The local inspector, who received £25 currency a year 

 for his services, was sent for only when there was enough 

 tobacco in the warehouse. 



Frankfort and the nearby village of Leestown, which 

 together had three warehouses, were active export 

 markets in that period. In 1818 tobacco worth $14,100 

 ( in 282 hogsheads ) had been shipped out from that dis- 

 trict. Except for the tobacco of a few production areas 

 in the south-central parts of Kentucky, much of the leaf 

 was of poor quality. The consequent low prices in the 

 period between 1819 and 1836 curbed expansion of the 

 agriculture. 



Yet, in 1821 planters were being advised by farm 

 authorities that tobacco was "unquestionably the best 

 crop the Farmers of Kentucky can at this time raise." 

 Much of the tobacco of the state was taken by coastwise 

 vessels out of New Orleans to Virginia for stemming and 

 redrying. The Old Dominion, by 1818, had developed a 

 considerable industry in processing Kentucky tobacco. 



Tobacco from the Bluegrass State was reaching New- 

 Orleans in hogsheads averaging 1,300 pounds and in 

 kegs and in boxes. More than half of the leaf received at 

 that port went to United States ports on the Atlantic 

 seaboard and then to domestic factories. Some of it went 

 to the British who had adopted grading classifications 

 for Kentucky tobacco. The London market in 1832, for 

 instance, was offering the Kentucky product as "fine and 

 leafy," "middling," "ordinary and old." Stripped leaf had 

 a special category. 



T 



lie fertile fields 



It was in the late 1830's that Kentucky entered the 

 period of its first great expansion in tobacco production. 



40 



