“A tour de force . . . a top-notch study of a powerful couple negotiating the shifting socioeconomic world of the New South and early corporate America.”—Journal of American History 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 and Katharine Smith Reynolds 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. Katharine and R. J. Reynolds “is an engrossing study of a power couple extraordinaire . . . Telling us much about an unusual relationship, Michele Gillespie also provides a new way to understand how the post-Reconstruction New South elite helped construct business structures, social relations, and racial hierarchies. The result is an important addition to our understanding of the industrial South in the North Carolina Piedmont heartland” (William A. Link, author of The Paradox of Southern Progressivism). “Ms. Gillespie uses Katharine’s life and work as a kind of prism through which to view the prejudices and predilections of Southern culture in the 1910s and 1920s.”—The Wall Street Journal

"Illustrated with 150 photographs, plans, and drawings, Catherine Howett's engaging study analyzes the singular convergence of influences that occurred in the imagination of a highly unusual woman. The book provides welcome insight into the culture of the New South and into a richly inventive period in the history of American landscape architecture."--BOOK JACKET.

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.

Reynolda: Her Muses, Her Stories is your invitation to explore Reynolda House Museum of American Art, North Carolina's nationally acclaimed art museum showcasing paintings, sculpture, and decorative arts in the restored 1917 home of tobacco magnate R. J. Reynolds and his wife, Katharine. Their sixty-four-room bungalow sits at the center of an estate that beckons thousands of visitors each year to its formal gardens, meadows, woodlands, shops, and restaurants. In this volume, David Park Curry has captured the essence of Reynolda House Museum of American Art through a lavishly illustrated essay that blends Reynolda's fifty years as a beloved family home with her second life as a museum of American art. Using the lenses of time, landscape, home, social context, history, and memory, Curry connects you to the remarkable place called Reynolda. Highlighting the fascinating--and often surprising--stories of the myriad ways signature works of art came into this stellar collection, Martha R. Severns offers insights about the artists, writers, donors, and, most importantly, the museum's founder, Barbara Babcock Millhouse. Each of the eighty concise essays is afforded a generous two-page layout that includes a full-page color image. This beautifully illustrated book takes you through an American place and an American collection. Consider it your personal tour with behind-the-scenes access to all the stories you might wish to learn, but cannot, in the limited span of a single visit to this Museum.

A History of the tobacco industry in the United States and an insider's look at the tobacco industry through U.S. history.

A cloth bag containing ten copies of the title.

In the early twentieth century, Winston-Salem was hailed as the "town of a hundred millionaires." Booming tobacco and textile manufacturing industries converged to make Winston-Salem the largest and richest city in all of North Carolina, and major architects flocked to the area to design for its newly wealthy clientele. Ambitious commercial buildings and gracious suburban estates abounded, hosting generations of families that shaped the economic future of the country. Great Houses and Their Stories explores Winston-Salem's finest residential architecture from that era--its spacious mansions, palatial gardens, and even working farms--and delves deeply into the stories of the people who lived and worked in those historic buildings. This is a book for the preservationists, history buffs, and architecture lovers of the world and for the Winston-Salem residents who have always wondered about the abundance of green-roofed mansions still surviving in their city, even as similar pockets of early 20th century architecture throughout the country have been lost to time. Author Margaret Supplee Smith, Ph.D., and photographer Jackson Smith tell the rich histories of more than 75 great houses through beautiful new photography, historic photographs, personal narratives, and oral histories. Through diligent research of historical records and interviews with residents and local historians, they've uncovered fascinating stories about the families whose fortunes shaped neighborhoods like Buena Vista, West Highlands, and Reynolda Park. By publishing this book, Preservation North Carolina hopes to advance the preservation of Winston-Salem's rich architectural legacy, which is highly threatened by demolition and overdevelopment.

You may think you know the South for its food, its people, its past, and its stories, but if there’s one thing that’s certain, it’s that the region tells far more than one tale. It is ever-evolving, open to interpretation, steeped in history and tradition, yet defined differently based on who you ask. This Is My South inspires the reader to explore the Southern States––Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia––like never before. No other guide pulls together these states into one book in quite this way with a fresh perspective on can’t-miss landmarks, off the beaten path gems, tours for every interest, unique places to sleep, and classic restaurants. So come see for yourself and create your own experiences along the way!

Class, race, and gender collide in this insightful examination of the life of Susanna (Susan) Preston Shelby Grigsby (1830–1891)—a white plantation mistress and slaveholder who struggled to participate in the economic modernization of antebellum Kentucky. Drawing on Grigsby's correspondence, author Susanna Delfino uses Grigsby's story to explore the complex cultural and social issues at play in the state's economy before, during, and after the Civil War. Delfino demonstrates that Grigsby engaged in certain kinds of antislavery activism, such as hiring white servants as a way of conveying her support for free labor and avoiding ever selling a slave. Despite her beliefs, however, Grigsby failed to hold to her moral compass when faced with her husband's patriarchal authority or when she experienced serious economic trouble. This compelling study not only illuminates how white women participated in the South's nineteenth-century economy, but also offers new perspectives on their complicity in slavery.