Washington Duke

Washington Duke
Washington Duke (1820-1905)
Born	Washington Duke (1820-12-18)December 18, 1820 Orange County, North Carolina, U.S.A.
Died	May 8, 1905(1905-05-08) (aged 84) Durham, North Carolina, U.S.A.
Occupation(s)	Farmer, entrepreneur
Known for	Namesake of Duke University (Durham, North Carolina) Founder of the tobacco manufacturer W. Duke, Sons & Company in 1865, (later merged 1890 into the American Tobacco Company)
Spouses	Mary Caroline Clinton ​ ​ (1842⁠–⁠1847)​ Artelia Roney ​ ​ (1852⁠–⁠1858)​
Children	Five, including three sons Brodie Leonidas Duke (1846-1919), Benjamin Newton Duke (1855-1929), James Buchanan ("Buck") Duke (1856-1925), and daughter Mary Elizabeth Duke (1853-1899)
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Washington Duke (December 18, 1820 – May 8, 1905) was an American tobacco industrialist and philanthropist. He was born in Orange County, North Carolina. During the American Civil War (1861-1865), he was drafted later in the War in 1863, at age 43 into the Confederate States Navy and served at coastal postings in Charleston, South Carolina and at the Confederacy's national capital city of Richmond, Virginia, a river port on the upper James River, from the Chesapeake Bay.

After the war and with the loss of his previous farming equipment in 1865, Duke returned home and founded the W. Duke, Sons & Company, a tobacco manufacturer that would later be merged with several other companies to form the conglomerate American Tobacco Company (a.k.a. tobacco trust) in 1890.

Early life and Civil War

Washington Duke was born on December 18, 1820, in eastern Orange County, North Carolina, in what is today the township of Bahama in Durham County. The eighth of ten children of Taylor Duke (c. 1770 – 1830) and Dicey Jones (born c. 1780), Young Washington worked as a tenant farmer until he married Mary Caroline Clinton (1825–1847) at age 22 in 1842. At the time of their marriage, his father-in-law gave the couple 72 acres of land located in what is today Durham County. It was on this land that he began his career as a subsistence farmer. The couple had two sons: Sidney Taylor Duke (1844–1858), and Brodie Leonidas Duke (1846–1919). Unfortunately this first wife, Mary Caroline Clinton Duke died only five years into their marriage in 1847 at the young age of 22.

In 1852, Duke built a homestead for his second wife, Artelia Roney (1829–1858), who was from Alamance County, North Carolina. The structure still exists. Artelia then gave birth to three children between 1853 and 1856: daughter Mary Elizabeth Duke (1853–1899), and sons Benjamin Newton Duke (1855-1929), and James Buchanan Duke (1856-1925), (the latter more commonly known as nicknamed "Buck"). In 1858, oldest son Sidney caught typhoid fever and died. His mother. wife Artelia, who had been caring for Sidney (age 14) also succumbed to the illness ten days later.

Very little is known about Duke's antebellum views on politics. It is known that Duke owned one slave, named Caroline, whom he purchased for $601 dollars, and had hired out the labor of another owned slave from his neighbors to work on his farm.

At the outbreak of the American Civil War (1861-1865), Duke was then 40 years old, too old for the initial call-up and military draft of the conscription act into service for the new southern Confederacy. However, the second Confederate Conscription Act passed in September 1862 increased the draft-eligible upper age to 45. Duke, aware that he would soon be called into military service, held a sale at his home on October 20, 1863, to sell the entirety of his farm equipment. He enlisted in the Confederate States Navy, and served in Charleston Harbor at Charleston, South Carolina, and later further north at the Confederate States national capital city of Richmond, Virginia, until his capture by Union Army federal occupying forces in April 1865. After a brief stint as a prisoner of war in a Federal military prison, he was paroled and was sent by ship back south to New Bern, North Carolina on the Atlantic coast, and from there, walked 134 miles (216 km) westward inland back to his homestead.

Tobacco career

Puzzle Card Number 8, The Cryptogram Puzzle, from the Jokes series (N118) issued by Duke Sons & Co. to promote Honest Long Cut Tobacco (c. 1890)

After the war, Duke stopped farming in order to focus on manufacturing tobacco products. In 1865, using a converted corn crib as a factory, Duke started his first company, W. Duke and Sons, and began production of pipe tobacco under the brand name Pro Bono Publico (For the Public Good). According to Duke, he, along with his sons Ben and Buck, produced between 400 and 500 pounds of pipe tobacco per day. As their company prospered, they built a two-story factory on the homestead in 1869. In 1874, Washington Duke sold his farm and moved his family into the rapidly growing city of Durham. He and his sons built a factory on Main Street, and Washington spent the rest of the decade as a traveling salesman for Pro Bono Publico.

Bronze seated statue of Washington Duke (1820-1905), tobacco manufacturer, at Duke University's East Campus, in Durham, North Carolina, (photographed in June 2006).

In 1880, at the age of 60, Washington Duke sold his share in the company business to Richard Harvey Wright, a farmer from nearby Franklin County. W. Duke, Sons & Company, led then by Washington Duke's son James Buchanan ("Buck") Duke as president, eventually achieved great success as a manufacturer of the invention of cigarettes. This business later merged with other similar local companies, into a trust conglomerate and became the American Tobacco Company around 1890. Through merging multiple partners and through floating stock, the company A.T.C. became the largest tobacco manufacturer in the world.

After selling his share in the company he founded a quarter-century before, Washington Duke became more involved with local politics as a member of the Republican Party of North Carolina, but then a minority in that state longtime led by the opposing Democratic Party and its Southern Democrats faction, and devoted more time to charitable and philanthropic works. A lifelong member and supporter of the Methodist church, Duke began to support local churches financially, as well as institutions of higher learning. Duke helped to bring Trinity College, a small Methodist college< founded in 1838 by the former Methodist Episcopal Church (1784-1939), to Durham from Randolph County (near today's Trinity, North Carolina), in 1890. In 1896 while Trinity College was struggling financially, Duke donated $100,000 dollars to the institution on the condition that it "open its doors to women, placing them on equal footing with men." In appreciation for the bequest, the school offered to rename itself after Duke, which he declined.

Washington Duke died fifteen years later at his home in Durham on May 8, 1905, at the age of 84. Originally interred at Maplewood Cemetery in Durham, he was later moved and re-interred in the Memorial Chapel within the Duke University Chapel. In the 1910s, members of the Duke family began to plan what would become known as the Duke Endowment of Trinity College. After the indenture for the $40,000,000 (40 million dollars) bequest was signed in December 1924 by Washington's youngest son (a year before his own death), James Buchanan ("Buck") Duke (1856-1925), Trinity College then renamed itself as Duke University in honor of Washington Duke, in accordance with the terms of the indenture. Today, a bronze seated statue of Washington Duke (1820-1905) sits on Duke University's East Campus.

Bibliography

• Durden, Robert Franklin, The Dukes of Durham: 1865–1929, Duke University Press, 1975. ISBN 0-8223-0330-2
• North Carolina Historic Sites Archived December 13, 2018, at the Wayback Machine, North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources Office of Archives & History]

External links

• Asoldierswalkhome.com Archived January 18, 2018, at the Wayback Machine
• library.duke.edu
• Duke Homestead and Tobacco Factory
• Duke University biography of Washington Duke
• Duke Homestead Education & History Corporation