Looking for Historical Information about Pipe Smoking

This site is focused on the history of pipes, not tobacco. However, it may be of some use: Tobacco Pipe Artistory
This sounds like a problem for Mr. Lowercase!

I'd highly recommend picking up a copy of Compton Mackenzie's book Sublime Tobacco. It's a fairly comprehensive history of tobacco -- and smoking -- that spends a good bit of time on the 1800s. It's a fun, fairly breezy read. There are other histories of tobacco and smoking, but they almost all tend to overlook pipe smoking once it passes from the Americas to Europe. "Smoke of the Gods," for example, turns into a long -- and labored -- discussion of the impact of the cigarette, virtually ignoring every other form of tobacco. Mackenzie, being a pipe and cigar smoker himself, knows where to keep the focus.
Every pipe-smoking reader should also have a copy of Carl Ehwa's Book of Pipes & Tobacco. IMO, it's the best book on the topic (but not exclusively a history).
I should mention that both of the above books are long out of print. You'll only be able to find them on the second-hand market.
I can tell you that until about the mid-1800s, "mixtures" and "blends" were completely unknown. Everyone who smoked a pipe smoked straight leaf, whether it was Virginia, burley, orientals, latakia, perique, whatever. Fribourg & Treyer was the first tobacco company to actually try blending different types of leaf together to come up with mixtures. They remain the oldest tobacco house still in existence.
Bob

Have a poke around on Heather Colman's dawnmist website. She's an archaeologist specialising in clay pipes (pretty much all that was smoked in the 19th century by the classes you listed). I can tell you that those in the Navy didn't smoke on board, particularly in the early half of the 19th century, given the risk of fire aboard wooden ships covered with tar.

I agree with Bob's recommendation on the book Pipes and Tobacco by Carl Ehwa. It has great historical information on the history of pipe smoking, among other topics. If you can find a copy, grab it. Well worth the investment, in my opinion.

Bob I have not seen a copy of Sublime Tobacco in years. That is the one were he recalls smoking cigarettes and then a pipe in some hole in a field with his friends. If my memory serves we right he used to suck on his Fathers cold pipes and was finally given a cigar by his Father in an effort to break him of the nicotine habit without success. In terms of pipe smoking history you might try the Museum of London as they have some great studies of smoking behavior in the 1820s based on exhumations of dead people from this time. Very interesting discourse on local pipe makers with some great pictures of skulls showing a perfect circular hole between the jaw and skull caused by wear from clenching a clay pipe in your mouth all day! Both Leicester and Manchester have large museums devoted to clay pipe manufacture and urban smoking habits.

Very cool site!
Outside of Pipedia, and Wikipedia, there's not a whole lot on real pipe history online. You'll do better in a library. Here are a few reading suggestions:
Pipe: The Art and Lore of a Great Tradition by Robin Crole published by Prima Publishing
The Book Of Pipes & Tobacco by Carl Ehwa, Jr published by Random House, Inc
The Pipe by Georges Herment, published by Simon and Schuster
There are numerous specialized books as well, but these are general histories.

blindmansleeps,
I've been doing some ongoing research into 19th century smoking pipes, partly due to my company's line of traditional corn cob pipes and partly due to my Civil War reenacting hobby. The 19th century is interesting in that you start to see a transition from the traditional clay pipes that had been the primary tobacco pipe source during the 17th and 18th centuries. While clay pipes remained popular and were widely used through the American Civil War and even into the latter half of the 19th century, you start to see the use of briar, corn cob, and meerschaum in the 19th century that began not only to deviate from the white clay pipes but also began to change the traditional shapes in pipes towards the more modern shapes that we see today, especially with the briar and meerschaum pipes. In all honesty, if you were to look at a briar pipe circa 1860s it would not look that much different from some of the modern style briar pipes other than the more rounded mouthpiece compared to the more flattened style popular today and of course the mouthpiece would have been made from materials common in that period such as carved horn, gutta-percha, and vulcanized rubber. Among the "masses", clay pipes remained popular as well as "reed stem" clay pipes (sometimes referred to as "trade pipes" since they were a popular trade item with Native American tribes). These pipes featured a clay bowl that could be fitted with a replaceable reed stem (commonly river cane stems but any hollowed reed would do). They were extremely popular with soldiers in the 19th century as they could easily be packed in your haversack and less likely to have a broken stem at the end of a days march as was a common occurrence with clay pipes with integral clay stems. And, if the reed were to break, you could easily find and cut your own replacement in the field. One of the most famous manufacturers of these pipes was the Pamplin Pipe Factory in Appomattox Co., VA. Here is a link to an interesting and informative slideshow about the Pamplin Pipe Factory put together by the Virginia Department of Historic Resources: http://www.dhr.virginia.gov/SlideShows/Pamplin/pamplinTitleSlide.html. Of course, corn cob pipes also became a popular tobacco pipe during the 19th century. The early history of corn cob pipe production is rather hazy, but references (such as Mark Twain's reference to corn cob pipes in his novels set in Missouri in the 1840s) would suggest that homemade cob pipes were widely used as an inexpensive tobacco pipe for common folk before the Civil War. Even Jefferson Davis (President of the Confederacy and former U.S. Secretary of War) referenced using corn cob pipes on his plantations. There are even references of cob pipe use during the Civil War. From the diary of a private in the 37th Indiana, September 9, 1863: "Some of the Tipton County boys were quite happy to come across a nice big corn field, and even if the corn was a little green, it made for some pipes to replace the clays that keep breaking..." Then of course, in 1869, Henry Tibbe began the first commercial production of corn cob pipes, and as they say, "the rest is history".

Check at abebooks.com for some of these books. They listed several copies of BOOK OF PIPES AND TOBACCO