Richard Joshua Reynolds (July 20, 1850 – July 29, 1918) 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 (now Winston-Salem), 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. By the 1890s, production had increased to millions of pounds annually.

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 (1887-1920). 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. Additionally

Neal 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 Katharine Reynolds urged her husband to shorten employees' work hours and provide a lunchroom, schools and nursery services for them.

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.

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." She contributed to the William Neal Reynolds Coliseum in Raleigh, North Carolina, in honor of her uncle. He would later sell it in 1980 to Diana Ross formerly of the Supremes. She also headed the effort to turn the Virginia farmstead where her father was raised into a historic site. Now called the Reynolds Homestead, it is a State and National Historic Landmark listed in the National Register of Historic Places. As a Continuing Education Center of Virginia Tech, it offers a variety of programs and classes for all ages, all open to the public and many for free. It is open for tours, April through October, Monday through Saturday.

Family's companies

Descendants of Hardin William Reynolds have influenced the economic and cultural growth of the U.S., particularly in the South, through their business successes and philanthropy.

In 1919, his nephew, Richard S. Reynolds Sr., founded the U.S. Foil Company in Louisville, Kentucky, supplying tin-lead wrappers to cigarette and candy companies. In 1924, he bought the maker of Eskimo Pies (which were foil-wrapped) and four years later he purchased Robertshaw Thermostat, Fulton Sylphon, and part of Beechnut Foil, adding the companies to U.S. Foil to form Reynolds Metals. After realizing the limitations of the tin and lead used in his company's products, in 1926 he added aluminum to the line. The company began using aluminum foil as a packaging material in 1926, and in 1947 they introduced Reynolds Wrap. Sold worldwide, it transformed food storage. Reynolds Metals was the second-largest aluminum company in the United States and the third-largest in the world. The Richmond, Virginia-based company was acquired by Alcoa in 2000.

See also

  • Arca Foundation

References

Further reading

  • Gillespie, Michele. Katharine and R.J. Reynolds: Partners of Fortune in the Making of the New South (University of Georgia Press; 2012) 381 pages; dual biography of R.J. and his much younger wife (1880–1924)
  • Mayer, Barbara. Reynolda: A History of an American Country House 1997. Reynolda Museum of American Art. U.S.A
  • Tilley, Nannie M. The R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company (2009); scholarly business history