Transcribed from volume II of Kansas: a cyclopedia of state history, embracing events, institutions, industries, counties, cities, towns, prominent persons, etc. ... / with a supplementary volume devoted to selected personal history and reminiscence. Standard Pub. Co. Chicago : 1912. 3 v. in 4. : front., ill., ports.; 28 cm. Vols. I-II edited by Frank W. Blackmar.

Tobacco.—While Kansas has never been considered a tobacco-growing state it has been demonstrated that the crop can be sucessfully grown here. The plant has probably had a limited cultivation ever since the settlement of the territory, but no record of production prior to 1870 is to be found. In 1870 there were 29,047 pounds raised; 201,040 in 1872 and 393,352 in 1873. The first figures of acreage are those of 1877, at which time 717 acres were devoted to the cultivation of tobacco. The following year the acreage was only 553, with a gradual decline in area until in 1910, when it was but 201 acres. This crop, however, was valued at $25,260, or a little over $125 an acre. Col. Sharp, a merchant of Coffeyville and a former resident, of Kentucky, has been encouraging the culture of tobacco in Montgomery county. In 1909 he sent to Kentucky and obtained a quantity of White Burley seed, this being the variety that made the Blue Grass state famous, and gave it to about 100 farmers living about Coffeyville, offering a prize of $10 for the best sample grown that year. A number of them promised to plant and experiment with a crop. On seven farms visited by the colonel in 1910 he found tobacco doing well on six of them. He expressed his belief that the article can be grown in this state as successfully as in Kentucky. The White Burley crop in parts of Kentucky averages $275 to the acre.

Page 810 from volume II of Kansas: a cyclopedia of state history, embracing events, institutions, industries, counties, cities, towns, prominent persons, etc. ... / with a supplementary volume devoted to selected personal history and reminiscence. Standard Pub. Co. Chicago : 1912. 3 v. in 4. : front., ill., ports.; 28 cm. Vols. I-II edited by Frank W. Blackmar. Transcribed July 2002 by Carolyn Ward.