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Chestnuts were once an important part of Appalachian history.
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The chestnut tree dominated the Appalachian region — one Virginia county alone exported 160,000 pounds of chestnuts in 1910.
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They were such a big part of life in the Appalachia, they were used as currency.
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According to historians, children would gather nuts to buy shoes for school, and adults would use chestnuts to pay property taxes.
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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.