Antique Hampton's Home Spun Tobacco Tin Tag 🚬 Embossed Chewing Tobacco Plug Tag, 1 Inch

What Was Hampton's Home Spun Tobacco? 🚬 Hampton's Home Spun Tin Tobacco Tag

Size: 1 1/8" x 3/4" ~ (with the prong)

Tiny, tough and full of history. This is a little round tin tag painted brick red, with HAMPTON'S arched across the top in dark letters, a small flourish, and HOME SPUN across the middle. Below the disc a pointed tin prong sticks straight down. The back is bare dark metal. That prong is the whole point: tags like this were pushed right into a plug of chewing tobacco at the factory, so everybody at the store counter knew exactly whose tobacco they were buying.

🌿 Whose Tobacco It Was

HAMPTON'S HOME SPUN was filed as a chewing tobacco trademark on April 24, 1947 by the R. C. Owen Company, which filed Booster Natural Twist, Old Hill Side and Railroad Twist the same day. R. C. Owen is a twist tobacco maker in Gallatin, Tennessee, started in 1931 by Richard Carter Owen Sr., who ran it until he died in 1961, when his son took over. The company is still in Gallatin, still making twist chewing tobacco, a small family firm next to the giants of the business.

Gallatin has a long story of its own. It was laid out on the Cumberland River and made the county seat of Sumner County in 1802, named for Albert Gallatin, the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, and it sits about 30 miles northeast of Nashville. Old homes like Cragfont, Rosemont and Trousdale Place are still open to visitors there.

🏷️ A Collector's Tag

Tin tobacco tags came along in the 1870s as a way to brand plug chewing tobacco, and collectors have cataloged more than twelve thousand different ones. A historical society note on a board of tags collected around 1895 says metal tags had gone out of style by 1950. They're small enough to lose in your pocket, and plenty of them got lost.

It's a great little piece for a tobacciana collection, a Tennessee history shelf or a shadow box of old advertising.