This presentation will examine the archaeology of former flue curing barns in Southern Maryland, which were used to dry out tobacco leaves.
Beginning with initial European settlement in the 17th century and continuing until the early years of the 21st, Maryland tobacco farmers air-cured their harvests in barns with hinged siding. Several farmers, however—among the wealthiest—experimented with flue-curing in weather-tight barns. One invented and patented a jacketed furnace manufactured by the Bibb Company of Baltimore in the 1860s. This illustrated talk examines a surviving Bibb Tobacco Flue Furnace recovered from a barn in Calvert County and suggests other possible examples of former flue curing barns in Calvert and Charles counties.
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