Duke Homestead and Tobacco Museum

Visit Duke Homestead or take an online tour, which not only features the history of the Duke family, their tobacco endeavors, and their homestead, but also contains a collection of original cigarette commercials and a movie of the tobacco bagging process.

Preview your trip on the web: Duke Homestead and Tobacco Museum

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Related pages

• The Dukes of Durham: After the Civil War, Orange County farmer Washington Duke put everything he had into growing tobacco. From farming he quickly expanded into manufacturing, and by the end of the nineteenth century, his son controlled the largest tobacco industry in the world.
• The Bonsack machine and labor unrest: When the Duke tobacco company adopted the Bonsack machine for rolling cigarettes, workers who had rolled cigarettes by hand were thrown out of work, and their replacements made less money.
• Opposition to the Knights of Labor: Editorial in a Durham newspaper, 1887, expressing concern about the Knights of Labor. Includes historical commentary.

Related topics

• Learn more about Bull Durham, Durham County, North Carolina, Washington Duke, historic sites, history, industry, museums, and tobacco.

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The Duke Homestead and Tobacco Museum online tour gives visitors a glimpse into the history of the family whose name became synonymous with the tobacco industry in America. This online tour will give the viewer the opportunity to see the ancestral home of the Duke family and learn about the tobacco manufacturing that built its financial empire.

Also find out the story behind the Duke Homestead and Museum, watch dozens of original cigarette ads and a movie of the tobacco bagging process, and take the informative, illustrated tours of the homestead and the visitor center. Another tour explores a typical day at the Duke homestead.

Take a trip to the Duke Homestead, an authentic “living museum of tobacco history” offering activities that demonstrate early farming techniques and manufacturing processes which made tobacco such an essential mainstay of the state’s economy. It is located at 2828 Duke Homestead Road in Durham. Admission is free. For more information call (919) 477-5498 or send email to duke@ncmail.net

See: Celebrate Tobacco Barns from the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources Office of Archives and History.

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