6 THE PEANUT— THE UNPREDICTABLE LEGUME 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE PEANUT INDUSTRY 

 IN THE UNITED STATES 



"Groundnuts" are mentioned ( 19, 20) in some of our earliest Colonial 

 ^cords, but this name was used for other plants as well as for peanuts, 

 ■''and we are often not sure what plant was indicated. Whether or not 

 peanuts were grown within the present limits of the United States by the 

 Indians of pre-Columbian times is still questionable, but we do have 

 authentic records of peanut culture during Colonial days. The following 

 quotation from a report by Sir William Watson (27) to the Royal Society 

 and published in the Philosophical Transactions for October 1769 is of 

 special interest: 



"It is with this view, that I lay before you some pods of a vegetable 

 and the oil pressed from them. They were sent from Edenton, in North 

 CaroHna, by George Brownrigg, whose brother. Dr. Brownrigg, is a 

 worthy member of our Society; and are the produce of a plant well 

 known and much cultivated in the Southern colonies and in our American 

 sugar islands, where they are called groundnuts, or ground pease. . . . 

 Mr. Brownrigg, from whom as I before mentioned, I received the oil, 

 considers the expressing oil from the ground pease, as a discovery of his 

 own: It may, perhaps, at this time, be very little practiced either in 

 North Carolina, the place of his residence, or elsewhere. But certain it 

 is that this oil was expressed above fourscore years ago; as Sir Hans 

 Sloane mentions it, in the first volume of his History of Jamaica ; and 

 says that this oil is as good as that of almonds. . . . After the oil has 

 been expressed from the ground pease, they are yet excellent food for 

 swine." 



Thomas Jefferson (6) mentioned peanuts as being commonly 

 grown in Virginia, but implied that the crop was of little importance 

 (Commercially. Before the Civil War, they were grown commercially 

 at least for local consumption throughout the South and even in Cali- 

 fornia. Ramsey (23) in his history of South Carolina, 1809, mentioned 

 among vegetables, groundnuts used as a food, as a substitute for cocoa, 

 and as a source of oil for domestic use. In discussing Edisto-Island, he 

 again mentioned groundnuts, saying, "They are planted in small patches 

 chiefly by negroes for market. They produce 80 bushels per acre. They 

 are commonly sold for five shillings sterling per bushel. . . . price in 

 1768 was eight pence sterling per bushel." The fact that they were being 

 grown commercially in South Carolina is shown also from records of 

 exports from the port of Charleston. We find a shipment of 51 casks of 



