4th Grade Trip to St. Mary's Historic City

October 12, 2001

Inside the Tobacco Barn

by Melanie

Welcome to the tobacco barn. Here is the master of the plantation speaking to a group of students. Above his head there are tobacco leaves which have been hung up to dry. Tobacco was grown in the summer. It had to be carefully watched because worms often ate the tobacco leaves . The leaves were cut and hung to dry in barns. In the 1600's, people thought tobacco was good and that it was a type of medicine. Tobacco became an important form of money for the colonists. They traded their tobacco with the Native Americans.

In school I learned that tobacco is bad for your health. I think tobacco is bad because I learned that people can get cancer from smoking tobacco or breathing the smoke from cigarettes, cigars, or pipes. Younger people might copy older people who smoke and they would get sick. Long ago in the 1600's, people didn't have much knowledge about tobacco and how it could cause illness. Today we now know that smoking is very bad for you.

Tobacco

by Mickey

Here is the master of the plantation sitting inside his tobacco barn. The colonists used tobacco as money . They also used it as medicine. The tobacco was usually hung high up in the barn to dry. After the tobacco dried, the master had his helpers pick off the worms that were on the tobacco leaves. These worms ate the tobacco and that would meant less money for the plantation owner. In the text book I read that if the worker missed a single worm, the land owner might make the worker bite off the worm's head. So, the workers tried hard not to miss any worms.

When I walked into the tobacco barn, I was confused when I saw the tobacco hanging because I didn't know why it was hanging. My text to self connection was that the farmers worked hard on the farm and when hanging up the tobacco. I work very hard on cleaning up my room, washing windows, untangling TV wires, plugging in the lights, making my bed, and doing more chores.

Taking a Break from Chores

By Kristina

In colonial time, all of the men had to go to work in the fields. In Maryland, men spent almost all of the year working in the tobacco fields. Even young boys had to work in the fields. Some of the jobs that the colonists did were watching over the children, cooking, tending the tobacco, and caring for the animals.

My text-to-self connection is my feeling of seeing this man use a scraper to scrape the bark off the branches for fence making. We don 't use scrapers to peel bark off of trees anymore. We use sticks and rocks to do this. At my house, I have a tree and I shave the bark off the dead branches.

Native American Work Shelter

by Darius

This is a Native American work shelter. In a work shelter, Native Americans would sharpen rocks to hallow out a tree trunk or dig in the ground to build a fire circle or prepare the ground for planting. There would be a big rock which the Native Americans wet with water to make it easier to scrape the smaller rock against it to sharpen it. Also, there would be a long bowl or basket full of work tools.

Today we do not have a work shelter in this area to Maryland . We do not need to grind rocks, we use shovels to dig and we use saws to cut and scraping tools to hallow out things. We do not use all of the tools that native Americans used long ago. We don't put tools in a work shelter; we store them in a shed.

The Dove and the Ark

In November of 1633, a small ship called the Dove sailed with a larger boat called the Ark from Cowes, England to the new world. The Dove was owned by the Calvert family and other investors. The people put a lot of supplies on the Dove that they needed for settling in the new world.

When I went on the Dove, I felt kind of nervous because I thought the wood was going to break and the boat would sink. The boat is really very small. When I went on the deck I felt like I was coming from England to the new world. When I walked on the Dove I thought it was going to be big like the Ark and have lots of supplies.