The Peanut Pioneer of Porters Neck

Two miles east of here, a planter named Nicholas Nixon ran a plantation of more than twelve hundred acres at Porters Neck in the eighteen fifties and became a pioneer of commercial peanut growing. While most coastal farmers treated peanuts as pig fodder, Nixon spent years perfecting scientific methods for cultivating and harvesting them at commercial scale. He rotated peanuts with rye, oats, and millet, rested each field a full year, and devoted hundreds of acres a year to the crop.

In eighteen fifty-six, a steam-powered thresher for the nuts was built on his plantation, one of the earliest mechanized peanut harvesters on record anywhere. Farmers from other states sought Nixon's advice. He died in eighteen sixty-eight, but his writings on peanut planting were republished for decades, quietly seeding the industry that would make peanuts a pillar of Southern farming.