Home Grown: JC Newman and America’s Cigar Legacy

Photos by Crystal Harris

Cigar smoking in America is almost as old as America itself, with the origin of American cigars being generally credited to General Israel Putnam, an Army officer who served in the famed Rogers’ Rangers during the French and Indian War, and later in the American Revolution. Between those famed campaigns, Putnam was shipwrecked while taking part in the British Expedition against Cuba. Not only did he survive the wreck, but the British took Havana, And Putnam—as the story goes—brought home several bundles of Cuban cigars as well as some local tobacco seeds. Upon his return, the Ranger veteran planted these on his Hartford, Connecticut homestead thus literally birthing the now-prolific shade grown Connecticut wrapper. 

The consumption of cigars, once considered a boutique luxury, became an American cultural staple starting at the end of the Revolutionary War, reaching clear through the next century. While cigarettes remained ironically rare through this period, cigars could be found hanging from the mouths of Generals, poets, politicians, and cowboys. At the peak of American cigar manufacturing, there were tens of thousands of cigar-rolling factories across America, with heavy concentrations in places like New York, Pennsylvania, and Florida where there were both strong agricultural bases and convenient access to shipping ports – European demand for cigars also exploded during this time.

In 1869, a Spanish cigar maker by the name of Vicente Martinez Ybor relocated his operation from Cuba to Key West, Florida. A little more than a decade later, he relocated once more to a plot of land purchased just outside the city of Tampa. The town that sprouted here, Ybor City, is alive and thriving today. During the peak of the US cigar boom, Ybor and its parent Tampa, were collectively known as the Cigar Capitol of the World, producing more than half a billion (yes, with a b) cigars a year, with 150 factories in Ybor City alone. Now there’s one, which is where our story really begins…

HAIL CAESER 

Julius Ceaser Newman was a Hungarian immigrant whose American dream took shape in 1895 in Cleveland, Ohio where he hand-built a rolling table out of scrap wood, purchased tobacco with a $50 loan, and sold his first order to a local grocer. This one-man operation grew from a wing-and-a-prayer to one of the country’s largest family-owned cigar businesses, and the last one to continue producing cigars both on and from American soil. 

In 1954, the company relocated from Cleveland to Tampa, still known then as Cigar City, into a factory built in 1910 known as El Reloj – “the clock” in Spanish, so named for its prominent clocktower on the front of the building. This location remains their company headquarters today and is the last operating cigar factory in Tampa. It also remains owned by the Newman family. While on assignment at SOF Week 2026, we capped out trip to Tampa with a pilgrimage to see El Reloj in person to learn about American cigar-making from its last great practitioner. For those in the area, or wanting to make the trek for themselves, factory tours are open to the public and offered on a regular basis. We were lucky enough to jump into one just as they stepped off from the front desk.

Before we get too deep, it should be noted that not all JC Newman cigars are made in America. Our tour guide, Holden, broke it down for us like this:

“Our Tampa factory makes our U.S.-made cigars, including handmade cigars and antique-machine-made cigars. Our J.C. Newman PENSA factory in Estelí, Nicaragua makes handmade cigars like Brick House, Perla del Mar, El Baton, Quorum, and Yagua. Our luxury Dominican cigars, including Diamond Crown, Diamond Crown MAXIMUS, Julius Caeser, and Black Diamond, are handmade for us by the Fuente family.”

One of our first stops on the tour was the basement of El Reloj, which includes both preserved historical rooms as well as The Cigar Vault – itself a living museum to both the Newman legacy and the American cigar industry. In this one room alone are several significant artifacts of the cigar industry. There are cigars recovered from the S.S. Central America, a steam-wheel passenger and cargo ship that sank off the coast of the Carolinas in 1857. They’ve also preserved the last bale of pre-embargo Cuban tobacco received from Havana.

MAN VERSUS MACHINE

There is a je ne sais qua to hand-rolled cigars. Whether it’s connection to centuries-old practice, or the concept of artisan craftsmanship, or the perception of quality and luxury, this technique still thrives today both at the JC Newman factory and at countless similar places around the world. Our cigar sherpa Holden, put it this way:

“…both are part of our history, but they represent very different kinds of cigar making. A handmade premium cigar is made with whole leaf tobacco and rolled by a trained cigar maker using traditional tools, touch, and judgment. At El Reloj, we still hand roll cigars in The American Room, including The American, Angel Cuesta, Wm Brown, and limited El Reloj Collection cigars. We also still operate antique, hand-operated cigar machines from the 1930s. These are not modern, high-speed cigarette-style machines. They are old mechanical cigar machines that still require a skilled operator. They allow us to keep another part of American cigar manufacturing alive. Lines like Factory Throwouts and El Reloj are made this way in Tampa.”

We had a chance to walk the machine production floor, which was like stepping into a powered time capsule. Our staff spends a lot of time touring modern aerospace production facilities. We’ve seen factories that make everything in this industry from micro red dots to miniguns. The machine floor at El Reloj was a stark contrast. Dark wooden floorboards creaking underfoot. The rich earthy smell of tobacco leaf. Machines painted a pale shade of green that seemed to be the signature of heavy industry a hundred years ago. These machines are electric, not electronic. They don’t move with humming and whirring like the high-precision, five-axis CNCs that make every other product in this magazine. Instead, they drive under a droning buzz or rhythmic clanks and clunks. Adjacent rooms full of bulk tobacco and shovels are for hand-feeding these machines more like livestock. Above the exposed-brick walls, a maze of PVC pipe acts as a large-scale humidifier. 

ALL AMERICAN

From the machine floor, we moved to The American Room. Aptly named, this humble space is the last room in the US producing domestic hand-rolled cigars. It’s also apt that The American Room is where JC Newman’s The American cigar line is produced. 

“The American is probably the best example of what makes J.C. Newman unique. It is hand rolled in Tampa and made entirely with American tobacco: Florida Sun Grown wrapper, Connecticut Broadleaf binder, and filler tobacco from Pennsylvania and Connecticut. American tobacco is different because it reflects American soil, climate, and agricultural history. Connecticut Shade is known for being delicate and smooth. Connecticut Broadleaf is darker, heavier, and often richer. Pennsylvania tobacco can bring earthiness and strength. Florida Sun Grown tobacco has its own character because of Florida’s heat, humidity, and mineral-rich soil. American cigar tobacco is also much rarer today than tobacco from Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Ecuador, and other major cigar regions. That rarity is part of what makes The American such an important cigar for us.”

Smoking hand-rolled cigars may feel urbane. Making them is not. Its long hours hunched over rolling tables, repetitive and yet highly technical. This is not a human assembly line, but skilled labor that can take years to truly perfect. In the glory days of Cigar City these were large, diverse groups that were sometimes caught in high-profile, highly politicized labor disputes. They formed unions, and formed their own culture that infused component traditions from Cuba, Spain, Italy, the Caribbean, and other places. During our tour, most of the hand-rollers had earbuds in, listening to music or audiobooks. But before this technological convenience, rolling rooms often had a lector, or reader, who would sit on a platform and read to workers all day. These readings could consist of anything from fiction and poetry to newspapers and political writings. In contrast to much of the manual labor force of the day, cigar rollers were often highly-educate, well-read, and politically savvy in large part because of the tradition of a rolling room lector.

LAST ASHES

Not only was our tour of El Reloj an immersive look into production and artisanal trade, but also into the cultural history of those who gave the world a rich, recognizable pastime enjoyed by historical titans from Mark Twain to Winston Churchill.

What makes the American identity so unique is that it isn’t built on bloodline, but on shared experience. The US cigar industry brought together talented, dedicated craftsmen from Eastern Europe to South America in the pursuit of perfecting a product enjoyed the world over for nearly 300 years. JC Newman stands as the last bastion of this legacy. Since we could not have said it better than Holden, we’ll allow him the last word:

“J.C. Newman’s role as the last major traditional cigar manufacturer still hand rolling cigars in the United States is important because this used to be a huge American industry. At one time, there were tens of thousands of cigar factories across the country. Today, almost all premium cigar production has moved overseas because of labor costs, access to tobacco-growing regions, regulation, mechanization, and the decline of the old cigar cities. For us, keeping cigar making alive in Tampa is not just nostalgia. It is part of our responsibility as a family company. El Reloj is a working factory, but it is also a living museum. We are not just preserving the tools and stories of cigar making. We are still using them.”

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