Adams County tobacco grower Patrick Raines inducted into Ohio museum hall of fame

Adams County’s place in southern Ohio tobacco history got a fresh marker this spring when Patrick Raines was inducted into the Ohio Tobacco Museum Hall of Fame in Ripley. For a county where tobacco once helped define farm life, the honor linked one local grower to a much larger story about the men and families who built an agricultural economy that still shapes rural identity today.

Raines was one of four longtime growers recognized by the museum, alongside Don Pope of Gallia County and Larry Hall and Kenny Ring of Brown County. The Hall of Fame is housed inside the Ohio Tobacco Museum’s room devoted to the people who played important roles in the tobacco industry, and the 2026 class reinforced how deeply the crop’s legacy runs across the Ohio River valley.

The induction came during the museum’s annual dinner meeting and reverse raffle on April 11 in Ripley, where about 350 guests turned out. The fundraiser raised $13,500 in cash prizes and served as the organization’s primary fundraiser for the year, money that helps keep the museum active and its collections moving toward new displays and educational programming.

That work matters because the museum is not just preserving objects, it is preserving a local economy’s memory. Ripley Heritage says the museum operates in an 1850s home that became the site in 1988 and remains the only tobacco museum in Ohio. Ripley Heritage, Inc. was chartered in 1975 and amended in 1976 as Ripley’s U.S. Bicentennial project, giving the museum a direct tie to the region’s effort to document its own past.

The tobacco story reaches back much farther. Museum history materials say white burley tobacco was first discovered and cultivated in 1864 on the farm of Capt. Frederick Kautz. Scholarship on burley in the Ohio River valley describes tobacco as more than a cash crop, saying it shaped both the economy and the social life of farm communities. That history explains why a Hall of Fame nod for an Adams County grower still resonates beyond county lines.

Museum leaders also used the event to keep the institution moving forward. Board elections returned David Dugan, Larry Hall, Nick Layman and Kenny Ring to three-year terms. Volunteers and contractors are working on a sidewalk extension and a ramp to one of the outbuildings, while plans call for reorganizing collections so visitors can safely view tobacco presses and other equipment now in storage. Workers are also sorting photographs by year, digitizing old images and building a public binder for personal memories connected to tobacco farming.

The museum said it will continue seasonal demonstrations, with future dates posted on its Facebook page, and surplus tobacco plants will again be offered to the public in exchange for donations. It also plans to take part in the July 4 America 250 celebration at the Brown County Fairgrounds, carrying Adams County’s farm heritage into another public milestone.