Java Plantation Life

Tobacco production was closely linked with America's economic growth and was so popular that it was used as money. Maryland's suitable climate helped the region thrive, and the Java Plantation, like other nearby plantations, grew tobacco as its major crop. Tobacco brought prosperity, but it also quickly depleted soil nutrients, leading early settlers to clear more land for planting. In the first two centuries of European settlement in Maryland, virtually all trees were cut down. Growing tobacco was hard work: using a hoe was tedious but disturbed the soil only minimally, while the plow, invented in the 1790s, made the process easier but disturbed the soil more deeply. That disturbance, combined with the loss of trees that held the soil, greatly increased erosion into creeks and rivers compared with precolonial times.

Maryland · United States