Everything about James Buchanan Duke totally explained
James Buchanan Duke (
December 23,
1856 –
October 10,
1925) was a
U.S. tobacco and
electric power industrialist best known for his involvement with
Duke University.
Born near
Durham, North Carolina, his father,
Washington Duke (1820-1905), had owned a tobacco company which James B. Duke and his brother
Benjamin Newton Duke (1855-1929) took over in the
1880s. Known by the nickname "Buck," in
1885, James Buchanan Duke acquired a license to use the first automated
cigarette making machine (invented by
James Albert Bonsack), and by
1890, Duke supplied 40% of the American cigarette market (then known as pre-rolled tobacco). In that year, Duke consolidated control of his four major competitors under one corporate entity, the
American Tobacco Company, which was a
monopoly in the American cigarette market.
In the
1890s, he forged an agreement with his
British competitors to divide the market, with Duke controlling the American trade, the British companies controlling the trade in British territories, and a third, cooperative venture between the two - the
British-American Tobacco Company - controlling the sale of tobacco to the rest of the world. During this time, Duke was repeatedly sued by business partners and shareholders. In 1906, the American Tobacco Company was found guilty of antitrust violations, and was ordered to be split into three separate companies: American Tobacco Company,
Ligget and Myers, and the
P. Lorillard Company.
Duke was married twice, the first in
1904 to Lillian Fletcher McCredy, but they divorced in
1906 and had no children. He married again in
1907 to Nanaline Holt Inman with whom he'd his only child, a daughter,
Doris.
In
1892, the Dukes had opened their first textile firm in
Durham, North Carolina that was run by Benjamin Duke. At the turn of the century, Buck Duke organized the American Development Company to acquire land and water rights on the
Catawba River. In
1904, he established the
Catawba Power Company and the following year he and his brother founded the
Southern Power Company which became known as
Duke Power, one of the companies making up the
Duke Energy, Inc. conglomerate. The company supplied
electrical power to the Duke's
textile factory and within two decades, their power facilities had been greatly expanded and they were supplying electricity to more than 300
cotton mills and other industrial companies. Duke Power established an electrical grid that supplied cities and towns in the
Piedmont Region of
North and
South Carolina.
Lake James, a power-generating reservoir in Western North Carolina, was created by the company in
1928 and named in Duke's honor.
In
1911, the
United States Supreme Court upheld an order breaking up the
American Tobacco Company's monopoly. The company was then divided into several smaller enterprises, of which only the British-American Tobacco Company remained in Duke's control. After his death in 1925, there was a great deal of controversy, and some historians suspect that some resentful
Imperial Tobacco executives were feeling some anger at Duke for having lost the Tobacco War between Duke's company and
Imperial Tobacco.
In December of
1924, Duke established
The Duke Endowment, a $40 million trust fund (about $430 million in 2005), some of which was to go to Trinity College. The University was renamed "
Duke University" in honor of his father. On his death, he left approximately half of his huge estate to
The Duke Endowment which gave another $67 million (about $725 million in 2005) to the trust fund. In the Indenture of Trust, Duke specified that he wanted the Endowment to support Duke University,
Davidson College,
Furman University,
Johnson C. Smith University; not-for-profit hospitals and children's homes in the two Carolinas; and rural
United Methodist churches in North Carolina, retired pastors, and their surviving families. The remainder of Duke's estate, estimated at approximately $100 million (about $1 billion in 2005), went to his twelve-year-old daughter,
Doris Duke.
James Buchanan Duke is interred in Memorial Chapel in the
Duke Chapel on the campus of
Duke University.
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