Setting The Table

Episode 7

Virginia: The Birthplace of Barbeque

Deb Freeman:

As most of you know, I grew up in Norfolk, Virginia. And yes, that's how you pronounce it. One of the first food articles I wrote was about James Hemings, America's first chef de cuisine, who was enslaved by Thomas Jefferson. Hemings studied cooking in France. When he came back to Monticello, which just so happens to be in Virginia, he brought back recipes for things that we still eat today, like macaroni and cheese, French fries, and whipped cream. Writing that article made me realize there must be so many other foods that have their American start in Virginia as well. There's quite a list. There's one dish in particular that just might surprise you.

Deb Freeman:

Welcome to Setting the Table, a podcast about Black cuisine and foodways. I'm Deb Freeman. I'm a writer that focuses on African American foodways and the impact those foodways have on how we cook and eat today. If you remember on our first episode, we talked about barbecue and how the great migration spread Black foodways across the country. In this episode, we'll take a look at how barbecue became a part of those foodways in my home state of Virginia. To start us off on delving into the birthplace of American barbecue, I brought back my friend, author and culinary historian, Adrian Miller, who you might remember from that first episode.

Adrian Miller:

I think of Virginia as the birthplace of American barbecue, because if you go back historically, that's how everybody at that time thought about it. A lot of the references to barbecue as a social event would say a Virginia barbecue. It was really only later that you got the term Southern barbecue or other states applied. The earliest writings we have of barbecue come from Virginians. As barbecue spread to other parts of the south, it was usually Virginians bringing along their enslaved African Americans, who were the primary cooks for this. It seems like Virginia is where the action is.

Adrian Miller:

Now, not everybody agrees with me. I get a lot of, "Well, what about Carolina?" Or, this, this and that. I just asked them, if you believe it's someplace else, talk to me about where you get that from and their sources. Usually the sources that people cite are well after so many references to Virginia barbecue, a good five decades later. If you know anything about US history, that the Carolinas were settled much later than Virginia. The interesting thing to me though, is that over time, Virginia has let other parts of the country take that mantle.

Deb Freeman:

Sorry to you all in North Carolina, but we're going to set the record straight. I hate to tell you, but what you think of as North Carolina barbecue is essentially Virginia barbecue. I love the Tar Heels, but we were first. American barbecue is the result of a unique combination of European, African and Indigenous people coalescing in Virginia.

Adrian Miller:

I'm a big proponent that barbecue, as we understand it is Native American in origin and its foundation. Now, not everybody's feeling that. You've got people that are saying it's from West Africa and believe me, I wanted to prove that barbecue was from West Africa. I wanted to cross my arms with an X and say Wakanda forever. But if you go back to the sources of that time, around the time of the Atlantic slave trade, there's just no evidence that Africans were cooking that way. The second thing is, if this is West African in origin, how come we don't see Southern style barbecue all across the Americas? Because enslaved Africans were everywhere. I think it was a unique combination of Native Americans, Europeans, and Africans that all come together to put us on barbecue.

Adrian Miller:

Barbecue for the Indigenous people, there were two ways to do it, right? One could be for cooking something for immediate feasting, but a lot of times it was for preservation. It was a really low fire. There were reports that sometimes this stuff would cook for a day, maybe even a couple of days. I think what Europeans brought into the mix is, first of all, they brought their domesticated animals because Indigenous people were eating game, probably primarily early venison, bears and things like that. The Europeans brought their domesticated animals, cows, goats, and pigs. They brought another type of cooking called carbonado. This is a faster type of cooking that was maybe closer to grilling what we would say today, but cooking something over high heat or short period of time. To me, barbecue emerges as this intermediate type of cooking. Not quite as slow as preservation, but not as fast as grilling.

Adrian Miller:

And I'm borrowing this thesis on the work of Joe Haynes, who wrote a book called Virginia Barbecue. For anybody who's interested in this, that's a great book to read. He did a great job of marshaling a whole bunch of sources together and compiling them and looking at this early history. The thing that's a little bit harder to perceive is just the role of enslaved Africans here, because what I think happened is that the early years of barbecue, you probably had enslaved Native Americans actually as barbecue cooks. Later you've got enslaved Africans who can have their own meat, cooking, smoking traditions that get into the mix and then a certain way of seasoning that also gets into the mix and then they become the go-to cook.

Adrian Miller:

Through trial and error, they're the ones who perfect barbecue to the thing that it becomes identifiably and well known by the 19th century. The other thing that's really interesting to me is that this idea of barbecue, digging a trench full of hardwood burning coals with animals butterflied, and you're flipping that and saucing that, as far as I can tell does not show up anywhere else but Virginia in the early years.

Deb Freeman:

What exactly does a Virginia style barbecue look like? To answer this question, I had to go to a barbecue expert.

Joshua Fitzwater:

My name's Joshua Fitzwater. I'm joining you from Richmond, Virginia. My friends call me Fitz. I'm the founder of Southern Grit Magazine, a food publication covering Virginia foodways. I'm also a heirloom watermelon grower and a barbecue aficionado.

Deb Freeman:

Fitz has spent years writing and photographing Virginia food ways and carries those culinary traditions on his shoulders. He's also a native of Norfolk, Virginia and spends much of his time seeking out the unique food traditions that still exist throughout the Commonwealth. This guy's the real deal. I asked him to share what Virginia barbecue would've looked like in the early days.

Joshua Fitzwater:

So process wise, this is back at the beginning, we're dealing with ox, we're dealing with whole hogs, feral hogs. They even used to barbecue sturgeon, the ancient fish that are now are, I think some of them are endangered and you can't find them around here, but your animal is cooked whole over a pit with wood fired coals below it. Back then the animal would be laid over long sticks and tree limbs and those types of things. Today, when people do it, the Virginian way, they're using rebar and stuff like that. Back then it would be sticks. They're making coals from wood and these go under, into the dug pit. They go under the hogs. That's just like a very general description of the process. Vinegar, which is associated nowadays with a Carolina style barbecue, definitely present at really, I'm sorry, North Carolina people, but really in a lot of ways, Carolina barbecue is an extension of Virginia barbecue with a much better marketing campaign than Virginia barbecue.

Joshua Fitzwater:

You would also baste the hog that would be with your vinegar, with your red pepper midway or so through the cook. This is to actually preserve the skin and make sure that the skin does not burn. It allows the meat to cook without burning the animal as much and also for flavor, obviously. That would be a basic breakdown of Virginia barbecue early in the creation of it.

Joshua Fitzwater:

There are photographs that exist of an enslaved Pitmaster, a Juba Garth, I believe this is during Antebellum times. There's actually photographic evidence of basically taking a tree branch and where it would fork off into branches, cutting that off but leaving the two stumps, attaching a rag of some sort on there and then using that to apply the baste onto the hog. That's known as a Virginia wand. It's the precursor to the barbecue mop that you would see a famous Pitmaster, like say a Rodney Scott in South Carolina, using today.

Deb Freeman:

Fitz has also participated in several large scale Virginia style barbecues and knows firsthand the amount of labor it takes to do it right. And has a deep reverence and respect for the early Pitmasters who eventually perfected American barbecue.

Joshua Fitzwater:

I've had the honor of being able to do a couple of these and assist in a couple of these with Joe Haynes, with some notable African American Pitmasters in Virginia. So Sam Clayton, Alex Bazemore out of Suffolk. I've also been able to document and witness the 1752 Barbecue in Woodstock, Virginia, the whole hog barbecue, and they're barbecuing giant huge hogs that are, some of them were 200 pounds, 24 hour cooks. It's really hard.

Joshua Fitzwater:

When I was involved in the first one that I did, I could not walk the next day after digging the ditch, getting the rebar down and getting the pigs onto the pit. You're constantly making wood fire coals in a burn barrel and feeding it under. You're bending down and you're feeding these barrels that, you've smoke inhalation. It's incredibly hard. There's the labor component but then also there's a true talent for, when do you apply this baste? When do you flip these hogs? Where do you put the coals so that they're not going to overcook one area, but cook another area enough? When I was a part of this doing these, one, I chose to do that. That's the first thing.

Joshua Fitzwater:

The original Pitmasters did not have that luxury. Still they're producing these very renowned by the way, barbecues because there's still documentation stories of Washington throwing barbecues. There's barbecues on record honoring Thomas Jefferson, Martha Washington. I mean, it's a, who's who of our Founding Fathers by these Pitmasters that now are nameless. We know a few that come later. So your Juba Garths that are from this lineage, your John Dabney, who actually does have some notoriety in the Richmond area. Also, Browns Island, Thomas Griffin. The craft and the skill combined with the labor and how just insanely difficult it is, to not now explore these Virginian Pitmasters, who essentially through the combination, as Haynes would say, the creolization of these three cultures created a whole new way of cooking, a whole new way of approaching fire and meat.

Joshua Fitzwater:

That's really what we need to shine the light on and what we really need to investigate and talk more about because there's really not anything more synonymous with American cuisine than barbecue. It began in Virginia. It began, essentially in the hands of enslaved Pitmasters that were working with what they had in front of them and innovating, essentially a new part of American cuisine that today everybody enjoys and is so synonymous with American cuisine.

Deb Freeman:

Adrian has also done extensive research into early Virginia Pitmasters. I asked him to talk a bit about them.

Adrian Miller:

Another guy that most comes to mind, who I wrote about in my book was a guy named Charles Allen. Now he may have gotten his expertise during slavery, but he was more notable after emancipation. This was a guy from Lexington, Virginia who was known for doing barbecue. Interestingly enough, there was a Catholic priest in Boston who had the bright idea like, "Hey, I'm building a new church. I need a fundraise for it. Let me have a true Southern barbecue. And I'm going to put this guy, Charles Allen, on a train and have him come up here." Several years in the 1890s until the early 1900s, Charles Allen was basically brought to Boston to cook this barbecue. His wife was, I would say, a co-cook. To have this husband and wife team cooking barbecue, I think is pretty extraordinary.

Adrian Miller:

There was another guy named Shackleford Pounds who was an interesting figure. He was known for barbecue, but he was celebrated by people who were sympathetic to the Confederacy and was depicted as the loyal servant, that kind of stuff. But he was a notable barbecue guy. There's so many names like that that exist. There are so many that we don't even know, of people who have contributed to this culinary art form. The interesting thing about him is that a lot of these African Americans were either anonymous or maybe you got their name, but nobody ever really talked to them. But this guy was interviewed quite a bit. Thanks to those interviews, we can get into the mind of a chef. You could tell that he was doing some very interesting stuff with his sauce and other things. Very interesting figure. We also, somebody took the time to actually draw an illustration of him, so we know what he looked like and he was a smooth brother. I'm thankful for that.

Deb Freeman:

It's interesting to think that Virginia's ground zero for American barbecue as we know it, but it's even more interesting that it doesn't get recognized for that history in mainstream food culture.

Adrian Miller:

Well, I got to tell you, I am just mystified, why that died out because again, almost everybody in the early 19th century was calling it Virginia barbecue. That's where it was rooted. The fact that that died out, I'm just not so sure. That's one of the big mysteries of history to me. You've asked me a question that has stumped me for a long time. Because I'm, I don't see a reason why it happened, but it happened. When people today talk about the earliest barbecue, they all start with Carolina. Nobody talks about Virginia, even though what they're doing in Carolina is what Virginians were doing first, especially the Eastern North Carolina, whole hog tradition. I know some North Carolinians might be getting mad at me saying this, but I'm just saying, that's what the historical record shows

Deb Freeman:

Again, I have love for our North Carolina listeners and I must admit, you all have done a much better jobs, showcasing your traditions, but I also can't help wishing that more people recognized that Virginia started this whole American barbecue thing.

Adrian Miller:

Nobody's connecting the dots. I think there's three things going on. I don't think there are enough people talking about it. I don't know if there's a big appetite for history anyway. The third thing is, I think for a lot of these food writers, they want something that's fairly easy to categorize and to point out the traditions. You could say the Carolinas, Kansas City, Memphis, you can point these places. When you say Virginia, where exactly are you going to go to get that iconic Virginia barbecue place? On these other places, they have those, those are readily available. You have an idea where those are. I don't know if there's an iconic Virginia barbecue place.

Joshua Fitzwater:

It's not that we don't have good Virginia barbecue restaurants. We have a massive influx as the rest of the country does, of the very strong contingent of North Carolina style barbecue and Texas style barbecue. But we still do have authentic Virginian barbecue restaurants here. You can notice this by things like the phrases minced barbecue, or sliced barbecue. An authentic Virginian barbecue pork sandwich would be served in minced fashion versus the pulled barbecue sandwich you would see in Carolina. It would be sliced instead of chopped.

Deb Freeman:

We might not market Virginia barbecue traditions as well as central Texas or some other places, but our community traditions are still strong. In many ways that may be more true to the roots of Virginia barbecue.

Joshua Fitzwater:

These early barbecues were put on by enslaved Pitmasters for either political reasons or community gathering reasons. You can find your best Virginia style barbecue at the Shenandoah Autumn Festival, where the 1752 guys are going to cook six or eight, super large whole hogs over a pit the old way, and then feed a thousand plus people or whatever it is, for this big festival. That is actually more in line with how American barbecue as we know it today came into being. Because at one of those events, you can see the political signs like, this person's running county whatever, and this person is running for this and it's all stacked right by the barbecue. That is very much in line with the Browns Island barbecue, where they were trying to bring the community together and ensure community stability and so forth.

Joshua Fitzwater:

Or you can tie that back to when they were honoring Andrew Jackson in Fredericksburg and Martha Washington in Fredericksburg when she passed away. That community cooking that still exists is much more in line with how this style of cuisine, American barbecue, began versus the later thing of, we're not going to do the whole hogs. We're going to do something more cost effective, and we're going to bring in more technology and we're going to be cooking shoulders/pork butts. It's less labor intensive. It makes more sense that way, you can get more done, but that's not the roots. That's the continuation of the roots, not the original roots of barbecue in America.

Deb Freeman:

As a Virginian, it's easy to lament that our barbecue legacy seems to be forgotten. The truth is, as people get more interested in learning about foodways and where food traditions come from, their journeys will eventually lead them back to Virginia.

Joshua Fitzwater:

I got to tell you, there's a lot of things that are bad about, quote unquote, hipster culture. There's a lot of snootiness and a lot of things, but there are those people that are going to pay extra and want to touch something that's older. They're going to want to know the story behind the thing. That you have seen in the last decade, like at Southern Grit, for example, we've seen clamoring for this style of content, for covering something like Shenandoah Valley barbecue chicken, which is based around chicken and basting chicken. We've seen really good responses for covering these different Pitmasters like Bazemore we mentioned earlier, Clayton or the work that Joe Haynes is doing in writing, cooking, or the 1752 guys. There's a lot of others. Ronnie out in Varina, Virginia, that's in touch with his Virginia roots. I'm just going to start naming off everybody. It's going to sound like I'm plugging people, but there definitely does seem to be an interest.

Joshua Fitzwater:

It'll be interesting to see as people get older and some people pass away, how things like the barbecue sauce that you and I grew up loving at Doumar's, which then would go to Bill's Barbecue, which was a Virginia barbecue restaurant in Richmond, iteration of it anyways because the families knew each other, will that stuff will survive and hopefully it'll get passed down. It will. To really understand it, you have to follow that history.

Joshua Fitzwater:

I have been optimistic about the response on these types of articles and these types of photo stories and these types of video work that we've been doing. And I hope that it's going to continue to grow. We're going to end up pissing off a lot of Carolinians because the more you talk about barbecue, the more you realize the epicenter is in Virginia. That's okay. History is not always comforting. It's about the truth, not what makes you feel good.

Adrian Miller:

Barbecue is definitely having a huge moment. I just got back from the Middle East. I was in Dubai, Cairo and Kuwait. People are going nuts for barbecue. But they're all eating central Texas style barbecue. And that goes to my point is, that's what they're seeing, right? That's where the most blitz is right now in terms of the people out there, putting videos out, things like that. I think there's going to be a hunger, pun intended, for diversity in barbecue. I think that's going to lead to just an exploration of these different barbecue styles. Virginia is definitely poised to have its moment. I'm eager to see somebody just break down those styles.

Adrian Miller:

If you just look at the history of barbecue. To me, the strongest case is that Virginia is the birth of barbecue and barbecue spreads throughout the south and becomes Southern barbecue when Virginians move to other places and bring their enslaved African American cooks, who make this barbecue in the other places. The Virginians that show up in Kentucky, west Tennessee, the Carolinas and Texas that we can trace because there are newspaper articles about these people hosting barbecues. They're like, this guy was born in Virginia, and he decided to bring this custom to this part of the country. The barbecue's DNA is definitely connected to Virginia, but a lot of people don't know about that. That means we have a tremendous opportunity to educate folks

Deb Freeman:

Like soul food, barbecue is a cuisine born from the complicated history of America. And when we explore its roots, we gain a greater understanding of the ways that history has shaped the way we eat and how we can't separate one from the other.

Joshua Fitzwater:

When people think about barbecue and they get really pumped up about, barbecue is not about an area. It's only about the people. Yes, that's true to a point. If you do not know the history and you do not know these early Pitmasters and you do not realize that barbecue in America was essentially founded by enslaved Pitmasters, then you don't know the history. You don't realize where it came from and you don't really know who you owe a debt of gratitude for that. But the region does make a difference. This is why it is important that we talk about Virginia barbecue because it is the co-mingling of those three cultures that brought on that creolization, as Hayes describes it. If those three were not present, the way that barbecue came out would not be the way barbecue came out. There was something else would've came out, if anything.

Joshua Fitzwater:

It is really the combination of those two things that made it possible for us to have barbecue the way we have it now. The more that we explore Virginia barbecue, the more we realize who the real forefathers of our barbecuing were, the people that were actually doing it. That's extremely important because you can say, well, George Washington threw barbecue and he did. He absolutely did, but who actually made the barbecue? Who dug the pit? Who put the wood down? Who laid the pigs on? Who killed the pigs? Who cleaned the pigs? Who put the pigs on top? Who knew how cook them, where they were delicious? It literally brought people in to try to like curry favor from those people. Who actually made that happen?

Joshua Fitzwater:

That's why we need to explore Virginia barbecue more. That's why until we do, we're not going to really know who birthed it. We may never find specific names. It's great that we have some. I would like to see more time and more articles and more effort given to the Juba Garths, to these early Virginian Pitmasters, who are the forefathers of American barbecue.

Deb Freeman:

So the next time you go out for barbecue, or maybe if you make some of your own, remember the journey barbecue has taken and maybe think a little bit about Virginia and the alchemy that happened between the Indigenous, the enslaved and the settlers that led to where we are today.

Deb Freeman:

This has been Setting the Table. I'd like to thank my guests, Adrian Miller and Joshua Fitzwater. Follow Adrian's thoughts on Twitter @soulfoodscholar and check out his book, Black Smoke: African Americans and the United States of Barbecue, available now at book sellers.

Deb Freeman:

You can learn more about Fitz's work documenting Virginia foodways at southerngritmagazine.com and on Instagram @southern_grit_magazine.

Deb Freeman:

Setting the Table is part of Whetstone Radio Collective. Thank you to the Setting the Table team: Producer, Marvin Yueh, Audio Editor, Evan Linsey, Researcher, Haven Ogbaselase and Intern, Kai Stone. I'd also like to thank Whetstone founder, Stephen Satterfield, Whetstone Radio Collective Head of Podcasts, Celine Glasier, Sound Engineer, Max Kotelchuck, Associate Producer, Quentin Lebeau, Production Assistant Amalissa Uytingco and Sound Intern Simon Lavender. Cover art created by Whetstone Art Director, Alexandra Bowman. Our theme music is Who's Back in Town by Sammy Miller and the Congregation.

Deb Freeman:

You can learn more about this podcast at whetstoneradio.com, on Instagram and Twitter @whetstoneradio and subscribe to our YouTube channel, Whetstone Radio Collective, or more podcast, video content. You can learn more about all things happening at Whetstone at whetstonemagazine.com. Until next time, I'm Deb Freeman.