Robert Morris was the very personification of the quintessential American “rags to riches” story.

Born in Liverpool to a tobacco merchant and a wayward woman who melted away shortly after giving birth to him, the infant Robert, unlike his mother, would not pass into oblivion; he would grow up to help shape the destiny of the world.

It just so happened that Robert was a genius. He had an uncanny knack for numbers and an even greater ability to sense and seize opportunities in their embryonic state.

When George Washington wrote informing him that the French Fleet was sailing to the Chesapeake from the West Indies with the hope of bottling up the British Army at Yorktown, but that he had no money to fund the army’s trek from New York, Morris personally funded the entire expedition thereby securing the American victory and the surrender of Cornwallis, thus ending the war.

He was rich and generous of spirit, just like the cigar we have named for him.