#Tar January 25

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North Carolina’s association with TAR runs deep.

Let’s start with the nickname for the UNC Tarheels. Here is the story behind that.

UNC Tarheels Nickname

Many years ago

Many years ago, being called someone a “rosin heel” or “tar heel” was a slight implying that they worked in a lowly trade. Yet, during the Civil War Confederate Soldiers from North Carolina flipped that negative into a positive. They began to refer to themselves as “Tarheels” to demonstrate state pride.

North Carolina’s Economic Connection to TAR

During Colonial Times there was something called Naval Stores. Naval stores are goods (stores, or things stored for later use) used in building and maintaining ships. Originally, “naval stores” included everything used to build a ship, including wood and cloth, but by the end of the colonial period it meant tar, pitch, and turpentine.  That became what North Carolina became infamous for.

TAR and all of these other products were manufactured from pine trees, which North Carolina had in abundance. North Carolina became a key supplier to the British Navy, and naval stores became central to the colony’s economy.

Choices about preferred economic interests often dictated the path that the various colonies made.

England had tried before to encourage its colonists to manufacture naval stores. In Virginia, the Jamestown colonists had briefly tried making TAR, but they quickly found that tobacco could bring them more money. Efforts to build a naval stores industry in New York and New England failed for similar reasons: Other crops and other industries were more profitable, and the colonists did not want to take on the messy work of making tar and pitch. And by 1700, New Englanders had cut down most of their native pine forests, which made manufacturing naval stores nearly impossible. Cue up the music for North Carolina. being the Tarheel State.

You can read more in Kent Wrench‘s book called North Carolina’s Forgotten Economy

Facts about TAR and its byproducts

Tar is a dark, thick, sticky liquid produced by burning pine branches and logs very slowly in kilns. Seamen painted coats of tar on riggings that held masts and sails in place. It was also used on land, as axle grease, to preserve fence posts, and to cover wounds on livestock to help them heal. You may have smelled it when you passed a new road being laid down.

Pitch is produced by boiling tar to concentrate it. It was painted on the sides and bottoms of wooden ships to make them watertight. At room temperature, pitch is nearly solid, much like modern caulk, which has similar uses. When heated, it flows like a liquid and can be used as a paint.

Turpentine is distilled from a gum that living pine trees secrete to protect wounds in their trunks. It was not much used in the colonial period, but by the nineteenth century it was used in manufacturing paint and a variety of other goods as well as for medicinal purposes. You may have used this colorless but strong-smelling fluid used as a thinner for oil-based paints.