About the Museum
From Portland, CT northward along the Connecticut River Valley on to Massachusetts and the lower tip of Vermont, the soils, climate and the know how of the farmers produced a tobacco that was excellent for the manufacture of cigars. The settlers from Europe found the natives using tobacco in pipes. Smoking leaves rolled up into a cigar was brought to New England from the Caribbean by General Isreal Putnam about 1763. |
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| Since the early 1800's farmers in this area have grown tobacco for the two outside layers of cigars - the binder and the wrapper. A type called Shoestring, then Broadleaf and Havana Seed supplied the leaf. In the late 1800's a fine grained type imported from Sumatra began to replace the wrapper from the valley. Researchers matched Sumatran leaf by making shade tents of cloth to cut sunlight and raise humidity. The first tent was put up on River Street in Windsor in 1900. |
 Shade tent |
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From that beginning to the present, shade grown
leaf from the valley has been recognized as the finest cigar wrapper in the
world. The growing of this crop had a very strong effect on the economics of
the valley towns. It brought in millions of dollars and provided a source of
work for thousands of young people fourteen or more years old. Even so, the local labor force was not enough to harvest the crop. Girls from Florida, boys from Pennsylvania and adults from Jamaica and Puerto Rico came to the valley to work the shade tobacco crop. Many of the adults stayed in the valley, thus adding to our ethnic mix. A new invention, in 1953, had a profound effect on the need for valley leaf to bind and wrap cigars. Finely ground up tobacco was mixed with an adhesive and made into a thin, paper-like sheet. The first use was as a binder and thus the broadleaf acreage rapidly declined. Adjustments to the method eventually made the product useful as wrapper. This change and a general decline in cigar smoking has reduced the Connecticut acreage from a high of 30,800 in 1921 to 2000 acres today. Fields that once grew tobacco, now grow nursery stock, houses, industrial parks and shopping centers. The Connecticut Valley Tobacco Historical Society was formed in 1988 to help preserve the artifacts and history of the cigar tobacco agriculture before it is completely gone from the valley. This society became the beneficiary of a trust fund set up by John E. Luddy who earned his money from selling shade cloth and other items needed by growers. The Connecticut Valley Tobacco Historical Society in turn made a grant to the Town of Windsor to be used for a tobacco museum at Northwest Park. The resulting Luddy/Taylor Connecticut Valley Tobacco Museum consists of two structures. First, an existing tobacco curing barn was remodeled to accommodate exhibits of early and modern equipment used to grow the crop. Second, a new, year-round facility was built to exhibit photographs, writings, and other documents about the crop. |
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Home / General Information / Town of Windsor Visitor Information / The Connecticut Valley Tobacco Historical Society
Northwest Park, 135 Lang Road,
Windsor, CT, 06095
phone: (860) 285-1888