The various buildings on Red Fox Farm in Mecklenburg County survive as a tangible illustration of the bright-leaf tobacco curing process pioneered here. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries tobacco had been the principal cash crop for Southside Virginia, a crop that enabled the region’s farmers to sustain themselves following the Civil War and Reconstruction. The industry was spurred by the introduction of a profitable method of producing flue-cured bright-leaf tobacco, a method developed by Robert M. Jeffreys at Red Fox Farm in the 1880s. Bright-leaf tobacco was used principally for cigarettes and thereby the demand for it increased significantly over the dark tobacco used for chewing. Along with the main house, the buildings connected with this enterprise at Red Fox Farm include five log tobacco barns, a pack house, strip house, smokehouse, log cabins, and a farm store or commissary.