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Upper Marlboro, Maryland

Habit-Forming Antiques in an Old Tobacco Barn

by Robert Kyle

For the past 27 years the Marlboro Tobacco Market Antique Show has taken place in one of the last surviving huge wooden warehouses built in town about a century ago to receive and sell farmers' tobacco crops.

The building reeks of ambiance and character. Aged wooden floors, support posts, and beams are visible in the muted lighting, creating a warm, intimate feel despite having over an acre of floor space. Aisles are wide, and many dealers enjoy larger booths than available elsewhere.

With tobacco farming in the state dating to the 17th century, the old buildings where bundles of dried leaves have been taken to market for generations are symbols of a bygone era. Add the element of bygone furnishings, and the result is a smooth blend between charming venue and vintage goods.

The show took place May 4-6. The Friday morning attendance was strong and buying active until about 2 p.m. when the climate changed. Comfortable morning temperatures surrendered to thick, high humidity and a record-setting 96<198>, atypical for early May. The nonair-conditioned warehouse warmed up, and buying cooled off. But the good news was there were two more days to go and a cold front coming. The forecast was correct, and there were smiles inside the warehouse again.

This quality show has been quietly chugging along since 1974. Joan and Bernard King, dealers for 40 years, launched the event as a fundraiser for the private school (Queen Anne School) their children attended. Today, son Jeff and his wife, Susan, have become dealers themselves and exhibit with the senior Kings at the show. The Queen Anne School continues to be a beneficiary of half the $6 admission charge ($5 with ad or coupon).

Upper Marlboro may sound like a burg in the boonies, but it's just 22 miles east of Washington, D.C. It was established as "Upper Marlborough" in 1706 by the "Act for the Advancement of Trade and Erecting Ports and Towns." It later became the seat of Prince George's County and the place to take your tobacco to auction. It's unclear whether Marlboro cigarettes derived their name from the place name.

Horse racing started there in 1750, and a racetrack remains there today. In 1993 the Maryland National Park and Planning Commission, a bicounty government agency, built an Equestrian Center and Showplace Arena.

The arena, with 35,000 square feet of space, was viewed optimistically by antiques and other show promoters as a promising new locale. Several antiques promoters tried it.

Joan King explained her experience with the new facility. "As for the Equestrian Center, we had an antique show in November there for two years. In fact, we were the first event held in the new center.

"Our shows were successful, but the rent was prohibitive, and the people running the center were very hard to work with. Some of their rules were ridiculous, such as we could not give our dealers coffee in the morning, since they were required to buy it from center vendors.

"Also, certain bathrooms were off-limits to our people, making some of our dealers walk to the other side of the building to use the bathroom. Then they informed us the center would become an ice rink during the winter months and we could not bring any vehicles in to load or unload and we would be standing on wood placed over the ice.

"We finally said, `That's enough,' and pulled out of the facility. We had good crowds, and the buying was good. Most of the groups that have tried the center have only had one event, then never came back. About the only show that has continued there is the gun show. However, I have to admit that the atmosphere of the tobacco barn can't be matched anywhere else."

What it lacks in pizzazz and parking, the old barn has in its rustic simplicity, where King now offers her spring and fall shows.

Unlike the D.C. area's other spring and fall quality shows (Oatlands Plantation, Mid Atlantic, and several Sha-Dor events) that draw dealers from many states, the Tobacco Market features lots of local talent. Half of the 106 dealers are Marylanders. About 20 more come from Virginia, a dozen from Pennsylvania, and some from Ohio, Delaware, New Jersey, and North Carolina. Florida, Georgia, and New Hampshire also are represented.

Many of the Maryland dealers don't work the East Coast circuit, thus their merchandise appears appealingly fresh. Much of it is furniture, and several dealers said the show has evolved into a reliable source for tables, chairs, armoires, bookcases, and chests. Oak especially sold well.

"I've been in the same spot for over twenty years, and I have quite a following," said Barbara Null of Buck and Barb's Oak Corner Cupboard, Middleburg, Maryland. "The clientele is excellent. I usually sell a table and chairs no matter what show I go to, but right now tables and chairs are hot." She said it had been a good show for her, but not her best one there.

Rick Fleshman of New Market, Maryland, was banking on buyers who wanted other woods. "I think a lot of oak went out of here. I sold a mix of things—oak, pine, country—but not much walnut went out. That is what I didn't see sell.

"It was a well-attended show but not a lot of overly aggressive buying. There was a lot of thinking about it and they would come back later. Some came back, some didn't. But this was the third show in the area in three weeks," he observed, "and that starts to take a toll." (The previous two shows were the Oatlands Plantation near Leesburg and the Capital Expo Show in Chantilly. Both are in Virginia, but west of Washington, D.C.) Fleshman said he had done very well at Oatlands.

"This is a quality show with nice people," said Tom Firment of Oldies But Goodies Antiques, Dunkirk, Maryland. "I've been doing it for twenty years and have a reputation and built up a customer base. I think it's very important to send cards to your customers."

Rating the show "excellent," Firment said he sold a $3800 store counter made into a center kitchen island, a bowfront china cabinet, a four-stack bookcase, an oak icebox, several oak tables, a large oak bookcase, and an iron and brass bed. "People are looking for the unusual, quality pieces," he said. "As soon as you add something different and out of the ordinary, that's what they want."

Asked who was doing the buying, Firment said sales ranged from couples in their 30's to an 80-year-old woman who didn't like the confines of a condo and was now furnishing a house she recently bought.

Dealer Jerry Trescott of Westminster, Maryland, said he sold so much early in the show he had to bring in another load. He, like several other dealers, was new to this particular show but not to the town. He had been part of another tobacco barn show just a few hundred feet up the road, where he developed a following.

Called the Planter's Barn, this other warehouse housed a fall antiques show for over 20 years to benefit an area church, but the show stopped, and Joan King, realizing an opportunity, in 1999 launched a fall version of the May show. Many dealers exhibit at both shows, and the second one has enabled new dealers to exhibit.

Several dealers spoke of customers who were cautious and contemplative before making purchases. Karina Bay of Monkton Mill Antiques near Baltimore said she sold several pieces the following week to buyers who had seen the items at the show. "I don't know why people do that," she said, "but it's happened at both the fall and spring shows there."

Tobacco, incidentally, had been in use in the Americas long before European contact for ceremonial and medicinal purposes. Thomas Hariot, in "A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia, 1588," wrote: "There is an herbe which is sowed separately by it selfe & is called by the inhabitants uppowoc...The Spaniards call it Tobacco."

John Rolfe, of the Jamestown Settlement (and husband of Pocahontas), in 1612 became the first person to successfully plant and harvest a tobacco crop for export to England. Tobacco soon became the primary crop in the Chesapeake Bay region of Maryland and Virginia and the foundation of the region's economy.

Large barrels called hogsheads were packed with tobacco ready for market. Some hogsheads were rolled to market when the farmer lived too far inland from a port or wharf. An axle was placed through the barrel, and wheels attached. This was pulled by an ox on lanes called "rolling roads." Today, many highways in the region are still called "Rolling Road."

Maryland tobacco sold at the Upper Marlboro warehouse continues to be exported to Europe, as well as to countries of Asia and the Middle East, but with funds resulting from tobacco company lawsuits, Maryland is discouraging farmers from growing it through a buyout plan, which pays farmers to use their land for raising crops not hazardous to health.

For information about the fall show, set for September 21-23, contact Joan King at (301) 888-9123, or e-mail her joanking@erols.com.