Richard Louis Dibrell (19 September 1855–12 January 1920), tobacco company executive, was born in Richmond and was the son of Richard Henry Dibrell, a tobacco merchant, and Mary Lee Jones Dibrell. The family surname, of Huguenot origin, was DuBreuil before his grandfather anglicized it. After tutelage under his father, Dibrell joined his brother Alfonso Dibrell in 1873 as a tobacco broker in Danville, which soon became the largest loose-leaf tobacco market in the world. In the early years they operated what was known as an order business that purchased tobacco from farmers at auction on warehouse floors and then redried and repacked the leaf into hogsheads for shipment to their customers.
Dibrell's success came from his keen eye and ability to assess instantly the quality of each pile of tobacco in the warehouse by the size, shape, color, and condition of the leaf. He knew also what price the same staple was selling for on other markets and which customers each pile of tobacco would best satisfy. Speedy assessment of the tobacco and decisive bidding were necessary because an auctioneer could sell as many as 400 piles of tobacco per hour during the course of an auction. Dibrell's earliest business was in leaves used as wrappers on plugs of chewing tobacco. His major customers included Liggett and Myers, of Saint Louis, Missouri, the world's largest plug manufacturer. In 1900 Dibrell added stemming machines to process the leaf before shipment. Not long thereafter the American Tobacco Company, which produced cigarettes, became one of his customers.
While his brother remained in Danville to handle tobacco purchasing, Dibrell traveled to sell tobacco. Much of the company's early business lay in the Midwest, and he spent months each year in Chicago, Cincinnati, Louisville, and Milwaukee. During one of his regular visits to Saint Louis, Dibrell met Ida Nelson, of Boonville, Missouri, whom he married in Boonville on 17 June 1884. They had one son. Dibrell erected a handsome brick residence on Broad Street in Danville following his marriage. His wife died on 24 November 1896. On 27 May 1903 Dibrell married Mary E. Boyd, of Reidsville, North Carolina. They had no children and lived in a house on Main Street, in Danville, that Dibrell purchased in 1903.
In the 1880s Dibrell traveled to Canada and after his brother's death in November 1890 to the United Kingdom to expand his markets. In 1897 he and Alexander Berkeley Carrington incorporated Dibrell Brothers, a partnership that dissolved after Carrington left Danville in 1902. Dibrell and his new partner Herbert Lee Boatwright rechartered Dibrell Brothers, Inc., in August 1904, and Carrington rejoined the company the following year. As secretary, Boatwright oversaw tobacco purchasing, as vice president Carrington managed the finances, and as president Dibrell continued the marketing and added customers in Belgium, the Scandinavian countries, China, and Japan.
As a trendsetter among tobacco-leaf brokers, Dibrell recognized two keys to the corporation's success: continuous travel to identify new customers and markets, and timely establishment and acquisition of smaller branches and subsidiaries, essential because the high cost of transportation made it inefficient for the Danville plant to process tobacco purchased in the Carolinas, Georgia, Kentucky, and Tennessee for shipment to all of its customers. Dibrell established branches or subsidiaries in Mullins, South Carolina, and in the North Carolina towns of Durham, Greenville, Henderson, Kinston, Rocky Mount, Wilson, and Winston-Salem. So successful was the acquisition of new markets and subsidiaries that the return on investment for the corporation's first fiscal year amounted to an impressive 44.6 percent. In 1917, one subsidiary, the G. R. Garrett Company in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, posted a 163-percent return on investment for the year. By the time of Dibrell's death the company was purchasing, processing, and shipping about 40 million pounds of tobacco annually.
Dibrell served as president of the Danville Tobacco Association, Inc., for five nonconsecutive one-year terms between 1897 and 1920. He also sat at various times on the boards of directors of several local banks, including the First National Bank of Danville and Virginia National Bank.
The success of his corporation afforded Dibrell the luxury of time and money to engage in philanthropy. Realizing that the future of the New South depended on improved transportation, he spent lavishly from his personal fortune, estimated at between $750,000 and $1 million by the time of his death, to construct farm-to-market roads in the Danville area. He also donated land and funds for the expansion of the city's Hilltop Sanitarium for the treatment of tuberculosis. As a Freemason, he was active in the Roman Eagle Lodge. A generous contributor to Mount Vernon Methodist Church, he served often on its board of stewards and occasionally in other church offices.
On 12 January 1920, after an eight-month illness, Richard Louis Dibrell died of cancer at his Danville home. He was buried in the city's Green Hill Cemetery. Under his partner Carrington's leadership Dibrell Brothers continued its expansion as one of the largest and best-known leaf tobacco companies in the South, and in 1995 it became Dimon Incorporated.
Sources Consulted:
Biographies in Lyon Gardiner Tyler, ed., Men of Mark in Virginia (1906–1909), 5:96–97 (portrait facing 96), and George W. Dame, Historical Sketch of Roman Eagle Lodge…, 2d ed., rev. (1939), 247–248; birth date on passport application, 23 Feb. 1909, Emergency Miscellaneous Passport Applications, volume 128: Sweden to Turkey 1907–1910, Division of Passport Control, General Records of the Department of State, Record Group 59, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.; Cooper Co., Mo., Marriage License; second marriage in Rockingham Co. North Carolina Register of Deeds, Marriage Register, 1868–1897, and in Charlotte Observer, 29 May 1903; Dibrell Brothers Archives and Jack Irby Hayes, Jr., and Alica White, "The Archives of Dibrell Brothers Incorporated" (typescript, 1991), both Danville Museum of Fine Arts and History; Danville Tobacco Association, Inc., Records (microfilm), Library of Virginia (LVA); Danville Register, 24 Feb. 1907; Edward Pollock, Illustrated Sketch Book of Danville, Virginia: Its Manufactures and Commerce (1885), 157–158; Nannie May Tilley, The Bright-Tobacco Industry, 1860–1929 (1948); Mary Cahill and Gary Grant, Victorian Danville: Fifty-Two Landmarks: Their Architecture & History (1977), 24–26; Dibrell Brothers Incorporated, 1873–1973 (1973); Death Certificate, Danville, Bureau of Vital Statistics, Commonwealth of Virginia Department of Health, Record Group 36, LVA; obituaries, funeral accounts, and estate in Danville Register, 13, 14, 27 Jan. 1920, and Richmond News Leader, 14 Jan. 1920, Richmond Times-Dispatch, 14 Jan. 1920, and Washington Post, 14 Jan. 1920.
Photograph in Tyler, Men of Mark in Virginia, vol. 5.
Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Jack Irby Hayes, Jr.
How to cite this page:
Jack Irby Hayes Jr., "Richard Louis Dibrell (1855–1920)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2022 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Dibrell_Richard_Louis, accessed [today's date]).
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