Jacques Busbee, who founded the famous
Jugtown Pottery in Seagrove in 1921.
Without her sampler serving as a primary
source to jump-start a historical investigation,
we would not have known to look for Eliza in
other sources. She simply would have remained
a forgotten footnote to North Carolina history.
But by studying an artifact, her sampler, cura¬
tors have been able to return another woman
from the shadows of the past.
Once North Carolina Museum of History curators learned more
about Eliza Taylor, they realized that tire museum's collection
includes several artifacts related to her. (Above) The museum
owns portraits of her daughter, Anne Taylor Busbee, and her
son-in-law, Perrin Busbee It ovens portraits of Eliza's guardians,
lohn l.ouis Taylor and William Gaston, as well as items related
to Gaston that include sheet music for "The Old North State."
Images courtesy of the North Carolina Museum of History
A curator is someone who works with and stud¬
ies the objects in a museum. To learn more
about history careers, access http:/ /nemuseum
ofhistory.org/THJHA_ THJHACareers.html.
When analyzing an artifact, consider the
following questions:
What is this artifact?
How would you describe it (size, shape,
color, texture, materials, and so forth)?
Who invented, made, or used it?
When was it used?
How was it used?
What does this artifact tell you about the
people who owned it or made it?
How does this artifact relate to North Carolina
history? What is its significance?
Analyzing
an Artifact:
by Alison Holcomb *
he tobacco hogshead on display in
Washington Duke's 1869 tobacco fac¬
tory at Duke Homestead State
Historic Site prompts daily questions
from visitors: What is that huge barrel? Why is
it in this factory? What does it have to do with
tobacco? The answers to these questions help
historians tell a fuller history of tobacco — a crop
that has influenced the history of North
Carolina like no other.
Just like letters, photographs, and birth
records, artifacts such as the hogshead can serve
as primary sources and provide firsthand evi¬
dence to historians. Even big tobacco barrels can
tell stories that help people experience the past
in a more authentic way. Analyzing the tobacco
hogshead reveals the hard, heavy labor
involved in tobacco's sale and manufacture.
Expanding that analysis to other primary and
secondary sources about hogsheads helps us
better understand tobacco's importance.
Secondary sources reveal that people used
hogsheads to transport and store tobacco from
the colonial period through the early 1900s.
These barrels consisted of red or white oak
staves (the long, vertical parts) and oak hoops,
and they usually measured forty-eight inches in
length and thirty inches in diameter at the head.
After sale at a warehouse, leaf tobacco got
pressed, or "prized," into the hogshead. When
full of leaf tobacco, hogsheads weighed about
one thousand pounds each. Warehouse workers
rolled them to buyers' wagons or carts. At facto¬
ries, workers then broke the hogsheads apart,
emptied out the tobacco, and sold the barrel
parts for scrap wood or firewood.
Just by examining our massive hogshead at
Duke Homestead, we learn something about
tobacco warehouse and factory workers. The
laborers assigned to roll such huge barrels
around the warehouses, place them in carts and
boats, and unload them at ports and factories
■ \lison Holcomb is the assistant site manager at the Puke Homestead
Tlllll, Spring 2009
