated newspaper article in the Greeneville-Greene County Li-brary "15 warehouses afford space for large volume," Jan.1, 1948, Greeneville Sun Community in Transition: Greene County, Tennessee, 1865-1900. Edited by Mitzi V. Bi-ble, Greene County Historical Society