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MANUFACTURER FOCUS
Making History Topper Cigars, F.X. Smith, and a former sales & marketing expert from Avanti Cigars all join forces to bring the storied Marsh Wheeling Stogies back to market. > BY FRANK SELTZER
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or Chris Topper, family and history are everything. As the owner of one of the nation’s oldest cigar companies, Topper Cigars, Chris is working to ensure a part of America’s history continues to survive and thrive. Chris is the fourth generation of Toppers to run the cigar company that began in 1896 when B.P. Topper started his own line of cigars out of McSherrystown, Pennsylvania. Topper had moved up to McSherrystown two years earlier from Maryland so he could apprentice in a cigar factory before opening his own place. McSherrystown is just a few miles from Gettysburg and during the Civil War, Francis Xavier Smith opened a factory in nearby Irishtown to supply soldiers with cigars, using Pennsylvania tobacco since the south controlled all the Virginia tobacco. By 1887, Smith
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moved to bigger quarters in McSherrystown and B.P also opened his factory there. The Toppers and Smiths became very friendly and in the mid 1960s with the Cuban embargo, the Toppers moved from hand made long-fill clear Havana cigars to a short fill machine-made product. To do that they moved their factory two blocks to Smith’s factory. Today Craig Smith, the fifth generation running F.X. Smith’s Sons in McSherrystown, continues to make Topper cigars and helps Chris with distribution. Both men love the history of their products, but both knew there was one cigar that was an icon. It was the Marsh Wheeling Stogie. Founded in 1840 by Mifflin Marsh, Marsh Wheeling (from Wheeling, Virginia at the time it didn’t become West Virginia until the Civil War) initially made cigars that were af-
fordable for the average person. Marsh made cigars that sold for less than a penny a piece. Marsh also was the first marketer in the cigar business, handing out free samples to Conestoga wagon drivers on the National Road—which ran from Baltimore to Wheeling connecting the east coast with the Ohio River – and to Captains of the river boats that dotted the Ohio River and he then sold the rest to passengers of the boats and wagons. The following year, the Wheeling Suspension Bridge was completed across the Ohio River. As a result, Wheeling’s business really took off and as did Marsh’s. In 1848, Marsh developed what became the icon, the Stogie. At the time, the cheapest cigars were Boston Cheroots selling for $3.50 to $4.00 per thousand. They also were made out of scraps. Mifflin came up with an affordable long filler cigar named in honor of the Conestoga wagons that traveled through Wheeling taking pioneers and settlers out into the west. The Marsh Wheeling Stogie was the result, measuring 7 inches with a 34-ring gauge. (And yes, the use of the word stogie today to mean a cigar comes from the Marsh Wheeling Stogie.) Marsh also came up with the slogan because of the Stogie’s length “longer enjoyment.” During the Civil War, Mifflin Marsh gave each soldier fighting for the Union —which was why this part of Virginia broke off into West Virginia—a bunch of the Stogies to take with him. (Again, he thought it was marketing spreading
