The brothers, co-owners of the Whitley Peanut Factory in Gloucester, have picked up where George Washington Carver left off. Those are big shoes to fill, no doubt. Carver left quite a legacy with the 300-plus uses he whipped up for the peanut at the turn of the century. Stuff we created on the stove back home. That home was in Franklin, where the peanut thrives in the area's sandy farmland.
Goober peas permeate their earliest memories.
It was a blast - until I got big enough for him to hand me a broom and put me to work. It's unlikely Marion Smith realized he was forging his sons' futures when he joined forces in 1977 with one Marvin Whitley. Before that, the elder Smith had been the founding president of the Bank of Franklin - an institution built on wealth squeezed from the peanut. Whitley was a member of the bank's board of directors. His Whitley's Peanut Company was in nearby Sedley.