Indian Chief

As their tobacco company grew, the Lorillard brothers sought to maintain competitive advantage by turning to ever more sophisticated forms of advertising. They began direct mailing campaigns, printing and sending out broadsides. Eventually, they created private labels which became so popular that they were collected as trading cards. The one shown here is an ad for Century Fine Cut and depicts Nature in the form of a white woman offering tobacco to a seated Native American.

NYPL ID number: 1800682

Maxwell Fox, The Lorillard Story

1947

Geroge Arents Collection, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations

Peter Ray

The father of Cornelia and Peter Williams Ray, Peter Ray was one of the black community’s most respected members. Born in 1800, he began working in Peter and George Lorillard’s tobacco company as an errand boy in 1811. When he died in 1882, he was one of the general superintendents in the company’s new factory in Jersey City. The Lorillards valued him as a worker, recognizing his skill as a "judge of leaf tobacco, and which will do best for snuff and which for cutting, for smoking and chewing tobacco," and rewarded accordingly.

Ray was also an important leader in the black community. He was active in the affairs of St. Philip’s since its inception, serving as the vestry’s senior warden for all but two years between 1843 and 1862. He also worked tirelessly on behalf of black education, cajoling the city's public school system into hiring black teachers.

NYPL ID number: 1800761
George Arents Collection

Manuscript Receipt Book. ca. 1825-ca. 1843/ Receipts, chiefly for curing tobacco and preparing snuff

circa 1842

The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations