THE R. J. REYNOLDS FAMILY – CHAPTER 8 THE CHILDREN

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Although born into immense wealth, the Reynolds children did not grow up expecting extravagance. They considered something as simple as receiving oranges in their Christmas stockings a great treat. As children, especially during R.J. Reynolds’ (RJR) lifetime, all four siblings sincerely sought to please their parents.

Both RJR and Katharine insisted that the children develop a strong work ethic and respect for money. Their father brought home pipe tobacco, small bags, and pieces of cord, so the children could string the tops of the little bags of pipe tobacco with the cord. They were paid by the piece and taught that Black families earned extra cash working from home in the same way.

Though the children occasionally visited their father’s office, they were never taken to the tobacco factories. To elite white eyes like Katharine’s, those factories were unfit for human habitation. RJR maintained that divide. He kept his family distanced from the gritty industrial world that built their fortune.

Ironically, both Katharine and RJR agreed that smoking cigarettes was an unhealthy practice. Katharine never smoked, even when increasing numbers of women considered it fashionable by the early 1920s. RJR, chewed tobacco and smoked cigars, but forbade his children to smoke and always warned them against it. Like many grown children, they ignored their parents’ advice in adulthood.

RJR died in 1918. Tragically, Katharine lived just five more years, dying in 1923 at age 43. At the time of her death, their children were teenagers. They were left orphaned in one of life’s most vulnerable stages.

Not expecting to die so young, Katharine had made inadequate plans for their care. In her will, she appointed her second husband, Edward Johnston, and her brother-in-law, Will Reynolds, as co-guardians. However, Johnston soon moved away with his new baby, leaving the four Reynolds children in their Uncle Will Reynolds’ care. He, in turn, hired cousin-in-law Robert E. Lassiter and his wife to oversee them at Reynolda. Yet both men lived on estates miles away and were ill-prepared to manage four adolescent wards. In effect, the children—aged 11 to 18—were left largely on their own.

Even before Katharine’s death, the eldest child, Dick, had begun living independently. A difficult teenager, he had dropped out of both boarding school and college, wrecked his motorcycle, disappeared for days, and expressed open dislike for his stepfather. He and his brother Smith never truly recovered from the loss of their parents.

“The Reynolds children seemed to me perfect examples of what too much money and too little discipline can produce.” Charles Brackett, family friend, 1932

To understand this criticism, one must consider the children’s financial situation. When RJR died in 1918, his estate was valued at $17 million (C$324 million). By the time Katharine died in 1923, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco had exploded in profitability. Her estate had grown to $35 million (C$638 million).

At ages 12 to 17, the children found themselves living unsupervised in a 64-room mansion, attended by a small army of servants. Each child was entitled to one-quarter of Katharine’s estate upon turning 28. Until then, they received annual allowances that increased with age, capped at $100,000 per year (C$1.8 million).

Annual court records show how Mary and Nancy, the daughters, found inventive ways to enjoy their wealth: ordering a barrel of oysters delivered to their school, hiring a private railroad coach to Florida, booking chauffeured limousines in New York, commissioning personal stationery from Tiffany’s, having jewelry made by Cartier, and hosting orchestra-accompanied dances at elite venues like the Ambassador Hotel in New York and the Robert E. Lee Hotel in Winston. Their annual spending ballooned from $20,000 to $40,000 (C$730,000). To prepare for high society, they took lessons in golf, organ, show jumping, and ballroom dancing.

Uncle Will further indulged them by sending them to art school in France, anticipating that both would soon marry. Mary and Nancy completed their education, traveled in Europe, and socialized with fast, wealthy peers. They married within a month of each other in 1929 -1930 and both settled in Greenwich, Connecticut.

The boys’ excesses, however, far surpassed their sisters.’ Neither Dick nor Smith was interested in formal education. They led fast lives - learning to fly airplanes, drinking heavily, and womanizing on both sides of the Atlantic.

As the girls married and moved away, the boys occasionally returned to Reynolda. No longer a working farm, by the 1930s, the estate had become the setting for wild Prohibition-era parties. For decades, Winston-Salem residents of a certain age and social class would reminisce about the music and booze-filled gatherings held there.

While the Great Depression limited market returns, Camel cigarettes remained a cash machine. By the mid-1930s, each child’s share of the estate provided over $230,000 (C$5.3 million) annually - at a time when the average American family earned around $3,000 (C$69,000) a year.

When the children reached age 28 about 1936, each inherited a trust worth $30 million (C$675 million). Remarkably, each of the four was more than the total estate Katharine had left, despite 13 years of extravagant spending during their youth.

This was a classic case of "too much, too easy, too soon." And it would lead to great tragedy.