Tobacco growing began in Central New York as a xcash crop with the
arrival of Germans after 1848. It continued until a disastrous hailstorm
ruined the crop circa 1918. After that, the tobacco growers grew
cabbage. My family in the Town of Elbridge, Onondaga County, grew and
cured tobacco, had a purpose-bui barnm for it that finally burned in
late 1945. 

BHY the way, in Laura Ingalls Wilder's Farmer Boy, set in St. Lawrence
or Franklin County, I believe.. There is a passage on sowing tobacco.

>>> [log in to unmask] 5/24/2005 3:36:09 PM >>>
I don't know specifically about Albany County, but tobacco was and is
grown
surprisingly widely (Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio, Maryland, Connecticut
and in
prior years Pennsylvania).  Different varieties have different cultural
and
curing practices (i.e., shade grown, sun-cured, fire-cured, flue-cured)
and
uses (cigar filler, cigar binder).  A "tobacco barn" might have been
used for
storing and curing the tobacco.

 I grew up in Broome County on a farm that supposedly had grown tobacco
in the
19th century.  Never confirmed it.

Bill Harshaw

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Harold Miller" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, May 19, 2005 1:45 PM


> A two hundred year old farm in the Town of Berne has a brick
outbuilding
> with no windows. The owners refer to it as a tobacco barn. It has no
> windows. A similar sized brick building on a nearby farm was built as
slave
> quarters. It has a window and a beehive oven in back. Would tobacco
have
> been a crop grown in the hills of western Albany County in the late
18th
> Century? Would a tobacco barn have been built of brick?
>
> The farm with the "tobacco barn" will be open for a tour of three
local
> Dutch Barns that is in the will be tour Saturday morning 9-12, June
16
> during Berne Heritage Days.
>
> Harold Miller
> Berne Historical Project www.Bernehistory.org 
> Berne Heritage Days 2005 July 15, 16, and 17
>