Smith Tobacco Barn

The Smith Tobacco Barn is a tobacco drying shed in Dillon County, South Carolina. It is located on the east side of a dirt road about four hundred meters south of the South Carolina State Highways 17-34 and eight hundred meters north of South Carolina State Highway 17-155 and about 1.5 km east of the junction of the South Carolina State Highways 17-22 and 155 He was listed on the National register of Historic Places on December 4, 1984.

Use

Brightleaf tobacco was introduced in South Carolina in the 1880s and 1890s. These plants thrive on the sandy, loamy bottom of the Pee Dee and become smoke- dried. The traditional shed has one or two combustion chambers in which wood or coal was burned. In the 1950s, many scales have been converted to gas or oil firing, as it allowed better temperature regulation.

The tobacco leaves were placed on poles that were placed on a horizontal support beam in the shed. There were three stages of drying. The first phase was dried the leaves at 40-43 ° C, in the second phase, the temperature is raised to 54-57 ° C, so that the leaves were yellow. Finally, the temperature was raised to 71-77 ° C, to dry the stem.

Description

The shed is rectangular. The gable roof is built of sheet metal and the base of bricks. The walls way up to the eaves are made from sawn timber. At the corners of the bars are joined staked and sealed the cracks with mortar. The gable ends are clad with horizontal Weather thighs. The small rectangular doors in the gables may be opened to vent the interior. In the southern and eastern sides there are supported by posts canopies of sheet metal, the Shadows for winding the Blätterspendeten. In the west there are doors on the ground. The name of JL King and the date 1942 are carved into the cornerstone. Inside the shed was divided by wooden connecting beams into five sections.

At the southern end there is a masonry brick combustion chamber. Older photographs show that the lighting was changed later on fuel.

When the shed for the National Register was nominated, he was no longer used as a tobacco shed, but was considered the best-preserved tobacco shed in Dillon County and in neighboring Marion County from the period between 1895 and the 1950s.