Ravenna – Gary Jones is the proud owner of a historic Mail Pouch Tobacco barn visible on State Route 88. The barn, which was originally built in 1906, still proudly extolls the Mail Pouch Tobacco message to, “Treat Yourself to the Best”. Mail Pouch Tobacco barns like this one are historic structures with one or more sides painted with a barn advertisement for the Mail Pouch Chewing Tobacco Company based in Wheeling, West Virginia.
In the heyday of barn advertising, from the early 1900s through the 1940s, many companies paid farmers to use their barns as roadside ads for their tobacco products or local feed and grain stores. Initially, barn owners were paid a dollar or two a year for the advertisement. The Mail Pouch Barn program began by the now defunct Bloch Brothers Tobacco Company; the Swisher International Group who purchased the company in 1983 continues the historic program.
The program ran from 1891 to 1992, and at its height in the early 1960s, about 20,000 Mail Pouch barns were spread across 22 states. Harley Warrick of Belmont County, Ohio painted many of those barns after being hired for the position after World War II until his retirement in 1992. (After 1992, barn owners could choose to continue with the program, although the company no longer provided the services of a barn painter.)
The barns were typically hand-painted in black or red with yellow or white capital lettering, read as: “Chew Mail Pouch Tobacco–Treat Yourself to the Best.” Jones’ iconic barn has distinct yellow and white lettering. The Mail Pouch message can be seen on two sides of Jones’ structure, such that drivers traveling either direction can see the message.
Warrick painted the Jones barn twice during his tenure as Mail Pouch barn painter, the final time in 1986. Since then, Jones, now 70 years-old, has maintained the iconic message on his historic structure. It was last painted in 2010. During the Jones family’s ownership of the barn, they continue to receive $10 per year, upon verification that the structure is still in good condition and the message is still visible.
The barn has been in the Jones family since the 1970s; according to Jones, the original owner was George Atchison. He remembered seeing the Atchison’s dairy cows in the lower level of the barn as a boy living next door to the 50+acre farm. Jones’ father purchased the barn and 5-acre plot on which it resides after Atchison’s passing in the 1970s.
Since purchasing the barn from his father, Gary Jones has uncovered many artifacts that show how the structure was used over time. It wasn’t until finding an old derelict piano in the upper level that he learned the barn had been used to hold dances, as evidenced by several ‘barn dance’ tickets that remained. Finding a slew of coal tickets in an old metal can, Jones learned that Atchison routinely purchased loads of coal for his own use and to resell in the local area from the Pleasant Valley Mining Company in Magnolia, Ohio. Jones has provided local historical societies with these documents, as well as a variety of items, for display in those society’s museums.
While Mail Pouch barns have become increasingly rare, thanks to Gary Jones, a piece of that storied past lives on today.
