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In 1893, the American economy collapsed — and Johnston County's cotton farmers watched decades of work evaporate at six cents a pound. What came next was a gamble: build a curing barn you'd never operated, raise a crop you'd never grown, and sell it at an auction that didn't yet exist in your county. This is the story of how the Panic of 1893 killed King Cotton, how a sleeping blacksmith accidentally invented bright leaf tobacco, and how one desperate pivot in 1898 built nearly everything you see in Smithfield today.