Antique Tobacco Tin Tag 🏷️ F.M. Bohannon's Special Drive — Winston-Salem, NC — 1900s–1920s Collector Piece

F. M. Bohannon's Special Drive Tobacco Tag 🏷️ Winston-Salem, North Carolina

Size: 3/4"

A little round tin tag, about the size of your thumbnail. F.M. BOHANNON'S arches across the top in dark blue, SPECIAL DRIVE runs through a red lens shape in the middle with a blue crescent above and below, and WINSTON-SALEM. N.C. curves along the bottom. The prong that held it in the plug is still on it. I have a few of these, and you'll get one like the ones shown.

📬 What the Address Tells You

Salem was a Moravian town from 1753, and Winston was laid out next door in 1849 as the new county seat. They tried to join up in 1879 and it fell apart because Winston wouldn't take the name Salem. The post office started using Winston-Salem in 1899, and the towns finally merged on May 13, 1913. Some Special Drive tags just say "Winston, N.C." - this one says Winston-Salem, so it's from 1899 or later, and most likely after the 1913 merger.

🚬 F. M. Bohannon and His Plugs

F. M. Bohannon made plug chewing tobacco in Winston and then Winston-Salem under a whole string of brands - Special Drive, Lucky Joe, Diamond in the Rough, Detective, Red Fox Twist, Sun Cured and Red, White and Blue. The company sold through salesmen and shipped straight out of Winston-Salem by parcel post.

That last brand landed Bohannon in the North Carolina Supreme Court. In January 1939 a Mrs. Caudle bit into a plug of Red, White and Blue and found a fish hook in it - it went through her mouth, and she spent eleven weeks in the hospital. Caudle v. F. M. Bohannon Tobacco Co. was decided in 1941. Makes you look twice at your chew!

The independent company's run ended in 1942, when Taylor Brothers bought the Bohannon brands - the same Taylor Brothers who made Black Maria and Bull of the Woods. Taylor kept the names going: on July 1, 1947 it filed a pile of trademarks at once, and F. M. BOHANNON'S SPECIAL DRIVE was registered on January 10, 1950 (No. 519,572), with first use claimed back to 1900. The drawing is an oval lined for red - the same mark as this tag. It stayed on the books until 1992.

🏇 The Way They Sold It

Local legend has it that the smaller Winston tobacco men rode the sales routes through the Carolina backcountry themselves, calling on storekeepers who'd known their fathers and selling on a handshake. Whether Mr. Bohannon did, nobody can say, but a tag this size went everywhere a plug did.

A neat little piece of Winston-Salem history for a tobacciana collection, a shadow box, or anybody with Forsyth County roots.