Pierre Lorillard II also known as Pierre (Peter) Lorillard Jr., was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 tobacco

Tobacco

Tobacco is an agricultural product processed from the leaves of plants in the genus Nicotiana. It can be consumed, used as a pesticide and, in the form of nicotine tartrate, used in some medicines...

 manufacturer, industrialist, banker, businessman, and real estate

Real estate

In general use, esp. North American, 'real estate' is taken to mean "Property consisting of land and the buildings on it, along with its natural resources such as crops, minerals, or water; immovable property of this nature; an interest vested in this; an item of real property; buildings or...

 tycoon.

Biography

Lorillard was born in New York, the son of Pierre Abraham Lorillard

Pierre Abraham Lorillard

Pierre Abraham Lorillard was a tobacconist of New York City. He founded the business which developed into the Lorillard Tobacco Company, which claims to be the oldest tobacco firm in the United States and in the world...

 and Catherine Moore. He married Maria Dorothea Schultz in 1788 and they had five children. They lived at 521 Broadway in Manhattan

Manhattan

Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...

.

Lorillard's father, also known as 'Pierre Lorillard I', was the founder of the Lorillard Tobacco Company

Lorillard Tobacco Company

Lorillard Tobacco Company is an American tobacco company marketing cigarettes under the brand names Newport, Maverick, Old Gold, Kent, True, Satin, and Max. Lorillard is a member of the National Black Chamber of Commerce.- History :...

. Lorillard's father made the first American tobacco fortune by developing a tobacco firm that he started in 1760. Originally the business was a snuff-grinding factory located in a rented house in lower Manhattan. It was called Lorillard's Snuff and Tobacco company and sometimes, the name was abbreviated as, J. Lorillard. Later the firm moved to a better location that was on the Bronx River

Bronx River

The Bronx River, approximately long, flows through southeast New York in the United States. It is named after colonial settler Jonas Bronck. The Bronx River is the only fresh water river in New York City....

. Lorillard II took over and continued to manage and operate the family business after his father's death in 1776.

Lorillard was a prominent citizen of Manhattan. One New Yorker wrote of him, concerning a prison break and the old jail bell and its peculiar sound,

Social clubs

Lorillard II was a member of social clubs, one being a fox-hunting club called the Meadow Brook Hunt Country Club and another as the Narragansett Gun Club. He often is associated with Tuxedo Park

Tuxedo Park, New York

Tuxedo Park is a village in Orange County, New York, United States. The population was 731 at the 2000 census. It is part of the Poughkeepsie–Newburgh–Middletown, NY Metropolitan Statistical Area as well as the larger New York–Newark–Bridgeport, NY-NJ-CT-PA Combined...

, sometimes called the first American country club, since between 1802 and 1812 he purchased the first tracts of land upon which it later would be developed. The village and the surrounding area were developed in 1886 by his grandson, Pierre Lorillard IV, as a resort for socially prominent people and was named a country club

Country club

A country club is a private club, often with a closed membership, that typically offers a variety of recreational sports facilities and is located in city outskirts or rural areas. Activities may include, for example, any of golf, tennis, swimming or polo...

. The forerunner for the concept was founded earlier, however, in 1882 at Brookline, Massachusetts at The Country Club, Chestnut Hill.

Death

Lorillard died in May 1843 at the age of seventy-nine outliving his brothers George and Jacob. A newspaper reporter then writing his obituary tried to describe an extremely wealthy American and used the relatively new word, "millionaire

Millionaire

A millionaire is an individual whose net worth or wealth is equal to or exceeds one million units of currency. It can also be a person who owns one million units of currency in a bank account or savings account...

". Larrabee, p. 239

While the word "millionaire" had been in use since 1816, apparently it was used for the first time in the United States in 1843 when it was used to describe this wealthy tobacco merchant, although Lorillard was not the first American to own one million dollars worth of property. He may have been one of the wealthiest men in America, however, he definitely was not the richest at the time. John Jacob Astor

John Jacob Astor

John Jacob Astor , born Johann Jakob Astor, was a German-American business magnate and investor who was the first prominent member of the Astor family and the first multi-millionaire in the United States...

 was the wealthiest man in America at that time. Lorillard just happened to have been the first to be called a millionaire in newspapers. Cleveland Amory

Cleveland Amory

Cleveland Amory was an American author who devoted his life to promoting animal rights. He was perhaps best known for his books about his cat, named Polar Bear, whom he saved from the Manhattan streets on Christmas Eve 1977...

 incorrectly reports that it was in Lorillard's 1843 obituary that the first use of the word "millionaire" was put in print anywhere.

Philip Hone

Philip Hone

Philip Hone was Mayor of New York from 1826 to 1827. He was most notable for a detailed diary he kept from 1828 until the time of his death in 1851. His recorded diary is said to be the most extensive and detailed of his time in 19th century America.Son of a German immigrant carpenter, Hone became...

, one-time mayor of New York, wrote in his famous diary about Lorillard,

External links

• http://www.lorillard.com/