Katharine and R. J. Reynolds

Partners of Fortune in the Making of the New South

Michele Gillespie

• Publisher: University of Georgia Press
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780820344652
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Biographies
• Index: Business

Separately they were formidable—together they were unstoppable. Despite their intriguing lives and the deep impact they had on their community and region, the story of Richard Joshua Reynolds (1850–1918) and Katharine Smith Reynolds (1880–1924) has never been fully told. Now Michele Gillespie provides a sweeping account of how R. J. and Katharine succeeded in realizing their American dreams.

From relatively modest beginnings, R. J. launched the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, which would eventually develop two hugely profitable products, Prince Albert pipe tobacco and Camel cigarettes. His marriage in 1905 to Katharine Smith, a dynamic woman thirty years his junior, marked the beginning of a unique partnership that went well beyond the family. As a couple, the Reynoldses conducted a far-ranging social life and, under Katharine's direction, built Reynolda House, a breathtaking estate and model farm. Providing leadership to a series of progressive reform movements and business innovations, they helped drive one of the South's best examples of rapid urbanization and changing race relations in the city of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Together they became one of the New South's most influential elite couples. Upon R. J.'s death, Katharine reinvented herself, marrying a World War I veteran many years her junior and engaging in a significant new set of philanthropic pursuits.

Katharine and R. J. Reynolds reveals the broad economic, social, cultural, and political changes that were the backdrop to the Reynoldses' lives. Portraying a New South shaped by tensions between rural poverty and industrial transformation, white working-class inferiority and deeply entrenched racism, and the solidification of a one-party political system, Gillespie offers a masterful life-and-times biography of these important North Carolinians.

Katharine and R. J. Reynolds

Partners of Fortune in the Making of the New South

Michele Gillespie

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1 Making a Business of It

2 A Hardworking, Painstaking Student

Photographs

3 Making Money

4 Dearest of All

5 Brains and Backbone

6 A Thousand Cattle on a Hill

7 A Woman for a New Day

Epilogue

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Acknowledgments

I am indebted to many wonderful people in the researching and writing of this book. Let me begin with all the archivists whose knowledge of their respective repositories and whose support for my work has helped me enormously. I would like to thank especially the interlibrary loan staff at the Z. Smith Reynolds Library at Wake Forest University; Max Moeller, archivist at the Hagley Library and Archives; Amy Snyder, curator of the Mount Airy Museum of Regional History; Carter Cue, former archivist, and Tom Flynn, archivist, at Winston-Salem State University; Suzanne Durham, former special collections manager at the Biltmore Estate; Barry Miller, director of communications and external relations, Hermann J. Trojanowski, special projects archivist, and former director of the archives Betty Carter, all at the University of North Carolina–Greensboro Library; Molly Rawls, Fam Brownlee, and the staff of the North Carolina Room at the Forsyth County Public Library; and Robert G. Anthony of the North Carolina Collection at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill. I am also most appreciative of the North Caroliniana Society for granting me an Archie K. Davis Fellowship. Mount Airy attorney David Hite, though not an archivist by profession, took time out from his own work to assist me in my research in the Deeds Room of the Surry County Courthouse.

I am especially grateful to the staff of the Reynolda House Museum of American Art, where the Reynolds family papers, along with many family objects and photographs, are housed. Museum director Allison Perkins has been a constant champion of this project. I have benefited greatly from the collegial support of the Reynolda History group: Phil Archer, director of public programs; Camilla Willcox, Reynolda Gardens curator of education; Sherry Hollingsworth, special assistant to Barbara Millhouse; and Todd Crumley, archivist. Their kind invitation to join them for their monthly lunches led to pleasurable discussions about our latest discoveries over the past few years. Sherry Hollingsworth and Todd Crumley have been exceptionally generous with their time and their knowledge of the Reynolds family and available sources beyond those lunch engagements. Sherry has dedicated many years to documenting the lives of the first two generations of Reynolds family, friends, and staff, and I cannot thank her enough for her willingness to share that work with me. Todd put up with my many archival visits, never-ending requests, and incessant questions with the best of cheer over some seven years. I also received valuable advice and support from Richard Murdoch, former archivist, Elizabeth Clymer-Williams, assistant director of collections management, and Kathleen Hutton, director of education. Former chairman of the board J. D. Wilson helped me untangle Roaring Gap connections to the Reynolds family. I am also grateful to Barbara Millhouse, Katharine and R. J. Reynolds’s granddaughter and the president of Reynolda House from 1965 to 2004, whose own research into her family history and relating of family memories have enlivened this book immeasurably. Noah Reynolds shared with me important documents in his private collection that greatly enhanced my understanding of Katharine Reynolds’s relationship with her oldest son, Dick, at the end of her life. Although I have benefited greatly from all the support of the many people affiliated with Reynolda House and the Reynolds family, let me note that the conclusions and interpretations conveyed herein remain completely my own.

My friends and colleagues in the history profession have supported this book throughout its development and provided me with multiple opportunities to share and hone my ideas. At an early stage, Jonathan Berkey, Vivien Dietz, and Sally McMillen invited me to present my research to their fine students at Davidson College. John Boles brought me to Rice University, where graduate students and faculty in the Houston Area Southern Historians group gave me a great critique of an early paper. Cindy Kierner provided me with the welcome opportunity to present my work in the form of an annual address before the Southern Association for Women Historians at the Southern Historical Association meeting in Richmond. Melissa Walker invited me to present my work to her terrific students at Converse College, and Catherine Clinton and Mary O’Donnell brought me to Queen’s University in Belfast to give a paper at their women’s history seminar. Bill Link at the University of Florida had me share my work at his Milbauer Seminar, where I received especially valuable feedback from his colleagues and students.

Four special people who were very generous with their time and information have unfortunately passed away since I began this project. Earline King, a well-known local sculptor, shared her memories of first- and second-generation Reynolds family members. So did the ever-gracious Zach Smith, Katharine and R. J. Reynolds’s nephew, who spent many hours with me relating stories about his family’s past. In a great piece of good luck, I was able to locate Ed Johnston Jr., Katharine’s fifth and only surviving child, in Baltimore, and spent several amazing days interviewing him about his family memories. My colleague Jing Wei, who helped me with one technical problem after another for nearly a decade, passed away unexpectedly and much too soon as this project neared its completion. I am so sorry that she and these other kind and supportive people are not here to see the completed book, which bears the fruits of their labor.

I am thankful to Betsy Taylor and Anna Smith for their advice and encouragement early on, and similarly to Joyce Schiller, former curator at Reynolda House. Nick Bragg, former director of Reynolda House, and close friend of the late Nancy Reynolds, has not only shared his extensive knowledge of the Reynolds family with me on multiple occasions but gave me a fabulous tour of Mount Airy and the Reynolds Homestead in Critz, Virginia, too. Beth A. Ford at Reynolds Homestead has been most helpful. Reverend Allen Wright at Reynolda Presbyterian provided insight into the evolution of Katharine Reynolds’s and his church. Historian Becca Sharpless gave me great suggestions on researching household relationships across the color line while her important book was in the production pipeline. Likewise Louis Kyriakoudes encouraged me to make good use of the online Tobacco Legacy documents. One fine day I received a thick packet in the mail from historian Lu Ann Jones. Early in her career, Reynolda House had hired her to conduct a series of oral histories with surviving family and staff members. Those oral histories, now over thirty years old, have been an invaluable set of sources for this project. In preparation for the interviews, she had also taken notes on family papers and correspondence now no longer extant, and after coming upon them many years later, thought to send them to me, a kindness for which I will always be grateful. Walter Beeker, southern studies scholar extraordinaire, has provided me with invaluable information and sources as well as his friendship.

I am grateful to my students in my History of the South since 1865 and my America at Work courses who crunched census data with me to get at the key demographic changes taking place in Winston between 1890 and 1920. Many thanks to my former student assistants and summer research fellows: Andrew Canady, Eleanor Davidson, Kyle Erickson, Kate Kammerer, Mary Elizabeth Crawley King, and Elizabeth Lundeen. Their intelligence, hard work, and good cheer have always reminded me how fortunate I am to teach such gifted students, many of whom have since become outstanding graduate students and young scholars.

My sincere gratitude goes to Ken Badgett, independent researcher and an expert on the history of the Piedmont region and the Boy Scouts of America. Ken’s deep knowledge of local and state North Carolina history is unparalleled. He is the most meticulous of scholars, and his willingness to share his findings with me and point me in the right direction time and again has made this book far better than it might otherwise have been. I am most appreciative of all my terrific colleagues in the history department at Wake Forest but want to single out Paul Escott, Simone Caron, Tony Parent, Sarah Watts, and Ed Hendricks for their advice and help. I also wish to thank the Kahle family for their generous fellowship; Jacque Fetrow, dean of the college; Jill Tiefenthaler, former provost and current president of Colorado College; Mark Welker, interim provost; and Nathan O. Hatch, Wake Forest president, for their support, and my terrific former colleagues in the provost’s office who championed this project too: Deb Alty, Velvet Bryant, Debbie Hallstead, Kline Harrison, Beth Hoagland, Anita Hughes, Rick Matthews, Matt Triplett, and Parul Patel.

I have had the great benefit of an exceptional writing group during the early years of this project and a fantastic reading group at a later stage. Bio Brio members Emily Herring Wilson, Peggy Smith, and Anna Rubino, all inspiring writers and biographers in their own right, not only encouraged me in my earliest fumbling attempts at defining this project but gave me constructive criticism that sharpened my thinking and writing considerably along the way. I will always be beholden to each of them. Likewise, my two years in my Landscape, Place, and Identity reading group with my Wake Forest colleagues Judith Irwin Medera, Gillian Overing, Emily Wakild, and Ulrike Wiethaus encouraged me to incorporate new theoretical constructs and more interdisciplinarity into my analysis.

Several people have been exceptionally generous in reading my manuscript and giving me outstanding feedback. Robert Whaples read an important chapter at a crucial point in the manuscript’s development, and I am grateful to him for his evaluation. Catherine Clinton, Paul Escott, Randal Hall, and Bill Link read the manuscript in its entirety and made it far better for their insights, helpful remarks, corrections, and questions. University of Georgia Press senior editor Nancy Grayson has been a writer’s dream to work with. She has been unwavering in her support for this project. It has been an extraordinary experience to work with s...

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• Katharine and R. J. Reynolds