Remembering Our Rural Roots

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In back of a tobacco field in 1874 in Wisconsin are haystacks, a barn and a house with people standing in front of it. -- from the Andreas Larsen Dahl collection

Wisconsin Historical Society, Image #26428

Two men in 1873 are posed amid tobacco plants in Wisconsin. Behind the men are a windmill and barn. In the center background a woman and a child stand near tall stacks of hay. The farmhouse is in the far background. -- from the Andreas Larsen Dahl collection

Wisconsin Historical Society, Image #27731

Workers pose in 1896 at the Willms cigar factory in Milwaukee, with cigars and cigar boxes. Gustav Willms, 1854-1917, sits on the far left with six cigar boxes on his knee. His son Edward Willms, born 1886, sits on the far right with a cigar mold in his hands. The other workers are not identified. The cigar factory was in the back of the Willms house.

Wisconsin Historical Society, Image #86338

A man on a large horse-drawn cart hauls a group of giant sugar beets, shown on a "tall-tale" postcard. The two horses are stepping onto a dirt road. The card was created Oct. 30, 1909, by Alfred Stanley Johnson Jr. of Waupun in Fond du Lac County, Wisconsin.

Wisconsin Historical Society, Image #44420

Jerry Apps

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Pioneer farmers from the East as early as the 1830s brought skill and interest in growing tobacco to Wisconsin. By 1850 tobacco was grown in Adams, Brown, Columbia, Marquette, Richland, Rock and Walworth counties. Richland County produced the most of any county for that year at 740 pounds. Wisconsin farmers by 1870 were producing 960,813 pounds of tobacco annually, most of which was sold locally to be used in cigar-making. Many Norwegian immigrants began growing tobacco, which was an extremely labor-intensive cash crop.

Jerry Apps, born and raised on a central-Wisconsin farm, is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the author of more than 40 books – most on rural history and country life. Visit www.jerryapps.com for more information.