H 



for Connecticut, where cigar manufacturing had its 

 origin. The roHing of cigars as a liome industry had its 

 apparent beginning in the Windsor district of the state 

 before 1800. It soon spread throughout the Valley in 

 Connecticut and to the eastern districts. By that time 

 mere males, who had generally appro\ed of the old 

 Indian custom of keeping women and tobacco far apart, 

 were encouraging the gainful occupation of their wives 

 and daughters. Local store-keepers took the crude, 

 home-made cigars in exchange for goods; smokers took 

 them in their stride. 



ome of the brave 



The start of cigar-making on a connnercial rather than 

 a barter basis is credited to a woman. She was the wife 

 of a Virginian tobacco worker known only as Prout, who 

 had been brought to East Windsor in 1801 by two manu- 

 facturers of chewing tobacco. In the year of her migra- 

 tion to Connecticut, Mrs. Prout set up shop and put 

 axailable females to work as rollers. 



No one bothered about quality or wrapper color or 

 the fact that leaf was improperly cured and that it had 

 not gone through the essential process of fermentation. 

 It was still a pioneering age; cigars were then a novelty 

 to be smoked at one's own risk, and at the price for which 

 they were sold no one could reasonably complain. The 

 art of winding the wrapper was unknown and the use 

 of a binder was still some years off. The spinning wlieel 

 and the loom were, for the time, set aside while nimble 

 fingers dropped filler into a leaf large enough to serve 

 as a wrapper. Then glue was applied to the wrapper for 

 the length of the cigar. These "paste (or 'barnyard') 



37 



