David Dunlop (6 November 1841–26 October 1902), tobacco manufacturer, was born in Petersburg and was the son of Anna Mercer Minge Dunlop and David Dunlop (1804–1864), a successful tobacco manufacturer. He grew up in Petersburg and attended private academies. Dunlop received an A.B. from Washington College (later Washington and Lee University) in 1860 and began working for a Petersburg tobacconist. During the Civil War he traveled in Europe, where he may have continued his studies. On 18 January 1866 he married Kate Compton in Lexington. Before her death in January 1895, they had one son.

In February 1867 Dunlop joined his cousin, David Brydon Tennant, as a partner in D. B. Tennant and Company, which manufactured plug, or chewing, tobacco for export. Dunlop oversaw the purchase and preparation of tobacco for market. Employing about 400 workers by the mid-1880s, the company became one of the largest manufacturers in Petersburg and exported its numerous brands to Canada, South America, the West Indies, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and India. One of the company's brands received a gold medal at the Calcutta International Exposition of 1883–1884.

Following Tennant's death in October 1885, Dunlop operated the business under his own name and continued producing various grades of plug and twist tobacco under the labels Belle of Virginia, Derby, Fair Maid, and Kohinoor, among others. Australia became Dunlop's most significant market. His shipments there increased from about half a million pounds of tobacco products in 1886 to more than 2.2 million pounds eight years later. On 16 February 1887 fire destroyed Dunlop's factory. He quickly constructed a larger complex of several four- and five-story brick buildings and continued to increase production. Five years later he joined a relative as a partner in Dunlop, Stokes, and Company, a Lynchburg dealer in leaf tobacco.

Until the 1890s, independent manufacturers produced all of the plug tobacco in the United States, and in 1888 David Dunlop was among the country's top twenty-five manufacturers. During the next decade James B. Duke and his partners in the American Tobacco Company entered the chewing tobacco market and undercut the prices of the independent companies. In 1898 the American Tobacco Company trust was instrumental in establishing the Continental Tobacco Company to control the production of plug tobacco. Dunlop continued to enjoy success and in 1899 exported more than 3.6 million pounds of tobacco worldwide. Sometimes his factory operated on both day and night shifts to keep up with the demand. That same year he was approached by a group of capitalists who supposedly wanted to consolidate several independent manufacturers in order to compete with American and Continental. Dunlop agreed to sell his factory and brands for $3.1 million, and in May 1900 newspapers reported on the imminent incorporation of the International Tobacco Company by Dunlop and several other manufacturers, including Alexander Cameron and Edward Carrington Venable. The new company was never incorporated, however; it may have been part of a scheme by stock jobbers to manipulate the market. A few months later the Continental Tobacco Company proposed to acquire Dunlop's business, but he refused the offer as too low.

During the 1890s Dunlop faced legal problems from his former partner's heirs. After Tennant's death, Dunlop offered his widow $1,500 for the company's trademark tobacco brands and the company's goodwill. Once Tennant's children were of age to inherit, they sued Dunlop for a half-interest in Dunlop's profits from the brands that D. B. Tennant and Company had owned. The suit made its way through the Petersburg courts, and in February 1897 the circuit court judge ruled that Dunlop's purchase had been legitimate. On appeal, however, in June 1899 the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals overturned that ruling and ordered Dunlop to pay a fair price, with interest, for the goodwill, brands, and labels of Tennant and Company dating back to 1886.

On 4 February 1896 Dunlop married nineteen-year-old Mary "Mollie" Corling Johnston. They had four daughters. Dunlop's business struggled against the formidable competition of the American Tobacco Company during the last years of his life. In 1902 he was forced to reformulate his flagship Derby brand in an attempt to widen its appeal. Late that summer he suffered a bout of typhoid fever while residing at the New Jersey shore. David Dunlop returned to his home in Petersburg, where he died on 26 October 1902. He was buried in Blandford Cemetery. The following year Dunlop's namesake son sold the tobacco business to the recently established British-American Tobacco Company, Ltd. In 1911 Dunlop's widow married the industrialist Archibald M. McCrea, with whom she restored Carter's Grove, an eighteenth-century plantation near Williamsburg.

Sources Consulted:
Biographies in Lyon Gardiner Tyler, ed., Men of Mark in Virginia (1906–1909), 5:115, and Philip Alexander Bruce, Lyon Gardiner Tyler, and Richard L. Morton, History of Virginia (1924), 4:379; Marriage Register, Rockbridge Co. (1866), Petersburg (1896), Bureau of Vital Statistics, Commonwealth of Virginia Department of Health, Record Group 36, Library of Virginia, Richmond; account books, correspondence, and other materials in David Dunlop Tobacco Company and Dunlop Family Papers (1836–1930), both Virginia Historical Society, Richmond; business records of D. B. Tennant and Company and David Dunlop in British-American Tobacco Company, Ltd., Records, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Duke University, Durham, N.C.; Lexington Gazette, 31 Jan. 1866; Petersburg Daily Index-Appeal, 18 Feb. 1887, 4, 5 Feb., 29 Dec. 1896, 9 Jan., 6 Feb. 1897, 18 May, 24 Nov. 1900, 5 Nov. 1902; Tobacco, 23 Aug. 1889; Washington Post, 12 Jan. 1899; Edward Pollock, Historical and Industrial Guide to Petersburg, Virginia (1884), 118; The City of Petersburg, Virginia: The Book of Its Chamber of Commerce (1894), 37, 61–63 (portrait); In the Circuit Court of the City of Petersburg: Tennant et als. Vs. Dunlop et al. [ca. 1895]; Tennant and Others v. Dunlop (1899), Reports of Cases in the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia, 97:234–255; obituaries in New York Sun and Washington Post, both 27 Oct. 1902, Petersburg Daily Index-Appeal, Richmond Dispatch, and Richmond Times (p. 8), all 28 Oct. 1902, and Tobacco, 31 Oct. 1902.

Image courtesy of the Library of Virginia.

Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Marianne E. Julienne.

How to cite this page:
Marianne E. Julienne,"David Dunlop (1841–1902)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2016 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Dunlop_David_1841-1902, accessed [today's date]).

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