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ShawnBelow is an excerpt and a link that is just slammed full of "Penn" and "Durham" tobacco company info. I think if someone reads through the entire thing they may find some answers.
PROTECTED BY MINNESOTA TOBACCO LITIGATION PROTECTIVE ORDER Hill become President. Hill had come up as a Bull Durham saleeman to become Duke's right.hand man. Manufacturing chief was Charles Penn, son of the Reidsville plugmaker Duke had bought out. Bred in the lrade, Penn had an uncanny knowledge of leaf. Tuze~{o smoking tobacco was being worked out, and Crowe was asked whether he could get several car- loads of the brand to the West Coast within a week. "I hadn't the slightest idea whether it was possible," recalls Crowe, "and besides I was scared stiff. What- ever I said, it was certainly no answer." Later on Hill called the young trainee back to,~his qffice for a private conversation: "Crowe, this business is mostly horse sense. If you don't know, say so. But your job is to get so that you do know." It was Hill's way of putting the young manufacturing man on his own, and it succeeded. Mr. Penn of Carolina Like the other executives George Hill was given a fairly free reign over his oa'n domain, sales promotion. But his dad knew what things George didn't know. One of them was manufacturing, and in this department Charlie Penn's word was, by Percy Hill's own edict, law. On several occasions Penn had to stand up against the youthful Sales Vice President's bright ideas, which were generated out of a scant year's experience making Carolina Brights. And Penn did just that quite successfully in his gruff, unshake- abIe way. For Penla,. even more than George Washington Hill, had been bred with tobacco. His grandfather was Thomas Jefferson Penn, a direct descendant of Thomas Jefferson and William Penn. His father was the well-known F. R. Pehn, whose ReidSvillepIug business, founded in 1838, was bought out by Buck Duke. Penn's No. I and later Penn's Natural Leaf (still made by American Tobacco) achieved wide ac- ceptance as a unique product-Burley filler wrapped in flue-cured leaf. The town of Reidsville itself (now centered around the production of Lucky Strike cig- arettes) was also unique. It was a typical Southern town, as suggested by some of Penn's lesser brands- Kitty May, Rebel Girl, Famous Friend, Dew Drop, Little Pearl, Littl~ Daisy, Native, Old Virginia Chew. But even more than Durham, Reidsville had been put on the map by tobacco and tobacco alone. As a manufacturing man ~Sth a knack of maintaining con- sistent quality control and an uncanny knowledge of leaf, Charlie Penn was also unique. It is a peculiar f~ct of the tobacco business that the manufacturing side wages a eon.~inual defensive CONFIDENTIAL: MINNESOTA TOBACCO LITIGATION ATX05 0170512
http://tobaccodocuments.org/ness/28918.html?zoom=750&ocr_position=above_foramatted& start_page=1&end_page=143