Yes, Jackie, tobacco barons.. with money from their NY (bronx) tobacco farms.. in the Bronx Botanical gardens today, you can eat lunch at the Mill, now a small food court. the Mill was a snuff mill, not a flour or saw mill!and the lorillard family sold some, donated the rest of the land to the city for the park.. some part of the land, owned since early colonial times was left as is, so the bronx has a small (100 acre or so) patch of native, virgin hemlocks (the same trees called Canadian hemlocks--that came up in the Canada/canadian thread)
the bronx river valley (a small river) and the connecticut river valley were big tobacco growing areas. connecticut still had lots of tobacco farms when i was i kid, some in the early seventies, but almost none now. (but canny NE farmers made a second forture selling off the dark smoke dried and stained barn boards from the tobacco farms!)

the family also had holdings (or married into) one of the southern tobacco families.. and now is mostly in the Carolinas.


my other obsession