CIGAR HISTORY 1460-1760
A National Cigar Museum EXCLUSIVE
© Tony Hyman
1460 People native to North, Central and South America use tobacco, and have for centuries. Two strains of tobacco, rustica and tabacum are grown from Chile to Canada, the former primarily in North America, the latter in the Caribbean and South America below Mexico. Virtually every Amerindian society use tobacco, even among groups that practiced no other agriculture. It was absent only in Northeastern South America where, in Inka times, coca prevailed as the drug of choice.
1492 Columbus gets gift of tobacco which he dutifully carries back to Spanish Royalty.
1493 Everyday Europeans get introduced to tobacco by Columbus’s crew.
1498 Columbus’ third voyage.
1516 Gonzalo Hernandez de Oviedo becomes Viceroy of San Domingo. Writes a history of the region upon his return to Spain in 1526, describing the almost universal practice of cigar smoking.
1535 Cubans are shipping Spain the best grades of tobacco available at that time. Hundreds of farms (vegas) are reported as in production but most are 33 acres or less. Typically, half of the farm is devoted to food crops, half to tobacco.
1550± Sailors of all nations are reported smoking.
1560± Jean Nicot, French ambassador to Portugal, spreads tobacco to France.
1564± Sir J. Hawkins returns to England with North American Indian (rustica) tobacco.
1570 Tobacco reaches Austria. Introduced for medicinal purposes.
1571 City of Manila founded by the Spanish under Legaspi whose methods were in great contrast to the cruelty of Cortez and Pizarro.
1575 The Portuguese break the Spanish monopoly on tobacco farming, followed not long after by the Dutch. Only the British were left out of the tobacco growing business.
1580 Tobacco planting begins in the Vuelta Abajo of western Cuba.
1588 Hariot, writing in England about the Raleigh sponsored voyage to Virginia in 1584, mentions the availability of Indian tobacco growing wild “sowed by itselfe.” Hariot says the Spanish call the plant tobacco, tho he uses the North American Amerind name, uppowoc.
1598 German traveler reports clay pipe smoking as almost universal in England.
1600 England addicted to tobacco, its residents spending more than £200,000 in scarce silver coin annually, mostly to Dutch and Spanish smugglers. Best grade of Spanish tobacco brings the modern equivalent of $125 a pound. The worst grades of trash tobacco bring about $15 a pound.
1604 England’s King James ordered the uprooting of all the tobacco-plants as it was ”of the two, more tolerable that the same should be imported, than be permitted to be planted here within the realm, thereby to abuse and misemploy the soil of this fruitful kingdom.” Simultaneously, without Parliamentary approval, he raised import taxes from 4¢ to 60¢ a pound. Duties went up and down, often yearly, for the next two centuries.
1606 Spanish King decrees tobacco may be grown only in specific colonies, including Cuba, Puerto Rico, Santo Domingo and Venezuela. Direct sale of tobacco to foreigners is punishable by death.
1607 Jamestown colony founded to grow tobacco so Britain would not be dependent on their Spanish enemies or Dutch and Portuguese smugglers.
1609 Explorers Hudson and Champlain discover NY state Iroquois growing tobacco in the Chemung Valley (near today’s Elmira).
1610 William Strachey, the first secretary of Jamestown, describes two types of wild tobacco, varying in height from roughly two to eight feet. Planting of West Indian seed began.
1610 Playwright Ben Jonson describes adulteration of tobacco with various substances by tobacconists: “sack-lees or oil, nor washes it in muscadel and grains, nor buries it in gravel, underground, wrapped up in greasy leather, or pissed clouts; but keeps it in fine lily-pots that, opened, smell like conserve of roses, or French beans.”
1611 Jamestown ships 142,000 pounds of tobacco, according to one questionable source. Seems high for a scraggly new colony gathering wild weeds. Probably incorrect date and/or poundage. Other sources report a much more likely 2,300 pounds shipped from the 1915 crop.
1614 King of Spain permitted open cultivation of tobacco but orders all tobacco to pass through Seville before being resold to foreigners.
1614 English writer Barnaby Rich describes Londoners as being able to buy tobacco in 7,000 shops “in every land and in every corner about London.” Londoners spend £320,000 a year on tobacco. £120,000 of which still ends up in the hands of the Spanish. The Portuguese and Dutch also cash in on England’s addiction. The English need more colonies in the new world so they too can grow tobacco for the mother country.
1614 The first cigar store figure reported in London. These symbols became necessary to inform a largely illiterate population that tobacco was available for purchase at their tavern, wine and ale house, apothecary, grocery, chandlery or tobacconist shop.
1615± In Spain, paper wrapped cigarettes replace Mexican-style cigarettes where the tobacco is packed in reeds. Reed cigarettes had been around for centuries, found among the Aztecs.
1616 Tobacco officially becomes a cultivated “white man’s crop” in Virginia.
1616 Blaauwhoedenveem-Vriesseveem goes into the tobacco business in Amsterdam. Three centuries later it’s still in business warehousing, distributing, forwarding and insuring tobacco.
1617 John Rolphe led experiments in curing, favoring the dry hanging method over compost pile style heaps.
1620 A Dutch man-of-war brings the first 20 African slaves to Virginia.
1620 House of Commons in England votes unanimously “that the importation of Spanish tobacco is one of the causes of want of money within the kingdom.” England was undergoing a severe coin shortage, and would soon ban importation other than from their New World colonies.
1620 One report claims that only about one-tenth of Virginia tobacco was sent to England because of high taxes, the majority arriving in Amsterdam where profits were higher.
1621 One widow and eleven maids shipped from London to Jamestown as wives; auctioned under the trees, they brought an average of 120 pounds of tobacco each, the debt to take precedence over all others. This story is also told with earlier dates and larger numbers as high as “90 agreeable maidens, young and incorrupt” bringing 150 pounds. It’s claimed that some of the “first families” of Virginia are descendants.
1622 Jamestown colony ships 60,000 pounds of tobacco to England. Quality varied greatly to the distress of commercial sponsors, who claim 40,000 pounds of it brought very low prices. English merchants refuse to send any more commodities in exchange unless quality improves. “We heartily wish that you would make some provision for the burning of all base and rotten stuff and not suffer any but very good to be cured [and sent home]...”
1622 Spanish tobacco sold on world markets for roughly 8 times as much as Virginia.
1624 The Virginia Company was dissolved and taken over by King Charles I. Business matters remained in the hands of London businessmen who sent representatives to the colony and burned poor tobacco. Antagonisms between growers and merchants would last in Virginia for 200 years.
1627 Virginia tobacco production reached 500,000 pounds.
1629 Virginia tobacco production reached 1,500,000 pounds. Pipe manufacture from local clay booming in England.
1631 Tobacco cultivation begins in Maryland.
1631 In quality control move, Virginia passes a law dictating how many leaves may be picked from a plant.
1640 Tobacco grown in Windsor, CT. Local law passed reading that after September 1641 “...no persons within this jurisdiction shall [smoke] any other tobacco but such as is or shall be planted within these districts, except they have license from the court.”
1646 New Englanders continue enacting laws: “No person under the age of twenty...shall take any tobacco until he hath brought a certificate under the hands of a physician that it is useful for him and also that he hath received a license from the court for the same.”
1647 Another law provided that no person should use the weed publicly or in the “fyelds or woods” unless he were traveling at least ten miles, nor could he smoke in his own home with more than one other person at the same time. Tobacco was thought to lead to idleness.
1650 Farmers were given official permission to plant tobacco in Santa Clara province of Cuba, one of Cuba’s most important planting districts known as Remedios or Vuelta Arriba. In doing so, the governor was merely giving official sanction to planting which had been going on for half a century.
1650’s Puritans in Massachusetts banned smoking and the purchase of tobacco, but added that it was alright for wholesalers to buy the local crop and ship it elsewhere to corrupt someone else.
1650 Parliament reintroduces import duties on New England tobacco.
1655 New Haven colony passed an anti-smoking penalty of 84 pence per pipeful, the fine to be given to the person who rats on the smoker, making squealer a profitable new occupation.
1669 Plymouth Colony, puritanical regarding smoking, set a 12 pence fine for smoking within two miles of a church (meeting house) on Sunday.
1670 Spanish King establishes cigar and snuff factory in Seville.
1660 Tobacco production in Virginia varies from 500 pounds per acre to 1660 per acre depending on the quality of the soil and its preparation.
1670 The tobacco business in Austria becomes a government monopoly under the control of the “Inspector of Woods and Forests.” Over the next century, tobacco became a million dollar a year business.
1671 White labor continued to dominate the tobacco industry in the colonies. Three white indentured apprentices worked the fields for every one negro slave. Virginia population of 40,000 contained 6000 indentures and 2000 slaves. That would soon change as white labor got more scarce and expensive, slave labor got cheaper and more available.
1674 French King Louis XIV decrees the privilege for producing and selling tobacco was no longer granted to individuals but was exclusive to the Compagnie des Indes. Tobacco growing became a government monopoly.
1681 Lord Culpepper, writing about Virginia production, says “The market is overstocked, and every crop overstocks it more. Our thriving is our undoing and our buying of blacks hath extremely contributed thereto by making more tobacco.”
1686 A French writer visiting the colonies noted that, laws aside, ‘everyone smoked’ including children.
1690 Tobacco expensive but in vogue among London dandies, so tobacconists were popular. The English were pipe smokers. Snuff was second choice.
1699 Lionel Wafer describes Amerind cigars: The natives “laying two or three leaves upon one another, they roll up all together sideways into a long roll, yet leaving a little hollow. Round this they roll other leaves one after another, in the same manner, but close and hard, till the roll is as big as one’s wrist, and two or three feet in length.”
1700 Connecticut leaf was selling for two or three times the price of Virginia tobacco. New England tobacco was hearty stuff, not for the faint of heart or throat. As a result it was heavily flavored.
1704 New England (CT) tobacco being shipped to the “West Indies.” Jamaica?
1700± The Thirty year War influenced spread of tobacco in Europe. Nine of ten Austrian working class smoked, including many women and pre-teens.
1705 “If any person or persons whatsoever shall pay away, or put to sale, or offer to pay away or put to sale, any hogshead of tobacco which he hath deceitfully or hath caused or suffered to be deceitfully packed, by putting thereunto any stones, or intermingling therewith any dirt, sand, tobacco-stocks, stems, ground leaves, or other trash whatsoever, shall forefeit, for every hogshead so deceitfully packed, 1000 pounds of tobacco.” Connecticut law.
1710 Active international trade in the early 1700’s made cigars and other tobacco available to all social classes, as did epic amounts of smuggling.
1710± French snuff makers are credited with wrapping loose snuff in decorated wrappers, the first tobacco labels.
1711 First officially sanctioned tobacco factory established in Havana “for the purpose of encouraging the culture of tobacco.” Factory operated for 23 years.
1716 A La Civette opens as a tobacconist at 157 rue Saint Honoré in Paris. France’s oldest cigar store was sold to a Davidoff subsidiary in 1997.
1715± English journals carry ads emphasizing the therapeutic powers of medicinal snuff.
1717 Spanish King again rules that Cuban tobacco can be sold only to Spain. The edict creates a job opportunity for smugglers for the next 181 years. Tobacco farmers, vegueros, rebel.
1719 Tobacco planting begins in Pinar del Rio, the home of the famous Vuelta Abajo.
1719 Growing tobacco was prohibited throughout France; capital punishment could be imposed.
1721 Cuban vegueros revolt again against Royal decree limiting their tobacco markets. An unspecified number of planters were executed and their bodies hung on a hill in public display.
1723 Cuban vegueros revolt yet again against Royal decree limiting their tobacco markets. Spanish King retracts rule about selling cigars and tobacco only to Spain after six years of farmer revolt.
1728 International demand led the Spanish King to begin construction of a huge new cigar factory in Seville, a world class project that would take three decades to complete.
1730 By law, all tobacco grown in English colonies was required to be inspected prior to export to prevent the sending of trash, badly seasoned, and unmarketable leaf “inasmuch as it deceived His Majesty of his customs.” Inspectors were soon accused of passing bad tobacco of their friends and “spitefully burning” tobacco of others.
1730 W.D. & H.O. Wills, one of England’s most important makers of tobacco, cigarettes and cigars, open the first of numerous factories in Bristol, England.
1732± The first English snuff mill in America established in Virginia.
1732 In Maryland, tobacco was legal tender for all salaries and debts, including those owed the government, at the rate of 1¢ per pound.
1732 John and Awnsham Churchill, London, publish “A Collection of Voyages and Travels” which includes a large engraving of a Maylay and his wife, both smoking cigars. “The Habit of a Malayan and His Wife at Batavia.” This is the earliest print of a cigar smoker of which I am aware. Engraving in the NCM collection.
1734 Cuban Don Jose Tallapiedra enters a contract with the Spanish Government, agreeing to ship 120,000 arrobas of tobacco. An arroba is a Spanish weight equal to 25 pounds so he was committing himself to three million pounds a year. Shipments were to contain 1,000,000 pounds of the best quality leaf from Santiago, Sierra and Bejucal, used to manufacture chewing tobacco. 1,400,000 pounds were to be of the type used to make snuff and the remaining 600,000 pounds were to consist of snuff already manufactured in Cuba from properly prepared stemless leaves. No mention was made of cigars or cigar tobacco.
1734 W. Thornhill & Co., purveyors of smoker’s accessories, established in London.
1735 Cigar smoking glowingly described in journals of traveler John Cockburn published in England (thanks to a chance encounter with three Franciscan monks who shared their cigars with him).
1739 One farm in Windsor, CT, shipped “221 weight” of tobacco to Barbados.
1740 The Spanish King’s Royal decree of December, 1740, established the Royal Trading Company of Habana, given a monopoly of tobacco trade from Cuba. This monopoly was interrupted in 1762 and restored in 1764.
1744-1767 Numerous records exist of shipments of strong New England tobacco to Boston and to the West Indies.
1751 English law aimed to stop smuggling also contains provisions prohibiting adulteration of tobacco.
1752 French government offers the equivalent of a whopping 70¢ per pound for all tobacco grown by Louisiana settlers. The offer came at a good time as Indigo had been Louisiana’s major crop but insects destroyed it, elevating importance of tobacco.
1753 Connecticut established the position of tobacco inspector to make certain goods to be exported were in good condition.
1754 Virginia exported 50,000 hogsheads of pipe and snuff tobacco. A hogshead weighed between 800 and 1,000 pounds. Virginia (Southern) tobacco was unsuitable for cigars so used reluctantly.
1755 Virginia passes the Option Act making it possible to pay the clergy in money instead of tobacco.
1757 New Seville cigar factory finally finished, the largest industrial complex in the world, a “walled city” with more than 4,000 daytime inhabitants with its own chapel, rules and prison. Its workforce rolled 100,000 cigars a day. Similar factories would later be established by the Spanish Crown in Mexico and the Philippines.
1760 Pierre Lorillard opens snuff mill in New York City. Soon expands to other tobacco products.
Part I of the Cigar Time Line covers events from just before European intervention in the Western Hemisphere and the beginnings of the cigar industry in the U.S. in the 1760’s.
Government activities (usually laws) and particularly noteworthy companies are in bold as are brand names. If a box, label or company is on exhibit, it is marked in claret color. Entries in light blue have been added since the May 1st, 2008, upload. Entries in red are social or historic events with significant impact on the country.