Ralph Benjamin Douglass (6 May 1891–21 August 1972), manufacturer, was born in Alexander City, Alabama, and was the son of Frazier Michel Douglass and Georgia Emma Barnes Douglass. He attended a business college in Birmingham and worked as a bookkeeper before becoming manager of a cottonseed oil mill in Opelika. Douglass married Renova Beard on 20 May 1912 in Luverne, Alabama. He moved to Savannah, Georgia, then to another cotton oil mill in Raleigh, North Carolina, and in 1919 to Norfolk, Virginia, where he served as vice president of the Eastern Cotton Oil Company for eight years.

In 1927 Douglass purchased a part-interest in the Smith Reduction Corporation, in Norfolk, and became the vice president and partner of its founding president, Oscar Frommel Smith. Renamed the Smith-Douglass Company, Incorporated, it produced nitrogen-based liquid fertilizer and during the next three years erected new plants in Danville and in North Carolina. The company began production of superphosphate, another fertilizing agent, in 1935 and of sulfuric acid in 1938, part of its development of a vertically integrated production system that controlled nearly all aspects of fertilizer manufacture from raw material through commercial product. During World War II, Douglass served as an adviser on chemical fertilizers to the Department of Agriculture.

Smith-Douglass expanded rapidly in the decade after World War II and constructed or purchased chemical plants in several other states. Douglass became president of the company in 1950, after Smith died, and chairman of the board in 1957. He retired after the Borden Company purchased Smith-Douglass for about $75 million in December 1964. At that time Smith-Douglass owned eleven chemical plants in Virginia, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio, and Texas; employed about 2,350 people; and had annual earnings of more than $77 million. Following the purchase, Smith-Douglass, as a division of Borden Chemical Company, became an even larger producer of chemical products, including pesticides. Several of its plants later required expensive environmental cleanups.

During his business career, Douglass served on the board of the Virginia Manufacturers Association and was active in several trade associations, including the American Plant Food Council and the Plant Food Institute of North Carolina and Virginia. He also participated in the National Tax Equality Association and the Virginia Polytechnic Institute Educational Foundation. Douglass sat on the Norfolk Planning Commission and on the governing boards of Norfolk General Hospital, the Norfolk Community Chest, the Norfolk Council of Social Agencies, the Hampton Roads Maritime Association, the Old Dominion Education Foundation, and the Seaboard Citizens National Bank. Before his wife died on 23 January 1951, their two daughters had married into the Kellam and Mapp families, both influential in eastern Virginia Democratic Party politics. Ralph Benjamin Douglass died in a Norfolk hospital on 21 August 1972 and was buried beside the remains of his wife and members of the Kellam family at Mount Pleasant Cemetery, in Belle Haven, Accomack County.

Sources Consulted:
Biographies in Commonwealth 20 (Sept. 1953): 29–30, and Rogers Dey Whichard, The History of Lower Tidewater Virginia (1959), 3:113–114 (portrait facing 113); self-reported birth date and birthplace in World War I Selective Service System Draft Registration Cards (1917–1918), RG 163, and World War II Selective Service System Draft Registration Cards (1942), RG 147, both National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.; Frank Sullivan, "Year of Expansion for Smith-Douglass," Commonwealth 20 (Sept. 1953): 15–17; Moody's Industrial Manual (1964), 343–344, and (1965), 2,376; New York Times, 14 Aug., 10 Dec. 1964; Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, 10 Dec. 1964; Wall Street Journal, 10 Dec. 1964; obituaries in Norfolk Ledger-Star and Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, both 22 Aug. 1972, and Washington Post and Times Herald, 23 Aug. 1972.

Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Brent Tarter.

How to cite this page:
Brent Tarter, "Ralph Benjamin Douglass (1891–1972)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2021 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Douglass_Ralph_Benjamin, accessed [today's date]).

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