Turpentine
Naval Stores-What were they?
When there were wooden sailing ships there were Naval Stores.
Sometimes whole industries disappear. I live near the Wiregrass, an area that still remembers the Naval Stores industry.1
Turpentine was a cash crop in Alabama2, Georgia 3, Florida4 and North Carolina (why it is called the Tar Heel State).5 The economics are assessed in “The Importance of the Turpentine Industry in the American South.”6
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Georgia was the world’s leading producer of naval stores, the materials extracted from southern pine forests and used in the construction and repair of sailing vessels. Typical naval stores included lumber, railroad ties, rosin, and turpentine.7
There is an Historical Marker in Bulloch County, GA for Charles Holmes Herty of University of Georgia Chemistry Department who conducted experiments in 1901 that revolutionized the naval stores industry in America.8
Zora Neale Hurston wrote "Turpentine Camp” in 1939
Zora Neale Hurston wrote "Turpentine Camp – Cross City," one of the few firsthand accounts written about the lives of the turpentine workers.9 There is an historical marker in Sarasota County about the “Bee Ridge Turpentine Camp.”
Tapping the Pines: The Naval Stores Industry in the American South
But thanks to the LSU Press there is a book, Tapping the Pines: The Naval Stores Industry in the American South10 by Robert B. Outland. Outland’s book is the first complete account of this sizable though little-understood sector of the southern economy. Outland traces the South’s naval stores industry from its colonial origins to the mid-twentieth century, when it was supplanted by the rising chemicals industry. A horror for workers and a scourge to the Southeast’s pine forests, the methods and consequences of this expansive enterprise remained virtually unchanged for more than two centuries.
Thanks to a Wiregrass friend, KM, who talks with me about Turpentine.
Meaghan English. Turpentine Farms. True South. 2/8/2017. By 1860, turpentine farms were producing $642,000 in Alabama which was covered in dense longleaf forests. . This became the scene of turpentine retrieval. Mobile County, Tuscaloosa County, and many counties in between became desirable distilling sites between the mid nineteenth century and the early twentieth century. The distilling of turpentine provided fuel and the resin was used in many varnishes and soap industries, according to the Encyclopedia of Alabama.
Buddy Sullivan. Naval Stores Industry. New Georgia Encyclopedia. 2006, 2020.
Barbara Clark, History of the Turpentine Industry in North Florida. WFSU.
David Cecelski. North Carolina and the Turpentine Trail. Coastal Review.org. 8/20/2019.
David. Walker. The Importance of the Turpentine Industry in the American South. Academia Letters. 2022.
Buddy Sullivan. Naval Stores Industry. New Georgia Encyclopedia. 2006, 2020.
Pioneer Turpentining Experiment. Georgia Historical Society. 2014. Dr. Herty devised a method using metal gutters and a cup for gathering resin from pine trees. This system was designed to replace the centuries old method of “boxing” or cutting a collection box in the living tree. Boxing had proved disastrous to southern forests. The massive cuts caused insect, fire and wind damage and destroyed valuable timber.
On July 20, 1901, Dr. Herty and his able assistant, Frank Klarpp hung a metal cup and gutters on the first tree. Herty and Klarpp kept careful records on the quantity and quality of resin collected from the cupped trees and boxed control trees and proved the cups and gutters successful. The experiment also led to the development of the clay Herty cup because of problems with metal cups used here. Dr. Herty (1867-1938) also devised the first system for manufacturing newsprint from southern pines and gave the South a tremendously successful cash crop.
Zora Neale Hurston. "Turpentine Camp – Cross City." Essay traces Hurston’s travels through the pine forests with an African-American “woods rider” named John McFarlin. Hurston's work on Florida’s turpentine camps is still considered authoritative.
OUTLAND, ROBERT B. 2021. TAPPING THE PINES: the naval stores industry in the American South. [S.l.]: LOUISIANA STATE UNIV PR. 2004, 2021.
Yet once again I feel smarter after reading your articles.
I don’t know if this is true - maybe someone else here does - but I’ve heard that Georgia was not originally called the “Peachtree State” but the “Pitch-Tree State,” referring to the pine tar, rosin, and turpentine industries.