• 8000 - 7000 B.C. The earliest known woven fabric was made from wild hemp was carbon dated to this era. 

(Information obtained from Jack Herer's book  The Emperor Wears No Clothes.  1995, pg. 2. Where he quotes The Columbia History of the World, 1981, pg. 54)

• 1000 B.C. - 1883 A.D. Cannabis hemp was the world largest grown cash crop.  It was used to make fabric, lighting oil, paper, incense, medicines, and food.

• 400 B. C. Pipes wrapped in hemp cloth containing cannabis residue were discovered in the Great Lakes and Mississippi Valley buried with Hopewell Mound Builders.  

• 1619 A. D. In James town Colony, Virginia farmers were ordered by law to grow Indian Hemp.

• 1631 A. D. - early 1800's In most colonies of America cannabis hemp was legal tender (money) through out this time period.  You could even pay your taxes with hemp for over 200 years.  

• 1631 A. D. In Massachusetts farmers were ordered by law to grow Indian Hemp.

• 1632 A. D.  In Connecticut farmers were ordered by law to grow Indian Hemp.  

• 1763 - 1767 A. D. In Virginia you could be jailed, if you were a farmer, for not growing hemp during times of shortage. (1)

• 1890 A. D. In 1824, domestic hemp was pitted against Russian hemp by rigging the USS Constitution on one side with American and the other with Russian grown hemp, 'and after being thus worn for nearly a year, it was found, on examination, that the Russian rope, in every instance, after being much worn, looked better and wore more equally and evenly than the American.'  But the commander said, 'the difference between them was not so great as to warrant a declaration that the proof was conclusive in favor of the Russian....'"  

Dodge, C. A.  1896.   A report on the culture of hemp and jute

 in the United States.  USDA Office of Fiber Investigations.  Report No. 8. p.15.

• 1850 A. D. The U.S. census counted 8,327 hemp plantations that had at least 2000 acres of land or more.

• 1896 A. D. Several [varieties of hemp] are grown in this country, that cultivated in Kentucky and having a hollow stem, being the most common.  China hemp, with slender stems, growing very erect, has a wide range of culture.  Smyrna hemp is adapted to cultivation over a still wider range and Japanese hemp is beginning to be cultivated, particularly in California, where it reaches a height of 15 feet.  Russian and Italian seed have been experimented with, but the former produces a short stalk, while the latter only grows to a medium height.  A small quantity of Piedmontese hemp seed from Italy was distributed by the Department in 1893, having been received through the Chicago Exposition...."

Dodge, C. A.  1896.   A report on the culture of hemp and jute in the United States.

 USDA Office of Fiber Investigations.  Report No. 8. p.7.

• 1842-1896 A. D.  A variety of marijuana and hashish extracts were the first, second, and third most prescribed medicines in the United States.

• 1891 A. D.  W. H. Holmes an ethnologist for the Smithsonian Institute recovers a large piece of hemp fabric buried with a man at an archaeological dig in Morgan County, Tennessee.

• 1902 A. D. "In Nebraska, where the [hemp] industry is being established, a new and important step has been taken in cutting the crop with an ordinary mowing machine.  A simple attachment which bends the stalks over in the direction in which the machine is going facilitates the cutting...  The cost of cutting hemp in this manner is 50 cents per acre, as compared with $3 to $4 per acre, the rates paid for cutting by hand in Kentucky."

USDA.  1902.   USDA. Yearbk of Agric. p. 23.

• 1905 "The most important fact to be recorded in connection with the hemp industry during the past year is the successful operation of a machine brake in the fields of Kentucky.  This machine breaks the retted stalks and cleans the fiber, producing clean, straight fiber equal to the best grades prepared on hand brakes, and it has a capacity of 1000 pounds or more of clean fiber per hour.  So far as we have any record, this is the first machine having sufficient capacity to be commercially practical that has cleaned bast fiber in an entirely satisfactory manner."        

USDA.  1905 Report of Office of Fiber Investigations.  Bureau of Plant Industry. p. 145.

• 1917 "The crop of hempseed last fall, estimated at about 45,000 bushels, is the largest produced in the United States since 1859.  A very large proportion of it was from improved strains developed by this bureau in the hempseed selection plats at Arlington and Yarrow Farms."

USDA.  Bureau of Plant Industry.  1917.  Report of the Chief. p. 12.

• 1918 "Early maturing varieties, chiefly of Italian origin, are being grown at Madison, Wisconsin, in cooperation with the Wisconsin Agricultural Experiment Station.  This is the third year of selection for some varieties, and the results give promise of the successful production in that State of seed of hemp fully equal to the Ferrara of northern Italy."     

USDA.  Bureau of Plant Industry.  1918.  Report of the Chief. p. 28.

• 1918 "When the work with hemp was begun in Wisconsin, there were no satisfactory machines for harvesting, spreading, binding, or breaking.  All of these processes were performed by hand.  Due to such methods, the hemp industry in the United States had all but disappeared.  As it was realized from the very beginning of the work in Wisconsin that no permanent progress could be made so long as it was necessary to depend upon hand labor, immediate attention was given to solving the problem of power machinery.  Nearly every kind of hemp machine was studied and tested.  The obstacles were great, but through the cooperation of experienced hemp men and one large harvesting machinery company, this problem has been nearly solved.  The hemp crop can now be handled entirely by machinery."

Wright, Andrew.   1918.  Wisconsin's Hemp Industry. Wisconsin Agricultural Experiment

Station Bulletin # 293. p.5.

• 1920 "The work of breeding improved strains of hemp is being continued at Arlington Farm, Va., and all previous records were broken in the selection plats of 1919.  The three best strains, Kymington, Chington and Tochimington, averaged, respectively, 14 feet 11 inches, 15 feet 5 inches, and 15 feet 9 inches, while the tallest individual plant was 19 feet.  The improvement by selection is shown not alone in increased height but also in longer internodes, yielding fiber of better quality and increased quantity."

USDA.  Bureau of Plant Industry.  1920.  Report of the Chief. p. 26.

• 1921"The organized hemp growers of Wisconsin, working in cooperation with the field agent of fiber investigations [Andrew Wright], have so improved the quality and standardized the grades of hemp fiber produced there that it has found a market even in dull times.  The hemp acreage in that State has been kept up, although there has been a reduction in every other hemp-producing area throughout the world."

USDA.  1921.   Annual Report of the Department of Agriculture: Hemp. p. 46.

• 1929 "In 1929 three selected varieties of hemp (Michigan Early, Chinamington and Simple Leaf) were grown in comparison with unselected common Kentucky seed near Juneau, Wis.  Each of the varieties had been developed by 10 years or more of selection from the progeny of individual plants.   The yields of fiber per acre were as follows: Simple Leaf, 360 pounds; Michigan Early, 694 pounds; Chinamington, 1054 pounds; common Kentucky, 680 pounds."

USDA.  1929.   Bureau of Plant Industry, Annual Report. p. 27.

• 1935 "The hemp breeding work, carried on by the Bureau for more than 20 years, was discontinued in 1933, but practical results are still evident in commercial fields.  A hemp grower in Kentucky reported a yield of 1750 pounds per acre of clean, dew-retted fiber from 100 acres of the pedigreed variety Chinamington grown in 1934.  This is more than twice the average yield obtained from ordinary unselected hemp seed."

USDA.  1935.   Annual Reports of the Department of Agriculture, p.6.

• 1937 The history of how the Marihuana Tax Act came to be the law of the land. - READ

• 1937 Full Text of the Marihuana Tax Act as passed in 1937 

• 1942 The Japanese invade the Philippine's and cut off our Manila (Abaca) hemp supply.  

• 1942 The U. S. government distributes 400,000 lb. (pounds) of cannabis hemp seed to American farmers from Wisconsin to Kentucky. (1)

• 1942-1946 American farmers produced 42,000 tons of hemp fiber per year. (1)