RVA Legends — Good Luck! Part 2

Arise Manchesterians!* Richmond College boy makes good!

Here’s a guy who climbed the corporate ladder, and became the poster boy for the well-respected Southern captain of industry.

Egbert Giles Leigh, Jr. was born in Amelia County, September 14, 1851 but spent most of his life in the city of Richmond. He attended Richmond College, but on the death of his father was forced to find a job. He was sixteen when he secured a position as a clerk in a wholesale house. Gaining experience and knowledge there he was able to open a retail grocery store in 1889 at 911 East Cary. He soon developed a business in coffee as an importer and manufacturer, in 1891 Mr. Leigh became president of the Southern Manufacturing Company located at 116 E. 19th Street offering coffee and spices. It was here that a new product was developed called “Good Luck Baking Powder.” [BBR]

The stabilized formulation of baking powder was a combination of sodium bicarbonate, Cream of Tatar, and starch to keep the active ingredients away from each other. But Cream of Tatar was complex – and costly – to make. That’s not bad if you pass the cost on to the consumer, which the early manufacturers of baking powder surely did.

However, it opened opportunity for those who could find another way to solve the problem, and it didn’t take long after Eben Horton Horsford’s original 1869 creation for enterprising chemists to find one. It turned out that using alum or alum-phosphate, instead of Cream of Tatar, not only produced a superior rising action, but it cost less to produce the final product.

All of a sudden, manufacturers employing this alternate formulation had a hot commodity on their hands. Southern Manufacturing Company was one of these upstarts, so it’s no surprise that they outgrew the small property at East Nineteenth Street.

For E. G. Leigh, Jr., the development of Good Luck Baking Powder put him on a fast track to the good life and local renown.

The high esteem in which Mr. Leigh is held by his fellow business men is shown by his election for three successive terms to the presidency of the Richmond Chamber of Commerce (of which he was frequently a board member), his appointment to the directorate of the National Waterways Association, and his election for five successive terms (1894-99) as president of the Southern Merchants’ Association, composed of members from thirteen states. Mr. Leigh has also been vice-president of the Commonwealth Club, declined the presidency, and is now a member of that club, the Westmoreland Club, and the Country Club of Virginia. [EVA]

Everything was blue skies.

(continued in Part 3) (read Part 1)

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* pronounced man-KEEZ-ans

Sources

• [BBR] Big Business in Richmond, The Good Luck Baking Powder Story. Ray Schreiner. June 2010.
• [EVA] Encyclopedia of Virginia. Lyon Gardiner Tyler. 1915.
• [IMM] Insurance Maps of Manchester, Chesterfield County, Virginia, June 1910 now Washington Ward of Richmond. Sanborn Map Company. 1910.
• [PSS] Pen and sunlight sketches of Richmond, the most progressive metropolis of the South. The American Illustrating Company. 1910?
• [RVCJ] Richmond, Virginia, the City on the James. The book of its Chamber of Commerce and principal business interests. G. W. Engelhardt. 1902.

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