I am going to share a first hand account of what tobacco season was in Stewart County in 1910. Verman Fitzhugh wrote this letter to my father thirty years ago, remembering his days as a young boy. Vermon was my father's double first cousin. He was the son of George Fitzhugh, who was the son of Henry Madden Fitzhugh, who was son of James Young Fitzhugh. Verman was the nephew of my grandmother, Minnie Fitzhugh Dennis. Moreover, to make for even more confusing connections, Vermon was married to Asilee Parker, who was the first cousin to my grandfather, Thomas M. Dennis, and the granddaughter of Thomas M. Dennis and Levicey Futrell. -jan Vermon's recollection of tobacco in Stewart Co., 1910: "In my mind I pictured the road down the hill to the tobacco barn at the bottom of the hill-just a few hundred feet or yards to the left on a road that went to Aunt Fannie Robertson's place. Believe it or not, I saw that barn "raised". I saw the first crop of tobacco placed in it and witnessed the saw dust fire that cured it. In my youth I saw a lot of things happen in connection with tobacco. I have wormed the plants, got the irritating gooey in my eyes which would burn for days. I tried to help in harvest time. Split the plants and straddle them over the sticks on which they would be placed in the barn for curing. Then near market time, the stripping of the leaves, grading and putting them in a hogshead for shipment to market in Clarksville or Nashville. Three times I went to market with Papa. Our tobacco, hogs, and corn were placed on the river bank. We went down the river before sundown and maybe about 4:00 o'clock the next morning the steamboat would pull in for a landing to pick up the cargo. Our way then of notifying the boat of a haul was to get on the river edge and wave a lighted lantern. The boat would answer with its steam whistle and pretty soon it would come in for a landing. In those days, all up and down the Cumberland, the steamboats zig-zagged from one landing to the other. Time was not important as it is today. Everybody had time, plenty of time. Living was hard, money non-existant. It took two days and one night to go from our landing to Nashville. I did not mind. I enjoyed the good food served on the boat and the apparent pleasure of the negro stevedores shooting craps between landings.