Appalachian history: Chestnuts were once used as currency

Chestnuts were called
“shoe money.”
Harry Shepherd/Fox
Photos/Getty Images

• Chestnuts were once an important part of Appalachian
  history.
• The chestnut tree dominated the Appalachian region —
  one Virginia
  county alone exported 160,000 pounds of chestnuts in
  1910.
• They were such a big part of life in the Appalachia,
  they were used as currency. 
• According to historians, children would gather nuts to
  buy shoes for school, and adults would use chestnuts to pay
  property taxes. 
• Country store owners would then sell them to produce
  wholesalers to distribute the chestnuts to cities in the
  Northeast US like Philadelphia and New York. 

This story was originally produced for


Endless Thread


, a podcast
from WBUR in partnership with Reddit:

Maybe your only familiarity with chestnuts comes from Nat King
Cole crooning about them roasting over an open fire. But
chestnuts were once as American as Apple Pie. In Southern

Appalachia, they were even
used as currency.

Before a catastrophic blight wiped out the American chestnut tree
in the early 1900s, the species dominated the eastern forests of
North America, the “Redwoods of the East.” Appalachian folklorist
Charlotte Ross says walking into a chestnut forest would have
been like “walking into a cathedral.” And the gems of the trees
were really the nuts themselves, cherished for their sweetness.

But to the folk of Southern Appalachia, the nuts weren’t just a
delicious treat, according to historian Ralph Lutts.

“It was a central part of their lives economically, particularly
the very poor. And when you had the time of plenty in the autumn
when the nuts were falling like manna from heaven, it was almost
a community celebration.”

Ross says so many people were involved in chestnut harvests that
it was actually a common place to meet your future spouse. The
elderly participated as well, though they were often strapped to
the backs of horses or mules via packsaddle, too frail to hike
through the woods on their own two feet but reluctant to miss out
on all the fun. The nuts were so plentiful, sometimes inches deep
on the forest floor, that Lutts remembers a woman who once said
“a chestnut grove is a better provider than a man, easier to get
along with too.”

But the chestnut was more than a celebrated bounty in those
areas. It was literally used as currency. “Shoe money” it was
called, since children would gather nuts to buy shoes and other
clothes at the beginning of the school year.

Adults got involved as well, using chestnuts to buy goods they
couldn’t make themselves and even to help pay off property taxes.
“Come September, October, the only commodity they’re trading in
at the country store to get their groceries is chestnuts,” says
Lutts.

In turn, the country store owner was the intermediary between
those rural communities and the rest of the world, selling those
nuts to produce wholesalers who distributed them to places like
Philadelphia and New York City where chestnuts were a hot
commodity. Vendors roasted and hawked the nuts on city streets,
leading to their informal label as America’s “first fast food.”
City people gobbled them up, especially during holiday season.
“If the chestnuts were around [today], they’d probably be selling
them on eBay or through Amazon,” adds Lutts.

To give a sense of scale, Patrick County in Virginia exported
160,000 pounds of chestnuts in 1910, according to the US
agricultural census. Lutts points out that this is actually a low
estimate since the people providing these numbers were “rural
folks who were a bit suspicious of the government.” So, it’s safe
to assume there were a fair amount of unreported
chestnuts in circulation.

Even in 1910, though, chestnut blight had already taken hold in
the Northeast. In an unfortunate twist of fate, it reached
Southern Appalachia right around the time the Great Depression
hit. It was a “catastrophe,” says Lutts, who recounts someone who
said that “when the trees started dying it felt as if the whole
world was dying.”

The economy recovered, of course, but it was never the same. The
industrialized world successfully encroached on subsistence
farming, the loss of a way of life.

Even though the trees died, Lutts says they still hold “mythic
significance” in that region, a symbol of nostalgia for old way
of life. Stories of chestnut harvests past were passed down over
the generations and historians like Lutts and Ross seek them out
and make sure they don’t fade with time.

Outside of that region, chestnuts faded from cultural relevance,
now mostly relegated to the dulcet tones of Nat King Cole’s
annual reminder.

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