R. J. Reynolds
Richard Joshua Reynolds was an American businessman and founder of the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company.
The son of a tobacco farmer and major enslaver, he worked for his father and attended Emory & Henry College from 1868 to 1870, eventually graduating from Bryant & Stratton Business College in Baltimore. He sold his share of the family business in 1874 and moved south to Winston, North Carolina, to start his own tobacco company. Reynolds was a savvy businessman and a hard worker, and he quickly became one of the wealthiest citizens of Winston-Salem; eventually, he was the wealthiest person in the state of North Carolina. He died in 1918 of pancreatic cancer.
Biography
Early life
Reynolds was born on July 20, 1850, at Rock Spring Plantation near Critz, Patrick County, Virginia. He was the son of Nancy Jane Cox Reynolds and Hardin Reynolds, a tobacco farmer. He grew fond of the tobacco business by helping his father.R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company
In 1874, Reynolds sold his interest in the family tobacco business to his father and left Patrick County to start his own tobacco company. He needed a railroad hub for his business, and since there was not one in Patrick County, he went to the nearest one, Winston, North Carolina. Winston and Salem were separate towns at that time. By 1875, Reynolds had established his tobacco manufacturing operation, and in the first year, it produced 150,000 pounds of tobacco. Although Winston-Salem alone had 15 other tobacco companies, Reynolds was able to distinguish himself through his business acumen and innovative techniques, including adding saccharin to chewing tobacco. By the 1890s, production had increased to millions of pounds annually.Reynolds' younger brother, William Neal, was attending Trinity College and worked part-time for him. Mr. Will, as he was known, began as a leaf-hanger and quickly mastered all facets of the operation. After leaving Trinity College, he managed tobacco purchasing. In 1888, Reynolds formed a formal partnership with Mr. Will and the company bookkeeper, Henry Roan. Reynolds served as President with 75% ownership, and Mr. Will and Henry Roan divided the remainder. The R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company was chartered as a corporation by the state of North Carolina on February 11, 1890. In 1892, Reynolds' net worth had grown to $200,000.
In 1913, Reynolds developed a great innovation: the packaged cigarette. Most tobacco users who smoked cigarettes preferred to roll their own, and there was thought to be no national market for pre-packaged cigarettes. Reynolds worked to develop a flavor he thought would be more appealing than past products, creating the Camel cigarette, so named because it used Turkish tobacco. Reynolds undercut competitors on the cost of the cigarettes, and within a year, he had sold 425 million packs of Camels.
By the time of his death, Reynolds had become the wealthiest man in North Carolina by far; his $66,000 paid annually in taxes was double the next-highest taxpayer. R. J. Reynolds had grown to encompass 121 buildings in Winston-Salem. After his death in 1918, his brother assumed control of the company; board members would wait 41 years before hanging another portrait beside Reynolds' in the R. J. Reynolds board room.
Family and personal life
There are rumors within both black and white Winston families' oral traditions that Reynolds was the father of numerous illegitimate children. Some of the company brands such as Annie, Lula, and Lottie were purportedly named for Reynolds' girlfriends during his lifetime. Reynolds did in fact have at least one illegitimate child before his marriage late in life, named John Neal. Neal was white and grew up at an orphanage in Oxford, North Carolina. Reynolds had some amount of involvement with Neal, spending time with him and supporting him financially during his life; RJR's extant account books show purchases for clothing and education expenses for Neal. In the 1900 census, RJR's brother and sister-in-law, William Neal and Kate Bitting, are listed as the twelve year-old John Neal's adoptive parents, and he lived with for an undetermined time after leaving the orphanage. AdditionallyNeal died of pneumonia in 1920 while living in Omaha, Nebraska and working as division managing salesman for the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. Neal is buried in the William Neal and Kate Bitting plot in Salem Cemetery, Winston-Salem.
Reynolds was the most eligible bachelor for many years in Winston-Salem and married Katharine Smith, who was 30 years his junior, on February 27, 1905, in Mount Airy, North Carolina. She was the daughter of Zachary Taylor Smith and Mary Susan Jackson.
Reynolds and Katharine's father, Zachary, were first cousins, and Reynolds had known Katharine since she was a young girl. She earned a degree in English literature and went to work as a Reynolds secretary, at one point winning $1,000 in a company-sponsored contest. Reynolds joked that he married Katharine to get his money back. Their marriage was very happy, and Reynolds wrote to Katharine saying he was very glad he waited so long to marry. Katharine Reynolds urged her husband to shorten employees' work hours and provide a lunchroom, schools and nursery services for them.
The Reynolds' children were:
- Richard Joshua Reynolds, Jr. who married Elizabeth McCaw "Blitz" Dillard, Marianne O'Brien, Muriel Maud Marston Laurence Greenough, and Annemarie Schmitt.
RJ Jr and Annemarie had one daughter two days after RJ Jr died, Irene Sabine Reynolds
- Mary Katharine Reynolds who married Charles Henry Babcock
- Nancy Susan Reynolds who married Henry Walker Bagley and Gilbert Verney. Nancy and Henry had three daughters, Jane Bagley Lehman, Susan Bagley Bloom, and Anne Bagley Grant, and one son, Smith Bagley, cell phone business executive and social activist.
- Zachary Smith Reynolds who married Anne Ludlow Cannon in York, South Carolina, November 16, 1929, and Libby Holman in Monroe, Michigan, on Sunday, November 29, 1931.
Reynolds died in 1918, and his wife, although 30 years younger, died six years later. They are buried in Salem Cemetery in Winston-Salem. Their children were then raised by their uncle, Reynolds' brother William Neal Reynolds, and his wife Kate Bitting Reynolds. Dick Reynolds became a Democratic politician, mayor of Winston-Salem, and treasurer of the Democratic National Committee.
Reynolds's grandson, Patrick Reynolds, became an anti-smoking activist following several family deaths from smoking and began the Foundation for a Smoke-Free America.
Political views
In 1884, Reynolds served as a city commissioner in Winston-Salem. Reynolds established progressive working conditions in his factory, with shorter hours and higher pay. He also signed a petition for a property tax to pay for public schools and voted to approve an income tax.Lasting influence of Reynolds and his family
Reynolds was generous with his workers, building schools and houses for them on his property. He also granted endowments to Guilford College, the Oxford Orphan Asylum, and the Baptist Orphanage, in addition to many other charities and churches in the Winston-Salem community. He became the first Southern man to establish a hospital serving African Americans in the South, the Slater Hospital. He started a savings and loan, served on the town board of Winston-Salem, and began a YMCA and an opera house.Reynolds donated money to the establishment of the Slater Industrial School, which would later become Winston-Salem State University.
In 1923, the newly formed Reynolds Foundation fully financed the construction of Nancy Reynolds Memorial School built at the birthplace of his and Will Reynolds' mother, Nancy Jane Cox Reynolds, in the Brown Mountain community of Stokes County. In 1930, the Reynolds Foundation paid for the construction of two wings adjoining the original building. During the Depression, Will Reynolds covered the costs for an additional month of school in order for Nancy Reynolds to become accredited. In the 1950s, the foundation financed and built the school's freestanding gymnasium and built and equipped its large agricultural building. A memorial gift that still provides for the school today is a $25,000 endowment set up after the death of Kate Bitting Reynolds, Will's wife, with the yearly dividends to be used solely for the upkeep of grounds, exterior beautification projects and playground equipment. The endowment's total value is now more than three-quarters of a million dollars and easily supports its intended use.
When Reynolds died, North Carolina's governor Thomas Walter Bickett said: "Therefore, the greatest eulogy that can be offered would be to refer to his life of rugged honesty, his wide usefulness and his kindly dealings with his fellowmen, which he himself deemed his first duty."