19th Century

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The Kentucky hemp industry fluctuated drastically over the 19th century, starting with its improvement during U.S. Embargo and Non-intercourse Acts during 1808-1809. The exclusion of European hemp and hempen goods resulted in greater interest in Kentucky and the establishment of manufactories. In 1809, well-known Lexington manufacturer, David Dodge, moved his ropewalk to Winchester, where he “intended to carry on his business more extensively than before” (The Kentucky Gazette,1809).

 

Over the next few years, he shipped hemp and yarns to Norfolk, where a manufacturer from said after receiving some of his material: “In 1809 and 1810 we had hemp and yarns from Winchester, Kentucky, the staple and quality very good and well handled; we then thought it only required to be water instead of dew-rotted, to be equal to any we had seen” (Moore, 1905).

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The War of 1812 also continued to stimulate Kentucky hemp production. In fact, the war itself is said to have been sparked by Henry Clay, who wrote a letter to his constituents in March of 1812 predicting that the country would go to war. Prices rose from $3 per hundredweight of the fiber in 1813, to $5 by the end of 1815. Nonetheless, foreign sources of hemp fiber became available to the United States upon the restoration of commerce with Europe at the end the war, it supplanted the domestic fiber in many uses, especially for naval purposes (Hopkins, 1951).

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The return of British imports prompted the tariff of 1816, which raised average rates to around 20 percent (United States History, n.d.). The increased cost of European material forced textile manufacturers in the New England states to seek domestic materials for production. Southern planters responded by dedicating new lands to cotton production, and as a result, bagging and bale twine (made of hemp fiber) was urgently needed to ship the material back North. The demand was so high at one point, the upriver region found itself unable to supply fully the requirements of the lower South for bale and rope bagging (Hopkins, 1951).

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Despite a temporary halt in production during the panic of 1819, demand from the South continued into the next decade and the price of Kentucky hemp was on the rise. By 1821, hemp fiber was selling between $5 and $6 per hundredweight. Another Lexington local, Richard Hawes, moved to Winchester in 1824 after inheriting some land in the county in 1823. The plot was a “fine hemp producer,” and Hawes partnered with Benjamin Buckner to build a ropewalk and bagging factory on the property. While Lexington had been (and continued to be) the center of the rope and bagging manufacturing industry in Kentucky, the move proved to be a wise one. It attracted the business of local men, and some from outside the county (Comstock, 2017).

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Henry Clay, who played a small role in settling the estate that brought Hawes the hemp land in Clark, sold a portion of his crop to the firm in 1825 (Lewis, 2015). Clay, who had become quite involved in the Kentucky hemp industry as both a farmer and manufacturer, had played a significant role in enacting the tariff in 1816 hoping to avoid an industry decline. In 1824, he helped passed another tariff large measure which raised rates to over 30% on average.

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Clay had two reasons for advancing the measure. First, as a matter of pure policy, he hoped to protect and encourage American manufacturing while gaining for the federal government a source of revenue that could be applied to internal improvements that he felt were needed. Secondly, as a politician, he felt that it would gain him support from the northeastern manufacturing states (United States History. n.d.). The increase in tariffs on foreign items of manufacture emerged as the center of political debate, and the advancement of the domestic manufacturing industries (particularly hemp) a common platform amongst Presidential candidates and a number of state representatives.

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Clay helped secure another tariff of 1824, which satisfied the Northern and Western industries, but upset regions of the South. Cotton growers sold heavily to Britain and other European nations, and justifiably feared tariff retaliation. Northern manufacturers and Western farmers produced largely for the domestic market and were more immune from foreign tariff discrimination than Southern growers (United States History. n.d.).

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As agitation for more protection continued and in 1828, Rep. James Clark, who later became the 12th Governor of Kentucky, testified on behalf of hemp, flax, and sail duck. His testimony provides an illustration of the Clark County, Bluegrass region, and Kentucky hemp industry from 1826-1828. Click here to read his full testimony. As a result, the tax on unmanufactured hemp per ton was raised to $45.00 the following May. The Tariff of 1828 was later called the “Tariff of Abominations.” While it sought to protect northern and western agricultural products from competition with foreign imports, the resulting tax on foreign goods raised the cost of living in the South and cut into the profits of New England’s industrialists. The bill was purposely drafted to make Andrew Jackson appear as a free trade advocate in the South and as a protectionist in the North, President John Quincy Adams approved the bill on May 18, 1828 and essentially sealed his election loss later that year.

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The Tariff of 1832 reduced existing tariffs in an attempt to remedy the conflict by the previous. The duty on hemp, which had been $60, was reduced to $40. However, this was still unsatisfactory to the large cotton producers in the South. Henry Clay proposed the Tariff of 1833, known as the Compromise Tariff (which led to his nick name “The Great Compromiser”), to gradually reduce rates over the next ten years (The Tariff of Abominations: The Effects, n.d.).

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Despite the loss of protection from foreign imports, Kentucky hemp manufacturers became especially active in the 1830’s. The exports of the Bluegrass section of the state in 1831 reached an estimated value of $2,750,000 of which hempen fabrics, second only to livestock, accounted for $750,000. “Quite a good demand” for bagging and rope was noted in the spring of 1833, and prices continued to rise through the spring of 1835. The industry fluctuated over the next few years, but by 1839 the two products were selling for good prices, however, not as high as they had been in 1835 (Hopkins, 1951).

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By 1840, Kentucky was producing more hemp than any other state. Two-thirds of the hemp in Kentucky was grown in the Bluegrass counties, including Clark, where much of the state’s slave population was also concentrated. Slavery had developed in Clark County according to the products that its agricultural climate was acclimated to produced. Hemp, grain, and livestock did not require the large number of field workers required for crops like cotton. Instead, they called for smaller but higher-skilled workforces whose labor patterns varied seasonally.

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Despite not requiring “largeness of scale,” the Clark County agricultural economy still desperately relied on slaves to to profitably convert the bluegrass feeds into profit. The process was dirty, break-breaking, and racialized, and many derisively labeled hemp a “nigger crop,” remarking that the work was “very dirty, and so laborious that scarcely any white man will work at it” (Lewis, 2015). On average, a single enslaved person could reportedly cultivate 17 acres and process 700 pounds of hemp fiber per season. Many antebellum farmers stated that the cultivation of hemp was the most profitable used of slave labor.

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Additionally, slaves were often hired for a time to the ropewalk that were processing last year’s crop. If a slave holder had more labor than was necessary, which was often the case during the hemp growing season, he always had the option of hiring out the slaves to neighboring farmers. This certainly seems to have been what Haws had in mind when he inherited the Clark County hemp farm in 1823. Not did opening his own ropewalk with Benjamin Bucker allow him to process his crop, but he could also employ his seasonally idle farm laborers.

 

The strength of the slave and hemp economy in Clark County had ensured that the success of the Haws and Buckner ropewalk, an operation indicative of the unique shape that the institution of slavery was taking in the Bluegrass. By 1840 Benjamin had bought out Richard Hawes’s interest in the company. Unfortunately, a sharp downturn in the markets hit the Bluegrass hemp farmers very hard in the early years of the decade, and with production dropping in the face of the falling market prices, the ropewalk was starved for materials (Comstock, 2017). A writer pointed out in July of 1839 that “the hemp crop is below par for the season and the quantity in the ground is considerably less than heretofore.” As time was to prove, 1839 was but the first of a three-year period in which insufficient rainfall caused hemp crops to be very poor, or as expressed by an official report, “quite deficient, and....almost a failure” (Hopkins, 1951).

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The price of hemp sank drastically during much of the 1840s, from $100-$100 per ton during most of the year in 1844, and dropping gradually to $20 per ton by the year-end. The price rose again to about $100 per ton early the next year and did not change radically until late in 1848, when it rose above $200. By 1850, the county noted having two hemp factories, and the primary exports consisted primarily of “hemp, cattle, horses, mules and hogs” (Collins, 1848). According to the United States Census of 1850, Clark County produced 450 tons of hemp, valued at $125 per ton (Bluegrass Heritage Museum). After 1850, prices for that kind of fiber were rarely quoted.

 

Through the next decade, the Kentucky industry began to decline. In 1848, Robert J. Didlake and David P. Bullock purchased town lots 59 and 60, located at the Northeast corner of Highland and Fairfax (now Lexington Ave.) The rope mill was said to have worked 40 hands. Just three years later, they sold the business to Andrew Keith and Clinton Haggard in 1851 who were able to keep it going for several years before closing it. By the time of the Civil War, however, the hemp industry was almost non-existent. The Federal blockade of southern ports, the Confederate embargo on cotton, and the voluntary curtailment of the acreage devoted to that staple in the South combined to diminish the need for baling materials. In addition. the United States formed the shipment of rope and bagging to the South, thereby outlawing the trade form which a part of Kentucky had derived its livelihood (Hopkins, 1951).

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Following the war, markets fluctuated drastically and farmers found it difficult to rely on hemp as a steady means of income, however, what little production was left in the U.S. was centered in Kentucky and in the bluegrass region of the state. In 1879, the whole country harvested only 5,025 tons of hemp, of which 4,583 tons came from Kentucky. After that, the loss of the binder twine market resulted in a further shrinking of hemp production. Wheat continued to be an important commodity in Clark County during this era, but it would rapidly decline, making way for locally produced bluegrass seed to rise in its place.

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Winchester’s railway line began to rapidly expand in the early 1880s, encouraging the exportation of hemp and other agricultural products to continue through the end of the century. Warehouses played an essential role along with its expansion, as many crops (like hemp) required a “middle man” to manage the transport of the crop. This role was filled by warehouse operators. The proprietor purchased the farmers’ product, and in the case of hemp, would sometimes process it, then stored it until it could be shipped out. In Winchester, these warehouses were located in north Winchester near the rail lines and later constructed along purpose-built spur lines, for convenience.

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Prior to the arrival of the railroad and construction of the warehouse, a farmer selling his produce in Winchester had to find numerous customers to purchase his harvest in small lots. With the entry of a warehouse into the commercial arena, sales of agricultural products accelerated in two ways; in bulk quantities or to a single purchaser, the warehouse operator. The warehouse operator could use the railroad to sell those products to distant markets— particularly to manufacturers—such as hemp to factories producing binder twine, and wheat to gristmills, especially large roller mill establishments (Enoch, 2012). 

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Valentine White Bush (V. W. Bush) erected his warehouse for storing and shipping hemp, wheat, and other grains in Winchester on North Main Street in 1880. Based on local tradition and research, Bush’s hemp and grain warehouse may have been the first built in Winchester. In August, The Clark County Democrat published:

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Mr. V. W. Bush has made arrangements with the town authorities by which Main Street just beyond the

railroad will be still further widened twenty feet. Mr. Bush is going to build an elegant and commodious

commission house adjoining the railroad on the north, and work will begin in a few days.

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Another hemp warehouse was constructed around 1884, when the Jones Brothers - Thomas B. and Henry M. - purchased the property across the street from V. W. Bush. In 1887, they sold the warehouse to David S. Gay, who would become the largest hemp handler in Clark County. The Winchester Handbook from 1889 provides a description of these two warehouses:

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Hemp and Wheat Warehouses.

Jones & Gay have a very complete warehouse for storage of hemp, wheat and other produce.

They have connected with their establishment a hackling house where their hemp is cleaned and

prepared for market. They do an immense business. V. W. Bush has another large warehouse of the same

kind which is now leased to Levi Goff. It has the proportions of a city establishment and is always full.

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Despite the constant market fluctuations, production increased from 155 tons in 1869, to over 1,000 tons in 1889, valued at about $125 per ton. However, near the end of the century, the crop once again found itself competing against foreign sources of hemp. In 1895 that, David S. Gay stated “there is but little hemp left now in the hands of farmers and dealers. And that little is being held to cover ‘shorts,’ and will bring a good price. The crop in the U.S. for 1894 was only 250 tons. The acreage for this year ought to produce 600 tons. The largest crop ever raised was 1,500 tons. Hemp is now used almost entirely to mix with flax in manufacturing fine twine. Not one binder twine factory will use hemp this year.”

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As the century came to an end, the Clark County hemp industry was seemingly non-existent and many of the warehouses that were once full of hemp, were now shipping tobacco, whiskey and bluegrass seed.

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