Donna on the Side - The Meet Scene:
Raleigh-Durham North Carolina -
a visit to the Duke Homestead and Tobacco Museum

The Adidas Outdoor Track & Field Championships is held in an area rich in history. Today, the Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina area is a major center for business and technology. But in the19th century it was the heart of a world-wide tobacco empire.

Today, smoking is banned in most public places, today. But not so in the past. Tobacco was a very important comodity in the history of North Carolina. So important was it in colonial times that it was used as currency. During the 19th century however, it really had a tremendous influence on North Carolina's economy, development and role in many industries.. Many of the cities in the state owe their development to tobacco as profits from tobacco were invested in land and fast growing southern industires such as electric power and textiles. Tobacco money was also used for humanitarian causes as well including establishment of Duke University.

Tobacco as a consumer oriented comoditiy started on Duke Homestead near Durham. There, tobacco was tranformed and marketed into cigarettes and a world wide industry. In 1865, after returning from the Civil War, Washington Duke, an Orange County farmer began making smoking tobacco in a small hut. Later, James "Buck" Duke, Washington's son, founded the American Tobacco Company and Duke Power and endowed Duke University. The Dukes were also instrumental in extending their influence and money to textiles, hydroelectric power and philandrophy.

A Tobacco Tidbit:
The present day term of "bull pen" to refer to the place where baseball pitchers warm up came out of the early days of the Durham Bulls baseball team. Back then, Durham Bulls pitchers warmed up under the Bull Durham sign. Eventually, the term "bull pen" became used in all of baseball to identify the place where pitchers warmed up.

The Duke Homestead & Tobacco Museum
We made a visit to the Duke Homestead & Tobacco Museum in Durham which is on and includes the ancestral home of the Duke family. It does a good job of presenting the history of tobacco in North Carolina. The museum consists of the museum building which includes the displays and information and the grounds which have the family home, barns and buildings. The museum offers this description of itself: "When you visit the restored Duke Homestead, you will see an authentic 'living museum of tobacco history' offering activities that demonstrate early farming techniques and manufacturing processes which made tobacco such an essential mainstay of the state's economy."