Prizery holds Nelson County's tobacco history

(Nelson County Times) A huge iron screw hangs above a tobacco hogshead, as though poised in suspended animation. The pause takes place perpetually in an outbuilding called the prizery at Elk Hill farm in Nellysford.
During the months after harvest 200 years ago or more, the prizery would have been abuzz with activity, and the screw would have been turning. It was used to press tobacco leaves layer by layer into a hogshead, the culmination of the process calling prizing, or pressing. Continued

Images: 1. Tobacco press, Upper Marlboro, Prince George's, MD 2. Sweeney Farm, Prizery, Appomattox, VA (Library of Congress).