Benjamin Newton Duke was an American industrialist, philanthropist. He was a leader in the South’s economic revival. Benjamin N. Duke manifested an interest in educational and charitable work, and influenced members of his family in this direction.
Background
Benjamin Newton Duke was born on April 27, 1855 four miles north of Durham, North Carolina, United States. His father Washington Duke, the son of Taylor and Dicie (Jones) Duke, was of English, Scotch-Irish, and Welsh descent. He married in 1852 his second wife, Artelia, daughter of John and Mary Roney of Alamance County. She died in 1858, when Benjamin, her elder son, was three years old. When they became rich, Benjamin and James B. Duke gave a science building to Elon College in honor of their mother. The boys, with their sister, were cared for until 1863 by aunts who came into Washington Duke’s home after his wife’s death. In that year their father, though a Unionist, went into the Confederate army, and the children went to live with their grandparents in Alamance.
Education
Ben went to neighborhood schools at Harden’s and Pisgah Church, and was a playful, sturdy youngster, busy after school with chores about the farm. After the war, when not working at growing and manufacturing tobacco, he was a pupil in the academy of Dr. Morgan CIoss in Durham, and later was sent to the Quakers’ school at New Garden (now Guilford College).
Career
The Dukes built a factory in Durham in 1874, and in 1878 formed the firm of W. Duke Sons & Company. The firm was one of the first to introduce cigarette machines; it boldly cut the price on their product and extended its market throughout the world. Branch factories having been established in New York in 1884, the Dukes entered the “cigarette war” which ended in a combination, the American Tobacco Company, formed in 1890. Benjamin N. Duke was one of the directors, while his brother James was president. Then followed a series of mergers which gave this corporation control of the industry in America, the Duke brothers being the dominant factors in the whole. On the dissolution of the combination by order of the Supreme Court in 1911, Benjamin Duke diverted his capital to a variety of other undertakings.
Already in 1906 he had become president of the Citizens National Bank in Durham, and had reorganized a local railroad, the Cape Fear & Northern, extended its tracks to reach Durham, and changed its name to the Durham & Southern. He became heavily interested in hydro-electric power development in the South, in cotton manufacturing, and in real estate. His fortune at one time was estimated at $60, 000, 000.
At the time of his death he had withdrawn from active management of most of these enterprises, his only business positions being those of director in the Southern Powder Company, and director of the Durham Realty Corporation, the latter owning hotels and apartment houses in New York and New Jersey. He relinquished his design of building an orphanage at Durham when it was suggested to him that Trinity College might be removed from the country to the location he had selected, and he forwarded plans which brought this about in 1892.
Between 1898 and 1925 his gifts to the college grew progressively, totaling in excess of $2, 000, 000. It was undoubtedly Benjamin’s example that induced James to make this school the chief object of his benefactions, which resulted in very large gifts by him in 1924 and 1925, and a change of name to Duke University. Benjamin gave to churches, to a negro hospital in Durham, and to many other institutions associated with his young manhood.
Achievements
Personality
Benjamin Newton Duke was modest, avoided publicity, and sought to keep his gifts secret.
Connections
In 1877 Duke married Sarah Pearson Angier of Durham, and had two sons and a daughter.