like manna FROM GOD: THE AMERICAN CHESTNUT TRADE IN SOUTHWESTERN VIRGINIA

Environmental History, Jul 2004 by Lutts, Ralph H

Some nuts shipped out of Stuart may have come from bordering North Carolina, but enormous quantities originated within Patrick County. In October 1915, the county newspaper reported, "About thirty wagon loads of chestnuts were brought to Stuart from the Meadows of Dan Saturday and Monday for shipment. The D. & W. Ry. has been taking away a car of chestnuts every day for some time." This was a lot of chestnuts, especially when we realize that the nuts arriving from Meadows of Dan and other Blue Ridge communities often were hauled in horsedrawn Conestoga wagons capable of carrying about two thousand pounds each. Even if the average wagon load was half that amount, this adds up to about 30,000 pounds of nuts shipped in two days.33

Despite the romantic tales of children collecting chestnuts to buy new shoes for school, the chestnut trade was not necessarily small; in some areas it was a large industry. The U.S. Agricultural Census of 1910 shows that Patrick County, Virginia, accounted for nearly 160,000 pounds of nuts. This is a high figure, but it is not unique; a single railroad station in West Virginia shipped 155,000 pounds of wild nuts in autumn 1911.34 These figures probably do not include all of the nuts harvested in these counties. For example, census figures account only for those reported, and the West Virginia figure does not account for nuts that may have been shipped by other means. The newspaper report of what was shipped from Stuart in a single weekend suggests the magnitude of the trade-at the peak of the season the train departed almost every daywithacarladen with chestnuts.

The U.S. Agriculture Census figures for 1910 show that Grayson, Carroll, Patrick, Floyd, and Franklin counties produced 360,384 pounds of nuts (Table 2). This amounted to 43 percent of the entire production of all nuts in Virginia that year. Patrick County produced more nuts than any other county in the state. Although the census figure is for "nuts," with no distinction regarding the kinds of nuts produced, nearly all of the nuts shipped in this region were chestnuts. (These figures may have included limited quantity of chinquapins and, perhaps, a few walnuts.) This conclusion is supported by the fact that twenty years later, after the ravages of the chestnut blight, these five counties together produced a mere 640 pounds of nuts, including only 170 pounds of chestnuts.35

It is quite likely that the trade continued to grow rapidly between 1910 and 1920. With an estimated return of ten cents per pound to the merchants, the value of the 1910 crop in Patrick and Floyd counties was only $15,985 and $4,879, respectively.36 The value of the trade in all five counties would be a mere $36,038. This does not come close to the later estimated annual value of Patrick's crop as over $52,164 ("a greater source of revenue than cattle"), or Floyd's crop as $100,000. It even falls far short at double or triple of the price per pound. If the estimates are correct, the annual trade may have grown in the succeeding decade or more to something approaching 500,000 to 1,000,000 pounds a year in the most productive of these five counties.