A. Tinsley Tobacco & Co Proprietor factory employee group shot taken in 1885. The Addison Tinsley Tobacco Manufacturing Company was founded in 1862 by E. C. Bright and Addison Tinsley. It was one of the largest tobacco companies in the world for years. The tobacco industry was a major source of employment and revenue for Louisiana from about 1862 to shortly after the turn of the Twentieth Century. At the peak of Louisiana’s tobacco period, there were 14 tobacco factories located here, the last of which, Number 39, a four-story brick warehouse at the northwest corner of the intersection of South Carolina and South Water Streets that later was the Nord-Buffum Pearl Button Company, was closed by the American Tobacco Company in the early 1900s.. In 2007, a small tobacco drying building remains behind the residence at 120 N Seventh.
