Duke Tobacco Machine Tag Found - Neat Piece of Local History

rastinirv

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Jan 21, 2013
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Found this yesterday. Hard to read, but it says, top to bottom:

W DUKE SONS & Co. BRANCH
MACHINE No. 9
THE AMERICAN TOBACCO CO
DURHAM NC

md2.JPG

Appears to be brass or copper. Found an NC history article (https://www.ncpedia.org/w-duke-sons-and-company) that indicates that Washington Duke decided to take on the famous Bull Durham tobacco brand by manufacturing machine-rolled cigarettes, as opposed to the hand-rolled variety. In 1890, W. Duke, Sons & Co. merged with American Tobacco and before long was the largest cigarette maker in the country.

Because this tag has both the Duke and the American Tobacco names, I'm guessing it's from 1890 to possibly the very early part of the 20th century. I'd like to think that this tag was affixed to one of the very first cigarette machines ever pressed into service.

I doubt this has any monetary value, but this is exactly what I love about this hobby: being able to construct a story around the things we dig up, things that otherwise would never be seen again.

Thanks for reading and happy hunting!
 

Upvote 16

Rookster

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Nov 24, 2013
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Congrats. Nice finds
 

A2coins

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thats awesome i love stuff like thay
 

Oct 5, 2014
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Congratualtions on the cool relic! :icon_thumleft:
 

wv1978

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Awesome find buddy! It's been a little to hot for me lately.
 

GB1

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