Richard Joshua Reynolds, founder of the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, was born in the shadow of Nobusiness Mountain, Patrick County, Virginia. His father was Hardin William Reynolds, a manufacturer of tobacco, a merchant, and a farmer all on a substantial scale; his mother was Nancy Jane Cox from a family famed in Revolutionary activities and long settled in northwestern Stokes County, North Carolina. Both were descended from English forebears. Reared in a comfortable home by strong and able parents, young Reynolds had ample opportunities for an education and escaped any drudgery in his early years by virtue of his father's large-scale enslavement of other people. He did begin early to work in his father's chewing tobacco factory situated in the rear of the home known as Rock Spring (a handsome but austerely plain brick mansion afterwards restored by Nancy Susan Reynolds and entered in the National Register of Historic Places) on the old Bristol-Norfolk highway. The emancipation of the people he enslaved had little effect on the financial standing of Captain Hardin W. Reynolds, since he and his two oldest sons plunged into work and the tobacco factory prospered in the late 1860s and 1870s.

Reynolds attended local subscription schools and possibly received additional training from a family tutor before attending Emory and Henry College for two years (1868–70). He deserted his studies in 1870 and began working for wages in his father's factory. During the first part of 1873 he attended Bryant and Stratton Business College in Baltimore at his own expense and while there solicited orders for chewing tobacco made in his father's factory, thus becoming familiar with the nature of city trade and the methods of wholesale dealers. Young Reynolds returned to Patrick County and on 1 July 1873 entered into partnership with his father in operation of the elder Reynolds's factory at Rock Spring. For a variety of reasons, including his father's desire to admit a younger but less able son into partnership, a need to be nearer flue-cured tobacco which grew in greater quantity farther south, and the need to locate in a town with railroad connections, Reynolds on 19 October 1874 purchased a one-hundred-foot lot on Depot Street from the "Congregation of the United Brethren of Salem and its Vicinity" for $388.50. Here, in present-day Winston-Salem, North Carolina, he built his first factory—38 by 60 feet—with railway connections to Greensboro on the main line of the Richmond and Danville railway system.

Reynolds manufactured what was known as Southern flat plug chewing tobacco—150,000 pounds the first year and something more than one million pounds by the early 1890s. This type of chewing tobacco, made from flue-cured leaf, provided a durable chew, though it did not absorb sweetening agents as readily as chewing tobacco made from Burley leaf. In the late 1880s Reynolds made a revolutionary change in his formula for producing Southern flat plug by using saccharin as his chief sweetening agent, thus producing a sweeter and more durable chew than that made of the porous Burley leaf. Seeing his opportunity, Reynolds immediately built a large, modern factory by securing credit from every possible source but chiefly from his family and from the Parletts, wholesale handlers of chewing tobacco in Baltimore. This new plant was five times larger than his business then warranted. During these months Reynolds played a forceful role in building the Roanoke and Southern Railway, which was completed in late 1891 and almost immediately taken over by the Norfolk and Western Railway, thus giving the towns of Winston and Salem shipping facilities to the east and west without dependence on the Richmond and Danville system, which in 1893 became the Southern Railway.

Within weeks of the completion of the Roanoke and Southern from Winston and Salem to Roanoke, Reynolds began his first official advertising. He was manufacturing more than five million pounds of chewing tobacco by 1898. His business had outgrown his capital, more was necessary for expansion, and James B. Duke's American Tobacco Company was beginning to undersell all manufacturers of chewing tobacco, whether flat plug or navy.

Either by force of Duke's monopoly or by Reynolds' need for capital, the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company became affiliated with the American Tobacco Company on 4 April 1899. Reynolds resented Duke's control and, when not permitted to manufacture smoking tobacco, he began work on a formula for three brands of smoking tobacco in the hope that at least one would become successful. He held them off the market until 1907, when the U.S. government began its famous antitrust suit against the American Tobacco Company. By 1911 Prince Albert smoking tobacco had been established on a national scale; its success was also based on a radical change in formula—inclusion of both Burley and flue-cured leaf. In the same year the American Tobacco Company was dissolved, and Reynolds went on to create the Camel cigarette—a blend of flue-cured and Burley leaf with very little Turkish tobacco. It was the first truly American cigarette, which other manufacturers were forced to copy. Reynolds had the lead and for many years his company stood first in the sales of all three major tobacco products. Until 1954, no product developed by the company achieved any success except those created by Reynolds. He became an immensely wealthy man, and many who followed his plan of low salaries and investment in his company likewise became wealthy.

Reynolds was a generous and humane man who contributed freely to various projects designed to uplift the people of his area—a practice followed by his heirs with funds derived from the greatly increased sales of the Reynolds products. He enjoyed great camaraderie with his employees and went along with the notion that he had risen from poverty and ignorance—a matter that gave rise to the general belief that he was ignorant and uneducated. He was a strong Democrat, departing from support of the presidential nominees only in 1896. He considered the income tax the fairest ever devised and carried no exaggerated idea of himself.

On 27 February 1905 he married Mary Katharine Smith, his first cousin once removed. They were the parents of four children: Richard Joshua, Jr., Mary Katharine, Nancy Susan, and Zachary Smith. He grew up a Methodist but, perhaps influenced by his wife, later became a Presbyterian. Reynolds died at his home, Reynolda, after a long illness of incurable cancer of the pancreas and was buried in the Salem Cemetery. For many years his portrait hung alone in the board room of the R. J. Reynolds Company until his successors in the early 1960s placed their own on the same walls.

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RICHARD JOSHUA REYNOLDS, OF WINSTON-SALEM, NORTH CAROLINA

Richard J. Reynolds, second son of Hardin W. and Nancy Cox Reynolds, spent his early years in the home of his parents in Patrick County, Virginia. His father's large estate and successful tobacco manufacturing business and the distribution of the manufactured products furnished ample opportunities for a liberal business education.

Private schools were available for members of the family, and as they reached the proper age they were sent to the best colleges to continue their studies. Notwithstanding the fact that R. J. Reynolds had no particular taste for books, after attending the neighborhood schools he entered Emory and Henry College and spent some time as a student in that institution. He is said to have been a marvelous mathematician and worked out a system that enabled him to make calculations with amazing accuracy.

For several years Mr. Reynolds traveled in the interest of his father's business. In those days distributors did not speed from one point to another in automobiles, stopping over night at the best hotels, but traveled in well-loaded wagons drawn by stout horses or mules, often over rocky or muddy roads and camped when it was not convenient to find a lodging place in which to spend the night. There was time, however, for thinking and studying human nature and working out problems with intelligence and originality.

After reaching the age of twenty-five Mr. Reynolds' wonderful genius began to be recognized. He having sought new fields for the expansion of business, decided upon Winston, now Winston-Salem, as a desirable location and in 1876, the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company was organized.

Mr. Reynolds was a man of such impressive personality that once having met him he would not be forgotten, tall, dark, with keenly discerning eyes, his marvelous executive ability was apparent to anyone spending a few minutes with him in his place of business. Orders or instructions were given clearly and tersely and no doubt were seldom misunderstood or disobeyed.

Mr. Reynolds was married to Katharine Smith, of Mt. Airy, North Carolina, a woman of great charm, intelligence and ability. They occupied a palatial home in the city for a number of years, after which a large estate was purchased about four miles northwest of the city and under the direction of Mrs. Reynolds, a beautiful and very spacious home of the English type was built. Extensive grounds, with acres of woodland carpeted with grass and flowers and a succession of gardens, present vistas of beauty to the visitor. A large lake and swimming pool are additional attractions. The name, "Reynolda," was given the estate and is preëminently appropriate and euphonious.

A village of considerable proportions was added, an attractive church (Presbyterian) was built, also a manse for the minister stationed there, a good school building, shops and cottages for employees. Farming, dairying, stock raising and horticulture, superintended by experts, make "Reynolda" one of the finest estates in North Carolina.

Mr. Reynolds died in 1916 and was survived by his wife and four children, two sons and two daughters, Richard J., Jr., Z. Smith, Mary Katharine and Nacy.

The elder son, Richard J., has given a great deal of time and attention to aviation and is interested in the development of aviation fields. He has traveled in foreign countries extensively.

Z. Smith Reynolds is also interested in aviation, and has made a record as one of the youngest aviators on long-distance flights. Mary Katharine married Charles Babcock and they make their home in New York. Nancy married Henry Walker Bagley and also lives in New York.

Many features of the city of Winston-Salem are monuments to the splendid public spirit of Mr. and Mrs. R. J. Reynolds. Not only the great business, furnishing opportunities for employment to thousands and fortune building to many, but gifts to the city are memorials which will stand for the benefit of future generations.

Several years after the death of Mr. Reynolds, Mrs. Reynolds married J. Edward Johnston. She passed away in 1924, being survived by Mr. Johnston and an infant son.

Pedigo, Virginia G. & Lewis G. Pedigo. History of Patrick and Henry Counties Virginia. Roanoke, The Stone Printing and Manufacturing Company, 1933.