Washington Duke (December 18, 1820 – May 8, 1905) was an American tobacco industrialist and philanthropist. During the American Civil War he enlisted in the Confederate States Navy. In 1865, Duke founded the "W. Duke, Sons & Co.", a tobacco manufacturer that would be merged with other companies to form conglomerate American Tobacco Company in 1890. Early life & Civil War Washington Duke was born on December 18, 1820, in eastern Orange County, North Carolina, in what is today the township of Bahama in Durham County. The eighth of ten children of Taylor Duke (c.1770–1830) and Dicey Jones (born c.1780), Washington worked as a tenant farmer until he married Mary Caroline Clinton (1825–1847) in 1842. At the time of their marriage, his father-in-law gave the couple 72 acres of land located in what is today Durham County. It was on this land that he began his career as a subsistence farmer. The couple had two sons: Sidney Taylor Duke (1844–1858), and Brodie Leonidas Duke (1846–1919). Mary Duke died in 1847 at the age of 22. In 1852, Duke built a homestead for his second wife, Artelia Roney (1829–1858), who was from Alamance County, North Carolina. It still exists. Artelia gave birth to three children between 1853 and 1856: daughter, Mary Elizabeth Duke (1853–1899), and sons, Benjamin Newton Duke, and James Buchanan Duke (more commonly known as "Buck"). In 1858, oldest son Sidney caught typhoid fever and died. Artelia, who had been caring for her stepson Sidney, also succumbed to the illness ten days later. Very little is known about Duke's antebellum views on politics. It is known that Duke owned one slave, named Caroline, whom he purchased for $601, and had hired out the labor of another slave from his neighbors to work on his farm. At the outbreak of the American Civil War, Duke was 40 years old, too old for the initial conscription into service for the Confederacy. However, the second Confederate Conscription Act passed in September 1862 increased the draft-eligible age to 45. Duke, aware that he would soon be called into military service, held a sale at his home on October 20, 1863, to sell the entirety of his farm equipment. He enlisted in the Confederate navy, and served in Charleston, South Carolina, and Richmond, Virginia, until his capture by Union forces in April 1865. After a brief stint in a Federal prison, he was paroled