The Duke Endowment was established on December 11, 1924, when James Buchanan Duke, the North Carolina industrialist and philanthropist, signed the Indenture of Trust creating the private foundation that bears his name. But the real roots of the foundation go much deeper.
"Buck" Duke was born on December 23, 1856, on a farm in Durham County, North Carolina. The son of Washington and Artelia Roney Duke, he was only two years old when his mother died, and only seven years old when his father was drafted into military service by the Confederate States of America.
When the Civil War ended in 1865, Washington Duke returned to the family farm. It is reported that following the war's devastation, Washington Duke's only material assets were two blind mules, fifty cents, and some tobacco that had been stored in a shed for several years. In fact, his primary assets were his sons — Buck and his older brother, Benjamin Newton Duke.
Together, the father and sons built a family tobacco business — slowly at first, with the Duke family taking to the road to sell small pouches of tobacco from the back of a wagon. The Duke family business grew slowly but steadily until 1884, when the Dukes decided to gamble on a new venture: the mechanized mass production of cigarettes. The gamble was so successful that the small business grew rapidly, acquiring other companies and eventually evolving into the mammoth American Tobacco Company — a firm so large, so complex, and so profitable, that when it was "busted" in the 1911 anti-trust decision, the only person who could dissect the giant company was its original architect, James Buchanan Duke.
The family fortunes were not, however, dependent on tobacco. Long before the 1911 action, the Dukes had invested in the textile industry and directed their attention to another new development, hydroelectric power — a move that led to the founding of Duke Power Company in 1905.
Throughout the years of growth and prosperity, the two brothers, Ben and Buck, worked together in business and in philanthropy. Their sister, Mary Duke Lyon, was an early partner in the family endeavors, and also encouraged the family's support of Trinity College, a regional institution affiliated with the Methodist Church. For many years the family contributed privately to Trinity — which would later change its name to Duke University — as well as to hospitals, orphanages, and the Methodist Church.
After their father's retirement and their sister's untimely death, Buck took the lead in most of the Duke family's business affairs, while Ben guided most of the Duke family philanthropy. This division of labors proved highly successful: Buck was a visionary and energetic business leader, while Ben organized and directed the Duke family's steadily increasing philanthropic efforts, building on the patterns established by their father. Quietly drawing on the counsel of trusted business associates and particularly on the wisdom of Trinity College President William Preston Few, the Dukes began to plan a more systematic method of giving — one that would continue on into the future for the benefit of the Carolinas.
On December 11, 1924, James B. Duke signed the Indenture of Trust, providing $40 million to establish The Duke Endowment as a perpetual trust. The Indenture is a remarkable document, not only setting forth the causes and institutions that were to receive funds, and many of the procedures that were to be followed in administering the trust, but also explaining the reasons for those choices. This has enabled the Indenture to remain a flexible and guiding force for the Endowment's trustees for more than eighty years.
The Indenture named specifically the institutions that Mr. Duke wanted the Endowment to support: Duke University, Davidson College, Furman University, Johnson C. Smith University; not-for-profit hospitals and children's homes in the two Carolinas; and rural United Methodist churches in North Carolina, retired pastors, and their surviving families. But, remaining mindful that times and situations change, Mr. Duke also used the Indenture to give Endowment trustees broad discretion to make grants for similar charitable purposes in accordance with his original wishes.
Tragically, Mr. Duke died unexpectedly in 1925, just 10 months after establishing the Endowment. In his will, he left the Endowment an additional $67 million to assist it in carrying out his ambitious plans to serve the Carolinas by educating students and teachers, healing minds and bodies, nurturing children, and strengthening the human spirit.
