Peppermint

Wayne County, N. Y., in 1816, was the first locality in this country to distill peppermint on a commercial scale. The supply of rootstocks was obtained from the wild plants found growing along the banks of streams and brooks. Adjacent counties soon undertook the cultivation of peppermint, but Wayne County was then, and is now, the principal peppermint district in New York.

The cultivation of peppermint was extended to Ashtabula, Geauga, and Cuyahoga counties in Ohio, and also to northern Indiana. Roots were taken from Ohio into St. Joseph County, Mich., the first plantation being made on Pigeon prairie in 1835. Other plantations in St. Joseph County were established the following years, and adjoining counties soon took up the cultivation of peppermint, and southwestern Michigan has been for thirty-five years or more the greatest peppermint-producing section in the United States.

About 1844 an interesting peppermint oil monopoly[2] was undertaken by a New York firm, which seems to have put an end to peppermint cultivation in Ohio, for none of the counties just mentioned has since been heard from as a peppermint-producing section.

The first step taken by this New York firm in its efforts to control the peppermint oil market was to send a representative to Liverpool, England, to ascertain the amount annually demanded by that market, which was found to be about 12,000 pounds. This done, another agent was sent West to determine the amount produced annually, with the result that it was found that the farms in New York did not produce enough oil for their purposes, the plantations in Ohio too much, while those in Michigan seemed to produce just about the right amount to satisfy the Liverpool demand. A contract was then entered into by this agent with the producers in New York and Ohio “whereby he bound them under heavy penalties to plow up their mint fields and destroy the roots, and not plant any more mint, or sell or give away any roots, or produce or sell any mint oil for the period of five years.” For this wholesale destruction of their mint fields the producers received a bonus of $1.50 per acre. Next a contract was made by the agent with the producers of St. Joseph County, Mich., agreeing to pay them $2.50 a pound for their mint oil, every ounce of the mint oil to be delivered for a period of five years to the agents named in the contract. They also were prohibited during this period from extending their plantations and from selling roots to anyone. The producers held to these contracts for about three years, after which period the New York firm was not so anxious to enforce them, having, in the meantime, acquired a large fortune through its peppermint oil monopoly.

Since that period the area devoted to peppermint cultivation in Michigan has steadily increased, and northern Indiana, with its principal centers of production in St. Joseph, Steuben, and La Grange counties, continues to place on the market a considerable quantity of oil. Ohio seems to have abandoned peppermint cultivation, at least on a commercial scale, and New York, for a number of years and until very recently, had greatly reduced the area under peppermint, thousands of acres formerly devoted to this crop having been given over to sugar beets, onions, and celery. In 1889 Wayne County, N. Y., had 3,325 acres of peppermint, whereas in 1899 there were only 300 acres. In 1905, about 933 acres were under cultivation.

Special canvassers appointed by the State of Michigan[3] made a canvass of 299 growers in the peppermint district in that State, covering 39 townships in nine counties (Allegan, Berrien, Branch, Cass, Kalamazoo, Oakland, St. Joseph, St. Clair, and Van Buren), and the total number of acres under peppermint cultivation, the number of pounds of oil distilled, and the average number of pounds per acre, as ascertained by this canvass, for the years 1900, 1901, and 1902, are as follows: