Only a Stogie from Wheeling Can Be a Wheeling Stogie
No, this headline is not meant to be a tribute to the late great Yogi Berra, though it sounds like something he might have said. In fact, this is federal law.
Indeed, by federal law, for a stogie to be called a “Wheeling Stogie” it must be made in Wheeling.
Boston, July 6, 1899, in the United States Circuit Court, Judge Colt handed down a decision holding that, “stogies bearing the name of ‘Wheeling’ or ‘Wheeling Stogies’, could not be manufactured in Boston or elsewhere other than Wheeling and sold as ‘Wheeling Stogies’.”
In an interview printed in the New York Herald and picked up by the Los Angeles Herald on October 30, 1895, Mifflin Marsh, founder of Marsh Wheeling Stogies, shared the history of “The Wheeling Stogie”:
“The name ‘stogie’ and ‘toby’ are both abbreviations. About seventy-five years ago, before the days of railroads and after the completion of the national pike, wagons used for conveying goods were a vehicle called the Conestoga wagon, or simply Conestoga. The drivers of these were called Conestoga drivers. In those days the pipe was used by those unable to afford cigars. Some inventive genius here in Wheeling, I have forgotten his name; Kirk maybe, conceived the idea of making a cheap smoke for the driver. He got some tobacco and rolled or twisted it in a crude way so that smoke would go through it, and sold it to these drivers, whence they came to be called Conestogas’. The tobacco used was of good Kentucky stock, which was, in those days, very cheap. Besides, there was at that time no internal revenue on them. When I began business in 1840, there was another man here engaged in it, and both factories employed from four to seven men.
The character of the stogie has changed but little in the seventy-five years of its manufacture, the stogie of the early days was about four and one-half inches long and made by hand of long filler Kentucky tobacco. The stogie of today is six and one-half inches long, but the materials and process of manufacture remain the same. The choicest brands of stogies in all manufactories are made from Kentucky tobacco, although Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, New York and Connecticut furnish what is known as a seed tobacco, which is largely used in the manufacture of stogies.”
In the 1815 city directory, we find a listing at Eleventh Street (Union Street) and Main Street in Wheeling, of the cigar shop and manufactory operated by Thomas Conrad, the first cigar maker in Wheeling. In 1819, Joseph Kirk of Wheeling began manufacturing cigars. In 1825, there is a listing, Cigar and “Stogie” manufacturer, Joseph Kirk (the first reference to the name Stogie). The ‘National Cigar History Museum’, states: “In 1825, in Wheeling, Virginia Joseph Kirk manufactured the first Stogie.”
Where did the name Stogie come from? From the Dictionary Stogy or Stogie “1. A cheap cigar. 2. A roughly made heavy shoe or boot.” Conestoga wagon “A heavy covered wagon with broad wheels, used by American pioneers for westward travel (After Conestoga, a village of southeast Pennsylvania).”
In Wheeling, the Conestoga freighter would bring his wagon down the Old Pike, down Seventh (Washington) Street, down Main Street to Twelfth (Monroe) Street to the Forwarding and Commission houses” of John McCortney and Robert T. Newlove. Both kept taverns on the south and west side of Main Street. Behind their taverns were large wagon yards for the accommodation of the wagoneer’s wagons and teams. The Forwarding Agent would accept the freight at his warehouse where it would await further shipment down river by flatboat, keelboat or barge. The wagons were reloaded with goods that had arrived by keelboats from the South for the wagoneer’s return trip east.
Along with the Conestoga wagons were the many stagecoaches arriving daily in Wheeling. When the Conestoga driver or stagecoach driver arrived, from a barrel, he could have a grab of ‘Wheeling Stogies’ for a penny; the bigger the hand the more “the smokes.” The Wagoneer and stagecoach driver would shove the stogies down in his ‘Stogy Boot’ top to keep them straight and handy. The stagecoach traveler bought his ‘stogies’, four for a penny. This was where and how the ‘Wheeling Stogie’ became famous and in the 1840s, Mifflin Marsh became the main supplier. His long, thin, cheap, Marsh ‘Wheeling Stogie’ became synonymous with the stogie, whether or not he actually invented it.
In 1877, the Wheeling Daily Intelligencer, reported: “The sales of revenue stamps show that 23,925,000 cigars were made in Wheeling in 1877. If Wheeling had not arranged to go down to history as the ‘Nail City,’ she certainly would be known to posterity as ‘Stogie Town.'”
Although we no longer have stogie manufacturers in Wheeling, chewing tobacco and snuff are still packaged here. The Swisher International Group is the present owner of the Bloch Brothers Tobacco Company, which dates from 1879, when Samuel S. Bloch and Aaron Block started their business with ten women at 1501-1503 Main Street. Their tobacco business amounted to a group of women rolling cigars on the second floor of their dry goods store. Left overs (the sweepings) of this process was flavored with licorice, packaged and sold as chewing tobacco in a paper pouch. They had a contest to name their new product and chose the name suggested by a Wheeling Postman, ‘Mail Pouch Chewing Tobacco’. The brothers sold their first pouch of tobacco Oct. 15, 1879.
The Wheeling “Stogie” book
For the rest of the story, pick up a copy of John Bowman’s book, The Wheeling “Stogie,” available at the Wheeling Artisan Center.
For more on the dazzling variety of authentic, federally sanctioned, “Wheeling Stogies,” see Buckle of the Stogie Belt.
