Richard Joshua Reynolds (1850-1918), who founded the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company in 1875, was born one of sixteen children at this Patrick County homestead. The plain Greek Revival house was begun in 1843 for Reynolds’s father, Hardin William Reynolds, and was later enlarged. The house is typical of the dwellings erected for the area’s mid-level antebellum gentry. R. J. Reynolds is regarded as the father of the modern tobacco industry. The industry helped bring about the economic rehabilitation of the South after the Civil War. Originally called Rock Spring, the 700-acre plantation is now maintained as a continuing education and research center by Virginia Tech. The house and the outbuildings at the Reynolds Homestead have been restored for exhibition.