Agenda - 01-24-2013 - 4g - Laserfiche WebLink

Browse Search

NPS FORM 10 -900 -A (8-86) United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet Section number 8 Page 13 Captain John S. Pope Farm Orange County, North Carolina 14 OMB Approval No. 1024 -0016 in a portion of the enclosed rear porch, and maintains the property and outbuildings so that they can be interpreted by tour - goers. The 1952 and 1967 additions to the property were combined into the main parcel, but are not included within the National Register boundary. Agricultural Context: Tobacco Farming in Orange County Agriculture has long played an important role in the history and economy of Orange County. The topography of the county is predominantly gently rolling hills and flatland with a combination of sand, silt, and clay soils over an underlying base of rock. The sandy loam, which provides the drainage necessary for tobacco farming, are located throughout the county, but larger concentrations of the soil are found in the northern part of the county, making tobacco farming more successful there. With the popularity of brightleaf tobacco in the years leading up to and following the Civil War, the economy of northern Orange County came to rely heavily on tobacco cultivation. The number of county farms tending the brightleaf soared from 10.8 percent to 40.7 percent from 1850 to 1860 and the quantity of tobacco grown rose five -fold, exceeding a million pounds.4 While wheat and corn continued to be grown in all parts of the county, by 1860 seventy -five percent of tobacco growth in the county occurred in its northern section.5 Tobacco remained the major cash crop in northern Orange County from the mid - nineteenth century through the early twenty -first century and was grown by small and large farmers alike. In 1850, three - quarters of the county's farms contained less than 100 acres, while just a handful had more than 500 acres. The average size of farms dropped from 285 acres to 198 acres between 1860 and 1870, in part because of the lack of slave labor to work the fields, and the value of farms fell by half during the same periods However, the expanding tobacco markets in nearby Durham made tobacco increasingly more profitable at the same time. The 1870 United States federal census listed tobacco production at 530,442 pounds (though those figures included Durham County, which was still a part of Orange County).' Like many mid -sized farms in northern Orange County, tobacco was the primary cash crop cultivated on the Captain John S. Pope Farm. It was a labor- intensive crop requiring leaves to be picked and strung by hand, so the Pope family employed a farm laborer as early as 1880, when the federal census lists an unrelated African American servant, William Thompson, living on the property with the family. A log building at the rear of the property housed the laborer, who likely took meals with the family and 4 Mattson, Richard L. "History and Architecture of Orange County, North Carolina," Unpublished manuscript. Hillsborough, NC: Orange County Planning and Development Department, 1996, pg. 20. 5 Carter, Jody, and Todd Peck. "Historic Resources of Orange County." Unpublished manuscript. Hillsborough, NC: Orange County Planning and Preservation Department, 1993. 6 Mattson, pg. 36. Lefler, Hugh. Orange County 1752 -1952. Chapel Hill: The Orange Printshop, 1953, pg. 122.