Abstract
ABSTRACT: Christopher Demuth’s early years in the Moravian community of Bethlehem, which included the traumatic transition from its “General Economy,” shaped and helped prepare him for a new career in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Trained in carpentry and millwork, Demuth went on to be the most successful tobacconist in Lancaster, specializing in snuff, which he sold throughout Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia. His extensive operation demonstrates Lancaster’s importance as a production and distribution node, as well as the signifi cant role that Pennsylvania tobacconists played in the state and national economy decades before tobacco was grown commercially in the state.