Tobacco Smoking; Wm. and Mary Qrtly., Vol. 8, No. 2

Transcribed by Kathy Merrill for the USGenWeb Archives Special Collections Project

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Tobacco Smoking

   William and Mary College Quarterly Historical Magazine, Vol. 8, No. 2.
   (Oct., 1899), p. 80

                               TOBACCO SMOKING.

   Most people are apt to suppose that as Virginians raised a great deal of tobacco,
they made personal use of a great deal.  But we cannot be too cautious in drawing
general conclusions.

   Brissot de Warville, who visited the country in 1788, says:  "The Virginians take
no tobacco in substance, either in the nose or mouth; some of them smoke, but his
practice is not so general among them as in the Carolinas."

   The practice of smoking tobacco was more common in England than in Virginia.  On
the return of his son, Thomas Nelson (afterwards general), from England, William
Nelson wrote that he regretted "to find that he had fallen into that bad practice
which most of the young Virginians going to England adopt, of tobacco smoking", adding
emphatically, "filthy tobaco".  Also that of "eating and drinking thought not to be
inebriety, more than was conducive to health and long life".  (Meade's Old Families,
etc., Vol. I., p. 207).

   As a matter of fact there is at present a much great consumption of liquor and
tobacco per man in New York and Pennsylvania than in Virginia.