Here are a few of the Founding Fathers who farmed, milled, processed, or advocated for hemp.
George Washington
George Washington’s estate, admits he grew hemp extensively and compared it to tobacco. “Throughout his lifetime, George Washington cultivated hemp at Mount Vernon for industrial uses,” Mount Vernon writes. “The fibres from hemp held excellent properties for making rope and sail canvas. In addition, hemp fibres could be spun into thread for clothing or, as indicated in Mount Vernon records, used in repairing the large seine nets Washington used in his fishing operation along the Potomac.”
Thomas Jefferson
Jefferson grew hemp at a large scale and unfortunately enlisted slaves to grow it. “Enslaved laborers cultivated hemp both at Monticello and Poplar Forest, Jefferson’s plantation in Bedford County, Virginia,” Jefferson’s estate Monticello.org writes. Jefferson once used 48 pounds of hemp to make clothing for child slaves.
Jefferson’s massive plantation could yield up to 150 pounds in one day: “A hand can tend 3 acres of hemp a year,” Jefferson’s journal reads. Tolerable ground yields 500. lb to the acre. You may generally count on 100 lb for every foot the hemp is over 4 f. high. A hand will break 60 or 70 lb a day, and even to 150 lb.”
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine’s Common Sense spurred the revolution and it had the largest sale and circulation of any book published in American history when it was published in 1775. It convinced colonists that they were being exploited by the Crown. “In almost every article of defence we abound,” the pamphlet reads. “Hemp flourishes even to rankness, so that we need not want cordage.” The latter line stirred up speculations, but “rankness” apparently means “fruitfulness” i.e. ensuring that the colonists would not run out of hemp rope.
Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin owned a hemp-paper mill and published content about hemp’s medical properties. Franklin published the Pennsylvania Gazette, and in it excerpted Ephraim Chambers’ Universal Dictionary, writing that hemp is “of great Use in the Arts and Manufactories,” and that “The Seed is said to have the Faculty of abating Venereal Desires; and its Decoction in Milk, is recommended against the Jaundice.”
