Many Talents of J.D. Peterson

Slap Swamp native J.D. Peterson was an inventor, horseman and creative genius.

J.D. Peterson Man of Many Talents

STORY Bill thompson PHOTOS Peterson Family

Back when tobacco was king, the castle was an old building where the sticky green weed was turned into marketable golden leaves. There was certainly nothing royal looking about those barns, no spires or parapets. They were simple structures, usually wooden with a tin roof and a shed on at least one side. It wasn’t the building that created the alchemy; it was the fire inside, a flame fed by wood cut from the surrounding forests and fed into an incinerator with flues that encircled the floor of the barn. The curing process necessitated constant attention to create just the right amount of heat at the right time. There was someone at the barn all day and all night feeding the fire, or adjusting ventilation. It was time-consuming, back-breaking work.

Then along came a fellow named J.D. Peterson. He didn’t look like royalty but he had a tremendous influence on the tobacco industry that was so much a part of the lives of the kingdom. On November 7, 1946, J.D. drove to Washington, D.C. to register his new invention with the U.S. Patent Office. He drove there to personally show the 10 | 954 | Spring & Summer 2020

drawing to “whoever needed to see it.” What he showed them was a design for an oil burning tobacco curing system (liquid fuel burner). Peterson’s patent 2,512,964 was granted on June 27, 1950. It would change tobacco farming and, consequently, the lives of hundreds of families that depended on the crop to make their livelihood. The kingdom had a prince.

This man who had such an influence on the kingdom of tobacco was not of royal lineage. He grew up in Slap Swamp, an area near Wannanish, a town within the town of Lake Waccamaw. When he was about 10 years old his family moved to Wilmington, where he immediately went to work delivering The Wilmington Star newspaper and doing other odd jobs.

When he was 12 years old (long before child labor laws) he began an apprenticeship at Hanover Iron Works while going to school at night. But he never finished his formal education. At age 13, he took his newly acquired skills to the “big paying jobs up north.” Because

of his skills and the fact that he looked much older than his age, he found employment, but before he did, he wrote his mother a letter to tell her how well things were going for him. He later admitted that he might have exaggerated his status. He bought a stamp with his last pennies to mail the letter then retired for the night in a cardboard box on the street in Steubenville, Ohio. He soon found employment and moved into a boardinghouse.

His job was working on high rise bridges and buildings, utilizing his welding skills. To earn a little extra money, usually a quarter, he would dive off a bridge to retrieve a tool that he or one of his co-workers had dropped into the water.

As with so many other native Southerners, the cold northern winters encouraged Peterson to move back to warmer climates and the developing construction boom in Florida. Most of the roads were still unpaved and the hot sand would cause innumerable flat tires. “It took a while to get to Florida,” he said.

North Carolina kept calling him

Peterson honed his welding skills working on high rise bridges and buildings in Steubenville, Ohio. He spent time working in Florida and Fayetteville before settling back in Columbus County.

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back home, so he came back to Fayetteville, where he opened up a speakeasy at a time when sale of alcohol was illegal. This necessitated numerous trips to the mountains to obtain the liquor for his business. Occasionally, he would have “brief contact” with law enforcement, including some fleeing down dirt roads at night.

He soon gave up the bar business and came back home to Columbus County, where he went into the welding and construction business. It was while he was putting a slate roof on the courthouse (1938) that he noticed a young lady in a red suit with black pumps and matching handbag who was walking from the hospital on her way to do some shopping downtown. J.D. rushed down to offer her a ride to her destination. The lady was Lillian Squires. J.D. jokingly told his version of the meeting. According to J.D., Lillian walked around that courthouse in “that little red suit” until he got dizzy watching and had to come down. In any case, sometime later they were

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married, a union that lasted fifty-eight years. It is unclear exactly what attracted J.D.’s interest in tobacco curers but he began to build metal flues to be used to distribute heat in wood-burning tobacco barns. His was always looking for ways to improve his product. At that time, adjusting the temperature as part of the curing process involved going into the heated barn. J.D. discovered that heating the barn with oil (kerosene) would allow the management of the heat (regulating the amount of fuel) to be done by using a carburetor and a steel burner. Combining this with the metal flues he was already making was a part of the process of developing the new curing system. So, on a fateful winter’s day in 1946, J.D. Peterson, a man with only a basic formal education but a superior creative intelligence, drove to the patent office in Washington, D.C., to get the patent for his new invention.

With word of mouth the primary marketing tool, the Peterson Tobacco Curer began to sell all through the tobacco belt. Although he had some distributors, he sold most of his curers directly to the farmer who came to the plant to get the curer. He and his family later moved from Lake Waccamaw to his wife’s family farm on the outskirts of Bolton. From there he expanded his tobacco curer business to include tin smithing, roofing, and some farming of tobacco, corn, soybeans and peanuts as well as a few cattle.

Folks who remember J.D. Peterson remember him as a man “who had wide-ranging interests and a mind to match.” Some time in the 1960s he developed an interest in horses. The primary stimulant for J.D.’s interest in horses came from a horse he gave to his daughter for Christmas. Vivian said, “Daddy had a mid-life crisis. He fell in love with horses. He read every book he could put his hands on.”

Just as he had been absorbed in developing the tobacco curer, so did J.D. involve himself in the horse business. One of his first efforts was to train a beautiful Appaloosa mare to stand quietly while J.D. fired a shotgun while sitting on the horse’s back. They became deer hunting companions and J.D.’s ability to train horses spread as he successfully worked with other people’s mounts.

Horse shows were popping up in pastures where enthusiasts would build a big round fence and have weekend horse shows, almost informal affairs that involved all ages. J.D.’s show ring was extremely popular as the area interest in horses grew. As with all his efforts, J.D. placed his own unique stamp on the arena he built at Bolton. His engineering instinct and the observation of muddy arenas elsewhere caused him to build a pond in the middle of the show ring. The result was that even after a heavy rain, shows could be held. Most of the events were “game shows” like barrel racing, pole bending, and ring spearing, but he also had pleasure classes and reining and English classes. People came from all over eastern North Carolina to show and play. Vivian remembered, “Those were fun times!”

In addition to the shows and horse training, J.D. partnered with Mrs. Sara Sledge, who ran the Ambassador Camp at Lake Waccamaw. He would host members of the summer camp for riding lessons. Over the years, those sessions would become fond memories for the campers and succeeding generations would pass greetings from their parents to J.D. as the younger campers created their own memories.

Looking back at accomplishments might be like looking at mirrors facing each other. It is an endless reflection. That is the case with J.D. Peterson. There is so much to see, and each time we look there is more to see. But looking at J.D Peterson’s life is more like looking back through a reflecting kaleidoscope, so colorful, so different, so unique.

Everyone calle her M iss Lillian A daughter remembers

There is an old axiom that applies to the life of J.D. Peterson: “Behind every great man is a great woman.” That certainly applies to J.D. In recounting some of his early years and those that came after he met Miss Lillian, it would be safe to say that she was probably the catalyst that changed him from the unfocused young adventurer to a man whose vision, creativity, and intelligence changed the tobacco industry, indeed, the culture of the area.

Miss Lillian (as everyone called her) had a deep religious faith that was probably a major factor in J.D.’s transformation. She and J.D. were married on February 18, 1939, when the country was on the brink of war and the future was uncertain. But faith and perseverance prevailed.

Vivian Brown is the youngest daughter of J.D. and Lillian and the only one of three sisters still living. Her recollection of her mother’s life is a picture of a unique lady, a lady who was ahead of her time yet in many ways exhibited those elements of Southern womanhood that is so much a part of “who we were.”

“My mother was born to Leta Blue Squires and Peyton Squires on September 5, 1918. She grew up surrounded by parents and several loving aunts (her mother’s sisters). She, her mother and father, several siblings and her maternal aunts all lived in the Blue family home near Bolton.

“She graduated from Hallsboro High School and then attended Flora McDonald College in Red Springs, N.C. Her college studies were interrupted by the sudden illness of her mother. Much of the family finances were drained by the illness and the death of her mother. She found she could not return to Flora McDonald, so she changed her career design to accommodate what she saw available in Columbus County. There was a severe need for trained nurses in the county so she entered the nursing program at Columbus County Hospital under the direction of Dr. Edwin Miller. Dr. Miller was a tall man; Mother was short. Mother had to stand on her tiptoes to reach the operating table height to assist in surgeries. When the good doctor noticed this, he made a stool for her to use during surgeries. Mother never forgot the kindness.

“On January 19, 1940, Mama and Daddy were blessed with the first of three daughters. My grandfather Peterson also lived with them for the first twelve years of their marriage until he passed away. During these years she was caregiver to the elderly aunts who lived just down the road and Granddaddy Peterson along with her husband and three girls. She was also bookkeeper for Daddy’s busi- ness. Somehow, she found time to be active in the church, where she taught Sunday School.

“Although she never received her nursing degree, her passion for helping those in poor health continued. When there was sickness or death within a neighbor’s family, she was always there to help. At a time when most folks were intimidated by taking insulin or even iron shots, she went back and forth to those homes like a “county nurse,” giving injections and helping people understand health

Peterson and his wife Lillian were married 58 years.

principles which many country folks were hesitant to embrace.

“A Mr. Hux from Whiteville organized a radio program on WENC which was broadcast every Sunday morning at 8 a.m. Mr. Hux asked several people in the county to take turns teaching Sunday School from the lesson study quarterly. Mother was one of those people. She was dedicated to this program. I remember, before Mother got her driver’s license, the whole family would be up before breakfast, be dressed for church, and be at the radio station in Whiteville before 8 a.m. Then we would watch through a large plate glass window as she delivered the lesson over the air. The program was called “Sunday School of the Air.”

“Throughout my childhood there were several individuals who came and went in our household simply because they needed a temporary place to live. Mother would provide one for them.

“This account may sound like she was an absolute saint. She wasn’t! But she was an example to all who were close to her as to how to love and give of yourself to a cause you believe in. She was always on the side of what she saw as ‘just and right.’ She never hesitated to stand up and WITH the little guy.

“She was a wonderful Christian wife, mother, grandmother, and friend to all. If she had an enemy, they certainly kept to themselves. She had a plaque on the wall in her kitchen which read, ‘Let me live in a house by the side of the road and be a friend to all.’ I believe that is exactly what her life exhibited.”

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