Tobacco Farmers Keep Family Tradition Alive

Image Gallery Two chewing tobacco plug cutters. At front, Schwabacher Bros. & Co., Seattle, Wash.; at back, a STAR cutter (with "Save the Tags" cast into the handle.) The STAR was patented by Enterprise Mfg. Co. Jan. 1, 1885, in Philadelphia.

Large collections of old farming items often center on tools, equipment, paper and advertising items used by operators and owners. For instance, dairymen like cream separators and signs for feed and equipment, while grain farmers favor antique tractors and wrenches. 

The same is true of collectors who’ve raised crops in unexpected ways. Take tobacco crops, for instance.

Jesse and Mary Pepper come from a long line of tobacco farmers who grow burley tobacco. Mary’s family farmed a Virginia land grant in the mid-1600s. Later generations of that family farmed tobacco and cotton in the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi. Jesse’s forebears were tobacco farmers in Virginia, Kentucky and Missouri. The Peppers have continued that family tradition ... on the western border of Missouri.

“Tobacco is defined by Webster as an American herb,” Mary says. “With so many of our ancestors proven to be tobacco people, we feel that tobacco truly is our heritage.”

Jesse has been involved in the tobacco industry in Weston, Mo., since 1939. In the 1950s, he bought into the Weston Burley House, and later became full owner. Today, he and his son-in-law, Kenneth Kisker, own the warehouse. The Peppers’ grandchildren represent the ninth generation to raise the tobacco crop in Platte County, Mo.

The two warehouses are also burley tobacco auction houses, hosting large annual sales attended by major tobacco companies. Although it is one of the smallest markets in the country, Weston’s tobacco market – the only one west of the Mississippi – generates millions of dollars for the local economy. The longtime family business forms a backdrop for Mary Pepper’s collection of tobacco-related items.

She recalls saving the little red tin mules stuck on plugs of Red Mule chewing tobacco her father bought. Mary well remembers her father’s pipes, humidors, pouches and cigar boxes. But tobacco wasn’t just a man’s proclivity.

“My little Mississippi grandmother dipped snuff,” Mary recalls. “I was always fascinated by her dainty little snuff boxes and dippers.”

The Peppers’ collection includes items pertaining to production of burley tobacco in Weston. Collectibles also come from the auction house.

“Tobacco auction house collectibles include scales to weigh the tobacco, and baskets, mostly used prior to pallets, to place tobacco in for sales,” Mary says. “I have a burlap square used to ship tobacco down the river to market before Weston had a market. It has tobacco leaf prints on it.”