Reidsville, Rockingham County, N.C., 1939 photograph of Mrs. Cornelia Neal and two other women are pictured seated on a bed, stringing tobacco bags. There is a stove visible in the foreground.

Report Text: NEAL, MRS. CORNELIA, (colored), age 66, husband 70; two children and four grandchildren living with her.

INCOME: They raise some of their food and a little tobacco.

HOME CONDITIONS: The house has eight rooms and there are 62 acres of land. they own 2 mules, a cow and about 50 hens. House is in bad shape but is well kept.

Food costs them $3.50 a week and taxes are $41 a year. They have had to borrow money on their home and are trying to pay it back.

She has been stringing for 35 years and makes about $26.00 a month. They need this money badly. It tires her a little to string bags because she is so old.

Photographers: Carleton Stutz, Peter A. Maxfield

Source: UNC Digital Collection: Tobacco Bag Stringing - Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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What is Tobacco Bag Stringing?
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, families throughout the tobacco-growing regions of North Carolina and Virginia earned much-needed income by sewing drawstrings into cotton tobacco bags.

Long forgotten today, tobacco bag stringing was a common activity in many communities.

Because the labor was not physically demanding and could be done at home, the work attracted many women, children, and others who needed money to supplement their farm incomes, or who could not find work in nearby factories and mills.

READ More About The History Of Stringing Tobacco Bags Here:
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