Sorghum making a fall tradition

My friend, Louise Duncan, has told me on several occasions how her father and mother, Silas W. and Mary Cardwell, operated a sorghum mill near Dutchtown. According to Louise, the Missourian did a story on the Cardwell operation, but despite my best efforts, I haven't been able to find that article.

I did find the Cardwell name attached to a sorghum operation "on the Rauh farm west of Dutchtown" as early as 1943. According to Mary Cardwell's obituary in 1996, the family continued to run the mill until 1969.

Along with the Cardwell mill, the Oct. 14, 1943, article mentions several other molasses makers: "Some of the older and experienced sorghum molasses manufacturers in the county are Tom Mayfield and Ellis Crain in the Oak Ridge community, Oscar Bird of Tilsit (and) Charles Berkbigler of Friedheim...The old Brown outfit has been moved from the Concord community to Old Appleton and will be in operation there."

The art of making molasses has been a fall tradition in Cape Girardeau since at least the mid-1800s.

An article dated Oct. 17, 1919, in The Daily Republican newspaper reported, "In the year 1859, when Cape Girardeau County and Perry County were in the same congressional district, Congressman John W. Noell of Perry County, who represented the district in the lower house of the National Congress, presented the father of Col. (I.M.) Bean with a small amount of sorghum seed, the first ever brought to this county. This seed was planted and about a gallon of sorghum was produced that year by crude methods. In the year 1860 several acres were planted with sorghum, and from that year dates the manufacture of sorghum in this county."

Apparently, the "crude methods" from the 1860s hadn't improved all that much by 1919. An article published Oct. 7, 1919, described a typical Cape County sorghum-making operation:

"Still the methods of making the sorghum are somewhat primitive in this county, and the machinery used is of the crudest in many cases. We are all familiar with the old sweep cane mill, with the horse or mule as the motive power, the old pit or clay hearth upon which rests the condensing plan, the skimmers, and the barrel in which is deposited the scum and all the impurities expurged from the liquid as it comes from the cane. When allowed to ferment and then fed to the hogs, these skimmings have often caused whole herds of swine to become beastly drunk.

"The typical open shed where the manufacture of sorghum is in progress at this time of the year can be found in many places in this county. Each neighborhood has its own little factory, to which all the cane in the community is hauled and there transformed into the golden, sticky fluid. The work is done 'on shares,' or for cash, and each producer of cane has his little measure placed in receptacles brought for that purpose. Jugs, kegs, barrels, buckets, fruit jars, milk cans, everything is used to hold the sorghum.

"Like all other trades, the making of sorghum has its tricks in trade. To produce the coveted amber color, chemicals are used to some extent, the principal one among them being lime. This clarifies the sap or juice and does not injure the sorghum in the last.

"A valuable by-product of the sorghum industry is the straw or the crushed cane from which all the juice has been extracted by the iron rollers or mill. This straw forms a mulch and is used in stopping washes on hill sides, being heavier, coarser and longer than wheat straw, it is an ideal 'gully stopper,' and is valued highly as such...

"Producing sorghum is not all fun, but hard work. The young plant is soon overcome by weeds if not cultivated thoroughly and often. The labor of stripping, cutting and hauling the cane is another tedious job, but the prices now obtained for sorghum ($1.25 to $1.50 per gallon) is conducive to an extension of the cane fields in the county. Good sorghum could be bought formerly for 40 cents per gallon, but the upward trend of all prices has had its effect on this commodity also..."

By 1932, writer John P. Putz reported that the retail price of sorghum molasses locally was 75 cents per gallon, and that "most of the sorghum molasses is still made in a very primitive way in this county, and the majority of the crushers are still operated by horsepower, the old fashioned sweep to which one horse or mule is hitched. The sap is carried, by its own gravity, to the condenser below, which in most cases (is) a very simple device, set on a hearth of brick and under which a slow wood fire is kept going day and night..."

In 1946 G.D. Fronabarger took his camera and notebook down to the "Northcut ditch area," southeast of Benton, Missouri. His jaunt to Scott County yielded these photos and a story published Oct. 1, 1946, in the Southeast Missourian.