The Humble Peanut

[Virginia Mescher]

Re: The Humble Peanut

This is Virginia's spouse posting.

There seems to be a common belief that peanuts were pig food or only eaten by the poor. But in the _Charleston Mercury_ from December 17, 1861, there is the following quote:

"A reporter in one of the morning papers states that the members of the Virginia Legislature made so much noise eating peanuts , that he is unable to hear the reading of a bill."

I really wouldn't consider the members of the Virginia Legislature as poverty stricken.

And the following quote from _The Liberator_ of December 3, 1858, is at least one account of eating peanuts before the war in the North:

"A few more persons straggled in, till we numbered thirty, including a few boys who had come in to eat their peanuts and discuss their affairs;..."

If peanuts are being eaten by boys, they were probably cheap and common.

These quotes were found with just a quick search and I just stopped looking down the list after I'd found a couple.

Now for a bit of conjecture. If peanuts were common in the North before the war, wouldn't it be reasonable to guess that some sutlers would sell peanuts as part of their stock? Has anyone found an account of sutlers selling peanuts? This question has identified an interesting area to do research and I've already found a sutler's ledger at UNC that will bear looking at but there are probably others out there. Interestingly, one of the items recorded in this sutler's register (the one at UNC) were "circus tickets."

And one other comment which hasn't been raised, the subject of boiled peanuts was extensively discussed on another forum. Although there were all kinds of conjectures and suppositions advanced by the proponents, no one was able to produce a single piece of primary documentation from the civil war period or earlier for boiled peanuts. So, unless you can find some primary documentation (and please share it if you do), leave the boiling pot for peanuts at home.

Michael Mescher

[PogueMahone]

Re: The Humble Peanut

I wonder if peanut farming is less labor intensive than cotton or tobacco? Virginia farmers may have been trying to find a crop that didn't require a large labor force and turned to peanuts. Just speculation on my part. I would be surprised if this was the case and the 1869 USDA didn't take it into account versus the "soldier theory".

Michael,

Did it not occur to you that the complaining reporter may have been backhandedly calling the Virginia legislators a bunch of pigs? Eating peanuts doesn't make THAT much noise.

[Virginia Mescher]

Re: The Humble Peanut

This is Virginia's spouse posting again.

The thought did occur to me that a reporter from South Carolina could be slamming the Virginia legislators for engaging in what he considered conduct beneath him. But, the report does imply that eating peanuts was a common occurrence among the legislators from Virginia and was allowed in the halls of the legislature. While they weren't all rich, I'd expect that none of them were poor. So the quote does support that eating peanuts was common for people above the poor class and its side effects (noise of cracking shells and I'm sure more than one shell landing on the floor) were tolerated by all classes.

Michael Mescher

[stri volunteer]

Re: The Humble Peanut

Consider in your research looking for alternate names for peanuts such as goober, ground pea, pindar, etc. You will be surprised what all pops up.

[Tom Craig]

Re: The Humble Peanut

Thank you to all who have responded, particularly Virginia and Hank. Those quotations and statistics were just the sort of thing I was looking for.

It appears from that basic survey that peanuts, while not super common in soldier life, would definitely have not been a complete oddity to see in a haversack or two here and there.

Thanks!
Tom Craig

[Virginia Mescher]

Re: The Humble Peanut

I wonder if peanut farming is less labor intensive than cotton or tobacco? Virginia farmers may have been trying to find a crop that didn't require a large labor force and turned to peanuts. Just speculation on my part. I would be surprised if this was the case and the 1869 USDA didn't take it into account versus the "soldier theory".

I grew up in tobacco country and know that tobacco is a very labor intensive crop and requires a number of people to grow and process it for market. The seeds need to be planted in a planting bed in Feb., replanted in a the fields in the spring, various steps taken during the growing season (weeded, topped of the upper leaves to make the plants produce larger leaves and not have a tall spindly plant, worms taken off just to mention a few), plants harvested in specific ways depending upon the curing method, cured, and then leaves graded and finally taken to market anywhere from Oct. to Dec. depending on the location and curing method.

As for peanuts, in reading the primary sources in the cultivation, they didn't differ so much from the way they were grown by my father in his garden. He would grow a few rows of peanuts in his garden ( I was supposed to take care of the peanuts) from what I remember they did not take any more care than the rest of the garden crops. When time came to harvest the peanuts, they were pulled up, dried, and then we could roast and eat them.

I haven't done any research on the cultivation on cotton so I really can't comment on the difficulty of that crop. All I know is that it required a great many people to harvest the crop. Maybe someone who has done research on cotton can comment.

[Hank Trent]

Re: The Humble Peanut

The thought did occur to me that a reporter from South Carolina could be slamming the Virginia legislators for engaging in what he considered conduct beneath him. But, the report does imply that eating peanuts was a common occurrence among the legislators from Virginia and was allowed in the halls of the legislature. While they weren't all rich, I'd expect that none of them were poor. So the quote does support that eating peanuts was common for people above the poor class and its side effects (noise of cracking shells and I'm sure more than one shell landing on the floor) were tolerated by all classes.

One of the challenges of research is to figure out how a reader would have reacted to something in the period, and honestly, in a lot of cases, there's no way to really know what the right answer is.

If I had to guess at the connotation of peanut-eating in the legislature, I'd say that in general, peanut-eating was seen as a casual spectator activity, based on numerous period complaints/descriptions of peanut-eating in theaters (can give examples if anybody wants). It brought up images of rowdy, cocky boys, indulging themselves while watching a show, rather than dignified men--even though dignified men did eat peanuts as snack food.

You know the little emoticon that some forums have, of an animated smiley eating popcorn? People post it when a flame war starts to break out, and the implication is "I'm just going to sit back and have fun watching the excitement," since eating popcorn is associated with being at a movie. I think that when legislators eating peanuts are presented in a negative context, it can be sort of the same thing, implying they're not taking the proceedings of congress seriously enough, because peanuts were symbolic of the theater.

Here are a couple more examples of peanuts and legislators:

[Robert A. High, representative 1838-1839, Alabama state legislature] His head was a little bald, which fact he took great pains to conceal. He was restless in his movements, and generally had a supply of apples and goober-peas in his hands, while he passed most of his time in the lobby, and was seldom present when his name was called. (p. 119, Reminiscences of Public Men in Alabama, William Garrett, 1872, on MOA)

[ex-Congressman Colonel Boreall--not sure if he's real or presented as a "type" and not sure if he's supposed to be southern] The Colonel has a right to enter the [U.S.] House and Senate. He talks familiarly of the President, who owes his nomination to him. This his patrons may appreciate his influence, he is generally seen sitting within the bar of the House, in close conversation with some leading members... Then he goes out with jaunty manner, pattering the pages with peanuts as he goes. DeBow's Review, 1859.

More southerners eating them:

Under the falls [Black Creek Falls, Gadsden, Alabama] there was a platform erected, and I learned that Wheeler's cavalry had had a dance there a few nights before. From the number of peanut hulls I saw they must have had a jolly time with the country girls.
(p. 67, How It Was: Four Years Among the Rebels, Mrs. Irby Morgan, Nashville, TN: 1892 http://docsouth.unc.edu/morgan/morgan.html

Consider in your research looking for alternate names for peanuts such as goober, ground pea, pindar, etc. You will be surprised what all pops up.

It's worth compiling a list. What else have folks run across?

peanuts
pea-nuts
ground beans
ground peas
ground nuts (watch out for references to the wild kind, though)
pindars
goobers
goubers
gubers
the Latin genus: Arachis

Goobers seems more southern; ground nuts seems more common earlier in the century or British.

Here are a couple rare ones, from Dunglison's Dictionary of Medical Science, 1854. Dr. Robley Dunglison was a professor in Philadelphia.

Arachis Hypogea. A. Americana, A. Africana, Arachnida hypogea, Ground nut, Pea nut, Earth almond, (S.) Mane; erroneously called Pistachio nut, in the South; Pindars of the West Indies. Cultivated in the Southern States. The seeds are oily, and are eaten. A kind of inferior chocolate may be made of them.

I've seen a few sporadic references, mostly European, to arachis hypogea being identified by the common name pistachio, but certainly not enough to think it was common "in the South." "Earth almond" seems a way more common synonym for the chufa.

Hank Trent
hanktrent@voyager.net

[PogueMahone]

Re: The Humble Peanut

Virginia,

I grew up in tobacco country also, which is why I asked. I never worked tobacco, but I've been around it all my life. It seems to be one of the more fussed over crops than any other.

(My parents grew tobacco a couple of years, but stopped the year one hand nearly cut off his own foot chopping stalks and another fell from the top of the barn hanging it. After that, they leased the allotment and the barn.)

Cotton was extremely labor intensive at picking time because you had a short timeframe to get it out of the field when it was ready to be harvested.

[PogueMahone]

Re: The Humble Peanut

Looking for something else, I happened upon this site with a description of peanut farming at Chapter VI: http://images.google.com/imgres?imgu...en-us%26um%3D1

"This low limit was almost reached the next day when Hamilton found himself on a peanut farm for the first time. He had always known that peanuts, unlike all other "nuts," grew underground but he had made the common mistake of supposing them to grow on the roots of the peanut plant like the tubers of a potato, instead of really being a true nut, developing from a flower the elongation of the lower portion of which reaches to the ground. The farm was run by an orphaned colored girl nineteen years old and her four younger brothers.
"Jes' as soon as the young-uns gits big enough," she said to Hamilton, when discussing the statistics of her little holding, "we're goin' to buy a big patch o' peanut land. Ah'd like to grow peanuts every year, but these hyar gov'nment papers say yo' shouldn't. They say once in every fo' years is enough fo' peanuts, but Ah'm goin' to try it every other year."

"Aren't they a very troublesome crop?"

"'Bout the same as potatoes, Ah reckon. But they pay a good price fo' picked peanuts, an' Ah can get these boys hyar to do the pickin'. In one o' the papers Ah saw up to Colonel 'Gerius' place the other day, one the gov'nment puts out, thar's a list showin' this country has to send to foreign countries fo' twelve million bushels o' peanuts every year. Ah'm goin' to try raisin' a real big crop, and Dicky hyar," she added, pointing to the oldest boy, "thinks jes' as I do about it."

Hamilton was distinctly impressed with the evidence that this young negro girl and her younger brothers not only knew enough about the peanut business to be able to make it pay, but that they were reading the government bulletins."

It is supposed to be based on stories collected during the 1910 census. The photos show little has changed since the Civil War except fashions.

[Gallinipper]

Re: The Humble Peanut

Hey, that's good stuff Joe. Whoooo-eeeeeyy! Look at those KY stills!

Rich Croxton