Lewis Ginter was a prominent businessman, military officer (major), real estate developer, and philanthropist centered in Richmond, Virginia. A native of New York City, Ginter accumulated a considerable fortune throughout his numerous business ventures and became Richmond’s wealthiest citizen.
Background
Lewis Ginter was born on April 24, 1824, to John and Elizabeth Ginter, a Dutch immigrant couple, on April 24, 1824 in New York City. His father owned a grocery store, but died soon after Ginter was born. Several years later, Ginter's mother died, leaving him to be raised by his older sister and brother with their relatives.
Education
Ginter was self-educated for the most part, with no college training.
Career
Young Ginter accompanied a friend to Richmond, Virginia, in search of work in 1842, and there soon displayed his characteristic initiative by starting a house-furnishings store on his own account.
His business prospered and by the early fifties he had become an “importer of fancy goods” as well as a dry-goods wholesaler trading extensively with village and country merchants. After he had formed a partnership with John F. Alvey, the firm of Ginter & Alvey specialized in silk, linen, and white goods, and Ginter himself went to Europe yearly to buy.
Shortly before 1860, his nephew, George Arents, obtained an interest in the firm, which became known as Ginter, Alvey & Arents. It enjoyed an enviable reputation and earned the handsome profit of $40, 000 in 1860.
Shortly after the Civil War began, Ginter closed his business and joined the Confederate army as quartermaster (earning the rank of major) under Gen. Joseph R. Anderson in the Army of Northern Virginia, where his frequent activity in battle won him the title of “the fighting commissary. ”
After his parole in April 1865, he became associated with a brokerage firm in New York which failed during the crisis of “Black Friday”. This adversity, a blessing in disguise, directed Ginter into the tobacco business in which he made his fortune.
The desire to return to Richmond encouraged him to form a partnership with John F. Allen of that city in 1872. They began in a small way by manufacturing smoking and chewing tobacco and cigars, and Ginter, with his earlier mercantile experience, traveled extensively to put their goods on the market.
In the face of sharp competition, he caught the eye of customers by handsome lithographed labels and attractive designs of packing, and cultivated their taste by the high quality of the product. More important, however, was the firm’s venture, in 1875, into the manufacture of cigarettes - then a foreign product of the weed and one still untried with Virginia tobacco.
Ginter introduced under the name “Richmond Gem” paper-rolled cigarettes made from the virgin leaf, which enjoyed rapidly increasing popularity. In the early eighties the firm became Allen & Ginter, whose Gem Tobacco Works erected on Cary Street in 1881 were mentioned frequently in the trade journals of the day.
Associated with them were John Pope and later Thomas F. Jeffress, both intimates of Ginter’s for many years. Ginter appreciated the influence upon the public mind of pointed advertisements at a time when modern scientific advertising was yet unborn.
Richmond Gem cigarettes, Opera Puffs, and Virginia Brights became bywords among smokers whose taste had been cultivated by Allen & Ginter, while the more conservative devotees of the pipe found contentment in Old Rip, and Richmond Gem Curly Cut.
The first factory began operation with twenty unskilled girls; by 1888 the new plant employed over one thousand skilled women and girls, and cigarette production had increased from 100, 000 per month to 2, 000, 000 per day.
The activity of the firm’s agents extended throughout the United States and into the leading marts abroad. Meanwhile the competition among the principal cigarette manufacturers - Allen & Ginter, W. Duke & Sons, Kinney Tobacco Company, William S. Kimball & Company, and Goodwin & Company - was growing so bitter that they were forced to combine for their own advantage.
In 1890, after several unsuccessful attempts to merge, Ginter succeeded in negotiating an outright sale of all the businesses to the American Tobacco Company, organized for that purpose. It was capitalized at $25, 000, 000 and incorporated in New Jersey after Virginia had disallowed a previous charter.
Allen & Ginter acquired stock amounting to $7, 500, 000 in the new corporation, of which Ginter was a director until shortly before his death. The income which he enjoyed during the ensuing years enabled him to turn his efforts increasingly towards beautifying Richmond, developing her suburban area near “Westbrook, ” his country estate, and supporting numerous charitable organizations.
He was buried in Hollywood Cemetery, Richmond.
Religion
Ginter joined the Episcopal Church a few years before his death in 1897 and was a member of the Masonic order.
Personality
Ginter was a quiet, unassuming man, widely read and widely traveled, a lover of nature and art.
The provisions of his will bespoke his broad interests in the public welfare.
Quotes from others about the person
“Never before in the history of Richmond did so many of the people do honor to one of their fellow-citizens. ” - the Richmond Times.