A trove of business records from a 20th-century Kentucky hemp processor are now in the hands of the University of Kentucky.
A family in Bourbon County donated some 17 boxes of records from the family decortication and processing business that operated from roughly 1900 to 1940.
The university’s Special Collections Library will clean and archive the papers, said Daniel Isenstein, president of advocacy group Hemp Highway of Kentucky, which organized the donation and notified Hemp Industry Daily.
The university gave no value to the donation. The records will be available to the public at a future date, Isenstein said.
The donors, the Spears family, bought raw hemp from neighboring farms and owned a decorticator, scutcher and baler to process the raw hemp.
