







Washington Duke and
his Third Tobacco Factory, c. 1904
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Building an Empire
In 1868 Brodie Duke tried to persuade his father
to move the manufacturing operation to Durham. Though Washington
Duke decided to continue at a rural location, he provided funds for Brodie
to establish his own factory in Durham, where he began production in
1870. Around that time also, Washington began to concentrate more
heavily on the manufacture of tobacco; he constructed a two-story frame
building--the third factory, and hired additional workers to handle the
increased production. Until that time, there had been no building on
the property built specifically for the manufacture of smoking
tobacco. The third factory was designed to receive and store
un-manufactured tobacco and to house the manufacturing operation.
The structure featured wide doors to facilitate loading and unloading of
tobacco. Rafters inside the building held tier poles probably used
for hanging sticks of tobacco prior to manufacture; small doors in the
attic were opened or closed to regulate the moisture content of the
hanging leaves. Square holes cut into the ceiling of the first floor
apparently were openings for chutes. The manufactory probably
contained no sophisticated machinery; no records have been found detailing
the interior contents, though it must have contained such items as flails,
sieves, work tables, weighing scales, and an assortment of baskets and
barrels.
Still, the homestead tobacco business retained
its simple, family-oriented manufacturing processes. The process of
manufacture at the third factory was simple and slow--as it had been at
the first and second factories in use previously. Workers flailed
the cured tobacco, beating the dry leaves into a very fine state by
forcing it through a sieve. Laborers then granulated the crushed
leaf while other skilled workers weighed and packed the sieved tobacco.
Demonstrations of processes used in early tobacco manufacturing are
presented in this factory. By 1873, the Dukes were producing around
125,000 pounds of smoking tobacco annually.
As the enterprise steadily expanded, and the
number of customers outside of North Carolina increased, Washington Duke
began to consider the advantages of moving his business into town.
Conditions in Durham in the early 1870s were very favorable for the
manufacture of tobacco; the location of the North Carolina railroad
station was convenient for shipping, and a warehouse for the sale of leaf
tobacco had been opened in 1871. Durham was rapidly becoming a major
tobacco center. In April 1874, Duke purchased two acres near the
railroad where he built a new factory.
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