The arrival of cool autumn air reminded our ancestors that it was molasses-making time. Generations of Arkansans considered molasses one of the three primary foods--the three Ms--meat, meal (corn meal), and molasses. While I might eat molasses occasionally at breakfast, it was consumed at every meal in rural Arkansas throughout the 19th and much of the 20th Centuries.
Henry M. Stanley, who later gained fame searching for Livingstone in Africa, was living in Arkansas when the Civil War broke out. He described a typical meal: "The breakfast at seven, the dinner at noon, and the supper at six, consisted of pretty much the same kind of dishes, except that there was good coffee at the first meal ... The rest mainly consisted of boiled, or fried, pork and beans, and corn scones. The pork had an excess of fat over lean, and was followed by a plate full of mush and molasses . . ."
While sugar was certainly available to our ancestors, costs and preferences meant that molasses often served as a sugar substitute--"long sweetening" as it was sometimes called. Indeed, molasses has been called by many names and it has been used interchangeably with the name sorghum molasses. True molasses is made from sugar cane, which cannot survive our winters. However, sorghum is an annual crop and can be grown throughout Arkansas. Many farm children simply called the syrup 'lasses.
Interestingly, sorghum was not grown extensively in Arkansas until after the Civil War. A few upland counties shipped sorghum molasses into slave-rich eastern Arkansas before the war, but most plantation owners purchased molasses in large barrels from New Orleans merchants. In December 1861, as the reality of the Civil War settled in, Clara Dunlap wrote a long worried letter from her home in rural Ouachita County about the practicalities of wartime shortages: "John [her husband] says he will have to send down several hundred bushels of corn to New Orleans & get molasses & sugar, etc; by getting 3 or 4 barrels of molasses, [and] we will kill enough meat to do us." By June of 1863, Clara was reporting that molasses cost an astronomical $100 per barrel in nearby Camden. And, the following year she wrote despondently of federal troops stealing everything on the farm, including her wedding shoes--and every barrel of molasses.
With the return of peace in 1865, farmers throughout Arkansas began growing sorghum for molasses. One Ouachita County farm woman wrote her son in Tennessee that "when we have it, [we] consume [a] gal [of] molasses per week--no joke . . . Will says he'll be bound to have a 'lasses patch next year."
Not every farmer grew sorghum for molasses since it was common for those who did to produce enough to sell the excess to neighbors. Certainly not every farmer invested in the equipment needed to process sorghum into molasses. Instead, he hauled his sorghum "cane" to a neighbor who would produce the molasses for a small fee per gallon or for a portion of the molasses.
The first step in making sorghum molasses was stripping the leaves from the eight-foot-tall "canes" as the stalks of sorghum were called, then cutting the canes and transporting them to the mill. The canes were passed through a roller which squeezed the sugar-laden juice and collected it for transportation to a large pan for processing.
The sorghum mill was usually powered by a horse or mule which pulled a long wooden sweep in a circle around the mill. The worker who fed the cane into the mill had to continually duck under the ever-circling sweep.
The fresh juice was poured into a long metal pan mounted on a brick or stone fire box. Jim Clemons, who grew up in Cross County, has written that as a boy he had helped make several molasses pans in his father's tin shop. Clemons described the pans as "roughly eight feet wide and fourteen feet long," and divided into sections so that the juice slowly made its way down the tilted pan.
As the juice boiled, a covering of green froth formed and had to be skimmed off. Ross Villines of Newton County was a highly regarded molasses man. He used dried red cedar to fuel the fire box. The secret to making good molasses was in knowing when the boiling concoction had been cooked enough.
Ms. Reda Miller was a student at the University of Arkansas in 1959 when she recalled how her family made molasses. Reda remembered the aroma of cooking molasses: "It is like the fragrance of flowers and cake icing all put together." Old-time molasses makers preferred the finished product to be a light brown color, and they criticize modern dark molasses as too strong and lacking in refinement.
Molasses was consumed in many ways by our ancestors, and often at every meal. Children loved to use molasses to make popcorn balls, molasses taffy, and gingerbread.
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Tom Dillard is a historian and retired archivist living in Hot Spring County. Email him at Arktopia.td@gmail.com. An earlier version of this column was published March 27, 2011.
Editorial on 10/04/2015