Export Leaf Tobacco Company

Scope and content:

The Export Leaf Tobacco Co. was listed in 1918 and 1924 as a substantial subsidiary of British-American that operated as the latter's tobacco buying agency. It was still listed in 1967 in Moody's Manual of Investments where it was described as a wholly owned subsidiary of the Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp. that was in turn owned entirely by British-American. Information about Export Leaf Tobacco Co. can be found in: the city directories of Petersburg and Richmond; Reavis Cox, Competition in the American Tobacco Industry, 1911-1932 (New York, 1933 ); and in Nannie May Tilley, The Bright-Tobacco Industry, 1860-1929 (Chapel Hill, 1948).

Less than a dozen volumes represent the operations of Export Leaf, and it is not always certain what functions the accounts were meant to record or to which department and city they belonged. In 1919 there was a department at Richmond, according to the city directory, and several volumes are labeled "Richmond Stemmery", "Richmond Storage," and "R. S." In the Petersburg directory for 1915-1916 the company was referred to as a tobacco stemmer and repriser, and several volumes are labeled "Petersburg Dept." In any case, these books relate more to storage, inventory, and processing than to the firm's activity as a buying agent for British-American.

There is a large collection of papers of the Export Leaf Tobacco Company at East Carolina University.

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