At the turn of the 20th century, Mansfield was not yet a major city in Ohio, but it ranked among the top of the nation in certain industries: one of these was the manufacturing and distribution of cigars.

Fortunately for us, this tremendous facility for rolling and selling cigars happened to correspond with the greatest Age of Cigars in the nation’s history. Picture images of the most prominent creative minds and titans of government and industry from 1860 to 1930, and — if they were men — they probably have a cigar in their hand.

There were plenty of places in America that had tobacco rollers busily turning out stogies during those generations, but there was one year in the early 1900s when Mansfield hit its stride in the industry by producing more cigars per capita than anywhere else in the nation.

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