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YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

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The Mid-South
And Its Builders

BEING THE STORY OF THE
DEVELOPMENT AND A
FORECAST OF THE FUTURE
OF THE RICHEST AGRICUL
TURAL REGION IN THE
WORLD EDITOR
C. P. J. MOONEY
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS
E. M. Holmes F. D. Beneke
Geo. L. Fossick E. N. Lowe
W. C. Watson
Secretary, C. E. Nichols

PUBLISHED BY
MID-SOUTH BIOGRAPHIC AND HISTORICAL
ASSOCIATION
THOMAS W. BRIGGS COMPANY
DIRECTORS
MEMPHIS, TENN.
1920

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COPYRIGHT, 1920,
BY
THOMAS W. ERIGCS COMPANY

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,HIS book is designed as a permanent and lasting
history of the development of the marvelous coun
try in the heart of the lower Mississippi Valley,
which those who live within it call the Mid-South.
The history of this region runs back to the gen
eration of men who were in the fullness of youth
when Columbus was in the gloom of the evening of his life.
The cross currents of the growth and civilization of North
America have swept back and forth through it. Its people bore a
hand in the upbuilding of the Republic. No other region has so
marvelously and so splendidly developed within the last fifty years.
No other region in the United States is richer in promise for future
prosperity and happiness.
The forward move of the Mid-South during the last quarter of
a century is due to a completion of the levees, to the cutting away
of timber, to the completion of transportation lines, to a more inten
sive cultivation of soil.
It is the purpose of this book to set forth the unique things that
have made the Mid-South great and to tell the story of the work
of some of its splendid men and women.
This book is designed for the library of the states and the uni
versities. Historical Associations, Chambers of Commerce and for
the use of the editors of the larger newspapers of the United
States, Canada and Great Britain. The articles have been prepared
by experts in their lines, the material has been carefully selected
and the utmost pains have been taken to assure accuracy in descrip
tion and statement of facts.
The editor is grateful to those who have made the publication of
The Mid-South and Its Builders possible.
Memphis, Tennessee, 1920.

The Mid-South in History

By C . P . J . M ooney

^HE story of the Mid-South, in its procession of men, the
march of events and the changing of conditions is filled with
dramatic interest. The splendid region had its historic begin
ning when the seats of civilization were changing from East
to West. Hernando DeSoto and his conquistadores stood on the
Chickasaw Bluffs and overlooked the mighty Mississippi in 1541. From that
day forward all the cross currents and struggle of men and nations for progress
and for a higher civilization swept through this valley. The beginnings of
things in the Mid-South were close to the endings of things with some of the
nations of Eastern Europe and Western Asia that were burning out.
It was less than a hundred years from the fall of Constantinople when the
banner of Christendom was hauled down from St. Sophia and the Crescent
floated from its dome to the march of DeSoto from Florida to Alabama and
Mississippi, through Tennessee and Arkansas.
The Ambassadors of Brandenburg and Anhalt were calling on Luther. John
Calvin was developing his system of philosophy and religion. There were
no plays of the immortal Shakespeare. He had not been born.
There were men with DeSoto who may have served with Bayard. Henry
VIII was changing wives and a year later Sent Catherine Howard to the block.
In that same year Francis I of France, who greeted Henry of England on the
Field of the Cloth of Gold, died. On that historic meeting spot, nearly four
hundred years ago, where armed knights tilted and where silken-clad ladies
gathered, sons of the Mid-South in 1918 hurled themselves against the lines of the
Hohenzollerns, rulers of an Empire which had its fling at life, terrified the
world and perished within the time of the generation of men.
Before DeSoto came, the civilization, under which Asia Minor, Mesopotamia,
Chaldea and Egypt were the beauty spots and the garden spots of the world,
had been swept away by the onrush of men from the desert near Aden and
by other men who came down from the roofs of Asia with death and chaos in
their train.
The discovery of America was ordered by Providence. The yellow races of
men had so multiplied that it was necessary that Europe people more land with
white men and women so that the human equilibrium could be maintained, and
into the Western Continent these men came just as children of Moses swept
out of Egypt into the Promised Land.
The development of America was a well ordered part of the eternal scheme
of things. The rise of the south and the flowering of the Mid-South is a part

of that evolution marking human progress, and though DeSoto came and went
and left behind him faint traces of his journey he did leave imprints of the
method in his plan which were of use to those that followed him. He came
northward and westward from Florida. He followed the courses of the smaller
rivers. He crossed over from the high grounds of the Upper Tombigbee and
drove towards the river, blazing a line which today is followed by one of the iron
roads of commerce.
It was fit that he should find the heart of the South in the heart of the
Mid-South. It was the place of the crossing of the Aborigines. Today it is the
place of the crossing by the means of two great bridges of millions of tons of
freight and millions of men and women out of the west into the southeast and
out of the east into the boundless west.
After the death of DeSoto not for one hundred and thirty years did a white
man, so far as history records, move across what is now the upper jjart of Mis
sissippi, Arkansas and Tennessee. Europe was largely engaged in developing
and reforming her own states. Richelieu was creating France. The pioneers of
southern Germany were moving out from the reaches of the Baltic and strug
gling to establish Teutonic solidarity from the Vosges to the Polish border.
Even before DeSoto saw the Mississippi, Magellan's ships had gone around
the world and the currents of commerce began to change from the channels to
which they had run for centuries.
Portugal had established a foothold in the far Indies, but the future fields
for exploitation were to the west. During this period the mighty struggle
between Spain and England for world supremacy took place, with France allied
with one and then with the other. The fate of the Armada decided that Spain
should not dominate the world. England abandoned her insular policy and bid
for the mastery of the seas.
Spain took over all of South and Central America except that which was
left to Portugal, but Spain did not drive her forces along the path marked out
by DeSoto. When the struggle finally settled down to a steady campaign we find Spain
seeking to drive north from Mexico, England taking over part of the Atlantic
Seaboard from the Dutch and holding all for herself from Florida to Maine.
The sons of France crowded into Canada, others touched Biloxi and then
began the century struggle between France and England for the mastery of the
Mississippi Valley, with Spain, a beaten contender, hoping for an opportunity
to come again into dominion over the region traversed by the first conquistador.
We find the French driving north from New Orleans, Mobile and southward
from out of Canada through the Lakes and down the Mississippi. One hun
dred years before England, the Colonies or the Republic gave thought to the
rich lands west of the Allcghanies we find iMcnch missionaries and colonists
going up and down the Mississippi. In 1673 Marquette passed down in front
of the Blut?s of Memphis and Helena. A few years later LaSalle, one of the
romantic figures among the world's explorers, came and set up claims for
Louis XIV, the Grand Monarch.

LaSallc had a magnificent vision. In his mind's eye he saw the flag of
France, the symbol of the rule of his country, at Quebec, Montreal, at the con
fluence of the Ohio and the Mississippi and on these bluffs down to the mouth
of the Great River. It was a glorious dream, but after another century the same
flag which gave way to the banners of Spain and England was hauled down
forever. The Mid-South became under the Stars and Stripes a part of the
young Republic. Along the Mississippi it was decided that the English speaking
people, the people of the blue eyes and light hair, and not the Latins, with their
traditions of Caesar and Charles V should populate this country. In the proc
ess of these changes there ran a thread of romance, chivalry, adventure and
tragedy. A few years after the French came to Natchez the greatest colonial enter
prise ever conceived had its headquarters in this Mid-South, near Arkansas
Post. John Law worked out a plan of colonizing and cultivating the banks of the
Mississippi and Law opened before the eyes of the French people a prospect of
trading in gold, furs and products of the soil over a region larger than all of
Europe. So well did the French people think of this enterprise that they invested
almost $400,000,000 in it. Law's plan was sound. He failed because he lost
the confidence of his countrymen.
The Hudson Bay Company and the East India Company were similar enter
prises and they succeeded. Even before Law came, the French built Fort
Prud'homme on the bluffs and Fort Assumption at Memphis, thereby coming in
conflict with the grants which Charles the First of England gave to his subjects
of land running due west from Virginia and the Carolinas across the river.
It may be interesting in the story of this Valley which is so closely inter
woven with the story of the contending great European powers to note that the
first white settlement west of the Mississippi, except those in the far southwest,
was made in the Mid-South at Arkansas Post. This was in 1688.
That the Mississippi Valley should join with the regions along the Atlantic
Seaboard and make for a common destiny was clear at the close of our Revo
lution. France and the colonies were allies. During the war men talked of
France holding the valley west of the river and the colonies controlling the
regions to the east, but so soon as English speaking people began to go down
the Ohio, Cumberland and the Mississippi the natural design that one people
must control all was developed.
There was talk of free navigation, but there could be no free navigation of
the river so long as one nation controlled the mouth and another the stream
higher up.
When France helped us beat the English, France and Spain both made it
inevitable that they should move out of the west and give the young nation
room to grow. Before 1803 far-seeing men knew that America must control
this valley either by purchase or by conquest. So in 1803 France surrendered
sovereignty in this valley and a few years later Spain gave up all color of claims
to South Mississippi and Florida and contented herself by holding Texas and
lands as far up as Oregon.

France and Spain left their imprint on this region. It is in the name of
villages, rivers and counties. In Memphis we see it in the name of Gayoso, in
Arkansas we note it in the St. Francis, L'Anguille and New Gascony. Higher
up Cape Girardeau tells us that once the Frenchman was there. Here the
Bayoso Gayoso is a reminder that Spain's hope of dominion was shattered.
We see the traces of French and Spanish laws in land titles. Now and then
the transfer of land in Eastern Arkansas must be referred to Washington where
the President of the United States will clear a title by stating that claims to
the land were surrendered in a treaty made between the United States and his
Royal Highness, the King of Spain.
The Spanish and the French also left behind them a little touch of poetry
and romance which to this day flavor the lives of our people.
Whence came the English speaking people into this Mid-South? Before and
after the Revolution a few bold s])irits were jjushing out from Pennsylvania
and New York into Ohio. Men from Virginia went out into the Kentucky
region. Boone crossed over from the Carolinas into the northwest. Down
from Virginia through the East Tennessee country other men came. After the
Revolution these pathfinders were followed by families. At the close of the
century we find the Middle Tennessee country and the Middle Kentucky country
filling with people. Louisville was a great trading center and Nashville was a
gathering place. Then down the river came others and even before the French
and Spaniards moved out men from the upper reaches were gathering on the
Chickasaw Bluff at Randolph, at Helena and at Vicksburg. The country was fair
to look upon. It startled the imagination of Burr and men of his sort until
they hoped to build it up as a thing apart from the old colonies.
It is a striking fact that the pioneers and builders of this region drew the
best and the sturdiest from all of the older states.
African slavery and the cotton gin had made the lowland planters of the
Carolinas all-powerful. The sturdy and independent hard-working men of the
hills felt a restraint that they knew was not fair to them. They wanted a free
region. They were moved by that impulse which had been common to men on
the border of civilization for centuries. They wanted more room and more
freedom, so down into the higher regions of the Mississippi they crowded. Out
of the mountains they passed over East and Middle Tennessee and came
into West Tennessee and into Arkansas. They moved into Kentucky as well
as into the lower states. But if the hardy and if the poor came they were
quickly followed by the well-to-do.
Slavery was not profitable in the high country, but it was profitable in the
black lands of Alabama and along the water courses farther west.
Before the war of 1812 there were fusing into this region currents of men
and women — the best that could come from Georgia, the Carolinas and from the
upper Ohio region.
The second generation of those who had moved out into East and Middle
Tennessee, into the Tennessee Valley and into Middle Kentucky again moved
farther west. 8

At this period transportation began to develop in this region and was the
chief controlling factor in its growth. Out of the upper rivers came the flat-
boats. Even before the steamboat came into use there was a larger commerce
on the Mississippi than on the Hudson.
There was a cry in the east for canals. There were natural canals in the
west. If the railroads had not been invented our river system would have devel
oped this region faster than any other of the Union.
Our second war with Great Britain found the people of the Mid-South ready
to bear a hand. The region had already so developed that a state consciousness
had asserted itself. It is one of the proud traditions that riflemen of Kentucky
and Tennessee had much to do with the defeat of the British veterans at New
Orleans. Men from Mississippi, calling themselves Mississippians, were in that
same struggle.
Already the great region west of the Allcghanies had found itself. Then that
region covered by North Mississippi, West Tennessee, Kentucky and Arkansas
had so shaped its fortunes that its people were active, energetic and filled with
pride of territory along with the pride of race. This race pride was logical
because the pioneers of this region were a cross-section of the strongest of all
the classes of the older states.
If there was not the coldness or austerity of the Puritan there was the
solemnity of the Covenantor, coming through the Scotch and Irish from the
Carolinas, with the joyousness and an abandon of those who had come out to
Virginia because they had followed the ill-starred fortunes of the Stuarts.
Men of education had come among us. In all the older homes today
you will find books that were printed before the beginning of the last century
and paintings that were the work of trained hands. Furniture and other
household trappings showed in their selection and arrangement cultured and
educated minds.
The Mid-South took on a definite growth after the war of 1812. The
Indians were in the way in Mississippi and in West Tennessee, but in spite of
this there was progress.
Mississippi was filled by men of culture and also by other men who if not
educated in letters were strong in character.
West Tennessee received more men and women from Middle Tennessee.
Arkansas began to fill with English speaking people. Litigation, incident to the
land titles granted by Spain, was pushed.
The splendid region known as Crowley's Ridge drew a hardy class of set
tlers. Hot Springs became a resort for health seekers.
In 1819 James Miller, the hero of Lundy Lane, came to Arkansas as the
first territorial governor and Crittenden of Kentucky was a high ofiicial.
The people of Arkansas had the proper appreciation of the press. In 1819 we
find W. E. Woodruff publishing a paper at Arkansas Post and printing the
latest news from London, New York and Washington, which was as much as
three months old. The Arkansas Gazette today is still an organ of light and
education.

Though Tennessee was a state almost from the close of the Revolution, West
Tennessee grew along with Mississippi and Arkansas. Mississippi became a
state in 1817, Memphis was incorporated in 1819 and Arkansas became a
territory in 1819. These facts show the close unity of the Mid-South and that
the development and growth for Arkansas, Tennessee and Mississippi run
along parallel lines.
Splendid men took a part in the affairs of these states in those days. If
West Tennessee attracted the attention of Jackson, Overton and Winchester,
Mississippi rejoiced in equally strong men.
The first judges of the Supreme Court of Mississippi were Shields of Dela
ware, Taylor of Pennsylvania, Hampton of South Carolina, Ellis of Virginia,
Clarke of Pennsylvania, Stockton of New Jersey and Child of New England.
Later, Maine sent to Mississippi Prentiss, and Quitman, a chancellor of that
state, was from New York.
Into the Mid-South came the best of the old families of the east and the
northeast and pioneers, sons of men who had fought the British, fought the
Indians and again fought the British.
Agriculture flourished because there was river transportation. Cotton was
profitably grown because slaves were here to cultivate it and New Orleans and
Mobile were ports easy of access. But if there was growth along the Missis
sippi there was also a splendid development in the valley of the Tennessee and
in the upper reaches of the Alabama and Tombigbee.
Be it remembered that if Jackson, Memphis, Little Rock and Helena were
on the forming maps, that the regions around Aberdeen, Columbus and Pontotoc
were fast developing.
The wild furor of inflation and land speculation did not prove so disastrous
in this region as it did in the upper latitudes.
There was a business sense among our merchants and traders which enabled
them to establish a banking system founded upon solid basis.
The culture of many men in this region had a reaction in a demand for
schools. In some families there were tutors and in others a teaching governess.
In the smaller towns there were male schoolmasters who taught after the man
ner of O'Hara, Barry and Forsythe of Kentucky. At the outbreak of the Civil
War there was an academy, institute, a seminary or college in most of the
county seats.
The town of LaGrange in West Tennessee, to which the first railroad was
projected from Memphis, was the seat of a famous school.
Before the Civil War there were schools of more than local reputation at
Holly Springs. Long before the war there was a school building in the midst of
Court Square in Memphis.
Men like Waddell, the elder Holmes and Byars were in many of the counties
of Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee. Holmes came out from Pennsylvania
as a missionary and after teaching and preaching near Pontotoc went to Tipton
County where he established the Mountain Academy. The struggle for educa
tion was characteristic of the people of this region even before the Mexican
War. This struggle found the sons of Mississippi, Tennessee and Kentucky
10

ready to bear a mighty hand. It appealed to their old spirit of adventure, and
they returned with larger ambitions and a broader perspective.
Soon after the Mexican War a great convention of progressive men from
the entire south was held in Memphis. The transportation problem had become
interesting. America now controlled all the lands from the Atlantic to the
Pacific and her people began to think along transcontinental lines.
Throughout Mississippi and West Tennessee the effort for polite education
was marked. The same was true in Central Arkansas. Young men, even in
the early days, were sent to eastern universities. Many went to private colleges
that clustered around Lexington, Danville, Bardstown and Lebanon in Ken
tucky and certainly the University of Virginia drew its quota.
Some of the young scholars of the far east came down to this region to
teach ; later they became lawyers or public men and left their impress on the
region. Prentiss came out of New England. George D. Prentice, the editor,
came from the east to Kentucky. Among the early editors of the Memphis
newspapers was a member of a distinguished New York family.
There was a certain flavor in this genteel education that made for nicety in
speech and in manner, a high regard for personal honor and a respect for woman.
Even today in some of the older libraries in the Mid-South one will find the
classics, Blair's Rhetoric, copies of Milton, Shakespeare, Young's "Night
Thoughts," Pollock's "Course of Time," Abbott's "Life of Napoleon" and
Hume's "History of England." The struggle for education was characteristic
of our people before the Mexican War.
The contest with Mexico attracted sons of Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky
and Arkansas and they bore in it a great part. The country was filled with old
men who were with Jackson at New Orleans. The sons of these men, inspired
by what their fathers had done, were eager for an accounting with Mexico.
Their resentment was fired by the massacre of Crockett and Bowie, both of
whom had gone into Texas from this region. Another Tennessean, Sam Hous
ton, had already made a name for himself in the southwest. When these young
men came back from Mexico they had larger ambitions and a broader perspec
tive. They saw the United States, a nation, covering the entire sweep of the
nation from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Fifty years before France had drawn
out of the valley, Spain which retired from Florida in 1820 had transferred its
color of title to Mexico and the children of those who stood in the way of
Spanish or French conquest in the Mid-South contributed mightily to annexing
to the United States what Mexico had acquired by revolution.
At the close of the Mexican wars the rivers of the Mid-South were crowded
with boats, but these natural arteries did not meet the demands of the people.
Land transportation was needed. Short lines of railroad were under construc
tion. A road had been built from Memphis, Tennessee, to LaGrange, its
objective being the Tennessee River, and railways were projected towards the
west. The military road uniting the southwest with the east passed from Mem
phis towards Little Rock, then towards Fort Smith.
John C. Calhoun and the elder Brinkley saw the necessity for a transcon
tinental railway system following generally the line of the 35th parallel. A
11

great convention of progressive men from the entire south was held in Memphis
in the early 50s. Calhoun was here. A barrel filled with water at the Bay of
Charleston was brought overland and a great ceremony was made of pouring it
into the Mississippi. The Memphis & Charleston Railway was projected and
other roads were outlined towards the west.
One can now go by rail from Washington to Memphis, to Little Rock and
on westward through El Paso, thence to Los Angeles with only one change of
trains. This accomplishment would have been a fact before 1860 except for
the slavery question, which involved not only geography, but also climate, and
aroused a spirit that was beyond compromise.
The northern people wanted a development towards the west through a
northern tier of states. The natural drift would have been through Memphis.
The war brought it about that St. Louis became the crossing point of the great
river. Transcontinental railway systems were projected through the upper
trail, with the result that soon after the war there was a continuous line of rails
from St. Louis and Chicago to the Pacific coast. Except for the Civil War much
of the greater part of the east and west transportation would have funnelled
through this region. Even so, the Mid-South has become in the development of
the country the center of a mighty transportation system. Along the South
western Trail, along Jackson's military road from the east into the southwest,
and into the west there are completed railway systems. The natural vahie of
these routes was never better demonstrated than during the World War. More
soldiers crossed the great river at Memphis than at any other point. The test
of war showed the logical lines and logical routes.
But if at the close of the Mexican War there were a few miles of railway in
the south before the opening of the Civil War one could travel by train from
Memphis, Chattanooga, through Knoxvillc, through Bristol then to Richmond;
thence to Washington and from Washington to New York. This was the first
great southern railway system. Another road had been built from Louisville
through Nashville and through Northern Alabama. The Mobile & Ohio Railroad
had already met the requirements of its name. The line from New Orleans
north through Grand Junction was under way with regular schedules as far up
as Jackson, Mississippi. The Little Rock and Memphis system had been
projected. The opening of the Civil War found the Mid-South filled with prosperous
people on the high ground. All over West Tennessee, Northern and East Mis
sissippi schools were being built, roads were being opened, courts were held on
regular schedules, the musters attracted great crowds and the people were
eagerly discussing politics as formerly advocated by Andrew Jackson of Ten
nessee as opposed to the politics preached by Henry Clay of Kentucky.
In those days two strong parties were built up in all the southern states.
Men of character, intelligence and education were opposing leaders. The Mem
phis Appeal and Arkansas Gazette daily devoted from eight to nine columns of
their space to the discussion of political questions and, often, all of their space
to the reporting of some speech made by some great leader. Probably in no other
region did the law draw unto its practice men of so high attainments. With all
12

that there was not that ease coming from established fortunes which destroyed
the spirit of energy and labor. Society was still developing. The spirit of youth
was over the land. While on some of the plantations there were great colonies of
slaves, in other regions there was a sturdy population of white men who lived
close to the soil and who had in them the vigor and strength of the pioneer and
the freeman who cared more for personal rights and personal freedom than the
mere loading of property.
So when the Civil War came, except from along the western shores of the
Tennessee River, every one, almost, enlisted in the armies of the Confederacy.
Some fought to defend their own region, but many marched away to the army
of Virginia and, as the struggle waxed, they gave a splendid account of them
selves at first Manassas, second Manassas and at Gettysburg, where they were
all but destroyed.
The turning points in the Civil War were in this Mid-South. In order to
succeed the Confederate leaders recognized that the south must not be cut in
twain by the enemy holding the Mississippi. The strategists in charge of the
northern army struggled from the beginning to secure a water route from St.
Louis to the Gulf.
So in '61 there was a fight at Belmont where Grant, dropping down the river
from Cairo, first met an enemy which was to confront him for four years at
Donelson, Shiloh, Vicksburg, Missionary Ridge and Petersburg and finally giving
away at Appomattox.
Island No. 10 in the same Mid-South was fortified heavily. In despair of
getting through quickly by the river route, the federals struck at Fort Donelson
in Middle Tennessee and then at Shiloh. At this Shiloh in the spring of '62
the unprepared but brave armies of both sides met in a deadly struggle. After
Shiloh Corinth became a place of strategy. Simultaneously with Shiloh there
was a naval battle in front of Memphis. But not until more than a year later
did Vicksburg surrender and Helena give occupation to Federal troops.
A student of history of the war finds that Shiloh, Belmont and Vicksburg in
this Mid-South were immense factors in the equation of blood and death which
was solved two years later.
In some counties in this region more men went to the armies than there were
voters. Only the very young and the very old men remained at home. We
complained of the scarcity of man-power in the World War and yet there
were taken only the young men.
In the Civil War the boys of sixteen and the men of sixty went in. And yet
the women and the children, the crippled and the invalids "carried on" at home.
This Mid-South during those four years contributed enormous supplies of cat
tle, horses and food to the fighting soldiers. Indeed, that splendid region of
East Mississippi in which now cluster the thriving cities of Aberdeen, Tupelo,
West Point and Columbus was called the "granary of the Confederacy" and the
Confederates successfully defended and produced great supplies in it until the
fall of '64.
When the end came this region was prostrated, gins had been destroyed,
fences had been burned, roads were wrecked and bridges were down. The
13

country was denuded of livestock ; the money of the people had gone with the
blood of their children into the support of the Lost Cause. The white people
were poverty stricken, the negroes were free and penniless. The victorious
army policed the land. The tragedy of Lincoln and the vindictiveness of those
who had fought the war in speech, but not on the battlefields, brought about a
condition that would have broken the heart of people of less courage.
In spite of the furies of reconstruction, in spite of the bitterness of politics
and of the rule of strangers the rebound of the Mid-South is one of the marvels
in the history of the state of society after wars.
The railroads were rebuilt, men broken in fortune but not in spirit sought to
construct others. Young men returning from the army labored at the first thing
in sight. Passing down from the hills many of them began to open the low
lands along the river. Within five years after the close of the Civil War all of
the great trunk lines of railways now in existence were projected. Far-seeing
men began to advocate the confining of the waters of the great river within its
banks. Here and there it was suggested that the holding of these waters was
a national problem. Notwithstanding the rule of the hostile party, the prac
tical disfranchisement of the white people and the wild orgies of office holders
in state capitals, the Mid-South in 1873 had gathered sufficient strength to with
stand the panic with less loss and less suffering than were marked in the east
and north.
After '76 the people got their local government under their own control and
there was orderly development interrupted only by two sweeps of pestilence, the
causes of which science has discovered and the occurrence of which will be
no more.Before 1890, competing lines of railways had been completed from Mem
phis to New Orleans, from Memphis to the west, from Memphis to the east
and from Memphis to the north. The commerce of the Mid-South began to
flow on iron rails from Chicago to the Gulf.
The grain and livestock products of the west were funnelled through Alem-
phis into the southeast. Memphis, Helena, Little Rock, Jackson, Tennessee,
Clarksdale, Mississippi, and Tupelo and the other towns of the Mid-South
were not only joined to one another by rail, but in many cases by competing lines.
The Mid-South had prepared to come into its own. The forces of develop
ment and reconstruction had finally come into active play. The great bridge was
projected across the Mississippi at Memphis. The first train ran over it in the
spring of '92. In the meantime, the levee was completed from the Chickasaw
Bluff's east of the river, as far south as the mouth of the Yazoo.
Since the beginning of the century pioneers had driven into these lowlands.
Before the war the region around Lake Washington was populated by men
who came out from the Carolinas into Kentucky, and along the high banks of
bayous and along the elevated shores of the river there were plantations.
Arkansas caught the spirit of Mississippi and was determined to shut the
waters of the great river out of the basin. Then bold spirits said that the river
must be held to its banks all the way from Cairo to New Orleans, and in this
good year that work has been completed. St. Francis Basin is a smiling plain
14

dotted with growing cities. Helena lies on the brow of Crowley's Ridge with
the vast alluvial countries to the north and the south.
In the Yazoo Delta men go from city to city on the highways where forty
years ago there was a jungle cut through here and there by lazy bayous. The
levees, railroads, and bridges across the river have been the vital artificial forces
in the building up of this region. Its further development rests in vehicle high
ways and in canals. These men who first pioneered into the St. Francis Basin
and into the Yazoo Delta were great builders. Many of them have been for
gotten. Some have left behind them prosperous families and great fortunes,
others, for themselves, lost the struggle, but they contributed much for the
benefit of their neighbors.
The opening of the Yazoo Delta and the St. Francis Basin to cultivation is a
romance of agricultural development like which there is no parallel, even
in the valley of the Nile or the old lands between the Tigris and the Euphrates,
which thousands of years ago blossomed as a garden, then died and which is
about to be resurrected under the touch of the conquering English.

l.S

Soil, Climate and Production
of the Mid-South

By C . P . J . M 0 0 n e y

I HE objective of this book is to put into type a series of facts
that will show the territory called the Mid-South to have made
more progress in development during the last quarter of a
century than any other region in the United States and to
demonstrate that no other region offers a better opportunity to
the farmer, the merchant and the manufacturer. The Mid-
South has the most fertile natural soil of any region in the world. No other
region is better for living during the entire year. It is unique in moderation of
climate, in average of rainfall and in variety of resources.
The Mid-South is that region covering West Kentucky, West Tennessee, part
of the Tennessee River Valley in Alabama, the northern half of Mississippi, the
eastern half of Arkansas and southeast Missouri. It is cut in twain, north and
south, by the Mississippi River. It is touched on the east and partly on the north
by the Ohio and Tennessee. The Arkansas, White and the St. Francis cut
through it west of the Mississippi. East of the great river are the Obion,
Hatchie, Forked Deer of West Tennessee, the Tombigbee, the Yallobusha,
Tallahatchie, Yazoo and the Sunflower. No part of the Mid-South is far away
from a large water course. Much of it is within an easy distance of navigable
streams. Not only is it well watered on the surface, but under a great part of
it is a sheet of artesian water.
The annual rainfall is higher than the average of rain in other parts of the
Mississippi Valley. The temperature in the lower half, below Memphis, reaches
a freezing point only during two months in the year. The heat of the summer
is never so intense as to bring about difficulties to man or beast. One seldom
hears of sunstroke in this region.
The experiments of the last quarter of a century have reached a point where
one can stand safely on the statement that the Mid-South is the richest agri
cultural region in the world. Two products furnish bread to the entire world,
one is wheat, the other is rice. The Mid-South produces both.
One product is more used than anything else for clothing and covering : that
is cotton. The production of cotton in the Mid-South is greater in quantity and
better in quality than in any other region in the world.
The third element in the living economy of man and beast is corn. Corn is
one of the Mid-South's great crops. 16

From Iceland to Australia men use tobacco. In the Mid-South is the heav
iest dark tobacco production in the world.
In the Mid-South are vast regions where five crops of alfalfa can be har
vested for fifteen years. From four to six crops have been harvested annually
in this region. In the alluvial region, in the St. Francis and the Yazoo Basin, no
soil preparation in the way of inoculation or lime need to be made. The elements
for the growth of alfalfa are already here.
The Mid-South is the natural region of the Bermuda grass and lespedeza.
After the heavy field crops the tremendous element in living is the home and
the commercial garden. In the Mid-South there is an enormous trucking indus
try. Out of it every year go hundreds of trains of tomatoes, strawberries, sweet
and Irish potatoes and all other vegetables peculiar to a temperate zone. An
index to the unique productivity of this region is the statement that after one
has harvested a crop of wheat one can plant on the same land and harvest before
frost either a crop of corn or cowpeas. One can gather a crop of early potatoes
or reap a crop of oats and gather a second crop before the winter from the
same soil.
After food and clothing the next necessity of man is housing and furniture.
The Mid-South is filled with hardwood timber and in the lower reaches are
great forests of pine and brakes of cypress.
The city of Memphis, which is in the heart of the Mi<l-South, is the center
of the largest hardwood manufacturing district in the world. The region in the
towns adjacent are filled with saw mills and timber camps.
After field crops and timber, an industry which has rapidly become impor
tant is that of livestock. It has so developed that the finest herds of blooded
cattle and blooded hogs are in this region. The national and international cham
pions at cattle shows have been produced in West Tennessee and in Mississippi.
Champion blooded hogs of the Western Continent are here.
What men grow and what men produce must be either consumed or sent
into other parts of the world. This makes transportation necessary. This
region is bisected by transcontinental railways and by lines extending from the
Lakes to the Gulf.
In this region there is a railway within a few miles of the door of every
citizen. There are only two counties in this region where there is no road; one
of these is served by a river. On either side of the Mississippi is a network of
railways running north and south. West of the river are lines running into the
northwest, the west and the southwest. East of the river are through trains
reaching the eastern states, the Atlantic coast states and the east Gulf states.
From the center of the Mid-South one is over night from St. Louis, Chicago,
Louisville, Cincinnati, Atlanta, New Orleans, Dallas, Fort Worth and Kansas
City. The east and west commerce of the lower Mississippi Valley funnels
across the two great bridges spanning the Mississippi at Memphis.
Post-war era of railway building began with the departure of the Federal
forces. It was brought to its present completeness after it was seen that the
Mississippi River levee system was an assured success.
17

In navigable streams, in soil, climate and transportation the Mid-South is
singularly blessed, showing variety of resources and products. These two cross
sections are interesting. East of the Mississippi, south from the Ohio, one
passes through the wheat and tobacco lands of West Kentucky into the tobacco
and cotton lands of West Tennessee, through the trucking sections of West
Tennessee, then through the high country of West Tennessee with its herds of
pedigreed cattle, then into Mississippi down through the black belt and prairie
country where cotton, corn, alfalfa, fine stock and dairying thrive. East and
west one passes from the cotton, small grain, livestock and tobacco country of
West Tennessee into the lands of East Arkansas where cotton and corn are
profusely grown in the St. Francis Basin and in the White, Arkansas River coun
try. At the end of the sector is the Arkansas rice region covering all the counties
of Grand Prairie. Extending northward on either side of the Mississippi and
along the other rivers is the alluvial region now protected by levees which
grows anything resulting from intelligent labor.
Twenty-five years ago the greater part of the Mid-South was given over to
cotton. It was a one-crop country. The levees were incomplete and the rail
road's system was not worked out. The lumbermen came and began to clear
the forest. An acre of land cleared of timber, was the more valuable because
it was immediately ready for agriculture. The completion of the Yazoo levee
was followed by the opening of the Delta of that name. Agriculture became
certain and men began to plant accordingly. In the St. Francis Basin progress
was slower. Finally a dirt wall protected it from the Mississippi and it imme
diately began to attract investors and planters. A few years later the culture
of rice became possible in Arkansas, because there was a great sheet of artesian
water in the Grand Prairie country. Then the Crowley Ridge country came
into its own for general farming and livestock.
It was found that alfalfa and other hays grew well in eastern Mississippi,
with the result that the prairie country and the Tombigbee country became highly
productive. Agricultural colleges had sent home the gospel of soil conservation
and the rebuilding of the high country began.
The propaganda for diversified agriculture and livestock was instituted. The
agricultural colleges, the better educated farmers and men of vision began to
appreciate what this country was and is, with the result that we have today a
record of development unequaled for the same period by any other territory.
There has never been a boom in this Mid-South and there has never been
an era of wild land speculation. No town has grown then flattened out.
Today we find this Mid-South blessed with a good and growing school
system. High schools are in the country as well as the city. In this region one
great agricultural school gives special attention to the things necessary for our
people. This year finds the cities being drawn together by good roads. In
almost every country there is a community center and yet (he country is only
one-third open to the plow and it is estimated that eighty per cent of this region
is plowable land.
The foundation for a great future has been solidly built. The soil is bv
nature rich. In the 12,000 square miles of alluvial land the washings of the
18

upper rivers, lime and decayed vegetation, have come down for a thousand
3'ears. One man bored a well in the alluvial region and 250 feet down the drill
passed through a cypress log.
Commercial fertilizers will never be necessary for this wonderful river
country. In the high country of West Kentucky, Tennessee and Mississippi the soil is
easily tillable, naturally rich. and quickly responds to a generous treatment.
In eastern Mississippi there is a black land which is the remains of a water
basin which was there thousands of years ago.
In Arkansas the Crowley Ridge country is high and fertile, adapted to grazing
and general farming. Further over one passes through the bottoms of the White,
east and west of which the soil gives growth to rice. Further east we have the
marvelous Arkansas River basin country in the midst of which is Little Rock,
the splendid capital of that state, and lower down the Pine Bluff country. Below
the end of Crowley's Ridge, on the shoulder of which is the splendid city of
Helena, is another vast reach of alluvial land along the Mississippi River as far
south as Louisiana. In this region the last frosts are usually around the first of
March and the first frost along in October. This tremendous advantage enables
the people of the Mid-South to keep their cattle and hogs in the open, if they
wish, ten months in the year.
In most of this region there is a natural pasture for nine months and cover
crops can be planted so as to afford grazing the other three months. Cattle need
protection in the winter only from the rain. In this region hogs can be grown
more cheaply than in any other part of the country, also there is food in the field
for them the year around. Bearing these facts in mind one can see how much
more cheaply hogs, cattle and sheep can be produced in this region than in the
hog and cattle countries further north.
The greater part of the future prosperity of the Mid-South rests in live
stock. The certainty of the results are proven by what has already been
accomplished. A stranger would be amazed at the extent of manufacturing in the Mid-South.
It is clustered over with hardwood lumber finishing mills. Dressed lumber, sashes,
doors, certain sorts of furniture are among the products of our wood-working
factories. The Mid-South is the center of the nation's largest output of cottonseed oil
and this amazing industry is gradually functioning into a condition where from
it there comes an enormous supply of food for man and beast. The hulls and
the cakes are now exported to the dairies of other lands. Some day the cattle
industry will be so developed that this great food will be consumed close to
the mills. Out of this same cottonseed one gets the basic material for oleo
margarine and the vegetable lards that are now big factors in the nation's house
hold economy.
The heavy productions in the Mid-South are cotton, livestock, lumber, rice,
corn, cowpeas, hay and tobacco. In manufacturing there are the finishing of
lumber, cottonseed products and mixed feeds. The quick transportation has
enabled an enormous development of the early vegetable and fruit industry.
19

It is coming to pass that trainloads of strawberries, radishes, beans and turnips
start out of the extreme southern part of the Mid-South during the last week
in February, then the shipments to points higher up continue until the vegetable
and small fruit harvest is in full activity in West Tennessee.
So all the early vegetables and fruits that can be grown in this region find a
ready market in St. Louis, Kansas City, Chicago, Minneapolis, Louisville, Cin
cinnati, Detroit, Cleveland and Pittsburgh before the early vegetables in the
neighborhood of these great cities can be taken from the fields.
The time is not far off when the vegetable and fruit industry in the Mid-
South will be equal in volume to either the cotton or to the lumber industry.
The development of the diversified agricultural activities of the Mid-South is
beyond the experimental stage. The railroads are here for the transportation
and no other part of the United States offers such a soil output in duration of
growing months, in variety of things grown and in strength of production as
does the region lying east and west of the Mississippi River 150 miles north and
south of the city of Memphis.
The day will come when this region will be the heart of the richest produc
tive territory of the United States.

After this sweep through four centuries wherein we have studied the races
that have held dominion in this region we are able to get an accurate measure
of the quality of men and women who now hold the cities and lands of the
Mid-South. It is going to be the most productive region in the United States.
The soil gives natural advantages. It required energy, patience and courage to
bring out of the land the best results.
Before the Civil War Eastern Mississippi, that splendid country around
Aberdeen, Columbus, West Point and Tupelo had been brought to a high state of
cultivation for those days. The black lands of East Mississippi were not subjected
to overflow. The bottoms of the rivers when cleared yielded abundantly.
Clustered around these cities there were families whose imprints are well
defined on the structure of the history of Mississippi. Passing through one can
note the high state of culture in the character of the splendid old homes.
Higher up in West Tennessee around Bolivar, Old Purdy, Corinth and
around Jackson and Madison County the country has been opened by a sturdy
stock of pioneers. The people lived comfortably and some of them elegantly.
The sons and daughters went to the schools in Jackson or at LaGrange, while
still others sought education in the older colleges in the north and east. The
same is true as to families along the White and Arkansas River around Helena
and higher up through the Crowley Ridge country. Little Rock, itself, had
become a city of culture and boasted of a splendid college. It was doing for
the youth of that state what Oxford in Mississippi was doing for those east of
the river. Here and there along the Mississippi in the St. Francis Basin and
in the Delta on knolls above the overflow, were baronial estates owned by men,
who had come down from the higher countries, saw a vision of the future and
determined to clear the low country and have it for their own.
20

The Civil War tore this splendid social fabric to pieces. Federals and Con
federates camped throughout West Tennessee and Northern Mississippi. Armies
out of the upper states met southern soldiers in Helena and Pine Bluff. There
was a constant collision of small bands in the upper counties of the Arkansas
and along the river there were the battles of Belmont, Island Ten, Fort Pillow,
Memphis, on the Helena front and Vicksburg just as there were further to the
east in Mississippi collisions at Corinth, Holly Springs and sharp conflicts around
Tupelo. When the struggle ended there was not a neighborhood, not a village
that was left unmarked.
For ten years after the war there was a fight for existence, a struggle against
annihilation, a supreme effort to keep the white civilization from going down
under the black rule. Then came the pestilence, but after that the heavens were
filled with rainbows. Those who had survived the struggle took on new courage
and those from strange land began to see the possibilities of the country. The
schools were rebuilt, roads were constructed and the levees began to throw their
strong shoulders against the river, then the bridges across the Mississippi were
built. The lumber countries of Michigan, Wisconsin and Northern Indiana had
become bare and strong men of the forest came into this Mid-South and were
staggered at the possibilities in timber.
Before '90, men from Indiana and the other states around the Great Lakes
were cutting trees and sending the hardwood lumber into northern cities. It
was found that as fast as the land was cleared it was the more valuable because
of its natural richness. A cutover country in the north is a barren country and
a cutover country in the Mid-South invites the plow.
The discovery of the wonderful qualities of cottonseed led to another great
development in this region which outstripped others.
In the early '90s the work of the builders had become manifest to the world.
More capital came in, more people came in and before the Spanish-American
War the production of raw agriculture and timber material from the territory
adjacent to Memphis became a great factor in the wealth of the nation.
Until the levees were completed and the bridge built over the river there
was steady progress marked by an occasional backset, but in 1900 it was realized
that no region could be a one-crop region ; that no city could depend upon one
article, and be permanently prosperous. Before that time cotton, because it was a
source of credit, was the only standby of the farmer. The timber man himself
depended for revenue on the unfinished product.
Around 1900 it was demonstrated that cattle could be economically grown
in the prairie country of East Mississippi and that Crowley's Ridge afforded
fine pasture.
Someone developed rice on the Grand Prairie of Arkansas. The lespedeza
was found to be a great cattle food.
The newspapers, the agricultural school men and the far-sighted business
men began the campaign for a more general agriculture and more varieties. Of
manufacture they built on to what the pioneer builders before them had con
structed. They came to know their country's possibilities; they preached a new
21

gospel. It was a plea for diversification, for variety and produce in produc
tion. They proved by experiment what the soil could do. 1 hey developed the
lowly gum tree into a timber as much sought after as the disappearing poplar
and the expensive mahogany.
Men like Duryea and Ames in West Tennessee, both of them from the North,
Davis, Ames and Clarke of Mississippi, Lee Wilson of Arkansas, Banks of
Memphis, Alf Stone of the Delta and the rice growers of Grand Prairie showed
by example what might be done in livestock, in alfalfa, corn and rice. Their
example was followed and in spite of the drawbacks of the last levee breaks and
with a touch of boll weevil to the far south, the opening of the great war
found this region bounding forward towards a condition which, when realized,
will make it the most productive and affording the best opportunity for creating
wealth of any country in the world.

22

The Geology of the Mid-South
By Prof. E . N . Lowe

,)2-^EFlNlTION— The Gulf border of the North American conti-
D^j^ nent has not always occupied its present position. At present the
j^M Gulf sweeps in a broad gentle landward convexity from eastern
J^/ Texas to peninsular Florida, this general convexity being
interrupted at the mouth of the Mississippi River by a pro
nounced southeastward projection of land. Toward the close
of the middle age of geological history (technically called the Mesozoic Era)
this interior Gulf region for long distances on both sides of the present Mississippi
River presented an aspect very different from that existing today. A broad arm
of the Gulf extended up into the continent as far as the Ohio River and so broad
that were it existent today to cross it in the latitude of Shreveport, Vicksburg,
Meridian and Mongomery, a fast ship would have a voyage of twenty-four hours.
In geological literature this is called the Mississippi Embayment, and it has
had an interesting developmental history from late Cretaceous time until the
present. Extent. — The Gulf border of the continent in late Cretaceous time was
200 miles north of its present position. The embayment began on the east side a
few miles north of Montgomery, Alabama; its eastern shore was an elevated
region of hard Paleozoic rocks extending northwestward to Tuscaloosa, thence
almost clue north to the present Tennessee River a little west of Tuscumbia,
thence through. Tennessee and Kentucky paralleling within a few miles the west
bank of the Tennessee. The head of the embayment crossed the Ohio River
into the southernmost tier of counties of Illinois, crossed the Mississippi into
southeastern Missouri, and extended in a straight line southwest to Pocahontas,
Arkansas ; thence the old shore line took a general southwesterly direction to
Little Rock, presenting, however, in Independence County a broadly wedge-
shaped reintrant into the bordering Ozark Upland. From Little Rock the
western border of the embayment extended southwestward to Arkadelphia,
thence almost due west into southeastern Oklahoma, and southward into eastern
Texas. The whole area included within the above boundaries in late Cretaceous time
was covered by a great expanse of salt water, broadly wedge- or V shaped with
the apex pointing north, the axis of the embayment having a trend a little east
of north and west of south. All of the present states of Mississippi and Louis
iana north of latitude 32° 30', northwestern Alabama, western Tennessee and
Kentucky, a small area in southern Illinois, southeastern Missouri, eastern Arkan-
23

sas, southeastern Oklahoma and eastern Texas were embraced within this
inland sea, the borders of which were constantly changing, expanding on the
one hand or contracting on the other as affected by submergence of contiguous
lands or emergence of marginal sea bottom.
This great bay came into existence as a result of a down-warping of the
solithern half of the continental axis now constituting the Mississippi Valley with
the consequent advance of the Gulf waters over the depressed area. Since the
initial period of maximum depression, the embayment area has been gradually
emerging partly by filling, partly by crustal movement, until after a long lime,
even geologically considered, the whole area has again become a land surface,
with the addition of broad areas to the south, east and west by the rising above
sea level of broad margins of the continent along the whole Gulf and southern
Atlantic coasts. It is the interesting history of these changes that is now
attempted. Formation of the Embayment. — At the close of Palezoic time and prior
to the down-warping mentioned above, the whole embayment area was a land
surface composed of the old hard rock formations that make up the continent
to the north of us, and that border the embayment area on the north, east and
west. It is probable that these rocks constituted high lands of more or less rough
topography, possibly mountainous in some parts. That they extended far south,
and that the continent then was perhaps more extensive in that direction than
today is more than probable, although borings in the embayment area, except
near the margins, have failed to reach this old rock floor so deeply buried is it
beneath later deposits.
The old rock surface consisting of limestones, sandstones and shales, became
land at the end of Palezoic time when the Apiialachian revolution pushed and
folded up the Appalachian chain of mountains and lifted the whole interior of
the continent above the sea. During nearly the whole of Mesozoic time this old
land remained above the sea and was subjected to the waste and wear of the
elements. After millions of years of erosion it was worn down approximately
to a level plain but little above sea level. Bordering its southern shores and
along its drainage valleys, all now hidden from sight, forests of giant cycads
grew, and the great reptilian monsters of Jurassic times lived and flourished in
its bays and along the banks of its sluggish streams.
In Cretaceous time the southern or Gulf coasts of this old land began to
sink beneath the sea, and toward the close of that period the sinking had pro
gressed until a moderately deep bay teeming with marine life occupied the whole
embayment area substantially as already outlined.
Emergence at End of Cretaceous. — As would be expected in a gradually
progressive submergence, the first deposits laid down on this old sea floor of the
embayment were overlapped toward the head of the embayment, so that today
none of these beds is to be seen in that region, nor are they encountered in
deep borings, although in Georgia and eastern Alabama they form a narrow
zone outcropping between the later Cretaceous beds and the old rocks of the
Piedmont plateau. On the western side the earlier Cretaceous (Trinity) beds
24

again appear in western Arkansas and extend southwestward through Oklahoma
into eastern Texas where it occupies large areas.
This disturbance means that while in late Cretaceous time the head of the
embayment was slowly extending northward, toward the mouth of the embay
ment the lands on the east and west were gradually rising and lifting into a
fringe of lowland the marginal sea bottom. Undoubtedly the two areas of
Lower Cretaceous are continuous beneath the embayment, but its northern
border has not yet been discovered.
At the end of the Cretaceous Period extensive uplift of the embayment sea
bottom occurred. It is not to be supposed that this uplift was sudden or accom
panied with cataclysmic force, but was a slow oscillation of the earth's surface
whose effects would scarcely have been noted in a long life time had men been
present to observe the change. It is probable that this uplift converted the
whole embayment into land, and possibly a larger area which now lies beneath
the Gulf.
The oscillation was not limited to the embayment, but affected the whole
Gulf and southern Atlantic border, and brought up out of the sea extensive areas
in the western part of the country. It constituted one of the important revolu
tions of geologic time — the transition from the Middle Age (Mesozoic) of the
world to the Modern (Cenozoic) Age. The period of uplift and land erosion
lasted so long that the continent was worn down to gently sloping plains, as
shown by the uniformly even line of contact between the Cretaceous and Ter
tiary formations.
Coincident with this geographic revolution the life of the world underwent
marked changes. Old groups very abundant during Cretaceous times disappeared
entirely or became unimportant ; the cycads and giant ferns were replaced by
broad-leaved trees of modern types ; the dominant reptiles that ruled the water,
the land and the air during Mesozoic time dwindled to insignificant proportions
and numbers, to be succeeded by gigantic and bizarre mammalian forms, most
of which in turn have become extinct since the beginning of Cenozoic time, to
be followed by more modern forms of the mammalian groups.
Cretaceous Deposits. — The embayment has been progressively filled in,
which, with successive uplifts of marginal bottom, has gradually reclaimed the
whole area into land surface. Streams flowing into the head and sides of the
embayment have furnished materials which have been worked by the waves
into sea bottom deposits. Shell-bearing animals, corals and other lime-secreting
forms of life have contributed largely to the deposits built into the lands of the
Mississippi Embayment.
At the beginning of this period of filling the lands bordering the embayment
were high and the eroding streams rapid and tumultous. These inferences are
justified by the character and mode of deposition of the materials brought into
the embayment sea. These consist largely of immense gravel deposits which
could have been transported only by swift streams. This gravel is composed of
subangular partially water worn fragments of chert cemented together by cal
careous clay. Interstratified irregularly with these gravel beds are extensive
25

deposits of sand and clay, with occasional beds of lignilic or highly lignitic clay
or sand. This lignitic material indicated swamp conditions at the time of its deposition,
and it is probable that shoaling of the water by filling over limited areas along
the coasts brought about temporary swamps and marshes with extensive growth
of vegetation. This division of the Cretaceous is known as the Tuscaloosa formation, the
deposits of this age being from 200 to 1,000 feet in thickness. Their distribu
tion is chiefly on the eastern side of the embayment, their outcrop on the west
side being generally covered under later deposits. It is probable that toward the
center of the embayment the materials of this formation thin out and become
finer, possibly passing into clays or limestones.
This period passes by easy gradations into the next younger one, the Eiitaw,
which forms a rather narrow fringe bordering the Tuscaloosa on the embayment
side. The materials of this formation consist chiefly of thick sand deposits,
becoming toward the end of the period somewhat finer and distinctly calcareous.
The deposits still indicate more or less the action of rapidly eroding streams, but
the lands were probably lower and the streams less swift than in the last period.
Great loads of sand were delivered by these streams to the waves and currents
of the sea which reworked them into off-shore deposits. These accumulated to
a thickness of several hundred feet, thickening toward the south, as in the case
of the east.
The next period, the Selma, succeeded without interruption the Eutaw. The
material deposited during this division of Cretaceous time consists of a soft
bluish gray limestone containing a considerable proportion of clay. This lime
stone is rich in large marine shells of different types and shows abundant evidence
of the presence of marine sauriaus, bones and teeth of which have been found
in many places.
The Selma or Anona Chalk, a limestone of the southern part of the embay
ment, is chiefly lime with eight or ten per cent of clay, which shows a deposit
almost entirely free from terrigenous deposits. This can be explained only on
the theory that the streams flowing into the embayment sea had v\'orn the sur
rounding lands so low that their waters brought little sediment into the sea, and
what was brought in was the finest clay, indicating sluggish drainage.
However, the chief drainage into the embayment was at the north end, and
here we find the Selma to consist of a calcareous clay, indicating that deposits
from the land, though the finest clay, was still in excess of that of marine origin.
Since the materials of this period are mostly of marine origin, and since marine
deposition is very slow, we are safe in concluding that the period of Selma
deposition was much longer than either of the two preceding. The Selma in the
southern part of the embayment reached a thickness of 800 or 900 feet. Its
chief distribution is in Alabama and Mississippi, though a zone ten to twelve
miles wide extends as far north as southeastern Carroll County, Tennessee.
Around the head of the embayment and along the western border, the Cretaceous,
if present, is covered by later deposits. It reappears in southern Oklahoma and
26

eastern Texas. Deep wells in many places in Tennessee and Arkansas reach
Cretaceous beds, but our information about them is meagre.
The latest division of the Cretaceous, the Ripley, consists of impure lime
stones and sandy marls and sands, having a maximum thickness of about 500
feet. During this time the streams had perhaps cut back into new regions fur
nishing new sources of sand, for much of the Ripley material is sand of medium
coarseness. The limestones formed the basal part, showing a transition from
the deeper and clearer seas of the Selma to the shallow water conditions of late
Ripley. The Ripley marls contain abundance of marine molluscous shells, mostly
fragmentary, but showing beautiful metallic and iridescent colors.
The Ripley outcrop constitutes the series of high sand ridges in northeast
Mississippi called Pontotoc Ridge. This high, sandy ridge passes into Tennes
see in McNairy County, being exposed in a notable cut near Cypress, on the
Southern Railway, and thence runs north ten to fifteen miles wide, but grad
ually narrowing as it passes through western Kentucky a few miles west of Ten
nessee River. A narrow zone of the Ripley outcrops in Lawrence and Inde
pendence counties of Arkansas, but it is encountered in well drillings over most
of eastern Arkansas. From Arkadelphia to Texarkana occur other narrow
outcrops, but on the whole, in southwestern Arkansas the Ripley barely peeps
out from under later formations of the embayment regions.
During the whole Cretaceous the sides of the embayment were gradually
being elevated above the sea, with resulting narrowing of the bay. As before
stated, the whole embayment area was probably uplifted and became dry land
at the end of Cretaceous time.
Tertiary History. — After a long interval of erosion of the uplifted Creta
ceous deposits and older Paleozoic lands, the embayment area was again sub
merged and an inland bay established. This bay was narrower than during
Cretaceous time, but longer, the embayment head reaching in the early Tertiary
its maximum northern extension.
The deposits of the Midway stage, the earliest division of the Tertiary, con
sist in the southern part of the embayment of fossiliferous green sand marls and
clays, but in the northern parts in Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois and Arkansas,
only the clay is present, forming the so-called "flatwoods." It is a tough, gray,
joint clay, and in the lower parts where it rests upon the marine marls is more
or less calcareous and fossiliferous. These clays and marls are encountered in
drilling at numerous places in the interior of the embayment, where they show
a thiclcness of about 200 feet. The outcropping portions, however, show only in
a narrow zone bordering the bayward side of the Cretaceous. This "flatwoods"
is evident in Alabama and Mississippi, and extends through Tennessee and
Kentucky into southern Illinois, thence southwest through southeastern Missouri
into eastern Arkansas, by Little Rock to Arkadelphia and Texarkana then west
into eastern Texas.
The next younger division of the Tertiary, the Wilcox (also called Sabine
and Lagrange), lies upon the Midway, completely covering it except for the
narrow penumbra mentioned above. This is a very important period in the
27

history of the embayment, since at the end of this time the greater part of the
embayment was uplifted into land, and has not since been submerged.
The Wilcox consists of a maximum of from 900 to 1,000 feet of deposits,
which are chiefly sands and clays, the sands often showing great irregularities
of bedding. The deposits and fossils of the Wilcox show very little evidence of
marine conditions, and it is probable that these beds were deposited in shallow
water, perhaps at times in brackish or fresh water swamps. Extensive lignite
deposits, which are derived from peat swamps, occur interstratified with the
clays and sands, and most of the fossils of the Wilcox are impressions of land
plants, although a few marine fossils occur, especially in the southeastern part
of the embayment. It seems probable that in the southern part of the embay
ment marine conditions prevailed, while toward the head of the bay swamps and
brackish marshes persisted.
At the end of Wilcox time most of the embayment became land by uplift
and by long-continued filling, which probably was somewhat of the nature of
delta-building. Certain it is, the cross-bedded sands very frequently impress
one as having been deposited under delta conditions.
The succeeding epoch, known as the Claiborne, is much more restricted in
its distribution than the Wilcox. Its outcrop strikes across Alabama and Mis
sissippi in a northwest direction to Grenada. From Grenada a very much nar
rowed zone reached northward to Tallahatchie County, Mississippi, approached
the Mississippi River beneath the delta formations, and reappeared in Crowley's
Ridge, Arkansas, as far north as Harrisburg, and thence southwestward. This
distribution indicates a very much narrowed, as well as a considerably shortened
bay, and this was practically obliterated before the end of the Claiborne.
The Claiborne deposits are mainly marine marls, clays, and sandstones, highly
fossiliferous in places toward the mouth of the embayment, but much more like
the sandy, clayey and lignitic character of the Wilcox in the regions toward the
head of the embayment. The closing stage of the Claiborne was marked by
deposition of clays and sands with much interstratified lignite, indicating swamp
conditions. The Jackson epoch followed the Claiborne, with probably a short erosion
interval between the two. Marine conditions prevailed during Jackson time,
and highly calcareous sandy marls and clays were doposited about the open mouth
of the embayment, which by this time was almost filled, so that the Jackson out
crop runs nearly east and west across central Alabama, Mississippi and Louis
iana. Beds of Jackson age are reported to occur in Crowley's Ridge, Arkansas,
as far north as Wynne, and in southeastern Arkansas south of the Arkansas
River. If this correlation be correct, a narrow bay, the limits of which are
mostly hidden beneath the Mississippi Delta deposits, extended as far north as
Wynne. The seas of this time were abundantly inhabited by all kinds of shell fish,
whose shells are beautifully preserved in great variety in the marls of that
period. Shark teeth and vertebrae indicated abundance of these predacious
fish. In Alabama and Mississippi occur in the marine clays of this period
vertebrae and teeth of the Zeuglodon, a gigantic species of whale that lived in the
28

Jackson seas. Bones and teeth of this animal have been dug up in the city limits
of Jackson, Mississippi, for which place the formation was named.
This epoch was closed by depositing sixty to eighty feet of sands and clays,
often lignitic, which probably indicated a local change of offshore currents, with
shoaling of the water. This was only for a short time and was followed by the
inauguration of the Vicksburg epoch, which was characterized by strict marine
conditions. These beds are alternating hard limestones and limey marls. The
limestones are massive in places, and occur in high ledges along the streams.
Some of this limestone is very pure. Certain phases of it consist of a creamy
white or yellowish uniformly soft limestone which can be sawed in blocks of
convenient size and shape, and placed in chimneys or foundations of buildings,
when it hardens to a firm rock. It is hence locally called "chimney rock."
The outcrop of the Vicksburg extends from Vicksburg, the type locality, a
little south of east across Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia; and extends west
ward into northern Louisiana. The only vestige of the great embayment remain
ing was a slight indentation in the shore line about the positions of the Missis
sippi River.
The relatively deep clear water conditions of Vicksburg time, with marine
life, gave way at the beginning of the next stage to turbid, shallow waters, either
fresh or brackish. This, the Catahoula (formerly called Grand Gulf, from a
Inading on the Mississippi River), presents a marked and rather abrupt change
from limestones and marls to sandstones, greenish clays, gray clays and lignite,
containing remains of fossil land plants but no marine fossils such as were so
abundant in the Vicksburg. The outcrop of these beds extends across Alabama,
Mississippi, and Louisiana in a direction slightly convex toward the continental
mass, showing still an indentation of the shore line.
The great quantities of clay and sand could not have been spread along the
shores of that time except from deposits by turbid streams. Abundant plant
remains have been found in the Catahoula, both in the clays and in the sand
stones, but all are species that fringe the coasts of tropic or subtropic seas.
Hence the climate of this time was considerably warmer than in the same
regions novv. The flora was very largely palms, some of them large-sized trees.
Impressions of large palm leaves are sometimes found preserved perfectly in
the sandstone of this period.
Thick deposits of gray and mottled clay, in places containing lime concre
tions, marked the final stage of deposition extending across Louisiana and Mis
sissippi into southern Alabama. These, also, were either fresh or brackish water
deposits, and were laid down in marginal lagoons or shallow offshore shelves
undergoing gradual depression. Where shallow water deposits occur in great
thickness there must necessarily have been continued and prolonged sinking
of the area at about the same rate as the upbuilding, else the shallow waters
would have soon shoaled and become converted by filling into dry land.
Present Condition of the Embayment Deposits. — The older rocks of the
earth are for the most part firmly indurated, so that clays have become shales or
slates, sands have become sandstone or quartzite, sea-bottom oozes have become
limestones or marbles. These changes come about as the result of the operation
29

of several factors, vertical pressure, lateral compression, cementation and heat,
through long periods of time. All the materials brought into the embayment
were deposited as unconsolidated sediments. After long ages the action of the
above factors, or of some of them, has resulted in a complete consolidation of
some of these formations, and the partial consolidation of others, while some
remain but little changed from the original condition of sediment.
The Tuscaloosa and Eutaw sands and gravels are still unconsolidated ; the
Selma limestone is semi-indurated into a soft limestone ; the Ripley consists of
unconsolidated sands, partly indurated marls, and hard crystalline limestones.
The Midway presents firm crystalline limestones, unconsolidated marls, and
firmly compacted and finely jointed clay; the Wilcox is mostly unchanged sands,
but has beds of firm clays and shales, and occasional hard sandstones; the Clai
borne is in part firmly indurated rock, often quartzitic, and partly semi-com
pacted clays and marls ; the Jackson consists of firmly compacted clays and
marls; the Vicksburg is prevailingly in hard limestone layers, with intercalated
soft marls; the Grand Gulf exhibits hard sandstone and quartzitic beds, but
more abundantly firm clay beds.
Development of Present Topography. — As we have seen, in the course
of emergence of the embayment area, the oldest formations next to the old
lands became uplifted into land, first as a penumbral border to the enclosing
lands; then each successively younger formation came up adding another fringe
to the border; and so on down to the youngest, which completed the filling of
the old embayment.
Erosion began at once on the first land to appear above the sea, and waste
and wearing down has continued on the whole embayment lands from the time
of the emergence until now, so that now the surface as a whole is one of mature
erosion. Valleys have been cut out, dividing ridges have been lowered, and
over large areas the general surface has been lowered and reduced to gently
undulating plains. The rate of waste and the stage of erosion reached vary in
different parts, dependent upon the character of the materials of the dift'erent for
mations; thus the region presents several very well-marked topographic divisions.
As is well known, the erosion of sandy formations tends to the development
of deep valleys separated by high steep divides, producing rough topography.
This is due to the rapid down-cutting of stream channels in unconsolidated
sands, while the fall of rain upon the divides sinks in instead of running off
with erosive effects. In regions of clays, on the contrary, as the valleys deepen
the divides are lowered by rain erosion, because the clay being impervious, rain
flows off the surface with resultant erosion. Regions of clays tend to develop
low, level, or gently rolling plains. In a region of hard rocks another factor
operates to develop the topography. Cracks or joints in the rocks often deter
mine the position and direction of streams, and as valleys develo[) these joints
often permit the rocks to cool off in blocks, leaving rugged, vertical, often steep
walls, so that a region of hard rocks is apt to present a rugged topogra[)hy.
Remembering these facts, and coupling them with what has been already
said about the nature of the materials entering into formations of the embay
ment, it is not difficult to understand the distribution of the topographic regions.
30

The earliest and the latest Cretaceous divisions constitute prominent and rugged
uplands and ridges, which would be expected, since they are prevailingly of
sand. These ridges form some of the highest and most picturesque regions of
northeast Mississippi and western Tennessee. This outcrop in northeast Arkansas
is less wide, but present the same rugged uplands.
Between these two uplands lies the outcrop of the Selma, a region of clay and
soft clayey limestone which weathers like clay. This, in contrast to the rough
sand regions lying east and west of it, presents a broad zone of gently rolling
prairies in Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee. The prairies of Arkansas were
not of the same origin, but were developed from a later clay formation. The
Selma does not outcrop in Arkansas.
The early Midway limestones lie in immediate contact with the sands of the
latest Cretaceous, and combine with them to form the rugged uplands just
described. The later Midway, however, is a clay formation and its outcrop,
called "The Flatwoods," is so low and level as to suggest a broad river valley.
This varies from three to ten or fifteen miles wide, and in its natural condition
is forested with hardwoods chiefly, whereas the sandy uplands are mainly
regions of pines.
The W'ilcox and early Claiborne stages, characterized by extensive sand for
mations, outcrop in most of the interior of the embayment in rolling and hilly
uplands, except where the surface has been planed away by the Mississippi
River into low flood plains.
The upper Claiborne and Jackson stages, being prevailingly marls and calca
reous clays, outcrop in level or gently rolling uplands, often open prairies that
form a rather narrow cast and west belt across western Alabama, Mississippi
and into Louisiana and southern Arkansas. However, most of the area west of
the Mississippi is covered by flood plain deposits.
The Vicksburg and lower Catahoula, which lies next to it on the south,
present a high, broken cast-west zone in the latitude of Vicksburg, the rough
topography being developed because of the hard limestone and sandstone
outcrops. The later extensive clay formations occupying the regions of southern
Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama have developed broad gently rolling surfaces
that slope gradually toward the Gulf. Where decided irregularity of surface in
tills region occurs it is produced by deposits of superimposed sand and gravel
of later age, which will be explained in the next paragraph.
Development of the Mississippi Flood Plain. — Undoubtedly, from the
beginning of the embayment depression drainage of the upland to the north
flowed into the head of the bay, the axis of drainage, most probably, following
the general direction of the present Mississippi River. When the whole embay
ment had been filled in and raised above sea level, with a gentle seaward-sloping
surface, the drainage from the north began to trench upon the newly made land.
Since the materials were soft and the surface had but slight elevation, this great
river, the present Mississippi, soon cut its channel in the embayment axis down
to base level, or practically to sea level. The final upheaval which obliterated the
embayment, as mentioned above, extended to the old lands around the head of
31

the embayment area, rejuvenating the streams, so that they began to bring down
into the Mississippi great quantities of chert, gravel and coarse materials derived
from the chert beds and cherty limestones of the Appalachian and Ozark uplands.
This material was deposited along the courses of the Mississippi, Tennessee,
White, and Red rivers, where they flowed through the embayment. On reaching
the Gulf great quantities of this material were delivered by the river to the
Gulf waves and currents, which reworked them and spread them along the
coasts, chiefly toward the east, just as present day deposits of sand and mud
are distributed toward the east rather than toward the west.
It is probable that during this gravel depositing epoch there were two or
three successive periods of uplift, for the present position of the gravel deposits
is on river-made terraces separated by vertical intervals of about 100 feet.
However, it is possible that some of the lower terrace gravels may be reworked
from the higher terrace deposits, just as the present river gravels of the Mis
sissippi are reworked terrace gravels.
The depth of alluvial deposits of the Mississippi indicate strongly that there
has been some subsidence in the embayment region since the earlier Pliocene
elevations. Also that there must have been some submergence in the lowest
parts of the embayment during the deposition of the great thickness of gravel, for
these gravels now cover in southern Mississippi and Alabama much of the clay
regions of the later embayment deposits.
After the great gravel epoch the embayment area became stable, and the
Mississippi having cut its channel down to base level, began to under-cut and
widen its channel. The process of widening continued until a floodplain was
developed. This was narrow at first, and the stream meandered from side to
side, cutting it wider and wider. The river now occupies a great trough cut
out of the enclosing lands, 100 to 250 feet below the top of the coastal plain
upland, and 75 to 80 miles wide. This has all been cut out of the uplands by the
wandering of the Mississippi and its tributaries over its floodplain, swinging
first to one side and then to the other.
Early in this period of floodplain building the Mississippi and the Ohio pursued
separate courses through the northern embayment as far south as Helena,
Arkansas, at which point they united. During this time the Mississippi, at
Cape Girardeau, Missouri, turned toward the southwest and flowed through
the gap between Benton Ridge and the Ozark uplands, thence through the low
lands west of Crowley's Ridge, meeting at its southern point the Ohio which
flowed on the east side of those ridges in the present course of the Mississippi.
Both Benton and Crowley's Ridges are remnants of the old embayment uplands
which escaped the lateral cutting of the two streams.
After these streams had cut out broad floodplains the melting of the great
continental glaciers of the Ice Age deluged southward flowing streams with
waste from the north. Covering the floodplains the streams deposited fine silt,
which after the water receded into its channels, was whipped up by the winds
and redeposited as loess on the lowlands and uplands alike. This loess is a
tawny, calcareous, unstratified silt which covers the bluffs of Crowley's Ridge
and the fringe of bluffs east of the Mississippi floodplain, and overlying the
32

terrace gravels to a thickness of 25 to 100 feet. Whatever loess was deposited
on the Advance and Mississippi lowlands of Missouri and Arkansas was removed
by subsequent transgression of the streams over those areas with deposition of
recent alluvium.
After the period of loess deposition a small tributary of the Ohio which
was flowing at a lower level than the Mississippi, cut across the divide connect
ing Benton and Crowley's Ridges and captured the waters of the Mississippi,
which then abandoned its course west of Crowley's Ridge and took the course
of the Ohio. Soon another tributary of the Ohio cut back by head erosion into
the Mississippi on the east side of Benton Ridge, thus diverting the stream into
its present course at that point. Since these changes the Mississippi has occupied
the former channel of the Ohio River, which now enters it at Cairo, instead of in
the vicinity of Helena, as originally. Recent alluvial deposits of the Delta, as
indicated by drillings, are from 50 to 100 feet in depth. In the lowlands of
Arkansas, Pleistocene sands and gravels underlie the alluvium to a depth of
200 feet.
Underground Waters of the Embayment.— At almost any part of the
embayment area good potable water can be had in abundance at some depth.
Lowland Supplies. — In the lowlands of the Mississippi floodplain, which
includes the St. Francis Basin of Missouri and Arkansas and the alluvial plains
of the L'Anguille, the White, the Arkansas, and the Ouachita, shallow driven
wells have been in use for many years. These obtain water from the sands of
the recent alluvium at depths ranging from 25 to 100 feet. The yield is not
usually abundant, but is sufficient ; the water is not particularly good, the vi'ater
from most of the wells having a disagreeable taste and odor. These wells are not
safe against surface contamination. With rare exceptions they are pumped
by cheap hand pumps, though occasionally one is found that will flow.
In that part of Arkansas included in the embayment lowlands sands and
gravels below the recent alluvium extend to a depth of 200 feet, and these fur
nish abundance of water of good quality. The greater part of the wells of that
region get water from this source. In all the counties where wells furnish
water for irrigating the rice fields, this source of water is used. Many wells are
pumped at rates of from 1,000 to 4,000 gallons per minute.
Conditions in the southeastern lowlands of Missouri are similar to those in
the adjacent parts of Arkansas. Here shallow wells 100 to 200 feet deep reach
good wholesome water in pleistocene sands ; wells 300 to 500 feet deep reach
the water horizons of the Wilcox; at 1,400 to 1,500 feet good water that will
rise nearly to the surface can be had from the Cretaceous.
In the lowlands of Tennessee wells easily reach the water-bearing sands of
the Lagrange formation, which yield a good soft water. Often wells can be
driven into these sands at a depth of 150 to 200 feet; hence the less desirable
water of the river alluvium is seldom used, although it can be reached at thirty
to fifty feet. The chief water supply of Memphis and smaller places along the
river is derived from the Lagrange at 300 to 450 feet depth. Deeper water
supplies could doubtless be obtained from the Ripley (late Cretaceous) at a
depth of 1,200 to 1,400 feet. 33

On the Delta lowlands of Mississippi driven wells from 30 to 75 feet deep
derive water from the alluvium. These are rapidly being replaced by deep
wells that furnish abundance of excellent water. In the eastern Delta artesian
water is obtained at depths of from 450 to 650 feet, in the western Delta at
depths from 850 to 1,000 feet. From the northern Delta toward the south the
depth of artesian wells gradually increases. Nearly all the Delta wells in Missis
sippi are flowing wells. The water becomes more mineralized with increasing
depth but is wholesome throughout the region.
Upland Water Supplies — On Crowley's Ridge, Benton Ridge, and uplands
lying near the Mississippi River, shallow wells and springs get water in the
gravel at the bottom of the loess. This water is liable to be hard, but is otherwise
wholesome, though deeper supplies are better. In the area of Wilcox outcrop
wells 100 to 300 feet deep find supplies of excellent water, but the wells do not
flow. Numerous excellent springs occur in the Wilcox area. In the northern
embayment deeper wells will reach the Cretaceous at 1,000 to 1,200 feet. In the
area of the "Flatwoods" good flowing wells can be had at a depth of 100 to 250
feet. In the prairies of the Selma outcrop of west Tennessee and northeast
Mississippi water must be obtained by sinking wells to the sands below the
Selma, a depth of 300 feet in Tennessee to 900 feet in central Mississippi.
The Claiborne furnishes abundance of flowing wells at 150 to 300 feet depth.
The Jackson prairies have no shallow wells ; at 600 to 800 feet good soft water
is reached, and on the stream terraces at 1,300 to 1,400 feet flowing wells are the
rule. In the Vicksburg and the Catahoula outcrops deep water is somewhat
uncertain, but shallow wells at the base of overlying sands and gravels furnish
excellent water. Good springs also occur.
Mineral Products. — The embayment is not considered a highly mineralized
region, yet it is lately coming prominently to the front with minerals of recog
nized value.
In the Wilcox formation of Mississippi and Tennessee high grade clays in
great quantity are commanding attention, and will undoubtedly be developed
at no distant day. Lignite of good quality and in great abundance occurs in the
Wilcox and Claiborne formations. These lignites have not yet been developed,
but if the high price of coal continues may be put upon the market. Tests have
proved the high fuel value of the Coastal Plain lignites. Building stone, excel
lent road-making gravels, and other structural materials are found in abundance,
and are being put upon the market. The greatest sulphur mines in the world
are located in Louisiana. Northern Louisiana, southern Louisiana and south
eastern Texas have developed some of the most phenomenal oil and gas fields
known, and very recently southern Arkansas has stepped to the front with a new
oil and gas field.
Soils of the Embayment. — Two pronounced classes of soils occur in this
region, upland soils and lowland soils. They will be considered separately
Upland Soils. — The most widely distributed upland soil is the Memphis
Silt Loam, more commonly called Brown Loam. This is a brownish-gray silty
soil, resting upon a reddish-brown or tawny, clayey subsoil. When rich in
humus it is a very dark brown mellow soil that is easily cultivated and holds
34

moisture well. Much of it in this area is badly exhausted, but much, also,
after many years of tillage is still abundantly productive. This soil is derived
from the loess, and was probably deposited by wind. It covers Crowley's and
Benton Ridges and the adjacent uplands in Missouri and Arkansas, extends over
western Kentucky and Tennessee, all of the west third of Mississippi, and over
large areas in southern Arkansas and northern Louisiana.
This soil is usually well drained owing to its upland position and its uneven
surface. Over large areas it is gently rolling, but along the bluffs bordering the
Mississippi lowlands its surface becomes rough. It was originally all forested
with hardwood trees. Within fifteen or twenty miles of the bluffs this soil
overlies the typical calcareous loess which imparts its lime to the soil. Within
these limits this soil is deeper and more productive than further back from the
river, and is very largely cultivated in cotton, corn, hay and potatoes, and in
many places in vegetable crops and fruit. Apples, pears, peaches and small fruits
do well on this soil.
Orangeburg and Ruston Soils. — On the sandy uplands both east and west
of the Mississippi River lowlands the prevailing soils are the Orangeburg and
Ruston series. Usually the rich red uplands that lie nearly level are regarded
as Orangeburg. This soil when rich in humus is a deep rich brown, friable, fine,
sandy loam resting upon a deep red subsoil. This soil is always well drained ;
it holds moisture and fertilizer well, is an excellent and very productive upland
soil, producing corn abundantly, potatoes, vegetables and fruits. It is especially
adapted to sugar cane growing, the syrup from cane grown on this soil being of
the finest flavor. The Elberta peach finds this soil especially congenial.
The Ruston soils are a dark gray fine sandy loam, resting upon a yellowish-
brown subsoil. It is usually associated with the Orangeburg, but is more widely
distributed. The soil is well drained, usually has a native growth of pines, but
is a less dependable soil than the Orangeburg. It is less rich in plant food, is
less retentive of moisture, and makes smaller yields. It also is adapted to such
crops as sugar cane, potatoes, corn, cotton and peas. Peanuts and legumes,
especially velvet beans (in the southern part of the area), and cowpeas do well.
Strawberries produce well, have excellent flavor, and ripen early.
Clay Soils. — In the embayment of Arkansas large areas of clayey soils
occur in Prairie, Lonoke, and adjacent counties. The surface is poorly drained
and nearly flat, much of it being in open prairies. The poorly drained prairie
type is called Crowley Silt Loam, and occupies all of Grand Prairie. The some
what better drained type which shades into the other and is usually clothed with
hardwood forests, is Arcadia Silt Loam. These are highly fertile soils, but
owing to bad drainage were long avoided by settlers. The better drained Arcadia
Silt Loam was in part cultivated. But within recent years these wet lands have
been found well adapted to rice growing, and are very valuable.
These soil types do not appear on the east side of the Mississippi River. In
the clayey "Flatwoods" of the Midway which forms a zone three or four to fifteen
miles wide in Tennessee, Mississippi and Alabama, the chief soil is the Lufkin
Clay, a heavy, dark, brownish to gray soil resting upon a tenaceous gray clay
subsoil. This soil usually lies nearly flat, so that surface drainage is not good,
35

and its texture is so close that water is held tenaciously. Both surface and under
drainage is needed. Tiling would greatly benefit this soil. The Lufkin soil is
generally wooded in post oak, black jack, and pine, the forests being open.
This area has been settled slowly, but with the cutting away of the timber
farms are springing up. Tillage of these soils is difficult, they are wet and cold,
and crops are late starting and late maturing. Very good crops of corn, peas,
hay and legumes, especially lespedeza, are grown, and the soil is improving
under cultivation.
Broad prairies in Mississippi and Alabama with rich limey clay soils charac
terize the outcrop of the Selma soft limestone. The soils are heavy, limey, dark
gray clay soils, technically called Houston Clay. This is a very productive soil.
All common crops do well, but it is especially well adapted to growing alfalfa.
This is a region of large and prosperous farms, and the country is very
attractive; cattle raising and dairying are developing, and good surfaced roads
are being built throughout the section.
The Jackson Clay is another zone of limey prairies that have the Houston
Clay soil, but it is less extensive than the northeast prairies. The character of
soil and topography is very similar and the land is productive of the staple crops.
Lowland Soils. — These include the soils of the whole floodplain region,
remarkable as being one of the richest and largest alluvial regions on the globe.
Several classes of soils with numerous types have been distinguished in this
division, but these need not be taken up here; it will be sufficient to distinguish
the prevailing types.
From the nature of their origin the soils of the lowlands are mixed. Mate
rials from the whole interior drainage basin of the continent have been brought
together by tributaries of the Mississippi, mingled in transportation, and finally
spread out in thin sheets over the whole overflowed area. Through countless
seasons these annual overflows spread out their tribute from the surrounding
lands upon this rich plain, building it up until a great thickness — 100 feet, or
more — of fine alluvium has been laid down. But the coarsest and heaviest
deposits were made by the overflowing waters along the borders of the streams,
while the finer materials were carried out and deposited further away from the
water courses. As a result the land built up more rapidly near the streams, and
more slowly in the interstream areas. The soils, therefore, which are formed of
materials first deposited near the stream are of coarser texture, consisting of
sands, sandy loams, and loams, then those made of clays that are deposited
in the low interstream areas.
The broad low back lands are often swampy, occupied by many sloughs and
shallow lakes, the whole area being badly in need of drainage. The entire low
land surface is so near one level that the streams which flow through it and
drain it are tortuous and sluggish, often clogged with drifts and debris left by
high waters. These conditions are being gradually changed, but much yet remains
to be done to reclaim these richest soils of the continent. So rich and so exten
sive is this floodplain, occupying large areas in five states, that were it brought
to its highest productiveness it could wellnigh clothe and feed the world.
36

The highest and best drained soil of this area is what is called the Sharkey
Fine Sandy Loam. This is the lightest type of delta soil, and consists of a light
brown fine sandy and silty soil, which is easy of tillage and rests upon a grayish
brown subsoil. This is usually not very extensive and lies near the streams.
It is an excellent soil for cotton, corn, oats, cowpeas, and lespedeza, and being
an early soil is suitable for trucking where convenient to markets.
Sharkey Silt Loam is a somewhat heavier soil, dark brown, deep and under
lain with a clay subsoil. This soil lies a little lower than the Sharkey Fine
Sandy Loam, and farther away from the streams. It is much more extensive
in its distribution ; is a typical cotton and corn soil, and owing to its fertility and
its comparatively well-drained condition it is one of the best and highest priced
in the whole lowland region. It is more certain than any other soil in this area.
The Sharkey Clay is a heavy clay soil, dark brown to dark drab color, wet
and tenacious. It is the typical "buckshot" soil of the delta. It lies in the broad
interstream depressions, and is the lowest type of soil in the area. Hence it is
cold and badly in need of drainage. A small percentage of this soil area can be
cultivated without drainage, but the greater part requires it before cultivation
can be attempted.
This soil is very rich in all the elements of plant-food — in fact, when properly
drained it is not surpassed in fertility by any known soils. Owing to its reten-
tiveness of moisture the Sharkey Clay is a late soil ; it can be put in condition of
tilth only late in spring, and consequently crops get a late start, but so vigorous
is the growth that by the end of the growing season phenomenal yields of cotton,
corn, oats and numerous other crops are made. Two bales of cotton or fifty to
seventy-five bushels of corn to the acre are common yields. Where rice has
been attempted it has yielded enormously ; wheat and alfalfa are successfully
grown. With proper drainage this soil is unsurpassed in alfalfa yield.
The greatest problem of the whole lowland region is Drainage. All types
of soils arc bettered by having adequate drainage. Any reasonable investment of
capital in constructing drainage systems in that vast basin, into which has flowed
the cream of the fertility of all the interior of the continent from the Appalachians
to the Rockies, from the highlands of Canada to the Gulf, would be like buying
gold eagles with silver dimes. Wonderful as are the yields of these lands now,
under thorough drainage systems the increase would be incalculable. Where
now are villages, would spring up cities, and land values would rise to heights
commensurate with those of the best lands of Illinois and Iowa, which these
lands exceed in fertility.

37

Story of the Levees

By E . M . Holmes

I AN began to build levees for the protection of the lands which
,^ he desired to use or to occupy before he began to make any
MraJij record which has survived until today whether it be on the
I§»1 granite of Egypt or the bricks of Mesopotamia, but it has
remained for these United States to erect the most gigantic
system of protection from surplus water of any land in the
world and the largest of these levees are in the Mid-South.
Contemporary with the civilization along the Tigris and the Euphrates to
which we trace most of our lines of learning, there was another along the Nile
its equal and at times surpassing it. There possibly were conspicuous develop
ment in India and China at the same time, but during the time when both the
people and the monarchs took themselves very seriously a Chinese emperor
burned all the books written prior to his time in order that all learning for the
future in the world should date from him. However, both sacred and profane
history and the recorded traditions antedating it refer to levees along the banks
of overflowing streams just in the same matter of fact way that they refer to
passes through the mountains or to the water courses themselves — to something
that has existed always.
The Bible contains a wonderfully written and thrilling story of Joseph's sale
as a slave in Egypt, his romance with Mrs. Potiphar, his long reign as Pharaoh's
premier, Jacob's migration to him and the multiplication of the Children of
Israel in the land of Goshen, which was in the eastern portion of the lowest
Nile delta, but the levee system of the Nile is known to have been three thou
sand and three hundred years old at that time and the Holy Writ makes no
mention of it. Herodotus was there five hundred years before the birth of
Christ and noted a mass of details in the land so strange to his mind, but levees
were so old at that time that he barely refers to them.
Cyrus and the dashing Queen Semiramis performed wonders in the Mesopo-
tamian country by adding to the levee systems around Babylon, while Nicrotis
not only leveed the river but changed its course for a time in order that he might
build bridges across its channel in Babylon without being bothered by water. His
barrow pits were so big that they were beautiful lakes.
Pliny narrates that the levees along the River Po in Italy antedated the
founding of Rome and he could not determine from traditions by whom they
were built.

38

When Drusus invaded what novv is Holland for the first Roman Emperor he
found levees there and Tacitus tells of that general building the fossa Drusi
which changed the course of a river.
The Rhine, the Rhone, the Oder, the Vistula, the Loire, the Tisza, the
Hoang-Ho, and the Meuse, or Maas as the Hollanders call it, have been leveed
for untold years.
The original settlement of New Orleans was delayed because the settlers
found the site flooded. Man cannot conceive of the human labor expended to
restrain the waters of these rivers, but, as in the case of the alluvial basin of the
Mississippi River, the most fertile and productive land which each succeeding
civilization could find could be made to feed and clothe the human race only
if the water which had created that fertility could be brought under control.
Levees properly constructed have never failed to do this and no other system,
in the seven thousand years in which there is a record of levees has been devised
to attain the same result.
The oldest river gauge in existence today is that located opposite Cairo in
the Nile. It was established nearly thirteen hundred years ago and there is a
record of the high and low water readings since that time. Records on other
streams run back for many years. The actions of the streams protected by levees
have been closely watched by the best observers of their times and the data
compiled have been studied by the best minds of the world. It has been estab
lished beyond the shadow of a doubt that the effect of levees is not to raise the
level of the bed of the river appreciably if at all. The bed of neither the Po nor
the Yellow River is as high as the country through which it runs. The savants
whom Napoleon took to Egypt with him thought that possibly the bed of the
Nile had risen some four feet in twelve hundred years, and the rise in the bed
of the Po is only that natural to the elongation of the river into the Adriatic sea
by the deposit of the silt at its mouth.
We should not worry greatly in 1921 over the thought that by the good
year 2221 the levees of the Mississippi River will have to be one foot higher than
they are today. Major Dabney in one generation has made a line one hundred
miles long with a maximum height of forty-two feet and an average of twenty-
four feet starting from practically zero. The next ten generations ought to be
able to add an average of one inch each to that.
If there has been any change at all in the bed of the River Po, it has been
only eight inches in two hundred and eight years.
Probably the mental trait which causes us to think of those things which are
far from us in time or miles is to magnify them, but the Nile Valley which
supported twelve millions of people at the time of the Arab conquest of Egypt in
700 had an area of about the same size as the St. Francis Basin of Arkansas
and the Yazoo Delta of Mississippi, while the protected area of Holland is not
nearly so large as the Yazoo Delta.
Areas of other levee systems in the world are inconsiderable in comparison
with those along the Mississippi River. Holland has some thirteen hundred
miles of levees, but many miles of that system are for the purpose of affording
means of transportation and having water at hand for irrigation. Innumerable
39

of its polders or basins entirely surrounded by levees are smaller than the aver
age plantations of the lowlands along the Mississippi River. In Egypt the ques
tion is more one of irrigation than mere protection from the water. The Egyp
tians with their systems of levees and cross levees benefit some six million acres,
while the Dutch have about half as much. The River Po is restrained by three
hundred and ten miles of levees from overflowing eight hundred and fifty thou
sand acres of land. The Loire has two hundred and eighty miles of levee for
two hundred and thirty thousand acres of land. The lower Rhine in Ger
many is diked from one hundred and fifteen thousand acres, while the protected
lands of the Oder amount to one hundred and seventy thousand acres and those
of the Vistula one hundred and thirty-four thousand acres.
The Mississippi River has seventeen hundred miles of levees which protect
twenty million acres of land. The area which it drains is as large as the com
bined areas of Great Britain, France, Spain, Italy, Norway, Portugal, Holland
and old Germany and Austria.
It is this tremendous water shed, a large portion of which is steep and sub
jected to the rainfall of tropical hurricanes, which makes the problem of the
levees of the Mississippi River one of so much greater magnitude than that of
the rivers of Europe or the problem of the Nile. While the Nile receives a
tremendous tropical rainfall at the head of its basin, it flows or creeps for hun
dreds of miles through low flat jungles to be confined by cataracts below which
afford the world's most wonderful natural basin for ponding the water, and
in the five hundred miles of its lower reaches it has no affluent and ]M'actically no
rain. Menes, who was the first king of record and who reigned in Egypt some
five thousand years before the birth of Christ, is said to have found the land a
swamp below Lake Moeris. He built levees which changed the channel of the
river from the Lybian or west side of the basin to nearer the middle of the
basin, where it has remained until this day. He also built levees to protect
Memphis. Sesostris seems to have been active in the construction of levees for
the protection of cities, while the custom in the earliest days seems to have been
to leave the cultivated lands subject to overflow. However, thousands of years
ago the system was begun of building levees all along the bank, with cross levees
to hold the water which was permitted to pass through sluices in the main levees
until the ground had been sufficiently watered to make a croj), and then to drain
the water oft' through canals which lay back toward the hills, taking it again into
the Nile near the sea.
The Egyptians first protected the west or left bank of the river before any
attempt was made to control the water on the other side. Under tlie Twelfth
Dynasty, some twenty-five hundred years after Menes, levee and irrigation
received great attention, and Joseph is said to have constructed the Bahr Yussuf,
or Joseph's canal, which still irrigates a large area which otherwise would be as
dry as the desert of Sahara, just west of it.
Levee construction then was not what it is now. Contractors along the Mis
sissippi River in the early part of 1920 paid thirty-five cents per hour for the
commonest negro labor with prices ranging up to fifty cents for loaders and
40

dumpers and a dollar or more per hour for skilled labor on the gas tractors and
drag lines. Then labor was so scarce that often mules which cost four hun
dred dollars per head stood idle for days eating oats at one dollar per bushel
and hay at fifty dollars per ton.
When a Pharaoh, Cyrus, Sennacherib, Nebuchadnezzar or Semiramis wanted
to improve the Nile, the Tigris or the Euphrates, he sounded the war cry, offered
free booty to all soldiers who failed to fall in battle, or she gave a pink tea to
the cavaliers of her court, and forthwith fell upon a neighboring and unsus
pecting people. Whole nations were brought back captives. The men were put
to work bearing earth in pans, while the women and children tilled the soil for
what scanty food and clothing the captives received. The only expense to the
work was the straw boss of the job.
At the end of the seven lean years in Egypt, Joseph had gathered into
Pharaoh's possession all of the livestock and the fee simple title to all of the
land in Egypt save only that which belonged to the priests, in exchange for
bread cards, and the people then offered themselves as slaves to work for
rations alone.
The entire cost to Pharaoh of the Bahr Yussuf probably was less than the
smallest "station man" contract on the Mississippi River.
Then the state of humanity was such that the priests had to shave them
selves from head to foot every other day that they might enter the temples free
from lice. What, then, must have been the status of the common laborer?
Even to this day, however, every Egyptian must work free of pay on the
levees during the entire flood period, supplying at his own cost cotton stalks
and other material to protect the embankments against wave-wash.
Yet during the Pharaohs, Ptolemies and Romans, the Egyptians so well
understood the rotation between legumes and cereals that the fertility of the
land was maintained.
During these times, the water was permitted to remain on the land until the
sub-soil was so thoroughly saturated that crops which required more moisture
than the surface soil vv'ould retain from the flood, were irrigated by hand with
water drawn from wells, and the capacity of the subsoil to hold water for that
purpose governed the location of the various capitals and larger cities. This
system of irrigation is still practiced to some extent.
Under Arab rule the population of Egypt dropped from 12,000,000 in 700
A. D. to 3,000,000 in 1200 A. D. Then even the Arab awakened and resumed
work on the Nile, to which Egypt has never turned in vain. In fact, Egypt is
called the gift of the Nile and the river commonly is referred to in that country
as a synonym for water. Where we say "high water" or "low water," they say
"high Nile" or "low Nile." Since then, under French and later English direc
tion, the Aswan dam has been built and enlarged, and barrages, or dams with
gates to control the flow of the water, have been built below, so that millions
of acres now can be watered or dried at will, during any season of the year.
With the Nile naturally high during August, September, October and Novem
ber; with the dates of the rises and falls almost as regular as the phases of the
moon; with a normal rise at Aswan of twenty-six feet and a maximum of less
41

than thirty feet; with twenty-three feet as the danger line at Cairo, and thirty
feet as the highest water in forty years ; with the high water mark in upper
Egypt about three feet above the level of the land and less than twelve feet
above the level of the land in the delta below Cairo, and with its discharge of
water less than one-third that of the Mississippi River, the Egyptian engineer
has a very different task from that of the engineer on the Mississippi River,
which may fluctuate forty-five feet on the gauge of its Cairo or at Vicksburg
without going out of its natural banks, while the Ward Lake levee line in Coahoma
County, Mississippi, for more than half a mile averages more than thirty-six feet
above the level of the land at its base. In fact, the Mississippi River has fluc
tuated sixty feet at Arkansas City without a break in the levee line.
The thrifty systematic Hollanders have built dikes to reclaim lands from
the sea, some of which approximate in size those along the Mississippi River.
More than half of their country naturally is subject to overflow from the sea,
the Rhine, the Maas or Muse, and the Schelde. Their levees facing the sea
run as high as eighteen to twenty feet above mean flood level, while the Northern
Lek and Southern Linge dikes are twelve to sixteen feet high. Some of the
more exposed sea dikes and those along the rivers in dangerous places are of
great width, but probably do not contain any more earth per lineal foot than the
larger levees along the Mississippi River.
While the Batavians, whom the Romans found in that country, had a num
ber of levees, mainly, however, for roads rather than for protection, the present
system dates from the thirteenth century.
Levees along the Mississippi River began with the settlement of New
Orleans by the French. They built the first levee on the river for the simple
reason that when they first tried to locate at New Orleans they found the town-
site under water, as also the Sieur de LaSalle had found it in 1682 when he
made the first voyage by a white man to the mouth of the river. In 1718
LeBlond de Latour, the engineer in the party of Governor Bienville, built the
levee along the river front where New Orleans now stands, and the colony set
tled there.
For the next hundred and seventy-five years the story of the Mississippi
River levees is a romance of struggle in which the levees gradually crept higher
up the river banks on both sides, in which fortunes would be made on the rich
lands back of them during the few years in which there would be no very high
water, in which a great flood would come down, wipe out the small embank
ments and carry destruction with them, dishearten the ordinary souls, but only
temper the metal in the hardier pioneers to a point of greater resistance until
these heroes were making their last stand, brave still but exhausted, then the
long arm of the United States government reached out in 1879 through the
creation of the Mississippi River Commission with a promise of aid and a
certainty of co-ordination in the work.
The present levee system really dates from that time.
Latour's levee was completed in 1727 so that it extended some eighteen miles
up and down the river with New Orleans presumably protected. By 1736 the
system extended forty-two miles on the left bank of the river, twelve miles
42

below the city and thirty miles above. The plan had been evolved of giving a
planter land along the river in consideration of which he was to build and main
tain a levee along the front. In 1752 there were fifty miles of levee and they
withstood the flood of that year, the state government aiding in the fight against
the waters.
Between 1785 and 1799 there was no flood, hut in 1809 there came down the
river such volumes of water that people in the lower valley thought that the
great lakes had broken through into the Mississippi River. When Louisiana
was admitted to the Union in 1812, there were three hundred and forty miles of
levees on both sides of the river. In 1811, '13 and '15 there were combined
floods out of the Missouri, Mississippi, Ohio, Cumberland and Tennessee rivers
which pla^'cd havoc along the lower river.
In 1828, however, the men of the lowlands had erected a continuous levee
from the mouth of Red River to a point sixty-five miles below New Orleans.
In 1845 the great river improvement convention was held in Memphis and
the national congress was urged to aid the local communities in the erection,
maintenance and extension of the levee system, and the congress ordered a
survey made of the Mississippi River. Four years later the national govern
ment through the swamp land acts gave to the states along the Mississippi River
and its tributaries the wet lands in them, to be sold and the proceeds used in
draining and protecting them from overflow.
In the meanwhile the line of levee had been made continuous from the mouth
of the Arkansas River south, with a height of one foot above high water mark
and a base five feet for every foot of height. But the flood of 1844 wrought
such destruction with this line and the wealth behind it that many of the planters
abandoned their lands and moved with their negroes to Texas.
Buoyed by the swamp land act by which Louisiana, Mississippi and Arkan
sas got some eighteen millions of acres of land for levee and drainage purposes,
the riparian owners again went to work and during the six years without high
water following 1851, they got the levees in better shape than they ever had
previously been.
Cairo boasted of the finest levee along the river. It was fifteen feet high,
wide enough on the top for a street and a railroad and faced on the front with
broken rock one foot thick.
When the flood of 1858 started down the river, the Upper St. Francis Basin,
from Commerce, Missouri, nearly to the upper edge of the New Madrid Ridge
was completely leveed. The Lower St. Francis Basin, from the New Madrid
Ridge nearly to the mouth of the St. Francis River had a levee all along the
front with the exception of gaps aggregating some twenty-five miles. These lines
were built under the state connnission which had charge of the swamp land fund
in co-operation with the planters who owned land along the river front. While
there was a levee across a bayou in the upper end of Crittenden County which
was some forty feet high with a crown of forty feet and a base of three hundred
and twenty feet, the average height of the levees was only about three feet.
The same agencies had built a levee from the foot of Crowley's Ridge at
Helena complete to Oldtown and from there to Scrub Grass Bayou with an aggre-
43

gate of fourteen miles of gaps in the lower portion of the line. Thence to
below the mouth of Arkansas River there had been no attempt at levees, and from
the right bank of Arkansas River to the high land below Cypress deck there
were only three miles of levees.
Arkansas and Louisiana combined had from there to a point far below-
New Orleans levees along the right bank of the river which were considered
fairly good protection for the country back of them, and with gaps only where
Red River came in and Bayou LaFourche went out of the main stream.
On the left bank of the Mississippi River, no attempt had been made to
levee the small pockets above the Mississippi-Tennessee state line but the Yazoo
Basin was considered well protected by a line all along the river front nearly to
the mouth of the Yazoo River. There was only one gap in the upper portion of
that line and that was nearly opposite Helena, where a bank had caved into
the river carrying the levee with it. The levee in that line where it crossed
Yazoo Pass was eleven hundred and fifty feet long and twenty-eight feet high
with a base three hundred feet wide. The average height of the Yazoo Basin
levee was four feet.
In the construction of her levee system Louisiana had gradually worked
toward the present plan. Originally owners of land fronting on the river had
voluntarily built some levees. The Spaniard had required him to do so. The
state later passed an act prescribing that where a levee broke due to the negli
gence of the owner of the land he was liable for all damage to the land or
property of others. Later Louisiana merged Carroll, Madison and Catahoula
parishes into a levee district in which the two front parishes could be taxed
for levees three hundred per cent of the state mill tax. Concordia and Ouachita
parishes were given "plenary and unlimited" power of taxation and action for
levee work.
However, the levee work in general in Louisiana during the few years pre
ceding 1858 was mainly in the hands of the police juries for the various parishes.
The right bank of the Mississippi River in Louisiana met the flood of 1858
with a levee line averaging less than five feet in height and of about the same
width of crown, while the base averaged less than fifteen feet. On the left bank
the height and crown were about a foot less than on the right bank, while the
width of the base averaged a little more than ten feet.
Mississippi in 1858 passed an act forming DeSoto, Tunica, Bolivar, Wash
ington, Issaquena, Yazoo, Sunflower, Panola and Tallahatchie counties into a
levee district, but the act was not to become operative until 1859.
These levees in the main had been built only for the protection of the lands
along the river front and a few of the high banks of the streams and bayous of
the interior. No one at that date thought of the other lands as ever being pos
sible of cultivation. Contemporaneous writers refer to them as swamps or jun
gles with no thought, apparently, given to their reclamation.
Such, in brief, was the levee situation along the Mississippi River when the
first of the floods of 1858 came down. It was the first real high water in seven
years and one of the highest ever known. This flood had barely receded when
the second rise came. This was quickly followed by a third and to caj) ihc
44

climax of devastation, down came a fourth flood, this a combined flood from all
of the upper tributaries and the worst that the river had ever seen since its
variations have been recorded.
Three and four foot levees were as mere potato rows in the face of that
volume of water, and so late was the last of the four floods in passing away
that only a few of the upper and higher lands were able to raise any staple crops
at all. Bankruptcy followed in its wake, only to be followed in 1859 with more
bankruptcy produced by the flood of that year. There was practically nothing
left along the river worthy of being called a levee and those of the people who
still had faith in the levees and vision enough to want to rebuild them were
without resources and without support in their communities. Half of the land
in Mississippi taxed for levees was forfeited to the state.
In the meantime the levee board created in Mississippi organized on the first
Monday in March, 1859, at Prentiss, then the county seat of Bolivar County
and located about six miles south of where Rosedale now stands. Its personnel
was: W. A. Raines, DeSoto County; James H. Anderson, Tunica; H. C. Cham
ber, Coahoma; C. J. Field, Bolivar; G. R. Fall, Washington; W. T. Barnard,
Issaquena; H. Barksdale, Yazoo; M. T. Collier, Tallahatchie; A. Murdock, Sun
flower, and F. Moore, Panola. J. L. Alcorn, later governor, was elected presi
dent; Mr. Field, secretary; Ike B. Robinson, treasurer, and Minor Meriwether,
chief engineer. Before this board had time to accomplish much the Civil War
came on and practically nothing was done during its duration.
In Arkansas little was accomplished during the same period, the planters
mainly confining their activities as to levees with throwing up small embank
ments with their slaves to restrain water during medium floods from coming
into the low places.
The Lower Yazoo district, composed of Bolivar, Washington and Issaquena,
was first to recuperate, and by act of November 27, 1865, organized with a board
consisting of Isaac Hudson and Christopher Field, Bolivar County; William
Hunt and George R. Fall, Washington County, and W. S. Langley and W. T.
Barnard, Issaquena County. In the early seventies a board was organized for
the upper district, but the main thing that it seems to have done was to issue
$1,800,000 in bonds on an authority to issue $1,000,000, of which one-third
presumably went to levees.
The national congress in 1879 created the Mississippi River Commission,
but its funds for the first few years were meager and its authority to do much
direct levee work not established. However, the mere existence of the com
mission causd hope again to spring up, local boards were created by the states
along the river and the relations between these and the commission became stronger
all of the time.
With practically no ]irevention from floods the virulent men along the river
front of the Upper Yazoo Delta, Cassidy's Bayou, Sunflower, Tallahatchie and
Yazoo rivers and a few of the major bayous emptying into them were making a
gallant fight to open up the country and till the fertile soil. The Mississippi
legislature by act of February 28, 1884, created the board of levee commis
sioners for the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta, and in April the board organized
45

with T. W. White of De Soto County as the first president and Reuh Page as
the first secretary. By good fortune Major T. G. Dabney was chosen as the first
chief engineer of the district. He has directed its policy with such skill that
the Mississippi River Commission in its latest ofiicial report, while it states that
all other levees along the river are in need of enlargement, says of Major Dab-
ney's work: "The upper Yazoo Basin has been made entirely safe against all
floods, except perhaps the extremest. In the event of the latter vigorous emer
gency work will, in all likelihood, prevent crevasse of the system or overflow
of the basin." Among the strong men on the first board were Colonel W. H.
Stovall of Coahoma, General B. S. Ricks of Yazoo, Colonel V. W. Sturdivant of
Tallahatchie, Colonel C. L. Robinson of Tunica, J. M. Heathman of Sunflower,
Capfain Townsend of Coahoma and C. C. Crews.
Between October 10, 1884, and March 1, 1885, two million cubic yards of
earth were placed on the ninety-seven miles of this line by Irishmen using picks,
shovels and wheelbarrows.
Across from the upper portion of this levee line lay the lower portion of the
St. Francis Basin extending from Helena, Arkansas, into Missouri, where the
New Madrid Ridge affords the only point at which to begin a levee line. The
effect of closing the Yazoo Basin was to raise the flood level in the St. Francis
Basin. But a small fraction of its two and a quarter million acres was in culti
vation and each farm was compelled to have places of refuge for man and beast
from the almost annual high waters, while there were but three railroad tracks
in the basin.
The late Captain Henry Newton Pharr, then a planter and civil engineer
at LaGrange, Arkansas, began in 1890 an agitation for the formation of the
St. Francis Basin of Arkansas and Missouri into a levee district. With little
support from any quarter and violent opposition in many directions, his brave
spirit was as undaunted as it had been while building bridges and digging
trenches for the Confederacy in the face of Federal bullets. By 1893 he had
enough sentiment behind him in the two states to get acts through the legisla
tures of both of them creating the levee districts and donating to them the lands
in their boundaries which had been forfeited to the state in default of taxes. He
was the first president of the organization, but in a short time consented to
become the chief engineer of the districts and II. P. Rodgers of Marianna suc
ceeded him as president of the board for the district in Arkansas. Hugh R.
McVeigh was the first secretary and James Fussell the first treasurer of the
permanent organization. Captain Pharr remained the engineer for the board
until his death in 1897, and during that time performed a wonderfully useful
work in the location and progress of the work and in keeping the people in the
lower portion of the district in line while they were paying taxes for a levee
up the river which made the water higher on them. His son, Harry Nelson
Pharr, succeeded him and now is the engineer for the board in Arkansas.
Meanwhile the levees in Mississippi had the same effect on the Arkansas
territory between Helena and the mouth of White River that it had had on the
St. Francis Basin and the result was the rebuilding of that line of levees which
is commonly known as the White River system, extending from Crowley's
46

Ridge at Helena to the loop levee at the lower end known as Laconia Circle.
The highest levee on the Mississippi River measuring fifty-three feet in height
is in this line a short distance below Modoc.
The Desha and Chicot county fronts in Arkansas were fortunate in receiv
ing aid from Louisiana in the rebuilding of their levee lines. The two Tensas
Basins of Louisiana lie just to the south of them and in the event that water
breaks through the barriers along either the Desha or the Chicot County front,
it must pass down through Louisiana to the Red River to get back into the Mis
sissippi River. Captain J. M. Whitehill and Major John D. Adams were
most active in the rejuvenation of that line.
Louisiana through its state and local organizations had kept pace with Mis
sissippi in levee work, its main line on the right bank extending from Arkansas,
with a gap for Red River to come in and Atchafalaya Bayou to go out, to below
I'ort Jackson, where the fluctuation of the river is very small and where there
is little land between it and the Gulf. On the left bank the line runs from the
high land at Baton Rouge to below Fort Philip, opposite the end of the levee on
the right bank.
While the local communities were straining themselves at times almost to the
breaking point to accomplish these results, the national congress was becoming
more liberal with the Mississippi River Commission in appropriations and broad
ening its scope so that it might directly aid in the building of levee for the sole
purpose of protecting lands from overflow. The commission on its part was
acquiring and systematizing the necessary data for the control of the river. For
years it and the local boards worked independently, yet there was little or no
friction and a rapid co-ordination of the work.
The system was for the local authorities to locate the line of levees and
secure the right of way. After considering the needs of each district the com
mission allotted to each a certain amount of its total congressional appropria
tion. Then the local and the government engineers agreed upon which portions
of the work should be done by each.
Some of the smaller districts for years have turned all of their funds derived
from bonds and taxes over to the commission and the entire work in those dis
tricts was done under the direction of the government engineers. Other dis
tricts maintained and still do their engineering corps, but now the commission
gives aid to a district only where the district hands over to the commission one
dollar for every two dollars allotted by the commission, all to be expended under
the direction of the engineers of the commission.
The levee problem of the Mississippi River had always been too big for
the local communities. It had always been national in its necessity and in its
benefits. The recognition of this fact by the federal government has stimulated
local activity in the matter of taxation and bond issues into the erection of a
levee line in which there is universal faith.
Now a flood equal to any of which there is a clear record can pass down
the river and out the mouth without any disturbance to business. A reading
of thirty-seven feet on the Memphis gauge in times past brought devastation
to a large portion of Arkansas and Mississippi. Now a stage of forty-five
47

feet passes by without a crevasse and with fanners peacefully plowing at the
very heel of the levees with a certainly of sowing and reaping.
The Mississippi River Commission has established as the standard levee for
the Mississippi River an embankment of earth free from timber upon a founda
tion from which all of the timber has been removed and the stumps blasted
out and into which a ditch six feet deep and of equal width at the bottom has
been cut near the middle of the levee line, the embankment to be three feet
above the elevation to which the water would have risen in 1912 if there had
been no break in the levee, to be eight feet wide on the top and to have a slope
of three feet in width to one foot of height on each side. Thus a levee primarily
has a width at its base six times its height plus eight feet. In addition to this
if the levee be more than eight feet high it is to have on the land side a
banquette coming to within five to eight feet of the top, ranging in width from
twenty to forty feet and having a back slope of four to one. Under this
specification a levee twenty-five feet high has a base of practically two hun
dred feet.
However, Major Dabney and his associates in the upper Yazoo Levee
district wanted a greater degree of security than this high standard. His
specification is for the same elevation, but a crown of ten instead of eight
feet and a back slope of four to one instead of three to one. His line of
ninety-seven miles has an average of twenty-four feet in height, while for
much more than half a mile the Ward Lake line averages thirty-six feet high,
with a maximum of forty-two feet. The Mississippi River Commission in
its latest report (1919) stated that that line was 94.8 per cent complete and
Major Dabney says that by the end of 1921 it will be entirely up to his
standard. Only one other of the larger levee lines on the river is comparable to this
in the closeness with which it approaches the standard.
In recent years the congress has added to the jurisdiction of the Missis
sippi River Commission all levees south of Rock Island, Illinois, and also has
extended its jurisdiction up the Arkansas River to the east line of Jefferson
County, Arkansas. The upper river districts, eight in number, are insignifi
cant in area as compared with the larger ones to the south. The extension up
the Arkansas River was necessary because the floods in the Mississii)pi River
backed up that stream, passed around the head of the Tensas Levee System
in the Cypress Creek country and flooded lands back of the levee in Arkansas
and Louisiana. Now the work is about complete of making a continuous line
of levee from the highlands on the right bank of the Arkansas River down
the Mississippi River to the mouth of Red River, cutting Cypress Creek in
two and draining the upper portion of it down back of the levee through a canal
into the big bayous which head near it.
Adding these levees to the old main lines, the levee system of the Missis-
sipi)i River is 1,732.71 miles long, 'ihc contents at the close of Ihc year 1919
were 349,280,992 cubic yards. It will require 123,755,570 cubic yards to bring
the entire line up to the commission's standard of height and width. The
48

lower St. Francis line is more than 90 per cent complete, while the average
for the entire system is 73.8 per cent.
No man knows or ever will know what has been the cost of all of the levee
work on the Mississippi River, for there is no record of early expenditures
for the various lines of levee that were washed away by floods only to have new
lines built in their stead and they in turn to suffer the same fate. However,
fairly good records since the Mississippi River Commission and the beginning
of its co-operation with the local levee boards indicate that the levee districts
have taxed and bonded themselves for levees to the extent of $84,446,755,
while during the same time the national government through the commission
has extended aid to them to the extent of $40,763,735, or a grand total of
$125,210,490 for the main lines of levees from Commerce, Mo., to the head
of the passes. During the same time the total goverment and local expendi
tures on the small districts along the upper Mississippi River were sufficient
to make the grand total $132,258,445.
The lower St. Francis district with a little less than four and a half million
dollars from the national government, raised on its own resources more than
eleven millon dollars, or in round figures, $2 per acre and $5 per acre, or a
grand total of $7 per acre. The upper Yazoo district has received from the
national government only about a million and a half, or seventy cents per acre,
against $14,379,766, according to the last Mississippi River Commission report
raised by the district, or $7 per acre, making a total acreage levee cost of $7.70.
The lower Yazoo district of Mississippi has cost the government $7,785,214,
or $3.60 per acre, and the people of the district themselves $16,301,807, or
$7.55 per acre, a total of $11.15 per acre, the heaviest cost per acre of any
district along the river. With an area of about the same size as that of the
upper Yazoo district, it has a line twice as long. Its tax per acre has been
slightly larger than that of the upper district, but its line of levee is far from
being as nearly completed.
The line from Helena to the mouth of White River has been the most
fortunate of any in that it has received the equivalent of $5.25 per acre from
the river commission against a local expenditure of $3.95 per acre.
The upper Tensas line in Arkansas and Louisiana has cost $10.90 per acre
of which the local communities have (laid within forty cents per acre of the
amount contributed through the Mississippi River Commission.
While these expenditures have been enormous, no man can estimate
their value.
The fertility of the alluvial lands of Mississippi and Arkansas was recog
nized long before the levee systems took formal shape. The lands along the
river front and upon the higher banks of the alluvial bayous and streams
brought j)riccs as high, omitting the value of the timber which then was a
liability and never an asset, as they did in recent years. Judge J. T. Rucks
moved from the upper Cumberland River in Tennessee with his negroes to
the high banks of Deer Creek in Mississippi and paid $40 per acre for wild
land. This was in 1840. The price was not out of line with those that
49

prevailed for land in the Delta which was supposed to be above water and
which has even fair chance for ingress and egress.
But there was no value then for any but the high ridge lands and they
were too few ever to make possible the development and settlement of the
country. Roads and railroads were impossible, save an occasional trunk line
crossing a basin with its traffic interrupted during a large portion of each
year. In less than the last decade wild lands in Arkansas which had been forfeited
to the State for non-payment of taxes have sold for fifty cents per acre with
virgin timber on them, but no levees and then for $50 per acre with the timber
removed and a levee built, but the land not cleared, while the cleared lands,
purely for farming purposes, have sold at four times that figure.
Without the levee there could be no resident there but the hermit or
the frontiersman. With the levee there are the network of railroads, the
hard-surfaced roads, the drainage canals, the bridges over streams and the
unsurpassed civilization on the ideal plantations and in the thriving cities.

50

An Agricultural Empire
By Prof. C. W . Watson

HE greatest agricultural empire in the known world, and the
only one that surpasses the great Egyptian alluvial section,
the gift of the Nile, with the advantages not to be compared
with in climate, rainfall, variety and richness of soil, is the
Mid-South. This lies on the Eastern and Western banks of the
great Mississippi River. The Mid-South covers East Arkansas,
Southeast Missouri, West Kentucky, West Tennessee and North Mississippi.
It extends 150 miles north and the same distance south of Memphis. It borders
the Ozark Mountains on the west, extends 75 to 150 miles east of the Father of
Waters, including a vast area in Eastern Arkansas, consisting of 3,000,000 acres
of America's super-soil, which embraces twenty-two counties. This is protected
by a mighty chain of levees .skirting the west banks of the Mississippi River
which runs north through the great alluvial section of Southeast Missouri, pro
tecting twelve or fourteen counties there consisting of three-quarter million acres
made fertile by being the very cream of the Northern soil, skimmed by nature
and delivered free by the great Mississippi overflows.
Across from the Missouri line, east of the Mississippi River, is South
west Kentucky, a territory embracing some ten counties with about one-third
million acres, which is adapted to all varieties of crops, but is especially known
as the great tobacco section of this great belt. There the soil varieties meet
the demand of the livestock grower, the truck farmer, tobacco and other forms
of farming. From the southern border of Kentucky, lying between the Missis
sippi River on the west, the Tennessee River on the east and running to the
northern border of Mississippi about four and a quarter millions of acres lie
there in a section already known as a great livestock center and where cotton
grows abundantly. The trucking interest is being developed and diversified
farming has become general, except in the strictly alluvial section along the
Mississippi River, where cotton predominates under plantation methods.
Many people have been and are now trying to find a suitable place to live
where the soil is fertile, the climate good with an abundance of good water,
a rainfall sufficient for farm crops and where a family will have surroundings
that make for both happiness and prosperity.
It is not the purpose of the writer to paint a glowing picture that cannot
be relied upon and is not a stern reality. The only purpose is to present the
possibilities of the great Mississippi River Delta and the region to the east
as far as the Tennessee River and the Alabama state line.
51

This wonderful territory includes counties where the climate is ideal for
certain crops and rainfall sufiicient to fully meet the requirements of the
farmers' neetls. The real money crops are rice, cotton, tobacco, cereal crops,
fruits and vegetables.
From the southern border of the Tennessee line, between the Mississippi
River on the west, the eastern border of the State of Mississip[)i as far south
as the A. & V. Ry., that runs east and west from Meridian, Jackson and Vicks
burg, the greatest varieties of soils are noted, which are adapted to the grow
ing of more different crops than any other state, with the exception, perhaps,
of California. This vast area consisting of several million acres is not a new or untried
country. Farmers have been making big crops here, while the nation has been
growing and spreading over the continent, but it is just now that the economic
advantages of these rich lands are becoming recognized as will be shown in
succeeding statements of this article and by actual figures as a result of experi
ments and actual demonstrations on the various types of soils that were found
to be especially adapted to that section.
To those desiring to change their environments to a healthy, profitable, vigor
ous life in the open or to the farmers tired of the life struggle in the territory
of high priced lands and where climatic conditions are not so favorable this
country offers unusual opportunities.
We have one section of this area that is adapted to the growing of rice,
another for cotton, corn and fruit, grain, grasses and livestock. Another section
has tobacco as its main money crop and in each section there is abundance of
good water for every demand. Cheap fuel is in abundance and in all except the
rice growing area, cheap building material is available at your very door.
In other states farmers have been paying $200 per acre for lands to grow
20 bushels of wheat while our $40 to $75 land will raise the same and more.
To relieve any doubt as to the stability of farm land investments in this section
examine the census and see that the land values have increased from 83 to 133
per cent during the last ten years.
Where capital and brains have been used, farms have been developed in
the rice section and one acre has yielded as much as 51 bushels. One acre in
the cotton district has yielded two or three bales of cotton. As high as 173
bushels of corn per acre and 1840 pounds of tobacco to the acre have been raised.
If the season permitted as many as five cuttings in one year, from five to nine
tons of alfalfa hay have been raised from one acre.
The average real estate agent would point out these lands as the "Garden
of Eden" where one may get rich without work and slate that the land will
grow anything on earth, but be not deceived, fur a new ;m(l niulcveloped
country never succeeded without work. Success can only come through the
use of the ax, and the plow properly directed by brains, and drainage scientifi
cally applied. But the work supported by the natural advantage coupled with
facts as a basis is what we want and in order to arrive at a fair conclusion,
52

each crop that is peculiarly adapted to a given locality will be taken up
separtely. In the following paragraphs we shall take up the various crops giving
area adapted to the different crops, yields, values, price of land, climate and
the future possibilities of this section:
THE DELTA OR COTTON TERRITORY. The alluvial area in the
St. Francis Basin in Arkansas, the twelve counties in Southeast Missouri, the
seven counties in West Tennessee and eighteen counties in North Mississippi,
is known as the Delta soils and is fitted for intensive farming of all kinds.
Cotton, corn, wheat, oats, rye and alfalfa may be raised. Alfalfa may be
cut as many as five or six times in a year. All crops common to the Southern
States yield abundantly here, but the soil and climate are especially adapted to
the growing of cotton and will produce cotton year after year, with little or
no apparent soil depletion. This is due to the fact that for ages the overflow
settling from the Mississippi River (before the great chain of levees were
built) has filled into depths ranging from five to one hundred feet. In this
delta one may dig down from fifty to one hundred feet and the earth will
show nothing but rich soil. Frequently in sinking Artesian wells, logs have
been taken out which were buried forty or fifty feet in the earth. In Missis
sippi County, Arkansas, a log was found at a depth of more than two hundred
feet beneath the surface.
All of the essential ingredients of alluvial soil, such as lime, phosphorous,
nitrogen and potash were washed down and piled up on the land. A chemist of
Illinois recently analyzed some of this dirt and found in the first seven inches
that it contained the following: Pounds
Nitrogen  5,600
Phosphorus  2,500
Potassium  40,000
The potash in this soil is sufficient for one thousand years' crop production
while legumes will furnish a large part of the additional supply of nitrogen needed,
aided in some cases by nitrate of soda.
There are three distinct varieties of soil in the Delta region, buckshot,
black loam and sandy soils. The buckshot is particularly adapted to the
growing of from three to six cuttings of alfalfa and in most cases lime and
inoculation are not necessary.
COTTON. Sandy loam is the great cotton producer and is best for the
growing of Irish and sweet potatoes. Cotton produces, under proper methods,
from one to two bales per acre in this sandy land, while the average negro
tenant is able to produce one bale to the acre. One cotton club boy produced
2,883 pounds of seed cotton on this soil which had been farmed for twenty-
eight years.
Two distinct things make this great area available — drainage and levees.
Lands that heretofore have been valued at from $3 to $10 per acre are nov;
easily worth from $100 to $300 and when we find the real value in years to
53

come, this will sell from $500 to $600 per acre. No one realizes the great
value of these acres and we know little of their productivity. We have not known
the possibilities of this soil.
RICE. A few years ago in Arkansas there were counties known as the
prairie belt that runs parallel with the rich Delta, only being separated by what
is known as Crowley's Ridge. This land, occupying fully three-fourths of the acre
age, was in wild prairie grass and was sold as low as $1 per acre. Later the
experiment stations found that this land was especially adapted to rice, there
being a hard-pan beneath the surface and ranging from two to six feet below
the top soil. This hard-pan being impervious to water made the problem easy to
keep water on the soil to meet the needs of rice growing. Water in unlimited
quantities is available at a depth of from fifty to two hundred feet and by the use
of large rotary pumps the rice can be watered abundantly.
The yields of rice per acre vary from thirty to fifty-five bushels and as new
and improved varieties are developed the yields are naturally increased. More
modern methods naturally assist in production and in 1919 on 158,000 acres,
6,162,000 bushels were produced. At a price of $2.40 received a bushel a
total value of $14,789,000 was received for the crop. These yields are below
the possibilities while in the rice growing area only forty per cent of this land
is in rice.
This soil is so adapted to rice that it will always be the real money crop
of that section, but oats, cowpeas, corn and hay may be grown at a profit.
Livestock, especially cattle, can be made a profitable industry.
The rice farmer holds his land today from $100 to $200 per acre and as the
more scientific methods are used this land will eventually sell for $400 per
acre. The rice belt will, when the entire acreage is used and advanced methods
adopted, easily produce sixty bushels to the acre. This section has advanced
more rapidly than perhaps any territory in the South today.
GOOD WATER EVERYWHERE IN THE DELTA. The Delta is now
noted for its artesian wells, of which there are more than three thousand.
These wells in the Delta are distinguished from the wells in other parts of
the country, not only for the superiority of the water, but also because they are
overflowing and will throw water twenty-five or more feet in the air, and when
piped will run into the second story of a residence without pumping, thereby
affording circulating water in the residences on the farms. Practically every
plantation in the Delta may have its own waterworks and sewerage. These
wells can be had at a cost of from $200 to $500 or $1 per foot. We have
many instances of water being found at a depth of less than three hundred feet.
OATS. Oats can be sown in October and November and harvested the
latter part of May and first of June. Forty bushels per acre is a low average.
Corn can then be planted and the middle to the latter part of July cow peas or
soy beans planted in the corn. The corn matures and is harvested before
the peas mature. Fifty bushels of corn is about the average where it is
anything like properly cultivated. Then the peas or beans and corn stalks may
be mown together, run through a thresher, the peas or beans saved and from
two and one-half to three and one-half tons of hay saved, which is worth from
54

$15 to $22.50 per ton here. Please here note the following production from an
acre of Delta land and its value :
40 bushels of oats at 60c  $24.00
50 bushels of corn at 75c  37.50
2Y2 tons hay (low estimate) at $12  30.00
15 bushels peas or beans at $2  30.00
Total  $121.50
This must not be considered a bare possibility but a fact which has been
demonstrated many times. Any successful farmer in the Delta will verify this
statement. There are some instances where the crop from land in one year has
netted its purchase price. There are many instances where the profits from a
place have paid for it in four to five years.
Oats are sown during the latter part of October, early in November, or in
February, and usually harvested in June, after which an additional crop of peas
or other forage may be grown with no injury whatever to the land. It is even
claimed by the best planters in the Delta that peas can be grown, the hay harvested
and leave the land in much better condition. The average yield per acre would not
be less than fifty bushels.
As high a yield as 135 bushels of oats has been made in the Delta — a most
remarkable yield — and one of the peculiar features connected with it is the fact
that it was made on land that six years ago was in such shape that it was
impossible to make any character of crop on it. But draining and rotating
crops, together with intelligent handling, have brought this piece of land up to
its present condition. No fertilizer of any kind was ever used on this land.
The oats were seeded about October 15 at the rate of eleven pecks per acre.
The yields were as follows : Bu. Per Acre
Appier  1 18.0
Hastings One Hundred Bushel  118.2
Bancroft  1 19.0
Red Rust Proof  135.6
These oats were weighed and figured at thirty-two pounds to the bushel. It
is interesting to note that the four native oats — Appier, Hastings One Hundred
Bushel, Bancroft and Red Rust Proof — made an average of 122.7 bushels
per acre.
THE DELTA OF ARKANSAS, MISSOURI, MISSISSIPPI AND TEN-
NESSE CAN BEAT THE WORLD ON CORN. Indian corn is the most valua
ble product of the farm in the United States, and it would seem that, owing
to the adaptability of the soil in the Delta to corn growing, it would get more
attention than it does. This neglect of one of the very best assets of this
section is probably due to the fact that corn is not considered a money crop.
Such a thing as corn breeding is not known, and very little attention is paid to
55

the seed that is planted, and it is cultivated, with very few exceptions, in a
very careless manner. It is true that every plantation has a few acres planted
in corn, but one that raises enough to supply itself is the exception. A curious
fact is that corn is not considered a money crop and at the same time it always
finds a ready market for cash, and, too, without going further than one's
neighbors. WHEAT AND CORN THE SAME YEAR. No further evidence is
required to convince the most doubtful of the fertility of the Delta soil when
it can be truthfully stated that wheat can be sown in the fall, harvested in
May or June and followed with corn and cow peas, and a good yield of each
grown and improve your land by it. Nothing takes as little from land as
cotton does and the very fact that a large portion of the Delta has been cropped
in cotton for many years and nothing done to build up the land, yet its produc
tiveness not impaired, is sufficient proof that wheat followed by corn and peas
will help rather than injure the land.
FORAGE CROPS. Miflet is one of the forage crops that works well
here and produces a large yield of hay and seed excellent for stock of all kinds.
Rye is used largely in this section as a forage crop. It is planted in Novem
ber and makes fine pasture for cattle during the winter and for hogs in the
spring up to March, when it is followed by corn, cotton, sweet potatoes and
other crops.
Kaffir corn works well as one of two crops on the same land.
Cow peas has been the greatest beneficial crop of the South for many years,
both as a forage crop and for its value in the amount of nitrogen it will return
to the soil. The yield in the Delta is usually three tons of hay and twenty
bushels of peas per acre.
The soy bean, a most valuable forage plant, has become a wonderful pro
ducer in this soil and climate.
Sugar cane — ribbon cane, as it is usually called — is cultivated here for syrup
and from four hundred to six hundred gallons can be produced from an acre.
Lespedeza, Bermuda, vetch, red, white, crimson and burr clovers do especially
well in this territory.
Field turnips, known as the "third crop," make an exceptionally good
stock food.
Peanuts are just becoming recognized here as a "money crop," and an
average yield of fifty bushels of peanuts and one and one-half tons of hay per
acre is obtained. One acre of peanuts will produce $64 worth of pork.
This is a land ideally adapted for the truck grower. Irish potatoes — three
hundred and ninety-six bushels per acre — have been grown ; sweet potatoes,
four hundred and five hundred bushels to the acre is not at all unusual. C:ibbage,
sugar corn, canta!oui)es, watermelons and other vined crojjs do well. Two crops
of potatoes can be raised with ease. Onions, lima beans, eggjilants, tomatoes,
string beans, melons, figs, berries, grapes, quinces, peaches, apples and pecans
are among the products of this soil. In fact, nowhere can be found a soil that
responds so quickly to cultivation with a most generous growth of all kinds
of vegetation. 56

Cotton in the Mid-South

By Major George L. Fossick

(OTTON has been called the fabric of civilization. Tb.e
American Southland is the world's greatest cotton region.
The Mississippi Valley is at the heart of that region. America's
favorable trade balance depends upon cotton. Its manufac
ture is the very underpinning of British wealth.
More cotton was produced during the last half century
than in all the combined ages that had gone before. Yet the world begins to
fear cotton famine. England foresees the day when America will spin all the
cotton grown in America. New England views with troubled brow the increas
ing rivalry of Southern mills.
Of the earth's more than 1,700,000,000 inhabitants it is estimated that 750,-
000,000 are fully clothed, mostly in cottons, 500,000,000 are only partially sup
plied with clothing, and the remaining number are about as as artless of textiles
as Adam was when he first say the Garden of Eden.
America produces 60 per cent of the world's supply of cotton. Efforts to
develop other sources of supply have been disappointing. The question is
largely one of transportation and labor difficulties. The world still looks to
America. It is estimated that cotton consumption increases at the rate of
400,000 bales annually. American production during the past ten years aver
aged annually an increase of only 170,000 bales over the previous decade.
Allowance must of course be made for acreage curtailment due to war conditions.
Memphis, the hub of the Mid-South, stands at about the census center of a
cotton producing belt encircling the globe. The cotton belt of the United
States reaches from the coastal plain of the Carolinas far into the Red and
the Grand prairies of Texas to a point where the annual rainfall, less than
twenty-three inches, is so limited that cotton production is not attempted.
Ten states of the American cotton region, the most important part of the
world's cotton belt, comprise a sweep of country 500 miles measured north
ward from the Gulf of Mexico and 1,450 miles westward from the Atlantic
seaboard, an area of 448,000,000 acres. Beyond are the irrigated fields of the
Imperial and the Salt River valleys of California and Arizona, completing the
belt from ocean to ocean.
The laist American crop, that of 1919-20 yielded 11,325,000 bales which
were picked from 33,566,000 acres, or within about 4,000,000 acres of the
greatest cotton area ever planted in America. Domestic spindles numbering
34,000,000 spun industriously but could consume only about half of the crop.
57

Nearly 7,000,000 bales were exported to feed foreign spindles, which, at
the present day, number about 150,000,000 of which 55,000,000 are in England.
India and Egypt, in the order named, rank next to America, commercially,
in cotton production. Cotton, a rough variety of which is highly prized for
mixing with wool, and as a substitute for woolens, is believed to be indigenous
to Peru. The Spanish invader found cotton growing in both Mexico and
Peru. Western types of American cotton may have had their origin in Mexico.
Native cottons grow beside American uplands from where Mount Ararat looks
towards the Caucasus to the Kirghiz steppes along the shores of the Caspian
Sea. In Turkestan cotton is grown farther north than anywhere else in the
world, or at about the latitude of Chicago. A little cotton is grown along
the river bottoms of northern Persia, and some claim that here the cotton plant
originated. China's crop is estimated at 4,000,000 bales annually, but it is not
enough to meet the needs for home consumption, and most of it is spun by
hand and woven on hand looms. The fibre is short, rough and harsh, but
clean. Cotton culture was introduced into Korea from its neighbor to the
south where it had been known before the days of Confucius. Japan and the
Philippine Islands, Borneo, astride the equator, and even Australia, grow
some cotton. Its culture is not unknown in Greece nor in Italy. Spain was
the first European country to grow cotton. There are unexplored possibilities
in Africa from the Mediterranean Sea to the Cape of Good Hope.
Great Britain has sought to develop cotton production in Northern Nigeria,
in Rhodesia, Nyasaland, the Sudan, Uganda and British East Africa, but out of
all of the long and arduous effort expended by all of Europe, in none of
twenty years has Africa produced, outside of Egypt, as much as 100,000 bales
of cotton. Yet England has not relinquished a cherished hope to perfect an
all-around organization, inclusive of all operations, from the growing of the
plant to the sale of the finished manufacture. England has planned to achieve
industrial independence by growing within the British Empire all the cotton
needed for British spindles.
Commercially the importance of any region from the standpoint of cotton
production is as much, perhaps more, dependent upon characteristics of the
fibre produced, which enhance or impair its spinning qualities, or restrict its
use, as upon the size of cultivable area suitable for plant development. Fibre
of American Sea Islands, the most superb of all cottons, is silky, fine, strong
and clean. It is used in spinning 150 to 400 yarns chiefly, but for experimental
purposes has been spun in England up to No. 2,150, or from a single pound of
cotton a single thread measuring more than one thousand miles in length. There
are accounts in Bengal of muslin made so fine that when laid upon the grass
and wet with dew it was not discernible. Bengal cotton is tinged, dirty and
weak of fibre, and is seldom spun above 8s. Owing to its poor cjuality little
cotton is exported from India to England, which leads in the manufacture of
fine cotton textiles. About half of the crop, which averages around 3,000,000
bales annually, counted in equivalents of 500 pounds each, goes to Japan.
Cotton acreage in India ranges from 20,000,000 to 25,000,000 acres annually
58

with a ten-year average yield to each acre of only 17 pounds, compared with
390 pounds in Egypt and 182 pounds in America.
Egyptian cotton acreage is hardly one-twentieth that of the United States,
but the value of the crop, owing to high productivity and excellent quality, is
one-fifth that of the American crop. Production is limited to the Delta of the
Nile and a narrow strip along the Nile, about 1,700,000 acres in all, yielding
1,400,000 to 1,850,000 bales, 500-pound equivalents, annually. Egyptian cottons
of the highest type, Sakellaridis notably, approach American Sea Islands in
beauty of appearance and quality. The fibre of Egyptian cottons characteris
tically is silky, golden to rich brown in color, and of about the same diameter
as American uplands. It staples from IV^ to 1^ inches and is suitable for
spinning up to counts of about 150s, or 150 hanks of 840 yards each to the
pound. The cotton area of Egypt is limited to the extent of land reached
by irrigation. Lancashire dreams to claim more and more from the burning
desert by watering from the Nile. England still turns with a longing hope to
Mesopotamia and to the Sudan, and thinks some day to witness greater returns
from the central table lands of the Deccan, the Valley of the Ganges, Western
and Southern India, aided by irrigation and seed selection, but admits that
progress will be slow and bought at great pains and with much money. Brazil
has been looked upon as a land of promise, and Argentina has yielded some
response to experimentation. But, after all that has been said and done, the
relative importance of cotton producing regions has changed little in half a
century. Some sections in America may look forward with confidence to
further development. India and Egypt have about reached the limit of cotton
production without serious interference with food production, which India's
more than 300,000,000 population, and the 10,000,000 human beings of Egypt
would reluctantly tolerate.
Neither cotton growing nor the industry of its manufacture assumed much
commercial importance until the invention of the saw gin by Eli Whitney in
1792. The gin was the one thing essential to bring about a sufficient supply
of raw material for the spinning machinery of Hargreaves, Arkwright and
Crompton. No other material lends itself so readily to the skill of the manufacturer.
The mercerizing process renders it not only as beautiful, but more serviceable
than silk. It can be made closely to resemble woolen products, and it has
never had to yield superiority in favor of linen fabric. There is no material
that can be spun or woven that cotton cannot be made to replace in acceptable
kind, and it is always more than an imitation.
Nothing surpasses the crispy texture and bright, clear finish of fine organdies,
the delicacy of sheer muslins, dimities, lawns and mulls, the attractiveness of
zcphys cloths and the ripe loveliness of madras, the richness of damask-like
weaves and finishes. The Dacca muslin has been called "the woven winds of
India." Cotton is equally adaptable to the making of overalls. Leave off the
cottonades, the outing cloths, heavy domestics and drills, the cantons, ducks and
denims — these and the other requirements of the masses — and the hum of
59

millions of spindles would be hushed. The industry of cotton growing would
count its product in thousands instead of eight figures. Cotton would be the
proud raiment of the rich, the coveted dream of the poor.
Unsolved mechanical difficulties restricted the growth of the cotton industry
until the days of Whitney and the English inventors. It was not until after
the Civil War that production in the United States reached a total of 5,000,000
bales. In 1914, the year in which Europe threw the match in the ])owder
box 15,906,000 bales were produced. Yet the cotton plant has yielded clothing
for man almost since the beginning of time.
India emerged into the dawn of history arrayed in garments spun from
cotton fibre. Women of Mesopotamia, at Mosul — whence the word muslin — ¦
"were gifted with such delicate sense of touch that they could spin thread of
more than hair-like fineness. Cotton with them took the place of silk in the
loom, and gold was not forgotten in the weaving." Herodotus speaks of trees
which bore fleece as their fruit. Aristobulus and Nearchus, officers of Alex
ander the Great, made cotton the subject of a special report, and it was probably
one of the things which attracted him to lead the armies of Macedon across
the Indus. Theophratus wrote of the cotton plant three centuries before the
Christian Era. Verres in Sicily used cotton cloth as covering for his tents.
Lentulus Spinther is credited by Livy with having introduced cotton awnings
into the theater at the Apollinarian games. Caesar covered the forum with
them, and also the sacred way from his own house to the Capitoline Hill.
The Aztec in Mexico and the Inca in Peru wove and spun before the
coming of the invader from the Old World. Cortez received gifts of cotton
fabric from the hands of a Montezuma, "curtains, coverlets, and robes of
cotton, fine as silk, of rich and various dyes, interwoven with feather-work,
that rivaled the delicacy of i)ainting."
The "Vegetable Lamb of Tartary" seems to have been nothing more nor
less than a mythical conception of the cotton plant. The wonderful buds were
said to burst when ripe and to expose to view tiny lambs whose fleece gave a
pure white wool which the natives made into garments.
Columbus is said to have found cotton growing on the West Indies. The
natives spun and wove it. They made of it garments, fishing nets and beds
which they suspended between posts and which they called hamacas — ham
mocks. Cabeza de Vaca in 1536, claimed to have seen cotton growing in what
is now the southwestern part of the United States.
There is abundant foundation for the popular belief that cotton was intro
duced into all of the Southern colonies by the first settlers. It was grown as
far north as New Jersey, but at first derived its favor from the high regard in
which it was held as a garden plant. The first seed, it is probable, were
planted at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607. Early French colonists from San
Domingo, it is believed, introduced cotton into Louisiana, and it is rei^orted
to have been seen growing at Natchez in 1722. Seed was imported from time
to time from the West Indies, Cyprus, Smyrna and Turkey. Some of the
early explorers of the Mississippi River claimed to have seen cotton growing
wild along the banks of its tributaries. 60

Many hold that cotton is indigenous to all tropical and semi-tropical regions
of the earth, reaching the highest state of development where soil and climate
are most favorable and where proper culture lends aid to Nature's generosity.
"No country in the world possesses the combination of advantages found
in the southern part of the United States for profitable cotton cultivation. In
this section the soil is naturally adapted to cotton growing, the climate is
favorable, the labor is better than elsewhere, and the farm management more
intelligent and experienced. Combined with these favorable internal condi
tions, arc good transportation facilities." — Bulletin 76, U. S. Bureau of the Census.
Short staple upland cottons, measuring }i to lyi inches in length of fibre,
constitute about 90 per cent of the American crop and are perhaps the most
generally useful of all cottons. Such cottons, varying somewhat in lint char
acteristics, are grown throughout the length and breadth of the American
cotton belt.
Boll weevil, temporarily at least, has put an end to the Sea Island industry.
Only 6,919 bales were produced in 1919, compared with 117,000 bales a few
years before.
A number of varieties of upland cotton stapling up to 1-5/16 inches and
sometimes better, are now being grown successfully in America, notably upon
the lowlands and silty second bottoms of the Mid-South. The long staple crop
of the world approximates something around 2,(XX),000 bales annually of which
not far from one-third comes out of the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta, the river
counties of Eastern Arkansas and parts of West Tennessee. The lint of
American long staple uplands somewhat resembles Florida Sea Islands, and is
highly prized for spinning up to 70s, for fine constructions and for textiles
requiring great strength such as automobile tire fabrics and tent cloths. They
represent, except for special purposes, to which Egyptians are especially suited,
the highest types of cottons available now that Sea Islands are passing. Long
staple uplands are bred-up varieties dependent upon seed selection, congenial
soil, favorable climatic conditions and proper tillage to foster growth.
The eastern half of Arkansas and to the south a corner of Louisiana,
to the north a wonderful country, that of Southeastern Missouri, across the
great river portions of Kentucky and Tennessee west of the Tennessee River,
and southward the State of Mississippi as far in the direction of the Mexican
Gulf as Vicksburg on the west and Meridian on the east — this is the Mid-South.
It produces 1,600,000 bales of cotton annually, of grade and staple suitable
for every use to which cotton can be put. That can be said of no other cotton
region. The soils of the Mid-South include the rich alluvial bottom lands com
prised in the Delta from Memphis to the mouth of the Yazoo River, similar
deposits west of (he Mississippi River and along its tributaries in Arkansas
and Southeast Missouri, and the splendidly fertile Mississippi River second
bottoms and silt prairies of Eastern Arkansas and Southeastern Missouri.
"Alluvial bottoms of the Mississippi and other rivers. This region includes
as the principal area the bottoms of the Mississippi River from Cairo, Illinois,
to the Gulf. It also includes the bottoms of all other rivers within the cotton
61

belt, many of which are too small to show on the map. Much of the land is
subject to overflow requiring protection by levees. Area, about 16,500,000
acres. Elevation, 0 to 300 feet. Surface level. Soils of the Mississippi
bottoms, mainly brown or mottled clays, silt loams, and fine sandy loams with
gray, light brown and mottled subsoils. Vegetation, largely cypress, red gum
and oak. Production of cotton, about 940,000 bales. The important cotton
growing section in this region is that known as the Yazoo Delta in which the
average yield of cotton per acre is about 265 pounds, the highest in the cotton
belt. In the bottoms of the streams east of the Mississij)pi River the prin
cipal soils are brownish loams, silt loams, and fine sandy loams, with yellowish
and mottled subsoils ; west of the Mississippi the principal soils are chocolate
red, brown and black loams, silt loams, and clays, usually calcareous.
"Mississippi River second bottoms and silty prairies : These second bottoms
are extensively developed in Southeastern Missouri and Northeastern Arkansas.
They lie above overflow. The important soils are brown and gray silt loams,
and fine sandy loams with light brown, gray and mottled subsoils. 'J'he gray
soils are poorly drained. The better drained soils are extensively used for
cotton, giving good yields." — U. S. Department of Agriculture, Atlas of Amer
ican Agriculture.
Eastward of the alluvial region in Mississippi are the bluffs and silt loam
uplands and the black prairies, a crescent-shaped belt naturally of high fertility
but somewhat impoverished extending from Montgomery, Alabama, to the
headwaters of the Tombigbee River near Tupelo, Mississippi. Northward and
somewhat to the east to the Appalachian limestone formations skirting the
valleys of the Tennessee River, are the clay hills extending from the Savannah
River through central portions of Georgia and Alabama, the northeast corner
of Mississippi to the Tennessee line. These clay soils yield about 145 pounds
of lint to the acre. The Mississippi bluffs and silt loam uplands mentioned in
the foregoing comprise nearly all of West Kentucky and West Tennessee and
form a strip forty miles wide, bordering the Mississippi bottom lands on the
east throughout the entire length of the State of Mississippi and to Lake
Ponchartrain in Louisiana on the south. Elevation, 100 to 600 feet. Surface,
level to undulating, badly gullied in places. Soils, mainly brown silt loams of
loessial origin, becoming thinner along the eastern border. A narrow strip of
the same soil occupies Crowley's Ridge, extending from Southeastern Missouri
to Marianna, Arkansas. Yield of cotton per acre is about 200 pounds.
The alluvial lands come first in point of productiveness. The alluvial soils
of the Mid-South embrace an area of approximately 13,(X)0,000 acres, only
a small fraction of which has been brought under cultivation. The Yazoo
Delta without fertilization, and solely dependent upon rainfall for moisture,
produces an average of 265 pounds of lint cotton per acre.
Rainfall averages 45 to 60 inches annually throughout the Mid-South.
Precipitation is greatest, and, as a rule, is well distributed through the spring
and summer months. The average is from 25 to 35 inches from March to
August; both months included, but the combined total for September, October
and November, seldom reaches more than eight to ten inches. Well distributed
62

moisture through the spring and summer months promotes growth, while the
dry weather in the fall gives the pickers a chance, and is essential to a crop of
high quality. Thunder showers followed by days of sunshine are considered
ideal weather for cotton growing.
Mean temperature over the Mid-South is around 60 to 65 degrees, with the
summer mean ranging from 70 to 80 degrees, averaging about 79, Fahrenheit.
Soil and climate are two things essential to successful cotton growing. Cotton
requires a long growing season. This is especially true of the long staple
varieties. The season without killing frost averages from 220 to 250 days in
the Mid-South.
Cotton is a sun plant, a weed, which delights in plenty of sunshine and
capable of withstanding high temperatures provided the supply of moisture is
kept up. An average of only 23 inches of rainfall annually in the semi-arid
regions of West Texas is considered too little for cotton. The cotton belt
has an average summer temperature along its northern boundary line of about
71 degrees, which seems about the dead line beyond which commercial produc
tion becomes unprofitable. Nearly all of the world's supply of cotton is grown
between the Equator and the 37th parallel north, which passes through Ken
tucky and crosses the great river where the Ohio River makes its confluence.
Experience has demonstrated that the Delta below Memphis, and the river
basins in Arkansas produce both long and short staple cottons under practically
uniform conditions year after year. This is important to the spinner. The
uncertainties of climate in Texas and Oklahoma are handicaps to cotton grow
ing in those two states. Texas cotton is widely different in fibre characteristics
from that grown east of the Mississippi River, and, naturally hard and wiry,
when the growing season is dry the fibre is shorter and harsher than usual,
while the color may have a reddish tinge. Many of the leaves dried up early in
the picking season by heat and drought, become inseparable in the gin and
reduce the grade, while the top crop may not mature, hence the "holly" crop.
When a mall finds from actual experience that cotton from a certain locality
invariably meets its requirements it will be slow to make a change. Peculiari
ties of the various producing sections are well known to the trade. There are
few markets such as Memphis, where every requirement can be satisfied. Mem
phis owes its reputation as a supply base for extra staples to the fact that lint
from the alluvial regions of Arkansas, Mississippi and southeastern Missouri,
handled through this market, retains, year after year, uniform length and strength
of fibre, texture, etc. Long staple cotton is produced in small and scattered areas
all over the belt, but, excepting on alluvial soils and where, in addition, the
rainfall is at least 30 inches during the growing season, the disposition is to
"run out," to deteriorate in texture, and length and strength of fibre, and in
productivity as well.
Within the memory of living man the wonderful alluvial farms of the Mid-
South were a wilderness. In spite of the march of civilization fertile millions
of acres still await the plow. One hundred years ago no cotton was produced
in all this vast territory with the possible exception of a few bales in West
Tennessee. Cotton growing on a scale commercially important was not begun
63

until the decade immediately preceding the Civil War which halted industry in
the South and gave it a setback from which recovery in a generation was more
than could have been expected.
Of the 13,000,000 acres comprising the alluvial lands less than 30 per cent
has been improved, and of the total area only 10 per cent is planted to cotton.
Of the Mississippi Bluffs and Silt Loam Uplands, an area of 16,800,000 acres,
about 40 per cent, has been improved and 1 1 per cent of the whole planted to cotton.
Art and Science stand at the portals of a glorious destiny. The alluvial
empire offers enterprise and industry the opportunity to numerical, financial and
intellectual pre-eminence. Its resources beckon and out of its bounty there is
enough to spare to enrich nations beyond seas and to add to the human enjoy
ment and usefulness of countless millions who speak in unknown tongues.
The skill of the engineer has curbed the mightiest of waters. Completion of
the levees to the point of definite security has given confidence to capital and
impetus to road and home building, and to general development. The past pre
sents a story of achievement. The future promises greater things. Drainage
has been a hard problem. Engineers are solving it.
The Mid-South will not depend upon cotton alone. But the Mid-South will
increase cotton production not only by planting more acres but by producing
more cotton to each acre. Seed selection is becoming better understood and will
grow in importance, methods of cultivation will be improved, invention will
relieve the labor question with machinery, and perhaps some form of fertiliza
tion, to hasten maturity, and to awaken dormant energies from the soil, may
be found beneficial.
The alluvial empire is the cream pitcher of the Mississippi Valley. The
Great Basin embraces 1,256,000 square miles of territory, or nearly half the total
area of the United States. The watershed of the Mississippi stretches from
the Canadian Rockies, from the gold and silver lodes and the granaries of the
west to the oil bearing sands, the coal and iron storehouses of Penns)lvania
and the Alleghany divide overlooking the Atlantic seaboard. The alluvial
valley is said to be an arm of the sea filled up by deposits of rivers which empty
into it. Every particle of soil was brought to the place where it now is by
flowing water.
It has been estimated that at active rising stage the sediment carried by the
Mississippi River past a given point is equal to 1,000 tons a minutes, enough to
make a wall across the entire channel one foot thick in eight minutes.
The sediment of which this alluvial soil is composed was collected atom by
atom, through ages and ages of time, from the natural wealth of what are now
states and provinces, numbering 32 in the United States and two in Canada,
churned in the laboratories of the Mississippi and its tributaries — 15,000 miles
of navigable streams — transported at floodtide along God's eternal highways,
and deposited to enrich a future empire which was yet a wilderness of forest,
of climbing, crawling, wandering vines, of canebrake and tall grass.

s

The United States stands almost alone in the development of the cottonseed
industry. Cottonseed grown in some other parts of the world are not so well
64

adapted to manufacture, and, in addition, the mechanical means, temporarily
at least, are lacking.
Cotton cannot be grown without producing cottonseed. About a ton of seed
is produced for every two bales of cotton. Memphis, the hub of the Mid-South,
and because it is pre-eminently situated both as a concentration point and as a
distribution point, is the greatest cottonseed products market of the world. It
holds a supremacy that is unchallenged.
The cottonseed industry is a development of the last quarter of a century,
although isolated and somewhat disappointed efforts may be traced back nearly
one hundred years, and oil has been obtained from cottonseed by means of crude
presses from time immemorial. As late as 1867 only four mills were in opera
tion in the United States.
The remarkable development of the industry has been due to the perfecting
of machinery for treating the seed, and to the discovery of new uses for the
product. Hulls are in great demand for feeding purposes, cottonseed meal is
extensively used in the manufacture of feed and fertilizers, and linters have
been made a most valuable contribution to the manufacture of felts, cotton batts,
absorbent cotton and explosives. Until within comparatively recent years the
chief purpose in crushing the seed was to obtain oil. Cottonseed meal was
considered of little value, and demand for the hulls and linters is of still more
recent date.
The United States Department of Commerce, Bureau of Census, for the
fiscal year ended July 31, 1919, shows that 4,478,508 tons of seed were crushed
by 727 mills operating in the United States. The oil product was 176,711,000
gallons, valued at $227,316,000, oil cake and meal 2,170,000 tons valued at
$116,119,000, hulls 1,137,000 tons valued at $17,917,000, and linters 889,500
bales of 500 pounds each, valued at $22,228,000. Total valuation $383,580,000.
Not many years ago disposition of cottonseed, the surplus after needs for
planting had been supplied, was a difficult problem. Now the dirt which attaches
itself to the seed in the handling is about the only waste matter thrown away in
the process of manufacturing.
It was not until 1890 that the annual crush amounted to as much as 1,000,000
tons. Fifty years ago only four per cent of the annual crop of seed was
manufactured. Cottonseed was one of the most valued of all crops during the World War.
Many men of enlightened opinion believe the war could not have been won
without cottonseed products. Cottonseed furnished glycerine for the manu
facture of nitro-glycerine, cellulose for high explosives, meal cake from which
was obtained an exclusive supply of nitrogenous materials, and which cake
saved the drought-stricken herds of the west from starvation. From the oils
were obtained more than one billion pounds of lard substitutes for animal fats,
while the production of hog lard was only 800,000,000 pounds.
The seed from a cotton crop of 12,000,000 bales is said to have a food value,
when scientifically manufactured, equal to that of 2,484,000,000 pounds of hog
lard and 192,00,000 bushels of corn, or 2,484,000,000 pounds of hog lard and
19,800,000,000 pounds of wheat flour. 65

Oils derived from cottonseed furnish the best edible oils. Much cottonseed
oil has been shipped to lands where olives are grown, and it has been shipped
back as olive oil. It is a superior oil for packing purposes. Lard and butter
substitutes made from cottonseed oil are in daily use throughout the world. It
compares most favorably with, if it does not excel, olive oil for salad and
cooking purposes. The vegetable fat is extensively used in the manufacture of
soaps, candles and oil for miners' lamps.
The oil to some extent has been used as a substitute for linseed oil, cotton
seed flour is said to be 25 times as nutritive as potatoes, five times as nutritive
as cornmeal, and four times as nutritive as oatmeal. Encouraging experiments
have been made with linters in papermaking.

66

Hardwood of the Mid -South

By F . D . Beneke

)ARDWOOD forests of majestic growth, though serving as a
barrier to the complete development of the world's most fer-
HWl\ tile agricultural lands, have furnished the Mid-South with an
(j^ industry that has contributed enormously to the wealth and
happiness of mankind.
More than 1,500,000,000 feet of hardwood lumber is manu
factured annually by a thousand mills, large and small, in the Mid-South. It
finds its way into the markets of the world to enrich the beauty of homes and
the dignity of public buildings ; to supply strong material for vehicles, agricul
tural implements and railway equipment, and to provide sturdy containers for the
safe shipment of merchandise across continents and overseas.
No other region in the world is comparable with the Mid-South in the
wealth of its hardwood forest products. Millions of acres of virgin timber in
the Mississippi Valley will supply generations yet unborn with the raw material
for furniture, fixtures, flooring, interior trim, automobiles, wagons, farming
implements, tool handles, railway cars, ships, sewing machines, shuttles, boxes,
barrels, crates and a multitude of other commodities essential to civic and
commercial progress.
The hardwood forests of the Mid-South are centuries old. They were here
when the first white man touched the shores of the New World. The under
growth in the valley woods was impenetrable when the intrepid Spanish, English
and French explorers pressed perilously across the mysterious continent to the
Mississippi River in quest of princely kingdoms, rivers of gold and pearls, and
fountains of eternal youth. They stood silent and forbidding when the early
settlement of America got feverishly under way.
When the tide of immigration swung westward, Andrew Brown in 1828
established the first saw mill in the Southern hardwood region at Natchez,
Mississippi. It was a crude aft'air, situated on the high east bank of the Mis
sissippi River, but it served the pioneer needs of that early day. The lumber it
produced was bound into rafts and transported on the broad bosom of the
mighty river to points where communities were being hewn from the wilderness.
This primitive mill has been in continuous operation for ninety-two years, and
some of the original timbers are said still to be in use in the modern plant now
operated by R. F. Learned & Son at Natchez.
Throughout the Nineteenth Century the forests of Indiana, Ohio, Michigan
and Wisconsin supplied the relatively modest requirements of those days for
67

hardwood lumber. It was not until the late eighties, when the northern forests
began to be denuded, that the lumbermen turned toward America's last great
reservoir of hardwoods in the lower Mississippi Valley, where, according to
the United States Forest Service, 80 per cent of the hardwood area of 36,000,000
acres, including the heaviest stands and most valuable species, was located on
the alluvial bottoms of the Mississippi River Delta.
New and crushing experiences awaited the pioneers who were first to invade
the virgin forests of the Mid-South. They received a cold welcome from the
people. Bankers looked askance upon their operations. They could obtain no
local credit, and they must pay in advance for their every need. Their labor was
unskilled in forestry or mill work, and consequently inefficient. They were
oppressed by strange climatic conditions and overwhelmed by floods which
swept unrestrained periodically through the woods, carrying priceless treasures of
logs and lumber on their crests.
Seventy-five per cent of the newcomers crashed upon the rocks of financial
disaster. But the others stuck grimly to their hard jobs and laid a firm founda
tion for the Mid-South's hardwood industry, and, subsequently, for an agri
cultural empire. To these men of stout hearts and blind courage the South owes
a debt of lasting gratitude. They blazed the broad trail through trackless jun
gles and assured the success of the lumbermen, the coopers, and the veneer,
flooring and box manufacturers who swarmed in their wake.
Many of the original pioneers long since have passed to their reward. Time
has silvered the hair of the remnant of the band. The list of earliest lumber
men in the Mid-South includes I. M. Darnell and his sons, R. J. and \\'alter,
E. E. Taenzer, Taylor & Crate, Anderson & Tully, John Dickson, the Bonners,
the Cochrans, J. W. Wheeler, Moore & McFerrin, Nelson A. Walcott, Charles R.
Palmer, Charles C. Gardiner, F. E. Stonebraker, O. B. Rife, the Howe Broth
ers, the Houston Brothers, Paepcke & Leicht, Russe & Burgess and others.
The first Southern saw mills in the hardwood fields were located on the
banks of rivers in order that logs could be transported by water from the for
ests that fringed the streams. In Memphis the mills were clustered along Wolf
River, where a few of the largest yet remain.
Only combination rail rates were available to the Northern markets, and
manufacturers paid high tariffs to ship their lumber to Cairo, St. Louis, Evans-
ville, Cincinnati and Chicago, the only important markets of that day. The
commodity rates to world markets were to come at a later date.
Timber was available everywhere at prices ranging from twenty-five cents
to a dollar and a quarter per acre. The land frequently would be thrown in
at that price, but the pioneers looked askance at property having no value, but
possessing taxable possibilities. They were interested only in timber rights, and
purchased largely tax titles giving possession of the stumpage.
Nevertheless, a few of the early comers did buy the land and timber at
prices ranging from $1 to $5. Perhaps it was forced u])on them. It resulted
subsequently that land ownership often made up for the frequent losses from
strictly lumber operations. It was not until the dawn of the Twentieth Cen-
68

tury that the alluvial land on which the timber grew so luxuriantly began to have
a tangible value of its own.
One of the early and costly mistakes in the lumber industry was to apply
Northern methods to Southern timber without taking into account the climatic
differences. The pioneers found that Southern hardwoods were more porous,
due to the longer growing season and the greater moisture from Delta soil,
which resulted in greater shrinkage in the curing process. Boards cut on the
Northern standard for inch lumber shrunk to less than an inch, and there was
no market then for thin lumber.
The pioneers learned through bitter experience that the insect pest, nurtured
by the damper woods, were far more active South than North. To avoid the
ravages of the bugs and worms they discovered it was unsafe to begin their
heavy logging before the middle of September, and that all surplus logs must be
run through the mills before June. Fref|uently, they discovered, the rainy sea
son in the autumn set in before they had a chance to create a surplus of logs
for the winter run. There were years when excessive moisture barred them
from the forests through the winter and spring months, whereas in the North
they had logged without interruption through winter rain and snow.
But the early difficulties were largely details of saw mill operation which they
were able shortly to correct. The colossal problem they encountered after all
was the marketing of the gum which grew so magnificently in the Mid-South
forests. European consumers were quick to appreciate the artistry of gum,
which they call satin walnut, but domestic buyers scorned to consider it because
the lumbermen had been unable to find the secret of curing gum lumber prop
erly. The objection was that gum warped and cracked. Architects would not
specify it, nor would builders take a chance upon its use.
Gum trees greatly predominate in the Mississippi Valley forests. The run
of gum is 50 to 60 per cent. Without a domestic market for gum it was too
costly an operation to remove the oak, hickory, ash and elm trees alone. It was
too great an economic loss to abandon or deaden the stately gum trees.
About 1912 the Forest Products Laboratory at Madison, Wisconsin, con
ducted by the United States Department of Agriculture, began a series of experi
ments to find the correct method of curing this outcast among domestic woods.
Within a short time the cure was discovered that made gum as dependable as
the older and more established hardwoods.
With a view then to creating a domestic demand for gum lumber, a group
of Southern saw mill operators met in Memphis late in 1913, and organized an
association which had for its chief purpose the advertisement of their major
product. The success of the publicity campaign was little short of phenomenal.
Gum soon gained popularity so rapidly that it threatened to displace some of the
older standard woods.
Practically all objections to gum and prejudices against its use gradually
disappeared as the educational propaganda spread through the national field.
Within less than ten years it has become a favorite wood for the manufacture of
high grade furniture and interior finish. It probably is the easiest of all woods
for the veneer mills to handle. Rotary cut red gum, carefully selected to show
69

grain and figure, so strikingly resembles Circassian walnut that only experts can
distinguish one from the other.
Red gum is more distinctive of the Mid-South than any of the other hard
wood species. It attains its finest growth and texture in this region. The
United States Forest Service says "its commercial range is restricted to the
moist lands of the lower Ohio and Mississippi basins and of the southeastern
coast. It is one of the commonest trees throughout the hardwood bottom type of
forest, and reaches a large size. These forests will furnish a supply of this wood
for all its many uses for years to come. The hardwood bottoms are for the
greater part overflow land. The soil is alluvial and generally of a great fertility,
and the tree growth for the most part extremely rapid."
The gum tree produces two distinct varieties of lumber. The high grade
cabinet wood comes from the heart-wood of the log, and is known as red gum.
Sap gum is the sap wood, although it may be partly from the heart, and is of a
lower grade commercially. It goes largely into the manufacture of wagon box
boards, vehicle bodies, wood pulleys, core stock, ceiling and siding, coffin boards,
barrels, packing boxes and crates.
Approximately one-third of the veneers manufactured from domestic woods
are made of red gum. It is splendidly adapted for cutting into thin sheets and
takes glue, better than any other wood. It is manufactured into rotary cut,
sliced and sawed veneer. It is used for a wide variety of purposes from light
weight fruit packages to the best grades of richly colored and highly figured
panels used in furniture, pianos and the most expensive and artistic architec
tural woodwork.
Red gum is used extensively in the manufacture of high grade furniture,
built-in furniture, stairwork and car construction. It is often finished to imi
tate the more costly woods, such as black walnut, cherry and mahogany. Two
other important uses are for doors and interior finish. Red gum has a close
grain, and is free from resinous matter which makes it difficult to ignite and
easy to keep aseptic. Many of the finest hotels, banks, clubs, office buildings,
apartments, dwellings, hospitals and churches are finished with red gum doors
and trim.
But red gum, though almost exclusively a product of the Mid-South, is
only one of the hardwood group that attains gigantic growth and superior tex
ture in the Mississippi Valley forests. This region likewise is the home of reil
oak and white oak — the wood of the ages — and of ash, elm, hickory, maple,
poplar, cypress, tupelo, cottonwood, sycamore, persimmon and other species.
The highest grades of hardwoods go into millwork, furniture, agricultural
implements and vehicles. The bulk of the lower grades is consumed in the box
factories, but the low grades go also into woodenware, novelties and miscel
laneous products.
Within recent years the automobile industry has become one of the largest
users of hardwood lumber. Normally, 500,000,000 feet of hardwood lumber
is consumed annually in the manufacture of automobiles and trucks. Ash,
maple and birch are used principally for the frames, elm for the interior of the
bodies, yellow poplar, black and Circassian walnut, birch and red gum for the
70

finish of tops and bodies, and hickory for the wheels. It requires thirty-three
board feet of hickory for each set of wheels.
Manufacturers of agricultural implements buy chiefly high grades of oak,
maple, cottonwood, gum, ash, hickory and elm. Handle manufacturers con
sume hickory, ash, maple, oak, gum and elm.
Large plants located near the hardwood forests have reduced the cost of
hardwood flooring to such extent that it is no longer considered a luxury in
homes, as was the case only a few years ago. Hardwood flooring is found
nowadays in the more modest homes as well as in the palatial dwellings. The
highest grades of hardwood furniture likewise are within reach of the masses.
Hardwood lumber goes into the manufacture of so many commodities that
a complete list of its uses would make dull reading. It may be interesting to
relate, however, that the bats used in organized baseball are made of Southern
ash, and that persimmon supplies the shuttles in the cotton mills and the shanks
of golf sticks.
The hardwood industry of the Mid-South is in its infancy still. One may
read the reports of economic alarmists and gain the impression that the great
hardwood forests will be denuded within the life of the present generation. Such
assertions are wholly untrue and misleading. Thirty years ago even the lumber
men believed that the hardwood timber supply in Indiana, Michigan and Wis
consin was exhausted, yet many large saw mills have been in continuous opera
tion in those states, and the present timber supply seemingly is as good as ever.
There are millions of acres of virgin timber in the Mid-South that have yet to
hear the ring of the ax.
Hardwood timber tracts in Arkansas and Mississippi have been bought up
largely by the saw mill operators for a future source of supply near their
plants. Lumbermen in quest of hardwood timber must look chiefly to Louis
iana for forest tracts. Many splendid blocks of hardwood timber now held by
lumber manufacturers will not even be entered for twenty or twenty-five years.
In addition to the supply in the forests, there remains an infinite amount of
merchantable timber on the plantations of the Mid-South.
Modern methods of operation have eliminated much of the waste of natural
resources so apparent a few years ago. The great trees are used for the manu
facture of commercial lumber. The smaller trees are utilized by the cooperage
industry. The cord wood and tree tops are consumed by the chemical plants
which produce wood alcohol, charcoal, and acetate of lime for fertilizer.
Following closely on the trail blazed by the lumbermen are the agriculturists.
Timber has been removed from thousands of acres in the rich alluvial region of
Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana. Some of the most productive plantations
in the Delta country today were covered only a few years ago with dense growth
of timber and underbrush.
At present the supply of cutover alluvial land is greater than the demand,
but it will not always be so. In some sections of the Mid-South even now the
native demand for cutover land exceeds the supply. The lumbermen generally
have adopted liberal policies in disposing of small farming tracts to Southern
farmers from the hill country. 71

The average Northerner still thinks of the Delta country in terms of half a
century ago. He is just now beginning to learn that the levee system has con
quered the turbulent Mississippi River, and that malaria, typhoid and other
preventable diseases are disappearing as drainage proceeds in the cleared areas.
He is learning, too, that good roads and good schools are being provided every
where in the alluvial region.
Northern soil chemists have proclaimed the alluvial soil of the Mid-South
to be the richest and most productive in the world, not even excepting the famous
Delta of the Nile. Phenomenal crop yields jjroduced without fertilizer by
farmers who understand agricultural principles furnish corroborative evidence
of the fertility of this super-soil.
Within the next quarter of a century the cutover tracts of the Mid-South
will be the most sought after land on the face of the globe. The prejudices
against this country which still exist by reason of ignorance will disappear, and
the small farmer from the North, the East and the West will lead the van of
eager buyers. Thus the land once spurned as valueless is destined to become an
agricultural Paradise, producing with equal abundance a large portion of the
raiment and food for mankind.
Again let it be emphasized that the hardwood lumberman is the pioneer lead
ing the Mid-South to a higher civilization. The log roads that he built through
the swamps in the early day are integral parts of the present trunk line rail
ways traversing this rich region, and his log trails of yesterday have become
the improved highways of today. He is removing the barrier to the full devel
opment of the Alluvial Empire, and he has contributed enormously to this
region of infinite possibilities — the Mid-South.

72

"The Heart of the Valley"

I /|i M0NTGW1ERY

The region covered by this map has the most fertile alluvial
soil in the world and splendid soil in the higher regions. In it
are grown the finest cotton in the world and the finest dark
tobacco. It is the greatest hardwood lumber region and the
largest rice region in the United States. In it is the largest truck
ing region in the Mississippi Valley. It is well watered and
fully covered by railroads. It is fast becoming the richest pro
ductive agricultural and livestock region in the United States.

7Z

iHajor (§. OT. JHacrae
j/^jOUR score and two years of as nearly correct life as mortal
^n man can live on this earth, of service to his Master and his
FWq fellow man, and of devotion to duty, may be said truthfully of
wl Major George Wythe Macrae, now rounding out sixty-one years
in Memphis, widely known financier and philanthropist, gentle
man of the old Virginia school, of classic education, wide read
ing, congenial disposition, respected by the entire community and loved by all
who know him. Born May 28, 1838, in Fauquier County, Virginia, the son of
Bailey W. and Sarah J. (Stuart) Macrae, he was educated at the Academy
in Warrenton, Virginia, and finished his course at Stewart College, Clarksville,
Tennessee, now the Southwestern Presbyterian University, of which he has
been a director for nearly forty years and which he now is actively engaged in
trying to move to Memphis, and expand into an institution worthy of Presby-
terianism. He came to Memphis sixty-one years ago and he and the late
Dr. D. T. Porter formed the wholesale grocery and cotton factoring firm of
Porter & Macrae. Save for an interruption on account of the Civil war in
which Major Macrae enlisted as a private, this firm stood for nearly forty years
surpassed by none in this section for honesty and efficiency. For nearly thir
teen years, following 1894, he was the president of the Memphis National Bank
and the Memphis Savings Bank. For about twenty years he was the president
of the Chickasaw Cooperage Company, which from a small beginning has
become one of the leading concerns of its class in the United States. During
these years of active business. Major Macrae acquired many excellently located
pieces of business property, but during the time that liquor was currently sold
in Memphis and the rental from its dealers was the best, Major Macrae stead
fastly declined to lease any of his property for that class of business. He did
not believe that the saloon was good for the community from a moral stand
point and had the courage of his conviction in that line as in every other. His
duty to his God, his family and his fellow man was ever uppermost in his mind.
His business acumen was great enough for him to make a fortune, every dollar
of which is "clean." For years he has been president of the Cossitt Library,
for a quarter of a century a director in the Second Presbyterian Church, Inc.,
and for nearly half a century a ruling elder and a teacher in the Sunday school
of that congregation. He has never entered politics, save for the exercise of
his influence and suffrage for the side of right, decency and honesty. Major
Macrae has been married twice, first in Clarksville, Tennessee, on September 13,
1866, to Miss Fannie Morris of Kentucky. Their only child is Mrs. Walter
White. On March 2, 1881, he and Miss Blanche L. Avent, daughter of the
late Dr. B. W. Avent, were married. Five children were born, of whom Mrs. R.
B. Lacey, Mrs. F. M. Crump and Mrs. B. A. Bogy survive.

74

C3 / /c/'^'6' Cc-ct c-

I. iM. g>tratton

^ESLIE MARTIN STRATTON, probably the most active and
widely interested business man in Memphis, Tennessee, was born
in Lebanon, Wilson County, Tennessee, February 23, 1881, the
son of Golladay and Louisa (Norman) Stratton. At the age
of twelve years he was a page in the State Senate. He filled the
same position two years later, and then went into the commer
cial field as a clerk in a grocery store. In that as in everything else that he has
gone into, he excelled. In 1900, he came to Memphis, worked for four years
for the Cudahy Packing Company and then organized the L. M. Stratton Com
pany, wholesale grocers. From the beginning this has been one of the most
active concerns in the city and it soon became one of the most successful and
grew steadily until January 1, 1920, when it and the W. C. Early Company, a
strong old concern, were consolidated under the name of the Early-Stratton
Company. Mr. Stratton is the executive head of the consolidated business,
probably the largest in its line in the Mid-South. He is president also of the
Stratton-Warren Hardware Company, the Mississippi Valley Furniture Com
pany and the Memphis Queensware Company. He is also vice-president of the
Stratton Automobile Company and a director in the Union & Planters Bank &
Trust Company. In addition to these concerns in the direction of which he is
active, he is interested in many smaller concerns in the city. Few men have
been able to accomplish in a full lifetime what he has done in fifteen years, but
during that time probably no other man living in Memphis has devoted as much
of his time and energy to the public welfare. He is president of the Y. M. C. A.
and a member of the board of trustees of the Leath Orphanage and board of
advisors of the Y. W. C. A., treasurer of the Methodist Hospital and superin
tendent of the Sunday School of Saint John's Methodist Church. When cam
paigns for money for all purposes became so frequent during the World war,
no man in the city was more active than he with both time and money in helping
to put them over the top. The same elements which made his business career so
remarkable, made him one of the most efficient men in all these campaigns.
Mr. Stratton has never sought or held an elective office, but from the time that
he was a page in the State Senate, he has taken a keen interest in that art. In
1911, he served as a member of the County Election Commission and two years
later as a member of the State Election Commission, doing wonders in both
positions toward clarifying elections. In 1919, he was chairman of the citizen's
committee which placed in office by handsome majorities a City Commission
standing squarely for business and not political administration. Mr. Stratton
and Miss Katherine White married January 15, 1902. They have eight chil
dren: Frances; Andrew C. ; Leslie M., Jr.; Alice; Louise;' Phil Warren; Kath
erine, and George Marshall.

79

0. ®, Jf it^busl)

);j.£jEAVING the University of Mississippi with the degree of
B. A. and leader in his class, Guston Thomas Fitzhugh earned
L^\ enough by teaching for two years to complete his education in
jsQ the law school in which he then had a high ambition, but even
his young dreams in Smith County, Mississippi, did not reach
^ the height to which he has attained in that profession in
Memphis. In two years he returned to the University, completed the two years'
course in one year and at once moved to Memphis, in 1889. From the first he
took a high stand at the bar and clients came rapidly. Both a student and an
orator, he was equally at home in any of the courts, but he steadily appeared less
in criminal courts and more in chancery. In the politically tempestuous '90s,
he and the late Senator E. W. Carmack were close personal and political friends
and Captain Fitzhugh's oratory and judgment were of great value to the suc
cess of their plans. He has ever been active in politics, not as a candidate for
office although often urged by leaders of successful elements to be a candidate
for governor and senator, but for the promotion of an idea or the election
of a candidate with an ideal, and always on the side of right, honesty and decency.
He was an ardent advocate of prohibition and always stood against boss rule.
But Captain Fitzhugh has never allowed his political activities to retard his
legal progress. The climax of his efforts at criminal law was the successful
prosecution of the Coopers for the murder of Senator Carmack — the most bril
liant trial in the annals of Tennessee when you consider the personality of the
victim, the defendants, the counsel and the witnesses. Probably his greatest
success in his profession grew out of his masterly handling of the ouster and
impeachment cases — in the former removing numerous officials and blazing a
trail through virgin forests in which the Supreme Court followed against the
fight of brilliant opposing counsel, and in the latter maintaining the integrity
and lofty ideals of the judiciary and thus earning the laurel wreath before
Tennessee's High Court of Impeachment. Captain Fitzhugh enlisted in the
Spanish-American war and served through to the end as a captain. During
the entire period of the World war he gave a large part of his time to war-work
activities. As a member of the educational commission of the M. E. Church
(South), he assisted in establishing Emory University of whose board of trus
tees he is a member, and he is closely identified with the great Methodist Hos
pital in Memphis. The son of Lewis T. and Juliette (Delony) Fitzhugh, Cap
tain Fitzhugh was born in Smith County, Mississippi, August 31, 1866. He
and Miss Josie Millsaps were married in Jackson, Mississippi, April 17, 1901.
They have three children: Millsaps; G. T., Jr., and Mary. He is a member of
St. John's M. E. Church, the Tennessee Club, Memphis Country Club, City Club
and Chamber of Commerce.

80

C, ®. ^mitj)

;HARLES DONOVAN SMITH, for many years one of the
leading contractors of the United States and for the past
twenty years one of the most active and progressive business
men of Memphis, Tennessee, was born December 11, 1864, in
Iowa, the son of Robert Donovan and Mary (McLean) Smith.
He really is a Mississippian, as his father was born and reared
in Vicksburg and returned to Mississippi soon after his son's birth and was a
planter in Yazoo County. At the age of sixteen years, Mr. Smith entered the
line which became his main life work when he went to work as rodman for the
engineering corps locating the railroad from Meridian, Mississippi, to New
Orleans, now the New Orleans & Northeastern Railroad. Before the comple
tion of the survey, Mr. Smith became levelman for the party. Mis father took
the contract for the construction of the railroad and Mr. Smith worked for him
first clearing the right of way and later became superintendent of construction.
In 1886 his father and he formed the contracting firm of R. D. Smith & Son
and the first contract in which Mr. C. D. Smith had a direct interest was the
construction of a twenty-mile railroad for the Pratt Saw Mill Company from
Verbena, Alabama. Upon the completion of that contract, Mr. Smith bought
his father's interest in the firm and with his brother, Mr. Walter Lane Smith,
formed the firm of C. D. Smith & Company. His progress in this line of activ
ity was so rapid that soon they became the leading contractors in the South,
injecting into the work his own wonderful energy, his rare capacity for organi
zation and a system the like of which no contracting firm in this section of the
country had previously known. His firm constructed in the State of Mississippi
one thousand and eighty miles of railroad. For twelve consecutive years it v/as
engaged in construction work for the Illinois Central and Yazoo & Mississippi
Valley railroads, doing practically all of their work south of the Ohio River.
His firm built the direct line of the Y. & M. V. road from Lake Cormorant to
Tutwiler, Mississippi, which, all things considered from the contractors' view
point, was one of the most difficult pieces of work his firm did. His firm also
built the Illinois Central's line from Corinth, Mississippi, to Haleyville, Ala
bama. In the development of the transportation system for Greater New York,
Mr. Smith and his associates built a section of the subway from Flat Bush
Avenue, Brooklyn, to the Manhattan Bridge. His firm built for the Santa Fe
Railroad the line across the Mojave desert from Parker, Arizona, to the main
line, ninety-eight miles, hauling all water for man and beast an average of
twenty miles. Another large contract was the construction of the Atlanta,
Birmingham & Atlantic railroad from Brunswick to Birmingham. Mr. Smith
and Miss Vida Vandegrift of Birmingham were married December 22, 1892.
They have one child, Marie V.

85

K JF, (Sailor

[HOMAS FRANK GAILOR, Memphis, Tennessee, third bishop
of the Diocese of Tennessee, was born in Jackson, Mississippi,
T^ September 17, 1856, the son of Frank M. and Charlotte (Mof-
(£v fett) Gailor. His father was prominent as the editor of a
newspaper, and as a brave Confederate officer was killed at the
battle of Perryville. His mother was an Irish lady of strong
character. After her husband's death, she brought her son to Memphis, where
she made every effort to educate him for the Church. After graduating from
the city schools, he entered Racine College, Wisconsin, taking his bachelor of
arts degree in 1876, and master of arts in 1879. In the latter year he also took
from the General Theological Seminary in New York his degree of bachelor
of sacred theology, was ordered deacon and began his ministry at Pulaski,
Tennessee. He was ordained priest in 1880. Two years later he was called
to the University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee, with which his relations
have continued to the present time. He has served therein as professor of ecclesias
tical history, chaplain and vice-chancellor, as a member of the board of trustees
since 1893 and chancellor since 1908. It was as chaplain that he became widely
known for his sound scholarship and eloquence. In 1890 he declined an election
to the bishopric of Georgia. In 1893 he was consecrated bishop-coadjutor of
the Diocese of Tennessee. He became bishop of the diocese upon the death of
Bishop Quintard in 1898. He has occupied the Episcopal residence in Memphis
for more than twenty-five years, during which time he has been a leading citizen
of the city and state, giving his time and talents freely for the advancement of
the higher civic interests. Although he has administered the affairs of a large
and exacting diocese, he has unsparingly answered the frequent demands of the
larger interests of the church throughout the country. He has been chairman of
the House of Bishops for the past decade, and upon the reorganization of the
administrative departments of the Episcopal Church in the United States in
1919, he was elected president of the newly created executive council for three
years, thus becoming the executive head of the church in this country. It was as
such that he attended the Lambeth (Pan-Anglican) Conference in England in
1920, where he preached the great sermon of the Conference in Saint Paul's,
London, and the sermon in Westminster Abbey at the Thanksgiving service for
Americans. Among his many honorary degrees are Doctor of Divinity from
Oxford University, England, conferred in 1920. He has made twelve notable
contributions to the literature of the church. He is vice-president for the South
of the United States Chamber of Commerce. He and Miss Ellen Douglas Cun
ningham of Nashville, Tennessee, were married in 1885. Their children are:
Frank H.; Miss Charlotte M., and Miss Ellen D. Gailor.

86

/WV. P- ^^^^^

Clarence ^aunbersJ
ILARENCE SAUNDERS, head of the seven-million-dollar
f'g&'y Wiggly Corporation, Memphis, Tennessee, with oppor
tunity for but little education, with no chance in life save what
his fertile brain evolved, has, at less than forty years of age,
made name, fame and fortune for himself, not by the old
route of raising prices, but by an original system of saving
money to the consumers on necessities of life. Mr. Saunders was born in
Amherst County, Virginia, August 9, 1881, the son of Abram Warwick and
Mary (Gregory) Saunders. He attended school until fourteen years of age and
then went to Palmyra, a few miles down the Cumberland River from Clarks
ville, Tennessee, where he worked as clerk in a grocery store from 1896 to 1900
and then moved to Clarksville, where he spent from 1900 to 1904 in the wholesale
grocery store of Hurst, Boillin & Company. Then he came to Memphis and
worked first as a salesman for Shanks, Phillips & Company and later for other
wholesale grocers until 1915. Out of his experience in the large number of
failures in the retail grocery business and consequent frequent losses to the
jobbers, due largely to credits in both lines, grew his organization in 1915 of
the Saunders-Blackburn Company, wholesale grocers, selling for cash only, and
two years later he worked out the Piggly Wiggly plan of a retail grocery where
each customer is his own clerk, pays cash as he walks out and carries his own
groceries home, thus eliminating all loss from credits and dispensing with all
man-power except the cashier. The system has proved itself the cheapest by
which groceries have been sold to the consumer and still leave a reasonable
profit to the dealer. The first Piggly Wiggly opened in 1916 at No. 79 Jefferson
Avenue, with a system originated by Mr. Saunders, and fixtures and arrange
ment designed and patented by him, and accompanied by the most meteoric
advertising campaign ever seen in Memphis which later became one of the most
cfl'ective ever seen in the United States. There are now five hundred Piggly Wig
gly stores in twenty-nine of the United States, and their business is in excess of
five million dollars per month. Due largely to the presence of twenty-eight
Piggly Wigglies there was no profiteering in groceries in Memphis during the
palmiest days of that custom. If the present rate of growth is maintained the
Piggly Wiggly stoes during 1921 will be the largest grocery retailer in the
United States. Mr. Saunders' charities have been the most extensive of any
in this section of the country, including $30,000 recently to the Methodist Hos
pital, and large amounts for the Baptist Hospital, Y. M. C. A., Red Cross, Sal
vation Army, and all other worthy causes. Mr. Saunders and Miss Caroline
Walker of McLeansboro, Illinois, were married October 6, 1903. Their chil
dren are Lee; Clarence Saunders, Jr., and Amy Clare. He is a member of the
Memphis Country and Colonial Country clubs.

91

c. m. s^mitk

[HOMAS KADER RIDDICK, lawyer, capitalist and business
man, Memphis, Tennessee, was born July 9, 1851, at Macon,
T(g^ Tennessee, the son of Edward Garrett and Harriet Mayo
(^J Riddick. In those days his native county of Fayette was con
spicuous for its educational institutions and Macon contained
two colleges. He received the degree of bachelor of arts from
the Masonic College there at seventeen years of age, and in February, 1872,
was graduated from Cumberland University at Lebanon, Tennessee, with the
degree of bachelor of law. Mr. Riddick located first at Augusta, Arkansas. In
the Spring of 1873 he had repeated attacks of malarial fever, and was advised
by his physician to return to Tennessee in order to get rid of the malaria. When
he followed this advice, his parents prevailed upon him to settle in Somerville.
The people of his home county quickly recognized his ability as a lawyer, and
from that time his clientele grew steadily, until today it is not surpassed in
number or in personnel by that of any attorney in the Mid-South. For a time
in Somerville, he and the late Charles A. Stainback were associated together,
but most of the time he was alone. The courts of Fayette County in those days
did not contain enough litigation to consume his energy, and he opened a law
office in Memphis, building up a business here which so far surpassed his home
practice that in 1897 he moved his residence here. Since that time he has been
a leading figure, not only in the courts, but in all public affairs and in all move
ments for the upbuilding of Memphis and the surrounding territory. His most
conspicuous early case in Memphis was in 1907, when he procured from the
State Supreme Court a decision in the case of Malone vs. Williams, ripping the
notorious ripper bill into shreds. The case is reported in Tenth Gates, and
established the premise that the General Assembly by a mere act cannot relieve
an elected officer of his duties and give them another under the guise of a change
in the name of the office. Another of his leading cases was in the decision which
he secured after a bitter fight permitting the consolidation of the Equitable and
Memphis gas companies. He was one of the counsel for the defense in the
litigation of Patterson vs. Galloway, in which the Supreme Court held that in
the management of the Patterson interests in the transfer and coal business the
late Robert Galloway had always acted properly. Recently he won before the
United States Circuit Court of Appeals a judgment for $97,000 for the Merchants
Cotton Press & Storage Company against the Gulf Compress Company. His
most recent service to the public was in securing the J. T. Harahan bridge. He
and Miss Amelia Pulliam were married October 24, 1882. Their children are
Edward Garrett, Miss Harriet M., Miss Betty R. now Mrs. Raymond Manogue
and Mrs. Amelia R. Stanford.

92

.¦r « im

a» €, f ennings;

ILEXANDER EPSIE JENNINGS, Memphis, Tennessee, mer
chant, planter, philanthropist and church worker, all on a
gigantic scale, was born near Water Valley, Mississippi, Sep
tember 10, 1866, the son of Zachariah David and Charlotte
Temple (Hale) Jennings. After having gone through the
Water Valley high school and the sophomore year at the Uni
versity of Mississippi, he took charge of his father's plantation on Cassidy's
Bayou, near Sumner, Mississippi. After two years, at twenty-one years of age,
he returned to Water Valley, where he and his father organized the firm of
Z. D. Jennings & Son, general merchants. Mr. Jennings, after his father's
death in 1904, continued to operate the Delta plantation and developed it into
one of the most productive in the state. In 1913 Mr. Jennings moved to Mem
phis and became an active citizen. Entering heartily into its commercial, social
and benevolent life, knowing no race or creed, he has endeavored to help all,
and organized the Jennings Furniture Company. Mr. Jennings had joined the
Baptist Church in Water Valley when he was thirty-three years of age and
during the remainder of the time that he was in Mississippi, he had been one of
the most active men in the state in the progress of that denomination as well as
in all other good lines. In fact, with the exception of Major Millsaps, the Jen
nings family has given more money to Christian education than has any other
family in Mississippi. A few months after having joined the church, Mr. Jen
nings was chosen president of the board of trustees of the Baptist Orphanage,
then a small institution. When he left Mississippi, it was one of the largest
institutions of the kind in the South. Soon after coming to Memphis he was
elected chairman of the finance board of the Baptist Memorial Hospital, which
office he still holds and he has seen that institution develop into one of the larg
est in the South. He has given with great liberality both of his time and money
to achieve this result, as well as to the other causes of his church and in fact
every other movement for the advancement of the community. For twenty
years he has recognized that the greatest happiness in this life is in service to
others and the predominating feature of his character is not that he may accu
mulate but that he may use what he accumulates for greater service to humanity.
A large part of his fortune is due to his faith in the alluvial lands. He owns
three of the finest cotton plantations in the St. Francis Basin of Arkansas and
is one of the largest cotton producers of that State. Mr. Jennings is a member
of the Central Baptist Church; the board of trustees of the Porter Home &
Leath Orphanage; the Rotary Club; the Memphis Country Club, and Chamber
of Commerce, and is a Shriner and a Knight Templar. He and Miss Dixie
Buford were married December 31, 1891. Their children are David Buford,
Louise and Esther.

97

Jfranfe Jf» Jlill

5OURTESY is a word worn threadbare through constant repeti
tion, and unhappily, the seed of good advice as to courtesy
often falls on barren soil. The career of Frank F. Hill, and
the standing of the Union & Planters Bank & Trust Company
are proof that where courtesy is persisted in in dealing with
the public, success is assured. President of the Union & Plant
ers Bank, Mr. Hill, just in the early prime of life, has made a mark for himself
that few men many years older can equal. The rank of that bank as one of
the largest and most progressive banks in Dixie is a monument to his ability
as an organizer, as an executive, and especially in picking good men, giving
them responsibility, and leaving them alone. Original and independent in thought
and action, calm in judgment, he brought to his bank the new order that con
verted a stolid, passive bank into a thriving, attractive public-service institution.
Born June 3, 1874, of Mary M. and the late Napoleon Hill ; educated in the city
schools, and Sewanee, the conspicuous success of his father, who was one of
the leading men of Memphis and a distinguished figure in Memphis early commer
cial history, attracted him as a boy, so that his father was persuaded to give him a
clerkship in the cotton house of Hill, Fontaine & Company, while many others
of the same station went to college. Later he engaged in insurance and real
estate business, but success only stimulated his early ambition to preside in an
up-to-the-minute bank. Chosen vice-president of the Union & Planters Bank
in 1908 (a director since his twenty-third year), in 1915, he was chosen presi
dent, and the growth of the bank shows the measure of success he has brought
it. The courtesy, rather the cordiality, that is distinctively in his bank is typical
of his own personal qualities. He made his institution the first state bank in
Tennessee to join the Federal Reserve System, and also instigated the movement
to establish a branch in Memphis of the Federal Reserve Bank. A director and
officer in numerous enterprises and social organizations, he is notably president.
Bluff City Abstract Company; Hill & Lawrence, Inc.; Mammoth Spring Milling
Company ; Mammoth Spring Electric Light Company ; vice-president, Memphis
Lumber Corporation ; Memphis Clearing House Association ; Bankers Club of
Memphis ; Member Tennessee Club, Country Club, Chamber of Commerce,
Memphis; New York Yacht Club; Bankers Club of New York; Chicago Exmoor
Country Club; Cape Cod (Massachusetts) Woods Hole Golf Club; a Shriner, a
32d Degree Mason, treasurer De Soto Lodge of Masons, Life Member in Elks,
served one term as a member of Memphis Board of Public Works. He married
Miss Lizzie Willins, and is the proud father of four splendid children, Napoleon,
Elizabeth W., Frank M. and Marywood. He is known for his courtesy, sin
cerity and staunch devotion to his friends. A gentleman "to the m.inner born,"
devoid of pretense, and enriched with democratic demeanor, a lover of the fine
arts, and a true sportsman.

98

.' <

3So9itp\) iSetolJurger

[IS marvelous business career, which has been one of continued
expansion, began at the age of 18 years when his disabili
ties were removed by the Legislature of Mississippi and he
took charge of his father's business. He was born in Coffee-
ville, Mississippi, on June 12, 1858, the son of Leopold and
Esther Lichtenstadter Newburger. He attended Spring Hill
College, Alabama, and completed his education in Mobile in 1874. In 1879 he
organized the firm of Newburger & Kory in his native town, and in 1881, Joseph
Newburger and his brother Edwin bought out the interest of their uncle, Mr. A.
Kory, and the firm continued business under the name of Newburger Brothers
for a number of years and was subsequently purchased by Edwin Newburger.
In the meantime, 1885, The Newburger Cotton Company, which was the medium
through which Mr. Newburger spent most of his energy for years and through
which he amassed a large portion of the magnificent estate which he now pos
sesses, was organized by him and the offices moved to Memphis in 1896.
Mr. Newburger has always been largely identified with planting interests, owns
several large plantations in Mississippi and takes great interest in farming and
stock raising. In connection with his great export cotton business, and later
for pleasure, Mr. Newburger has made numerous trips to Europe, and is
familiar not only with all the countries on that continent, but most of the cities.
For instance, when the Congregation Children of Israel had outgrown its old
synagogue and he assumed charge of the forces to erect a new one on Poplar
Avenue and Montgomery Street, he announced that he wanted it to be a repro
duction of St. Sophia at Constantinople, and the classic structure came forth a
thing of beauty. Mr. Newburger has probably more different lines of activity
than any other man in the Mid-South, not only commercial, financial and manu
facturing, but eleemosynary as well. He is president of the Newburger Cotton
Company, Inc., of the Memphis Packing Corporation, of the Memphis Rice
Mill, and of the Joy Rice Milling Company at Wheatly, Arkansas. He con
trols twenty-six cotton compresses in the best locations in Tennessee, Mississippi,
Arkansas and Louisiana. He is a partner in Silvan Newburger & Co., dealers
in future and spot cotton. New Orleans ; partner in Newburger Company, plant
ers and stock raisers in his native county; partner in J. & S. Newburger & Co.,
Fall River, Massachusetts, cotton brokers ; partner in J. C. Doyle & Co., farm
and timber land dealers. He is a member of the New York, New Orleans and
Memphis Cotton Exchanges, and associate member of the Liverpool Cotton
Exchange. He owns the Newburger Linter Company and the Haileybury
Frontier Mining Company, and is a partner of Samuel Newburger & Company,
New York. He is president of the Congregation Children of Israel; member
of the boards of managers of the Methodist Hospital, Crippled Children's
Home, Elizabeth Club, new Jewish Hospital, Federation of Jewish Charities,
and National Board of Jewish War Relief. He and Miss Hetty Cahn Kosman
were married June 14, 1907, their children being Joy and Mary Newburger.
103

C. (g. f ameg

jHOMAS GRIFFIN JAMES, Sharkey, Mississippi, is one of
the strongest characters in that land of big men, of genteel
ancestry, classic education, striking appearance, of ultimate
courage yet gentle as a woman, rare in his capacity to organize
and lead men, unsurpassed as a planter or business man in the
Delta, one of the most successful and useful citizens of his
state, whose integrity has never been doubted nor whose honor questioned,
loving and beloved by his friends. Mr. James was born December 28, 1861, in
Yazoo County, Mississippi, the son of Thomas Griffin and Jane Elliott (Foote)
James. In 1873, his father bought the original Sharkey Plantation. The main
ridge back of Mr. James colonial home on this tract probably has produced more
cotton per acre than any other tract of the same size in the world. Mr. James
grew up on the plantation, being educated in the common schools of the county
and finishing his education at Emory & Henry College in Virginia and at the
University of Mississippi. He finished school none too robust in health and
instead of locating on his father's plantation, bought a ranch near Wichita,
Kansas, where he spent six years, breeding and finishing white-faced cattle
which topped the market at the Kansas City stockyards. In 1888, he returned
through the country in a wagon to the Delta and took over the management
of the Sharkey Plantation, then some twenty-five hundred acres, his parents
moving to Oxford to complete the education of their grand-children. Mr. James
put into the management of the plantation a degree of energy, tact and judg
ment rarely equalled and at the same time began to expand, buying the Elm
Lake plantation just east of the Sharkey tract, and later adding adjoining
tracts until his individual acreage in the Delta now aggregates eight thousand
acres. Much of this was wild land when he bought it and on the remainder only
the high ridges were opened. He was a pioneer in tile drainage and has cleared
some six thousand acres, now as productive and highly improved as any in the
Delta. He was a leader in diversification, and one sun went down on the car
casses of two hundred and fifty-one dressed hogs in his various lots. Having
established his plantations on a solid basis, Mr. James branched out into other
fields. He organized and is president of the Bank of Tallahatchie at Sumner
and the Tallahatchie Flome Bank at Charleston; bought a two thousand-acre
plantation, "Pine Crest," in the hills near Charleston and established the finest
Duroc-Jersey hog breeding place in the United States, headed by Scissors, easily
premier herd sire of that breed. He is president of the Tom James Oil Company
with large holdings in the Osage, Oklahoma, fields. Mr. James and Miss
Memory Marks were married December 23, 1885. Their children are Miss Sal-
lie Cnow Mrs. Hugh L. Gary), Thomas G., Jr., and Mary Memory. His second
marriage was to Miss Maude Keirn. Their only child is Walter Keirn.

104

^'VlH^li^H/A

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M, C, 3o\mon

5ILLIAM GUMMING JOHNSON, manufacturer, business man
and capitalist, Memphis, Tennessee, was born in this city
WMj May 22, 1870, the son of John; Gumming and Elizabeth
j&pj (Fisher) Johnson. His father was one of the leading busi
ness men, a pioneer manufacturer and probably the most
generous philanthropist in Memphis for a generation.
Mr. Johnson attended Prof. Wharton S. Jones' preparatory school, and then
went to the Southwestern Presbyterian University at Clarksville, Tennessee.
On the completion of his literary course there, Mr. Johnson went to the Uni
versity of Michigan at Ann Arbor, where he specialized on chemistry, particu
larly as that science might be applied to the products of cotton seed. Returning
to Memphis at the age of twenty-two years, he organized the Tennessee Fibre
Company, with some of his boyhood friends as associates, and they began oper
ating in a small way in their first plant where the Southern Railway and
Linden Avenue join. The main purpose of the factory was the manufacture of
fibre and feed from the hulls of the cotton seed. Mr. Johnson was the originator
of the process to be used and designed the machinery for it. From the first it
was a success under his direction as general manager of the plant and treasurer
of the corporation. Mr. Johnson again pioneered in perfecting a process for
chemical purification and bleaching his product of cotton fibre, making it suit
able for use in gun cotton and smokeless powder. He also first used low grade
cotton linters for the same purpose, and these two products supplied the chief
ingredients of the powder used in the World War, during which period the
industry assumed enormous proportions resulting in great profits to the entire
South. Since the war Mr. Johnson has perfected a process for making the fibre
from cottonseed hulls into paper stock and allied products. Mr. Johnson was
elected president of the Memphis Chamber of Commerce in April, 1917, just
after the United States entered the war, and devoted almost his entke time to
war work and efforts to better the conditions of his city. He led the patriotic
efforts of the Chamber of Commerce in Liberty Bond, war savings stamps and
many other drives. During his administration the Chamber of Commerce was
given the task by the United States government of locating and establishing
Park Field. Mr. Johnson takes more satisfaction in his record as a pioneer
in malaria control work in Memphis and Shelby County than in anything else
he has done. He is vice-president of the Broadway Coal & Ice Company and
and a large real estate operator, and interested in many other enterprises
in the city. He is a charter member of the Memphis Country Club and for many
years has served on the board of directors of the Y. M. C. A., and as chair
man of its finance committee. He and Miss Evangeline Harvey were married
November 25, 1897. They have four children, all boys.

109

la. €. H. Wiil^on
[OBERT EDWARD LEE WILSON, of Wilson, Arkansas, son
of Joseph L. and Martha Davies Wilson, was born on French-
R(^\ man's Bayou, in Mississippi County, Arkansas, on March 5,
^ 1865. His father moved to that place from Tipton County,
Tennessee, in 1847. As there were no local schools, the son
was sent back to Tipton County to be educated. He returned
home in 1880, and began to lay the foundation of his fortune. No man ever faced
a more arduous task. The country, though as fertile as the valley of the Nile,
was a wilderness, and there was not a railroad within sixty miles of it. Mr.
Wilson had indomitable courage, energy and faith, and, what was still more
important, he had vision. He thought and planned years ahead of his time, and
with him the difficulties of the present evanesced, and its hardships entirely
vanished, in the perspective of the splendid future which he clcirly foresaw.
So he bought a few acres and started a small saw-mill. And then he bought
more land, and still more land. As he cut the timber he cleared the land. Today
he is one of the largest manufacturers of hardwood lumber in the South, and
he owns more than forty thousand acres of the richest land in the world, more
than fifteen thousand acres of which are in a high state of cultivation. Mr. Wil
son always took a great interest in the general development of his section. Fie
was a pioneer advocate of the St. Francis levee. He organized the first drain
age district in his county, in the face of fierce opposition. He constructed a
model public road at his own expense. He was a leader in the movement for
diversification of crops, and had the distinction during the World War of being
the largest food producer south of the Ohio River. He introduced tile drain
age in his section. He is president of the Jonesboro, Lake City & Eastern
Railroad Company, has an interest in several banks and has built up a number
of large industries. He owns the entire town of Wilson, with a population of
nearly 2,000, which is a model in every respect, with churches, schools, a
civic center, library, community house, and every modern convenience. It is the
only town in Arkansas that is operated without a municipal government. Mr.
Wilson also erected there one of the finest school buildings in the state, where
the higher branches of learning, are taught, in addition to occupational courses,
domestic science, and the usual grammar and high school studies. He is intensely
interested in young men, and has educated, or assisted in the education of
nearly a hundred. He is one of the trustees of the State Agricultural School at
Jonesboro, to which he has contributed considerable time and means. He is active
in politics, but has never held nor run for an office. He is perhaps the most
public-spirited, progressive, successful self-made man in eastern Arkansas.

110

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^^^OBERT EDWARD LEE WILSON, JUNIOR, lumberman
'^^^x planter, banker and business man, Wilson, Arkansas, from
R(^K early youth had no idea of being merely the son of a rich
\P) father, for, while his father is very wealthy, the son worked
J\^ as a laborer in his father's big mills during the vacations
^^^^U while a student at the University of Virginia and Yale. He
had access to his father's bank account, but he also had in his arteries the blood
of his father and in that blood there was no corpuscle of idleness. Mr. Wilson
was born in Bassett, Arkan.sas, July 7, 1889, the son of Robert Lee and Elizabeth
(Beall) Wilson. Until he was ten years of age he had a private governess in the
family home at Wilson. His father then acquired a home in Memphis and
Mr. Wilson went to the city public schools for two years and to the Memphis
University School for three years. Following this he went to Woodberry
Forest School at Orange, Virginia, for three years ; spent a year at the University
of Virginia and then went to Yale where he was graduated in 1912 with the
degree of bachelor of philosophy. With only a few vi'eeks of vacation, he
returned to Wilson and on July 1, 1912, began his career as assistant to the
manager of the real estate department of Lee Wilson & Company. The follow
ing year he became the manager of that department, not by favoritism from his
father, but because he had mastered the details of that then most important
branch of the business, had shown a vision of the future of the lands of that
section and had developed a capacity along that line which was of great value
to the company. At the same time he was elected vice-president of the concern
and his father gave him a handsome interest in the business. They are the only
stockholders in the firm of Lee Wilson & Company. In 1916 he was elected
general manager of the corporation, and as the increasing business of the firm
in other localities took his father away from Wilson more and more, the son
had the burden of the business fall more and more heavily upon his shoulders.
With the ownership of the entire town of Wilson, one of the biggest hardwood
sawmills in the country, several tremendous box factories, thousands of acres
of cotton plantations and more thousands of acres of timber lands, as well as
many lesser interests, this business probably is the biggest in Arkansas, and as
general manager Mr. Wilson has been equal to every emergency. Mr. Wilson
served in the aviation corps during the World War, at Love Field in Texas and
at Princeton, New Jersey, being a cadet when the armistice was signed. He
was a member of the Delta Psi Fraternity, and secretary and treasurer of the
Southern and Mohican societies at Yale; is a Knight of Pythias, and a member
of the Tennessee and Memphis Country clubs. He and Miss Natalie Arm
strong were married October 24, 1912. R. E. L. Wilson HI is their only child.

115

C. e. peil

^HARLES OSCAR PFIEL has designed and superintended the
construction of many of the largest business buildings and
most beautiful homes in Memphis, but the crowning works of
his career in Memphis as an architect are his plans for the
great Auditorium and Market House jointly for the city and
county on the old Court House site, and the perfection of the
plan for the Tri-State Fairgrounds, so that as the new buildings are com
pleted from year to year the ensemble will be both classic and harmonious, con
venient of arrangement and the most beautiful in the country. Mr. Pfiel was
born April 9, 1871, and is authority for the statement that as a youth he actually
tilled the soil of Illinois near Jacksonville, the family home. He attended the
high school and Brown's College in Jacksonville, until 1888, and later look an
agricultural course in the Kansas State Agricultural College, but agrarian pur
suits did not square with his artistic temperament and in 1891-2-3 he attended
the University of Illinois College of Architecture. He continued his studies
in that line in offices in Peoria, Illinois ; in Chicago and in St. Louis,
Missouri, until 1903, when he formed an association with the late G. M. Shaw
and moved to Memphis. His first important work here was designing the Ten
nessee Trust Building, now the Union & Planters Bank Building. He also planned
and superintended the Chamber of Commerce Building and the present home of
the William R. Moore Dry Goods Company. When planning the Main Street
addition to the Hotel Gayoso, he realized the opportunity for the exquisite mural
decorations which adorn the lobby and finally secured the consent of the owners
to the idea. He and Prof. Newton A. Wells of the University of Illinois worked
out the plans here and drafted the rough sketches, which Prof. Wells went to
Paris to complete, giving to Memphis her only real public works of art.
Mr. Pfeil also planned and superintended the construction of the P. P. Wil
liams, the John R. Pepper and the Walter Lane Smith homes, three of the most
artistic in the city, as well as a number of other useful public and beautiful
private structures. His plan for the Auditorium and Market House was adopted
after a severe competition in which leading architects of the United States were
the judges and it is a model of beauty in lines, perfection of arrangement for
the varied uses for which it is to be constructed and economy of operation.
Mr. Pfeil and Mr. Shaw were associated together until 1912, since which time he
has been alone in his profession. He is a member of the Memphis Country
Club, a member of the Tennessee Club, a member of the Chamber of Com
merce, a member of the American Institute of Architecture, and a member of
th Architects' League of Memphis. Mr. Pfeil was married September 15,
1909, to Miss Myra Russel Hancock, who died February 1, 1915, leaving no
child.

116

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)>^ULIAN COOPER WILSON, Memphis, Tennessee, one of the
leading lawyers of the South and formerly chancellor of the
Third Mississippi district, was born in Hazlehurst, Missis
sippi, June 19, 1872, the son of Benjamin Franklin and Susan
Wilson. He went to the public schools of his native city and
then read law in the office of the Honorable Robert N. Miller.
Then he went to the University of Mississippi where he took his literary course
and in June, 1892, received the degree of bachelor of laws with distinction from
the law department of the same institution. The Honorable Earl Brewer, later
governor of the State of Mississippi, was in the same class with him and in
September of the year that they graduated they formed at Water Valley the
law firm of Brewer & Wilson which quickly became one of the leading law
firms of North Mississippi. This partnership endured until 1901, when Judge
Wilson moved to Oxford, Mississippi, becoming the partner of James Stone
in the firm of Stone & Wilson. This firm enjoyed a constantly growing practice
until July 1, 1903, when Judge Wilson withdrew to accept appointment by the
governor to the chancellorship of the Third District. His administration of that
office won for him the admiration of the entire bar by his quick, clear and frank
rulings, while the records of the Supreme Court of the State show that almost
all of his decisions which were appealed were affirmed. He endeared himself to
the witnesses before his court by holding that the rule of law which prevents a
witness from defending himself from slurs by opposing lawyers carries with it
the obligation of the court to protect him. To the regret of the entire bar
Judge Wilson resigned as chancellor to resume the active practice of his pro
fession in Memphis on January 1, 1907. He practiced alone here for a time,
then formed a partnership with Mr. Walter P. Armstrong and still later Mr. Elias
Gates came into the firm, now Wilson, Gates & Armstrong. From the time that
Judge Wilson went into the office of Judge Miller at Hazlehurst, he has been a
close student of the law and probably no other lawyer in this section of the
country is better grounded in its essentials than he is. He is especially valuable
to a client who has a business point involved, as was shown in the Bank of
Collierville case where, after a shortage of $38,000, the receivers, as a result
of litigation won by him, were able to pay the depositors in full and the stock
holders the amounts in full of their original investments. One of his most
important cases was in representing a group of Mississippi Delta planters as
senior counsel when he secured a ruling from the Supreme Court declaring the
Tallahatchie Drainage act unconstitutional. Judge John F. Dillon of New York
being the counsel on the other side. Judge Wilson and Miss Mary Becton of
Water Valley were married August 27, 1902.

121

aa» €. Eee

; OBERT EDWARD LEE, for forty years a leader in transpor
tation, commercial, industrial, financial and social circles in
R(^i Memphis, Tennessee, was born in this city May 22, 1863, the
W) son of James and Rowena (Bayliss) Lee, and educated here
and in St. Louis. He comes from a virile, versatile, talented
and successful family, one of the oldest in the United States,
his branch having moved from Virginia to Maryland, thence at early date to
Tennessee, where his grand-father, James Lee, Senior, was a pioneer iron mon
ger of Stewart County, successful to a high degree and taking up the steam
boat business on the Cumberland River as a means of getting his product to the
markets. This James Lee and his son of the same name came to Memphis at
an early date and established upon the Mississippi River, under the name of the
Lee Line Steamers, a system of inland water transportation which, in the third
generation under Robert E. Lee, became the greatest transportation system on
the inland waterways of the United States. The younger James Lee for half a
century was one of the most influential and useful men in the development of
Memphis. At sixteen years of age Robert E. Lee went into the office of his
father in a minor capacity with the Lee Line Steamers. At seventeen years of
age he was the secretary of the company, at twenty-one years general superin
tendent, and six years later general manager. That this promotion was not due
to nepotism was shown by the success of Mr. Robert E. Lee's operation of the
system. River transportation was in its stage of transition. Its glory largely
departed with the passing of the Anchor Line. Mr. Lee put the business on a
solid and sound foundation. No man in Memphis ever put a keener intellect at
work for more hours per day and under higher pressure than did he. The
result was that while he took charge of a system operating five boats from
Memphis to Osceola, Arkansas, and Friar Point, Mississippi, he extended the
system until its termini were at St. Louis, Cairo, Cincinnati and Vicksburg, the
service being handled by fourteen palatial steamers, the James Lee II, Robert E.
Lee, Stacker Lee, Georgia Lee, Bayliss Lee, Rees Lee, Peters Lee, Sadie Lee,
Ora Lee, Rosa Lee, Rowena Lee, John Lee, Harry Lee and Rob't Lee, Jr., all
built under Mr. Lee's direction. He was recognized as the authority on con
struction and operation of steamers on western waters. In 1905 he retired
from the river and became president for a year of the Bohlen-Huse Coal & Ice
Company, later retiring from that and devoting his time to his large private
affairs. He is a director in the First National Bank and interested in many
other financial institutions, and is a member of the Tennessee, Memphis Country,
Menesha and Five-Lakes clubs. Mr. Lee and Miss Elizabeth Morrow were
married June 16, 1911. They have one son, Robert Edward Lee, Junior.

122

¦'fA/3^^

/ '1

M. W. Papltss

ilLLIAM BARCLAY BAYLESS, founder and head of the
^^ firm of W. B. Bayless Company, manufacturers' agents, Mem-
W^J phis, Tennessee, is a native of Colbert County, Alabama, where
[s^ he was born on a plantation October 6, 1869, the son of William
Wilkins and Rebecca (Thompson) Bayless. He received his
early education under private tutors in his home and com
pleted his school studies in the institutions at Florence, Alabama. When he
finished his education the United States government was doing work on Col
bert Shoals in the Tennessee River near Florence under the personal charge
of the later General George W. Goethals. Mr. Bayless did his first work there
in the position of paymaster and receiver of materials. In 1892 he went to
Louisville, Kentucky, to take a position with Bayless Brothers Company, whole
sale dealers in glass and queensware, and in seven years had worked up to the
vice-presidency of the corporation, in which he also was a holder of consider
able stock. In 1903, he sold his interest in that company, resigned his position
with it, and the following year came to Memphis where he organized the firm
of W. B. Bayless Company, of which he has been the only president. Later he
entered the manufacturing business under the firm name of the American
Woodworkers, Incorporated. He engaged first as agent for manufacturers in
selling glass to the southern jobbers from Virginia to Arizona, and gradually
extended his lines and territory until for some years he has been one of the
largest distributors of glass and wood and cordage products in the country and,
under the firm name of Bayless Manufacturing Company has developed in its
own products and in those for which Mr. Bayless' firm is agent, a tremendous
export business, including Europe, South and Central America, Australia and
New Zealand. Both in connection with his business and for pleasure, Mr. Bay
less has traveled not only over the United States and Canada, but also widely
in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Chili, Bolivia, Peru, Panama, Colombia, Vene
zuela, Costa Rica, Cuba, Porto Rico and Santo Domingo. Mr. Bayless has
extended his business to where it covers a territory wider, probably, than that of
any other concern in the Mid-South and has prospered financially through it.
He takes an especial delight in using much of his income and much of his time
in helping those who are in need. He is one of the most active directors in the
Associated Charities, the Memphis & Shelby County Tuberculosis Association,
the Red Cross and the Young Men's Christian Association, to all of which his
energy, judgment and influence as well as his large contributions are of great
value. He is also a member of the Memphis Country Club and of the Chamber
of Commerce. Mr. Bayless and Miss Janet Taylor Bell of Staunton, Virginia,
were married October 3, 1911.

127

, ^. ?|ollanti

I HE word "banking" and the name "W. P. Holland" are synony
mous in the Yazoo Delta of Mississippi, for it has taken him less
than twenty-five years from its organization to build up in the
Planters Bank at Clarksdale an institution remarkable in the
annals of the United States for the rapidity of its growth,
the scope of its operations and soundness of its methods.
Walter Powell Holland was born on March 27, 1867, near Springfield, Ten
nessee, the son of Dr. T. W. and Mrs. Fannie V. (Powell) Holland. After
having received grammar and high school education, he was graduated with the
degree of bachelor of arts from the Mississippi College at Clinton in 1887. Two
years later he entered business as secretary and treasurer of the Greenwood
Compress Company, and remained there until 1896, when he foresaw the wonder
ful future of the Clarksdale section of Mississippi and moved there, organizing
the Planters Bank in which he was from the first a stockholder and of which
he was cashier. From the first the bank grew rapidly. In 1907 he was chosen
president and from that date to this he has been the active head of an insti
tution which has been a marvel until today he is recognized in financial circles
of the entire country as the equal of any banker. No detail of the bank's
business is loo small for him to give his attention to, and no proposition that
may arise in connection with the business is too large for him to grasp instantly.
But even this mass of business has not been able to engross all of his time or
to afford an outlet for all of his marvelous mental activity. The same judg
ment and foresight which he has applied to the affairs of the bank have been
at work in his private investments and he has amassed a large fortune for him
self. Of classic education, he has kept up his reading and broadened himself by
wide travel and close observation, not only in every state in the Union and in
Canada, but often in Europe, including England, Ireland, Scotland, France,
Germany, Belgium, Holland, Italy, Austria, Russia and Switzerland. He is
an ardent sportsman, being a member of two of the best duck clubs in the
country, the Delta Duck Club of New Orleans and Mud Lake, Arkansas. He
is also a charter member of the Clarksdale Elks Club and a member of the
Memphis Country Club, the Tennessee Club of Memphis and a Master Mason.
He organized and is president of the following banks in Mississippi : Missis
sippi Exchange Bank at Friar Point, Bank of Lula, Peoples Bank of Jonestown,
Clarksdale Savings Bank, Progressive Slate Bank of Tutwiler, Bank of Ruleville,
Bank of Shaw, Bank of Hollandale, Bolivar County Bank of Rosedale, Merchants
& Planters Bank of Gunnison, Citizens Bank & Trust Co. of Belzoni, and a director
in the Bank of Drew, the First National Bank of Greenwood, and the Green
wood Savings Bank. Mr. Holland and Miss Florence Townes of Minter City,
Mississippi, were married November 10, 1896. They have no child.

128

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a. H. purroto

)ARON KNOX BURROW, Memphis, Tennessee, who handled
practically the entire cotton linter output of the United States
during the World War, and all of it while the United States
was in the conflict, is a native of Tennessee, although he grew
up in Texas. He was born, December 14, 1871, near Mace
donia, Tennessee, close to the line between Henry and Car
roll counties, the son of the Reverend Albert Gibson and Elizabeth (Polk)
Burrow. His father was a minister in the Presbyterian church and the family
was originally from Virginia. When Mr. Burrow was eleven years of age the
family moved to Kaufman County, Texas, where Mr. Burrow attended the
common schools until he was sixteen. He farmed until he was twenty, but
that did not agree with his tastes and in 1891 he walked off from the farm and
took a train for Memphis. His first work here was for Polk, Spinning &
Company, and for some eight years he worked on the cotton classing floor
directly under Mr. Spinning. Then he went into the cotton seed products busi
ness, specializing in the linter end of it. He put into this business from the
first an amount of energy, integrity and ability which sent it rapidly to the front,
so that in a few years he had extended his business over a wide range, and had
made a reputation as being surpassed by no one in his knowledge of the linter
business and in his ability to handle it, while in the minds of those who knew
him there was never any doubt as to his sterling honesty. At the time that most
of Europe went to war, he had one of the largest linter businesses in the United
States. The enormous demand for high explosives and gun-cotton came over
night and at once the DuPonts became the largest manufacturers of high explo
sives in the world with the possible exception of Germany. The DuPont Amer
ican Industries, Incorporated, immediately selected Mr. Burrow as its sole
agent for securing its supply of linters, his territory including the entire United
States. He not only made the purchases, but also assembled the shipments,
prepaid them and shipped them, and it was through this source that the French
secured the major portion of their needs in that line. When the United States
went into the war, it took over the entire linter output, and through the DuPont
agency, Mr. Burrow handled all the linters manufactured in the United States,
shipping directly to the various government factories and to France, which was
the largest foreign customer. Mr. Burrow is a member of the First Presbyetrian
Church ; a director in the Y. M. C. A. ; a member of the Memphis Country Club,
Chamber of Commerce, Merchants Exchange, and Tennessee and Inter-State
Cotton Seed Crushers associations ; president of A. K. Burrow Company, Inc. ;
first vice-president of the Johnson-Burrow Building Company, and manager of
the Memphis branch of the DuPont American Industries, Inc. He and Miss
Catherine Walter were married January 10, 1912.

133

C, ^, f . Moomv

[HARLES PATRICK JOSEPH MOONEY, managing editor
of The Commercial Appeal, Memphis, Tennessee, whose influ
ence probably exceeds that of any other man in the moral,
mental and material development of the community, and
editor in chief of this historical work, was born in Bullitt
County, Kentucky, September 15, 1865, the youngest of seven
children of John Francis and Hannah (Spraggins) Mooney. His father was
a native of County Down, Ireland, while his mother's ancestors, including
the Ray family, had migrated to what now is Kentucky from North Carolina
about the time of the revolution. The elder Mr. Mooney was one of the
leading men of the county, cultivating some 1400 acres of land which
Mrs. Mooney had inherited from her father and which had been in the family
directly from a government entry. He died when C. P. J. Mooney was only
seven years of age, and at thirteen the lad went to work as a telegrapher in the
Bardstown Junction office. Three years later he went to Saint Mary's College,
near Lebanon, one of the oldest educational institutions in Kentucky, and
remained there until 1886 when he received his degree of A. B., having special
ized in mathematics under Professor Timmons. Then followed two more years
in the school room with Mr. Mooney as principal and teacher of mathematics,
Greek and Latin in the high school at Uptons in Hardin County, at $40 per
month. But board then and there was only $8 per month. During that time
also he read law under his guardian, but being without means to pursue the law,
he, in 1888, followed a brother to Pine Bluff, Arkansas, intending to become a
telegrapher for the Cotton Belt Railroad. However, at Pine Bluff he found an
opening with Arthur Murray on the Press-Eagle, where he did his first news
paper work as reporter, writing editorials, soliciting advertisements and collect
ing the rents for Mr. Murray's large property interests. It was on June 17, 1890,
that Mr. Mooney came to Memphis as a reporter on the old Avalanche under
A. B. Pickett. Shortly thereafter the Avalanche and Appeal were consolidated,
and after four days with the Appeal-Avalanche, he went with Mr. Pickett on the
Scimitar, soon becoming city editor. In 1896 he became managing editor of
The Commercial Appeal, but in 1902 resigned to occupy the same position with
Frank A. Munsey's New York Daily News. After three months there he joined
the Hearst forces and in 1904 wrote his editorials for the morning editions in
the Parker presidential campaign. He had charge of the Chicago Examiner
from 1905 to 1908, and then returned to The Commercial Appeal. He was an
original Wilson delegate to the 1912 Democratic convention, vice-chairman of the
West Tennessee draft board, and is a director on Mr. McAdoo's own motion
of the Federal Reserve Bank for the Eighth District since 1917. Mr. Mooney
and Miss Corinne G'Sell O'Connor of Pine Bluff, formerly of Carondolet, Mis
souri, were married June 6, 1891. Their children are Hugh J., Miriam (now
Mrs. Robert E. Galloway), and Charles, junior. E. M. H.

134

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SAMUEL JAMES HIGH, financier, Tupelo, Mississippi, has
not only achieved great success for himself in early manhood
as a banker, but it is doubtful if there be in the Mid-South
any man who has been more efficient than he for the develop
ment of his home city, his county and his section of the state
in all that makes for good, and the material progress of
Tupelo and Lee County during the past fifteen years has been such that any
community might take justifiable pride in it. Yet Mr. High is just as demo
cratic in manner and unassuming in bearing as if he had merely drifted along
with the general mass of humanity. He was born in Lee County, near Tupelo,
October 3, 1872, and after having taken the courses in the public schools of
Tupelo, he went through Eastman's Business College at Poughkeepsie, New
York. In 1896 he entered the Bank of Tupelo as bookkeeper and within a few
years was promoted to assistant cashier. However, in 1904, he resigned that
position and was one of the organizers of the Peoples Bank & Trust Company,
which, mainly under his direction, has become probably the strongest financial
institution in any city of its size in the Mid-South. The bank opened with
Mr. High as cashier. In 1918 he became the active vice-president and in 1920
the president. Its resources now are over $4,000,000. He is also president of
the Tupelo Fertilizer Factory ; vice-president of the Tupelo Oil & Ice Company ;
director in the Tupelo Cotton Mills and the Tupelo Compress Company; presi
dent of the Tupelo Hotel Company ; director in the Tupelo Theater Company ;
president of the Tupelo Insurance Agency; director in the Cotton States Life
Insurance Company, Bank of Guntown, luka Guaranty Bank, Bank of Saltillo,
Bank of Sherman, Bank of Shannon, Verona Bank and Winfield (Alabama)
State Bank, in addition to owning stock in eight or ten other banks in his sec
tion. During the World War, he was district director for the Liberty loan
organizations, member of the executive committee for Lee County : county
food administrator for a year, chairman of the Y. M. C. A. campaign, chairman
of the war work relief campaign and local treasurer for the Red Cross. He is a
director in the Mississippi Welfare League, Conference Centenary treasurer for
the Methodist Church, and served as president of the Mississippi Bankers Asso
ciation from May, 1915, to May, 1916. He has been one of the most active
workers for all of the campaigns in Lee County which have given it her drain
age systems, her magnificent hard roads, and her diversification of crops so that
she exports feedstuff and has her cotton for a surplus crop. He is a devout
member of the Methodist Church, and has traveled widely throughout the United
States, Canada and Mexico. Mr. High was married October 21, 1897, to Miss
Annie Belle Allen, daughter of the late lamented and universally beloved John
M. Allen. They have one son, James Allen High, born in 1910.

139

[EW men have been larger factors in the development, first of
Coahoma County, Mississippi, and later the surrounding coun
ties, in planting, building, banking and business generally than
Mr. Edgar L. Anderson of Dickerson. Mr. Anderson was
born July 15, 1868, in Copiah County, Mississippi, the son of
W. P. and Mrs. L. G. Anderson. When only eight years of
age, the family moved to Coahoma County, where soon Mr. Anderson, Sr., and
Mr. C. W. King acquired a large tract of the finest Delta land. Mr. Edgar
L Anderson, at the age of twenty-one years, entered the firm of King & Ander
son, which now is composed of Mr. King, Mr. Anderson and his mother. The
King & Anderson plantation at Dickerson became famous as one of the most
productive and best managed in the Delta, and a pioneer in all progressive agri
culture suitable for that section. No "pent-up Utica" for Mr. Anderson, and
soon he expanded to entering established business firms in Clarksdale and
organizing new ones. The firm became large landholders in and adjoining
Clarksdale. In the early nineties, they built the first Alcazar Hotel — fine for its
day and generation — and seven years ago, when it had become outgrown by the
demand, they constructed the new one by the same name. Aside from his vast
planting affairs, Mr. Anderson is interested in the Clarksdale Theater; presi
dent of the Planters Manufacturing Company; vice-president of the Planters
Bank, the record of whose growth is one of the most phenomenal in the history
of banking in the United States; director in the Clarksdale Savings Bank; vice-
president of the Exchange Bank at Friar Point ; vice-president of the Peoples
Bank at Jonestown; director in the Bank of Ruleville; director in the Bolivar
County Bank at Rosedale ; director in the First National Bank in Greenwood,
an institution of rare solidity; director in the Bank of Shaw; vice-president of
the Bank of Hollandale; director in the Progressive Slate Bank in Tutwiler;
director in the Delta Grocery & Cotton Company of Clarksdale, a most success
ful pioneer in its line; director in the Johnson-Harlow Lumber Company of
Clarksdale; director in the Mississippi Valley Dry Goods Company of Clarks
dale; and a director in the Wm. R. Moore Dry Goods Company of Memphis, in
which he had business sense enough to invest during its forced reorganization.
Mr. Anderson has never held any elective office, but both Governor Longino and
Governor Brewer prevailed upon him to represent his county as commissioner
for the Upper Yazoo Levee District, where the judgment, honesty and integ
rity which have characterized his career were of great benefit to the entire
district. He has always taken an active interest in every movement pertaining
to good roads, and built the first gravel road in Coahoma County. Mr. Ander
son and Mrs. Mamie Brown Colbert were married June 25, 1902. Their family
consists of two sons, Edgar Lee, Jr., and William King Anderson.

140

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lENECA B. ANDERSON was one of the first northern lum
bermen to appreciate the wealth in the southern timber and
to have the capacity to take advantage of it. Born in Genesee
County, New York, in 1849, the son of David and Lovisa
(Throop) Anderson, he was educated in the public schools
of Coldwater, Michigan, and attended Kalamazoo College in
1871. Three years later he was in the lumber and manufacturing business for
himself in Van Buren City, Michigan, and in 1886 he associated himself with
C. Colby & Company in Benton Harbor, and in 1887 with N. B. Hall & Com
pany of Benton Harbor and Greenfield, Tennessee. Having changed the name
of the firm to Anderson-Tully Company and incorporated it in 1889, the com
pany moved to Memphis. Since that time he has been one of the most important
factors in Ihe manufacturing business and social development of Memphis. At
that time the value of southern timber was nominal and the overflowed lands
upon which it grew were considered practically worthless, often reverting to
the State for taxes. He realized their prospective value and his company locat
ing mills on Wolf River, bought large timber tracts along the Mississippi River,
thus availing itself of the cheapest transportation. Mills for the manufacture
of lumber into boxes, crates, etc., were erected and the business grew with
rapidity, being one of the most systematic and best managed in the country.
Later Mr. Anderson has extended his lumbering operations, his company being
one of the largest hardwood concerns in the South, and of recent years he has
made investments in Delta plantations, especially down in the sections where the
land had depreciated from the first attacks of the boll weevils, but now has
come back into its own. Mr. Anderson was married in 1876 to Miss Adelaide
Bennett of Pennsylvania, a woman of rare education, attainments and culture.
They have traveled widely, not only over the United States, hut Europe as well.
Their beautiful home in Morningside Park, and former residence on Poplar
Avenue, for many years have been the gathering places of the most literary
Memphians, as well as for many delightful social affairs. Col. Harry B. Ander
son, one of the first to enlist and to go from this section to France upon the
declaration of war, is their only son, but his four delightful children are the joy
of both elder generations of the family. The elder Mr. Anderson served for a
time as mayor of Benton Harbor, Michigan, but resigned the office in the middle
of his term to move to Memphis. Mr. Anderson is chairman of the Municipal
Terminal Commission. The commission is erecting modern river terminals
through the operation of which it is hoped Memphis will be able to profit by
the transportation advantages offered by the Mississippi River. Mr. Anderson
is a Shriner, member of the Chamber of Commerce and for four years has
been a member of the Board of Directors of the Chamber of Commerce of the
United States.

145

tK, (S, ©abnep

"The upper Yazoo Basin has been made entirely safe against all floods except
possibly the extremest. In the event of the latter, vigorous emergency work will,
in all likelihood, prevent crevasse of the system or overflow of the basin."

[HIS excerpt from the annual report of the chief of engineers.
United States Army for 1919, Part III, Page 3674, is a
wonderful tribute to the capacity, skill and integrity of
Thomas Gregory Dabney, Clarksdale, Mississippi, engineer since
its organization in 1884 of the Board of Commissioners of the
Yazoo-Mississippi Delta. Major Dabney, as he is universally
known, comes from that sterling French Huguenot family, d'Aubigne, his great-
great-great grandfather having gone to England upon the revocation of the
Edict of Nantes and come to Virginia very early in the Seventeenth Century.
The Dabney estate and mansion at Dabney's Ferry were in keeping with the
highest traditions of the Old Dominion. Major Dabney's grandfather, Ben
jamin Dabney, probably was the most distinguished lawyer in Virginia during
his day. Major Dabney was born in Raymond, Mississippi, December 12, 1844,
the son of Augustine Lee and Elizabeth (Smith) Dabney, his father having come
to Mississippi in 1835 and served for eight years as probate judge of Hinds
County. The lad was educated by private tutors at Burleigh, the family name
of his uncle's plantation and began life as a youth as assistant to the county
surveyor. His chief went into the Confederate Army soon thereafter, leaving
him in charge of the office, but he closed it and enlisted with the Raymond
Fencible. Left as dead after the battle of the Wilderness, he recovered, was
transferred to the artillery, became a sergeant, was the most expert gunner in
his command, the equal to any Confederate in devotion and courage, fought at
Port Hudson and Ship Island, and walked back to Raymond from Mobile after
the surrender. He completed his course in mathematics at Raymond and
worked variously on the Louisiana levees, the Gulf & Ship Island and Vicksburg,
Shreveport & Pacific railroads. Moving to Vicksburg, he was active in sup
pressing the riots of 1874. When he became engineer for the upper Yazoo
levee board, he found little more than a memory of a small levee. Between
October 10, 1884, and February 28, 1885, he placed two million yards of earth
with wheelbarrows on a line one hundred miles long. Now there are forty
million yards of earth in that line. With the specification about twenty per cent
larger than that of the government, the ideal levee will be attained in 1921.
Major Dabney has spent nearly fifteen million dollars on this line without the
slightest breath of suspicion as to any contract.

146

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!EWIS EDWIN BROWN, Memphis, Tennessee, whose firm,
George C. Brown & Company, handles three-fourths of the
red cedar lumber consumed in the United States and which
also is one of the largest hardwood manufacturing concerns
in the country, is a native of New York State, although he
was reared and has spent all of his active life in Tennessee.
He was born October 31, 1873, at Medina, Orleans County, New York, the
son of George C. and Celia E. (Jackson) Brown. When he was a lad of
twelve years, the family moved to Tennessee where they located in 1885 in
Warren County, near McMinnville, where the elder Mr. Brown engaged in a
small way in the manufacture and sale of red cedar lumber. The younger
Mr. Brown attended the public schools of Warren County for a time, worked
during vacations at his father's mill, clerked in the postoffice, learned telegraphy,
worked for the Western Union Telegraph Company and for the Nashville, Chat
tanooga & Saint Louis Railway in McMinnville, until he became of age, when
he, his father and two other gentlemen formed the firm of George C. Brown
& Company to enlarge the father's cedar business and also do a general whole
sale hardwood lumber business in McMinnville. A few years later the head
quarters of the firm was moved to Nashville, and in 1907 a branch yard and
office were opened in Memphis. In 1898, on account of the failure of the
health of Mr. George C. Brown and the fact that the other partners were not
actively engaged in the business, Mr. L. E. Brown became the active manager
of the business, and since it was incorporated in 1910, at which time headquar
ters were removed to Memphis, he has been the president, the original partner
ship having been continued unbroken until that date. Mr. G. C. Brown died
in 1911 in Nashville and his widow, together with her only other child, Mrs.
Frank A. Williams, lives in the old home there. About ten years ago, Mr. Brown
became interested in the manufacture of hardwoods in Arkansas, and erected at
Proctor, Arkansas, what is considered one of the best saw mills in the country.
Mr. Brown bought for it tremendous tracts of virgin timber surpassed in
quality and yield per acre by none in the country. Most mill men in those days
valued lands only for their timber, but Mr. Brown had vision enough to realize
a tremendous farm value in addition and from the first his company has cleared
its land as fast as the timber was removed or sold it to those who would do so.
It has disposed of some ten thousand acres in that way and still owns as much in
Crittenden and St. Francis counties. He is also vice-president of the Harwell
Lumber Company of Cosgrove, Arkansas. Mr. Brown and Miss Belle Harwefl
were married in McMinnvifle, December 23, 1896. Three children have blessed
the union: Lewis Edwin, Junior, who was born September 6, 1901, and died
July 27, 1905 ; George C. and Richard Harwell Brown.

151

f. m. Canaba

JOHN WALTER CANADA, Memphis, Tennessee, one of the
leading attorneys of the South, was born on a farm near
Whitehaven, Tennessee, December 27, 1876, the son of Wil
liam Wilks and Sallie Thomas (Brewster) Canada. The
father died when he was only twenty-six years of age and the
widowed mother moved to Memphis, where she reared and
educated her children. Colonel Canada, by which title he is usually known from
his service as an officer in the Spanish-American war and later as commanding
officer of a regiment of state militia, grew up in Memphis and went to the public
schools here. Then he attended the Memphis Military Institute where the prin
cipal tutors were Professors Wharton S. Jones, Nicholas M. Williams and J. L.
Sewell, intimate association with whom in itself was a liberal education. From
there he went to Millsaps College, Jackson, Mississippi, where he received his
degree of master of arts in 1897. During the same time, he was taking his law
course at the same institution under Judge Edward Mayes, for many years
recognized as one of the great jurists and teachers of law in the United States.
With his literary and law diplomas in his pocket, he returned to Memphis, but
had to wait until he became of legal age before he could be licensed to practice
his profession. He was admitted to the Memphis bar on the first of January,
1898, but it was only a few months later when the United States and Spain
went to war over the Cuban situation. Colonel Canada had been a cadet-cap
tain at the Memphis Military Institute. He promptly enlisted and Governor
Robert L. Taylor commissioned him first lieutenant in Company L. Fourth
Tennessee Infantry, United States Volunteers. He was soon promoted to cap
tain of the company and served with the army in Cuba, most of his time being
spent at Sanctu Espiritus and at Tunas de Zaza, on the south coast of the
island. He was mustered out of the service at Savannah, Georgia, in March,
1899, and returning at once to Memphis, resumed the practice of his profes
sion. He retained his love for the military and served as lieutenant colonel and
then colonel of the Second Regiment, National Guard, State of Tennessee.
Colonel Canada confined his law work purely to civil practice and rose rapidly
in his standing at the bar. For the past fifteen years he has been in the bulk of
the big cases in the local courts. He is vice-president and general counsel of
the Union Railway Company and general counsel for the Memphis Union
Station Company. He is solicitor for the Frisco System in Tennessee and Mis
sissippi ; general attorney for the Missouri Pacific system in Tennessee ; district
attorney for the St. Louis-Southwestern Railroad, and general counsel for
the Arkansas & Memphis Railroad & Bridge Company. Colonel Canada and
Miss Emma Berry of Franklin, Tennessee, were married December 31, 1903.
They have one child, J. W., Jr.

152

'>X-V \[)OuwaA<L.

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; ILLIAM HENRY MATTHEWS, Memphis, Tennessee, one of
leading manufacturers of the South, is a Canadian by birth,
having been born in Flesherton, Ontario, July 30, 1873, the
son of the Reverend H. S. and Sarah (Carter) Matthews.
He was graduated from the high school at seventeen years of
age and from a business college at twenty. Then he went
into the insurance business where he remained three years and this was followed
by five years spent in a private bank. In 1901 he organized the First State
Bank in Boyne City, Michigan, and the following year entered upon the line
in which he has made such a success in Memphis, at the same time being the
leading factor in developing a useful industry which makes wealth from what
formerly was a waste product. It was in 1902 that he was one of the organizers
of the Boyne City Chemical Company, and the following year he look over the
active management of the concern. A year later he organized and became vice-
president and manager of the East Jordan Chemical Company. He managed
these two plants with signal success until July, 1910, when he was elected vice-
president and general manager of the Lake Superior Iron & Chemical Com
pany, with headquarters in Detroit, Michigan. In that capacity he rebuilt the
plants of the company and managed them until 1914, when he bought in north
east Memphis the plant of the Forest Products Chemical Company, selecting
Memphis as the best location for such an operation because of the large amount
of refuse product from the many saw mills here and the untold amount of hard
wood annually wasted in the rapid clearing of the land close to the city. Except
for what was burned as firewood, all of this up to that time was not only a
waste, but an item of expense both to the mill men and the owners of the land
in getting rid of it. In Mr. Matthews' plant there is not a speck of waste from
a stick of this wood, even the smoke being condensed and converted into most
useful products. The more valuable outputs of the plant are wood alcohol,
calcium acetate, charcoal, creosote, pitch and shingle stain. Many of these
products were essential to the manufacture of munitions of war and when his
adopted country cast her weight into the scales in the World War, Mr. Mat
thews volunteered his services. Being recognized as the leader in the United
States in that line of manufacture, as well as a man of sterling honesty, perfect
integrity and 100 per cent efficiency, the government availed itself of his ability
at the nominal salary of $1 per annum. Since 1908, he built for the government
the chemical plant at Collinwood, Tennessee, and the chemical plant at Shelby,
Alabama. Since the war, he has become the head of both of these concerns, each
larger than the one in Memphis. Mr. Matthews has traveled widely on this
continent and abroad. He and Miss Clara Pasmore were married June 24, 1901.

157

J. m. jfox

jESSE WILLIAM FOX, active manager of the largest cotton
plantation in the world, director of the largest establishment
in the world for the breeding of better cotton seed, and final
authority on cultivation and soil maintenance and improve
ment, passed from the director of experiment stations to the
management of the immense cotton plantation at Scott, Mis
sissippi, and from the day he took charge has shown the same capacity for
directing the army of men under him that he did in the scientific work. Mr. Fox
was born in Webster County, Mississippi, August 11, 1867, the son of Hallie
and Angeline Fox. He was educated at the Agricultural & Mechanical College
of Mississippi, University of Virginia, University of Chicago and Harvard
University. He taught school in Slate Sjjrings one year, was principal of the
public schools at West Point for a year, and was acting professor of mathematics
at the State Agricultural & Mechanical College for a year. He taught agricul
tural engineering at the Agricultural & Mechanical College for a time, and then
had charge of the farm department of that institution for two years. At the
end of that time he was sent to Sloneville in Washingon County in charge of
the Delta experiment station there. Flis cotton and fertilizer work, and general
grasp of the Delta farming situation at that station attracted the favorable atten
tion of the cotton interests, not only of the Delta, but of the entire South, and
in 1910 he accepted an invitation from the World's Cotton Conference held
at Brussels, Belgium, to address that body on the future prospects of cotton pro
duction in the South. His statements to this conference were prophetic and
should be read by every cotton producer in the South. Perhaps Mr. Fox's best
work has been with cotton. Realizing that cotton is by far the most important
crop in the South, he has bent his energies to further this great industry in
every way possible. He established the first department of scientific cotton
breeding in the South at the Mississippi Experiment Station in 1910, and placed
E. C. Ewing, a trained plant breeder, in charge. He was the first to question
the recommendations which were being made for the wide spacing of cotton
for boll weevil control. A series of spacing tests were started at the Mississippi
Experiment Station in 1910. These experiments, with others since made, have
revolutionized the question of cotton spacing. In 1906 Mr. Fox began a series
of experiments to determine the relative production of different lengths of
cotton. This work has been of a great value to the cotton producers. When
the big plantation, the Delta & Pine Land Company of Mississippi, was organized
at Scott, Mississippi, Mr. Fox was put in charge. The organization and suc
cessful operation of this big plantation has attracted the attention of the entire
cotton producing world. Mr. Fox and Miss Lucy Gay were married December
17, 1897. They have three children. Misses Francis and Virginia, and J. W.
Fox, Junior.

158

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AMUEL MOSSMAN NICKEY, Memphis, Tennessee, one of
leading hardwood lumber manufacturers of the United States,
was born in Allen County, Indiana, September 9, 1868, the
son of Addison Boyd and Orpha L. Nickey. He was grad
uated from the Methodist College in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and
at the age of nineteen years went into the lumber manufac
turing business with his father, who was one of the pioneers in that line in the
wonderful hardwood forests of Indiana which, according to the general opinion
of lumbermen, contained the finest white oak in the United States. The father
and son were associated in business together first in Auburn, Indiana, for
ten years and at the end of that period they resumed the same business on the
son's twenty-ninth birthday at Princeton, Indiana, under the name of A. B.
Nickey & Son. They operated there successfully for another period of ten
years, and then Mr. A. B. Nickey, Mr. S. M. Nickey, and another son, Mr. W. E.
Nickey, came to Memphis, organized the Green River Lumber Company and
erected on the Illinois Central Railroad and Plum Street, what was at that time
probably the best equipped saw mill in the city. From the beginning of the
operation of the mill, the company was ever in the market for the best logs
that were to be had, and the product of the mill was unsurpassed by any in the
country. In fact the senior Mr. Nickey had been a pioneer in the manufacture
of quarter-sawed oak, and also in the establishments of the present grades of
that timber by which the finer qualities brought commensurate prices. Later
they established the firm of Nickey Brothers, Incorporated, and erected at the
intersection of Summer Avenue and the eastern belt line, the most complete
veneer plant in the Mid-South. Mr. S. M. Nickey is president of the company
which owns the veneer plant and Mr. W. E. Nickey is the vice-president, their
positions being reversed in the Green River Lumber Company. Lumbermen
agree that there are not two better managed or more successful plants of their
kind in this section of the country. Some years ago the Messrs. Nickey bought
a magnificent tract of timber land in Arkansas near where the Marianna branch
of the Iron Mountain Railroad crosses Fifteen Mile Bayou, which has yielded
splendid timber for their Memphis mills and which has wonderful agricultural
value when reduced to a state of cultivation. Mr. Nickey's standing among his
fellows in Memphis is shown by the fact that he has served as president of the
Southern Hardwood Traffic Association for a most successful term. He is also
a member of the Memphis Lumberman's Club, the National Hardwood Lum
ber Association, the Memphis Chamber of Commerce, the Masons and the
Second Presbyterian Church. Mr. Nickey and Miss Lois Metsher were married
in August, 1910. They have three children: Eleanor M., Lois M. and Samuel
M., Junior.

163

m, %. ^errin

I HERE is no better proof of what foresight, energy and ambition
can accomplish in the fertile Delta lands to the south of Mem
phis, than the career of William Kennedy Herrin, of Clarks
dale, Mississippi. A native Mississippian, he was assistant
manager at the age of twenty years, for Mr. C. L. Robinson
on the magnificent land where the town of Robinsonville now
stands. Within three years he was the general manager of all of his large inter
ests there. At the end of eight years he and his brother, C. H. Herrin, rented
the entire plantation from Mr. Robinson, and operated it in connection with a
big mercantile business until 1906, when he operated his own planting business
at Robinsonville. Then he moved to Clarksdale and formed the Clark-Herrin
Company. As president of the company, he managed this large planting business
with signal success for eight years, meanwhile organizing the clothing firm of
Powers & Company. Since 1910 he has been vice-president of the Planters
Manufacturing Company, operating the big oil mill. In 1912 he was elected
one of the city commissioners and appointed police commissioner over the
mayor. Clarksdale now thanks him for the splendid and successful fight which
he won over strong opposition for taking it out of the mud, and devising the
system by which it now has become one of the best paved cities in the country.
The Clark-Herrin Company was liquidated in 1915, and Mr. Herrin, with his
brother, C. H., and his son, W. K., Jr., bought the Dorr place, adjoining the
city limits at the then fabulous price of $125.00 per acre. Now some of that
land is selling for $3,000.00 per acre, and he has established on the remainder
of the place a model farm for the breeding of the fanciest Duroc-Jersey hogs,
his foundation herd having as good blood lines as there is in the land. In 1917
he organized the Herrin Bros. Cotton Company, one of the biggest cotton
factors in the Delta. In the same year he organized the Imperial Garage,
owned by himself, his brother and his son; and built the Herrin & Landry
Building on Sunflower Avenue, which is occupied exclusively by the cotton firm
and garage. He is also a director in the Planters Bank. Under his chairman
ship the Red Cross filled every quota for Coahoma County, and ended the war
with $18,000.00 on hand, now being used for community nurses. Mr. Herrin
is the son of Mr. J. C. and Mrs. Clara Kennedy Herrin, and was educated in
Yazoo County where he was born May 12, 1867. He married Miss Sallie West,
November 6, 1891, their children being William Kennedy, Jr., Mrs. George P.
Bowmar and Miss Evelyn Waters Herrin. He is a past exalted ruler of the
Elks and president of the Rotary Club. An ardent sportsman, his home is
filled with trophies of the chase, quantities of cui)s won at fox hound field
trials and bench shows, and his pack of Walkers now probably is the best in the
United States.

164

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Sogepf) J8eal protun

^(^OSEPH NEAL BROWN, Olive Branch, Mississippi, banker,
g^ merchant, planter and one of the leading factors in the mate-
J^W rial and moral progress of the Mid-South, bereft of his father
mi at two years of age, of his older brother during the Civil War
and of his mother just at the close of that struggle, when he
was but sixteen years of age, has carved out for himself a
commanding position in his own community, at the same time being
one of its most useful members. He was born in Marshall County, Mississippi,
October 2, 1849, the son of George Washington and Ellen (Huffman) Brown.
The family had moved to Mississippi from Perry County, Tennessee, being of
pioneer stock in the Volunteer State. His grandfather was Lieutenant Joseph
Brown of Captain McMahan's com])any, Tennessee Militia, in the War of 1812
and declined the grant of land voted to all veterans of that war on the ground
that he wanted no reward for military service to his country. Mr. Brown's
father was the principal of a private school, and the lad was educated in the
private schools of his community, the Civil War interfering with his taking
a college course. Upon the death of his mother in 1865, he wound up the
affairs of the plantation and began his mercantile career as a clerk in 1868 in a
country store in his neighborhood. Two years later he bought on credit a half
interest in the business and within two years had paid for that and then bought
the other half. He conducted the business with signal success for ten years and
then, in 1882, sold it and moved to the railroad town of Olive Branch in
De Soto County and established a mercantile and cotton buying business, which
is still conducted there by Mr. Brown and his son-in-law, Mr. T. H. Norvell.
Mr. Brown's delightful personality, sterling integrity, absolute honesty and
business acumen made him successful from the start in his mercantile ventures
and during the fifty years that he has been in active business he has never
asked an extension of a credit. In 1917 he organized the Bank of Olive Branch
with a capital stock of $15,000. He owns one-third of the capital of the bank
and has been its only president. Now the bank has a surplus of $10,000 and
deposits aggregating $200,000. He is a stockholder in the Union & Planters
Bank & Trust Company and is a director in the Stewart-Gwynne Company of
Memphis. Since the reorganization of the Baptist Memorial Hospital he has
been a most useful trustee, and is senior deacon in the Baptist Church of Olive
Branch. Without having solicited a vote he was elected a member of the
Mississippi Senate, where he has been most active in legislation 'for the State
Tuberculosis Hospital at Magee, for good roads and better schools. Mr. Brown
has been married twice; first, January 3, 1877, to Miss Pattie Brooks, who died
leaving one child, Miss Pearl Rivers, now Mrs. Norvell ; and later to Miss Willie
M. Wilson on February 16, 1906.

169

€, f . Pobman

"J^ J. BODMAN, Little Rock, Arkansas, banker and leader in
movements for better farming throughout his state, is a native
E^j of Warsaw, Indiana, where he was born December 25, 1874,
^M the son of Samuel L. and Elizabeth C. Bodman. At the age
of sixteen years, after having taken a course in the grammar
^ schools at home, he came to Memphis, Tennessee, and after
a few years here, moved to Little Rock. In 1900 he entered the employ of
the Union & Mercantile Trust Company of that city as a clerk. Now he is the
active vice-president and secretary of that institution and he has been one of
the main factors in the development of the concern to a point where it is one
of the strongest financial institutions in the Mid-South, and also one of the
most useful. Mr. Bodnian, as a banker, was not content with merely receiving
deposits and discounting paper. He long ago realized that with practically of
the South's agricultural activity devoted to one crop — cotton— this great
section of the country was treading, economically, on thin ice and when the
break came with the declaration of the World War in 1914, and the entire
South lay financially prostrate, he leaped to the front as the active and efficient
propagandist of the one idea that could make the South independent for all
time and under all conditions — that is for the South to raise all its own food
for man and for beast and then what cotton it can, letting the cotton be the
surplus and money crop. In September, 1914, he organized the Arkansas
Profitable Farming Bureau and became its chairman. He made a campaign
throughout the State the like of which had never been seen. There was no
antagonism on his part to cotton per se, but a campaign for less acreage until
the surplus of that year disappeared, meanwhile making each farm as nearly
self-supporting as possible and while this was being done the land would be
rejuvenated so that the future crops of cotton would be raised with less instead
of constantly increasing cost per bale due to wearing out the lands. Mobile,
Memphis, Birmingham and Texas cities asked for help along the same lines
and Mr. Bodman went to them and aided in forming similar organizations
there. In 1915 and 1916, he was a leading figure in the formation of the
Arkansas Livestock Association, and at the 1915 and 1917 sessions of the
Arkansas Legislature he was active for appropriations for district agricultural
schools and for Texas fever cattle tick eradication. He also organized the
annual profitable farming trip on which farmers of the State visit model farms
of other sections at an expense of some $18,(X)0 to the Little Rock Business
men, bringing back new ideas which they disseminate. Mr. Bodman and Miss
Mary Wood Wright were married October 4, 1904. They have two children,
Samuel W., born in 1910, and Anne C, born in 1912.

170

Ci^

la. JF. Carr

^^^ OBERT FLETCHER CARR, president of the Union Motor
'^^A Car Company, Memphis, Tennessee, is a native of Alabama,
R^^ having been born June 29, 1876, in Butler County. He is the
\^J son of Samuel H. and Emma E. (Stuckey) Carr. He received
^\V his early education in the public schools of Montgomery,
J^^^jJ Alabama, and, at the early age of nineteen years, he entered
the employ of the Southern Railway at Binningham, Alabama, starting as a
brakeman and rapidly earning promotions to freight conductor, then passenger
conductor and trainmaster. He remained with the Southern Railway in the
last named position until 1909, when he left the Southern Railway to join the
St. Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern Railroad forces, where he remained
that year and the next in the capacity of trainmaster. In 1910 he went with
the Frisco System of railroads, first in the capacity of transportation inspector.
His rise there was rapid. In two years he was promoted to superintendent, first
having jurisdiction of the Red River division, having his headquarters at
Francis, Oklahoma; then being transferred to the gulf coast lines with his head
quarters in Kingsville, Texas, and last to the Southern division, with his
head first in Birmingham, where he had begun his successful career only a few
years previously. Later his headquarters were transferred to Memphis. His
success as an operating official was so marked that in 1917 he was promoted to
assistant general manager of the entire Frisco System, with his headquarters in
Springfield, Missouri. In addition to having become one of the most efficient
railroad men in the Memphis territory, Mr. Carr had had time to look out for
his own private affairs, and had made considerable investments in Mississippi
Delta lands in the vicinity of Drew. These had been opened up for cultivation
and had become of sufficient importance to require the major portion of his
time, and afford a handsome income without the terrific strain of the high
railroad position which he held. In August, 1918, he resigned his connection
with the Frisco System and returned to Memphis, making his home in Missis
sippi for a time while devoting his energy to his plantations. He had traveled
all over the United States, having covered at least a million miles, before decid
ing that Memphis, as the center of the Mid-.South, was the best place in which
to live and be in business. He was one of the organizers of the Union Motor
Car Company and has always been one of its stockholders. Recently he bought
large additional blocks of stock in that company and is now its president. The
firm is one of the largest and its home on Monroe Avenue and Third Street
is one of the most elaborately staged motor car businesses in the South. Mr. Carr
and Miss Ida Bell Luster were married in February, 1899. They have six
children — Earl H., Robert H., Frances K., Margaret, Ernest and Ida Bell.

175

3B, ||, Crump

jABNEY HULL CRUMP, cotton buyer, planter and breeder
of fancy live stock, like so many other successful Memphians,
is a native of Mississippi. He was born in Holly Springs,
April 3, 1873, the son of James Moore and Caroline Hatch
(Smith) Crump. He attended school in Holly Springs for a
' few years and, having moved to Memphis, went to the Market
Street public school until he completed the seventh grade. At the age of fifteen
years, he quit school and went out into the business world on his own hook.
His first job was as errand boy in a cotton shed. At sixteen he was a clerk
in the salt warehouse of Myles & Company. After three years there, he became
a clerk in Ihe merchandise brokerage firm of Hugh Pettit &. Company, but after
less than one year there he got into the line of work which suited him and in
which he has made such a signal success. It was in 1892 that he went into the
office as a clerk for the cotton-buying firm of John Sherwood & Company.
In six years there and four with Robert Woolfender & Company, he mastered
the details of the cotton-buying business, and in 1902 he became the junior
member of the firm of F. M. Crump & Company, which soon became and still
is one of the most substantial, reliable and successful cotton-buying and shipping
firms in the Mid-South. Mr. Crump has ever been not only a liberal man,
but possesses a real desire to be of service to the section in which he lives, and
knows how to do this. In his Silleba Farm, near Capleville, twelve miles east
of the city, where he and Mrs. Crump have a summer home, he has not only
made a success in breeding registered Holstein cattle and Duroc-Jersey hogs,
but was the originator in this section of the community fair idea. For years
he held a fair at his own expense with prizes, especially for boys and girls, for
all of the possible produce of the farm. Later the community joined him in
making the Silleba Fair a permanent institution and still later other sections
of the county took up the idea. The effect of his idea is instantly apparent
in any community where the fair has been given for even a few years, in the
improvement in the preparation of the seed bed, the selection of better seed,
more thorough cultivation and higher type stock, cattle, hogs and fowls, and
hence a more prosperous community. Ten years ago he and some associates
bought a big plantation at Transylvania, Louisiana, and they have demonstrated
that cotton can be raised successfully in boll weevil territory by proper and
frequent cultivation and diversification. There has not been a year since then
that the plantation has not had corn, oats and hay to sell after having fed all
hands and stock on the place. Mr. Crump is a member of the Tennessee, Mem
phis Country and Rotary clubs and the Chamber of Commerce. He and Miss
Mary Metcalf were married April 10, 1907. Their children are Dabney II., Jr.,
and Charles Metcalf Crump.

176

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Jf . iH. Crump

;RANK MILLINGTON crump, leading cotton buyer and
exporter, Memphis, Tennessee, was born near Holly Springs,
Mississippi, July 15, 1868, the son of James Moore and
Caroline Hatch (Smith) Crump. He received his education in
the public schools and in Chalmers Institute in Holly Springs,
and at the age of sixteen years came to Memphis and began
work at the bottom of the ladder, the rungs of which he has climbed by sheer
merit until he has reached the top. He began work as a clerk in 1884 in a cotton
shed, later becoming bill clerk and shipping clerk for the wholesale grocery and
cotton firms of Stewart, Gwynne & Company and Hill, Fontaine & Company,
two of the most substantial and honorable firms ever in Memphis. From 1890
to 1892, he was a cotton re-weigher. His firm promoted him to cotton classer
and buyer in 1892, and he remained in this line of work until 1896, by which
time he had become recognized as one of the best posted cotton men in the city.
Then, with his brother, Dabney H. Crump, he organized the firm of F. M.
Crump & Company, cotton buyers, of which he still is the senior partner, and
which for a number of years has stood as one of the most reliable and pro
gressive firms in that line in the entire cotton belt. He is a member of the
New York Cotton Exchange and of the Memphis Cotton Exchange, which
honored him in 1906 by electing him president of that body. His standing as
one of the best informed men in the cotton line and as a man of the highest
personal and professional character was recognized nationally in 1909 by his
appointment as a member of the committee constituted by an act of Congress
to establish the original United States standard of grades and classifications of
cotton, considered by cotton men as the greatest step in recent years for the
stabilizing of the cotton market. The Memphis market long suffered from the
lack of adequate storage and compress facilities and the annual loss to this
section of the country from damage to cotton lying for months in the rain on
the public streets was tremendous, until Mr. Crump and some associates con
ceived and executed the idea of the Memphis Terminal Corporation, which has
done so much for the local cotton market. In fact Mr. Crump for many years
has been one of the most active men in the city for every movement for the
up-building of this section of the country. He is an active member of the
Chamber of Commerce and of the Memphis Country Club, and also fond of the
fishing and shooting afforded on the preserve of the Menesha Outing Club in
Arkansas. Mr. Crump and Miss Sara Stuart Macrae, daughter of Major and
Mrs. G. W. Macrae, were married, November 17, 1908. They have three
children, Frank M., Jr., and Blanche and Sara, the last two of whom are twins.
Mr. Crump has traveled widely on this continent and makes annual European
trips for both business and pleasure.

181

i|enrj» Craft

jENRY CRAFT, Memphis, Tennessee, one of the leading attor
neys of the Mid-South, prominent in club and social circles,
living the life of a country gentlemen at "Ilillacres" in Shelby
County and operating a large cotton plantation in Crittenden
County, Arkansas, was born in Memphis at what now is
No. 872 Poplar Avenue, February 5, 1866, the son of Judge
Henry and Ella (Boddie) Craft. His father for many years prior to his death
in 1894 was one of the conspicuous figures of this section, both professionally
and socially. His mother was of the Middle-Tennessee branch of the old
Boddie family, her father, Elijah Boddie, having been the wealthiest and most
influential man in Sumner County, Tennessee, during his day. Mr. Craft
received his literary education at the Southwestern Presbyterian University in
Clarksville, Tennessee, where he was graduated in 1884. Returning to Memphis,
he went to work for McDavitt, James & Company, wholesale grocers and cotton
factors. During the three years that he worked for that concern, he read law
under the direction of his father at night. He was admitted to the bar on
February 5, 1887, and the year following became the junior member of the firm
of Craft & Craft. His experience in the commercial world naturally led him
to specialize in that branch of law. He enjoyed a lucrative practice from the
beginning, as clients were quick to recognize his grasp of the law and to appre
ciate his painstaking care of every interest intrusted to him. Since the death
of his father he has formed no other partnership. His clientele has grown
steadily until now it is one of the best and most lucrative in the Mid-South,
purely civil and largely confined to his office. Mr. Craft has never sought
public oHice, nor taken any part in politics beyond the duty of every good
citizen but in 1911 he was appointed for special service as a justice of the
Supreme Court of Tennessee. One of the most conspicuous cases decided by
him in that capacity was the reversal of the first degree murder verdicts against
eight men in the Reelfoot Lake nightrider cases. He served for a year each
as president of the Tennessee Club and of the Colonial Country Club, the latter
of which is located near his country home "Hillacres," where he, Mrs. Craft,
and their younger children lead a delightful life and which he is rapidly develop
ing not only into a beautiful country residence but also to a high state of
productivity. He also owns four thousand acres of land at Proctor, Arkansas,
some of which came into the family thirty years ago at $2.50 per acre and some
of which he recently bought in a wild state at $75 per acre. He and Miss Emma
Galloway, daughter of the late Mr. and Mrs. Charles B. Galloway, were married
July 21, 1891. Their children are: Miss Charlotte O., now Mrs. John D. War-
field; Miss Margaret, now Mrs. H. Curtis Dewey; Henry, Jr., and Miss Ellen
Douglass.

182

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4)AaJ4

» J. Briber

[HE Honorable William Joshua Driver, Osceola, Arkansas,
representative in the National Congress from the First District
of Arkansas, has, since the days of his youth, been one of the
strongest factors for the material and moral development of
his section of the State. He was born in Osceola, March 2,
1873, the son of John B. and Margaret (Bowen) Driver. His
father had moved to the Saint Francis Basin of Arkansas from Georgia,
where from the time that he arrived in the new country he had been one of the
most prominent figures in every movement for the progress of the community.
The son was educated in Osceola, finishing the high school there in 1891. Then
he read law in the office of Judge George W. Thomason in his native town and
on May 1, 1894, was admitted to the bar of Mississippi County. His first con
spicuous service for the community was in connection with the early days of
the Saint Francis levee system. The district had recently been organized and
was without means. He rode on horseback from one end of Mississippi County
to the other and secured without charge to the levee board the right of way for
the line through that county. Three years after his admission to the bar the
Democrats of his county sent him to Little Rock as a member of the legislature,
where he served for two terms as a valuable member of that body. Here he
secured the donation of the State lands within the levee district to the district,
and the first bond issue authorized for levee building. He is also the author of
the act creating the Chancery Court of his district. In 1911 he was elected
judge of the Second Judicial circuit of Arkansas, where he made a reputation
of which any man might well be proud. During his incumbency as judge of
that circuit, his territory was experiencing its most rapid transition, much of it
from a wilderness to a state of high cultivation. Timbermen were everywhere
and they were closely followed by men clearing and cultivating the land. Many
good men thought that they could not get or keep labor without permitting the
operation of "honk-a-tonks," where both colors and sexes drank, gambled and
danced together and where the gamut of crime was run nightly. Judge Driver
stopped these and labor was equally as plentiful and far more efficient. He was
a terror to the Mississippi River liquor boats and to the whisky pirates on the
islands. His administration of the civil law was equally as efficient and useful
to the community. He was a member of the State Constitutional Convention of
1918. In 1920 he ran for Congressman in the First Arkansas District as a
Democrat endorsing fully the Wilson administration, and, although opposed by
a number of strong men from various counties in the district, carried every one
of the eleven counties. He is a Knight Templar, Scottish Rite Shriner and Elk.
Judge Driver and Miss Clara Haynes were married June 2, 1897. They have
one son, William J., Junior.

187

3facoli (@olbs;mitl)

)ACOB GOLDSMITH, head of the enormous department store
which 'bears his name, which is second to none between
St. Louis and New Orleans ; which in integrity is second to
none in the land ; which has six hundred employes, a dozen of
whom have been with the company continuously for from a
third to nearly half a century, and which last year bought the
palatial structure which it occupies on Main Street and Gayoso Avenue, spent
his first six months in Memphis working for his board, and then earned his
first American money working at $10 per month and his "keep." Born in
Baden, Germany, February 3, 1850, the son of Frederick and Sophia Goldsmith,
and having attended the schools there, he was but seventeen years of age when
his mother's brother, Louis Ottenheimer, then a merchant in Memphis, visited
the old home. He liked the looks of the lad, and accounts of Memphis induced
the then young Jacob to return with him. He landed in Memphis in 1867 and
went to work for the firm of Ottenheimer & Schwartz on Beale Street. His
friends laughingly say that it was a Jacob-Laban bargain, as he married his
employer's daughter. Miss Dora Ottenheimer, July 22, 1875. Their children
are: Miss Sophie, Mrs. Fanny Ottenheimer of Baltimore, Frederick, Elias J.,
Leo, Mrs. Aline Newman, and Mrs. Sadie G. Herzberg, and he has twelve
grand-children, one of whom is married. After three years of clerkship,
Mr. Goldsmith and his brother, Isaac, organized the firm of I. Goldsmith & Bros.,
with $500 capital, but it had a real merchant behind this small amount of money.
It moved into the Magevney Block on Main Street in 1881. Notwithstanding
the death of his brother in 1885, Mr. Goldsmith, although having bought his
interest in the business, continued the same firm name until 1904, when with
his three sons he incorporated the present firm of J. Goldsmith & Sons Company.
Four years previously the business had expanded to the point where the present
building was erected for it and in 1919 the company bought it. The apprecia
tion of the public for the high class of goods and the courteous treatment that
it receives at Goldsmith's is reflected in the constantly growing volume of busi
ness. The only semi-public office that Mr. Goldsmith ever sought was when
he was elected a vice-president of the Chamber of Commerce. He is a member
of the City and Rex clubs, the B'nai B'rith, an Odd Fellow for forty years,
a charter member of Progress Lodge, K. of P., organized in 1886, and the
Congregation Children of Israel, where he holds the second office — warden.
He is a director in the Manhattan Savings Bank & Trust Company, the First
National Bank, Wm. R. Moore Dry Goods Company, Memphis Hotel Company,
and the Gibraltar Coal Company. He was a heavy purchaser of all the [.liberty
Loans, and donor to the new Jewish Temple and the proposed Jewish Hospital,
as he has been to all charitable movements in Memphis for many years.

188

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M. ^. ^alliba?

I ILLIAM PARKER HALLIDAY, financier, Memphis, Ten
nessee, was born in Cairo, Illinois, August 6, 1865, the son of
William P. and Eliza W. Halliday. He was graduated in 1883
from the Pennsylvania Military Academy at Chester, Pennsyl
vania, and returning home in the fall of that year went to
work in November as a collector for the City National Bank.
Following this he became secretary to the firm of Halliday Brothers, which was
for years one of the leading firms of Cairo. Then he was in the employ for a
time of the Chicago & Northwestern Railroad under Mr. Marvin Hughitt, the
president of the company. He and Mr. Hughitt were chatting one Sunday in
December, 1888, and Mr. Hughitt stated that if he were a young man he would
go either to Birmingham, Alabama, or to Memphis, Tennessee, where they
dug millions of dollars each month out of the earth, referring to the iron mines
of the Alabama city and to the cotton of the Memphis territory. That the
suggestion made an impression on the mind of Mr. Halliday is shown by the fact
that on January 3, 1889, he landed in Memphis, where for many years he has
been one of the leading figures in the financial, industrial and social life of the
community. He engaged in the banking business here during the first few years,
and in 1892, he, the late Robertson G. Morrow and a few others, organized
the Memphis Furniture Manufacturing Company, of which Mr. Morrow was
president until the time of his death and Mr. Halliday vice-president. They
developed this to where the Memphis and its allied concerns compose the largest
furniture manufacturing business in the world. In the meanwhile the old
Gayoso Hotel burned, leaving the Peabody Hotel, then but a fraction of its
present size, as the only first-class hostelry in the city. The Hallidays long had
owned a hotel in Cairo and Mr. Halliday, together with Stuyvesant Fish, the
late Jerome Hill and the late L. P. Parker, manager of the Halliday Hotel in
Cairo, organized the Memphis Hotel Company, of which Mr. Halliday is first
vice-president, bought the old Gayoso site and erected the ])resent building.
Later the Hotel Chisca was erected, the Peabody Hotel remodeled, and Mr. Halli
day and his associates organized the Chickasaw Hotel Company, in which the
former hotel rivals of the city joined forces in the operation of the Gayoso,
Peabody and Chisca. Mr. Halliday also recently bought the Fransioli Hotel.
He also made heavy and profitable investments in Delta cotton lands. He is a
member of the leading social clubs and business organizations, and his recreation
is on the duck marshes of Arkansas, where he is one of the best shots. Mr. Halli
day was married November 10, 1892, to Miss Anne Pillow Ridley of Columbia,
Tennessee, a descendant of two of the oldest and most distinguished families in
the state. Their children are William P. II, William P. HI, and Anne Pillow.

193

C. i9. (grosibenor

; HARLES NILES GROSVENOR, for many years one of the
most active factors in the material development of Memphis,
Tennessee, and, during his nearly seventy years of residence
here, one of the city's most partiotic citizens, ever a true
friend and a most delightful companion, is a native of Mem
phis, having been born here November 23, 1852. He is the
son of Henry Merrill and Martha (Niles) Grosvenor, his father having been
in his day the leading merchant in the furniture business of the city. His mother
was the daughter of Charles Niles, for whom the son was named. Mr. Gros
venor grew up in Memphis during the Civil War and the unsettled state of
aft'airs which followed in its wake. His father died in 1869, and he was able to
secure only the educational advantages offered by the schools of the city. How
ever, the culture and refinements of his early home-life were followed by wide
reading on his part and such associations as have resulted in his being a man of
unusually broad information and delightful personality. When but a lad,
Mr. Grosvenor became associated with the late Col. John Overton, Jr., who
had just returned from service in the Confederacy under General Forrest and
gone into the real estate business in Memphis, mainly looking after the large
estate of his father, whose father was the prime mover in the laying out of
the City of Memjjhis. In 1880, Colonel Overton and Mr. Grosvenor formed
the partnership of Overton & Grosvenor, which for many years was the leading
firm of real estate dealers in Memphis, and one of the most active factors in
the rapid development of Memphis in the years which followed that time.
Mr. Grosvenor's attention to his business was so intense that in 1897 he suffered
a breakdown which necessitated his retiring from the firm and going West to
recuperate. He spent two years in Texas and Arizona, putting the same deter
mination in the quest for health that he had in his business and during that
time camped, living in a tent and did not spend a night sleeping in a house. At
the end of two years he was completely restored and returned to Memphis,
where he resumed the real estate business, but almost entirely in looking after
his own properties. During the more active days of his career, he was a director
in the Union & Planters Bank and in the company which built out Madison
Avenue the dummy line which later became the first electric line in the cit\\
He was also active in establishing the dummy line which became the Suburban
street car line and one of the principal owners of the Chickasaw Land Company,
which owned three thousand acres of land in South Memphis. Mr. Grosvenor
was married December 30, 1885, to Miss Olivia Polk Hill, daughter of Mr. and
Mrs. Napoleon Hill. They have three children: Napoleon Hill, Charles N., jr.,
and Miss Olivia, now Mrs. Marion G. Evans.

194

£S3^f^

aa. Jg, iUcMilliamg

[HEN one starts to think of the builders of the Upper Delta
section of the Mid-South, the mind naturally turns to Robert
Nesbith McWiHiams, of Farrell and Clarksdale, Mississippi.
He went to Coahoma County twenty-six years ago with a total
of $6.50 in cash and now owns one hundred and twenty-five
acres of $200-land for each dollar that he took there, with an
equal amount of other property. Born in Montgomery County, Mississipi, June 8,
1863, the son of Hugh Ferguson and Mary J. McWilliams, he went to the county
common and high schools and later took a short college course in north-western
Texas. Returning to Mississippi in 1894, he managed for planters for three
years, finally rising to the salary of $50 per month. But it was in 1897 that he
commenced his real constructive work when he took a partnership with two
Georgians in the land where the magnificent Humber plantation now is. It was
then a wilderness of blue cane and timber. He literally went into the woods
and with that Napoleonic industry and capacity for organization and manage
ment which have characterized his entire career, opened the land for the plow
and maintained the same high steam pressure in its cultivation. He established
the first rural postal route in Coahoma County and the first telephone on a rural
route. He soon bought his associates out of their share of the Humber planta
tion and added the Burk plantation to it until now he owns and cultivates 8,000
acres of the finest land that a crow ever flew over. His home there is as modern
as any in a city, with its electric lights and artesian water. He recently refused
$750,000 for the Humber place alone. But even Mr. McWilliams' iron consti
tution and steel nerves could not withstand the strain that he was putting upon
them and he was compelled to spend the summer of 1914 on Mackinac Island,
Michigan, to recover from a nervous breakdown. Returning he soon built the
McWilliams Building and organized the Delta Bank & Trust Company, with an
initial capital and surplus of $110,000. Now it has $250,000 and two millions
in deposits, while the building is valued at $450,000. The next year he built
the adjoining theater and department store. In the last three years he has
bought $800,000 worth of property. Now he is building a million dollar hotel,
to be eight stories high, with accommodations for eight hundred guests, bath and
ice water in each room, up to the minute in every respect, with a bungalow on
the roof for himself and his family. These are but a few of his many outside
enterprises. Mr. McWilliams is a Methodist. He was married December 28,
1887, to Miss Kate Cartledge. They have five living children : R. N. Jr., G. L.,
Miss Bessie, Miss Kathleen, who is now Mrs. Harry S. Moore, and Miss Marion,
in honor of whom her father named his theater.

199

3r. JF» iilcS>b3epn

lAMES FERGUSON McSWEYN, Memphis, Tennessee, one of
the best posted lumber manufacturers in the United States, was
born in Glengarry County, Ontario, January 15, 1855, the son
of Malcolm and Christine (Ferguson) McSweyn, both from
Scotland. He attended the public schools until he was eleven
years of age, and then being thrown on his own resources, went
to work in a general store in a small lumber town at the salary of $3.50 per
week. He remained there for three years and then when a lad of but fourteen
years of age he went into the great white pine forests of the Far North, assisting
in the manufacture of that beautiful timber. When that winter's snows melted
and the streams went out of their banks the following spring, Mr. McSweyn
took part for the first time in the driving of timber down the rivers. It was the
most thrilling life imaginable and held that strange fascination which constant
playing face to face with death ever holds for the full-blooded young man, but
in speaking now to his friends of his river experiences, Mr. McSweyn adds,
"I do not suppose that I would care much for it now." During the time that
Mr. McSweyn followed the life of the woodsman, he served as axman for a
party which was surveying the line for a railroad in 1874 through sixty-five miles
of green pine timber in which there was no sign of any ax having preceded that
wielded by Mr. McSweyn. Within ten years from the time of the survey, every
merchantable tree had disappeared from that forest. When Mr. McSweyn was
eighteen years of age he moved to Saginaw, Michigan, then in its prime as a
white pine manufacturing center. He continued for some time in the occupa
tion of woodsman, river driver and saw mill hand and foreman of lumber camp;
and drives always in the white pine line until 1893, when he entered the hard
wood business in Grand Rapids, in which line he has continued to the present
time. In 1879 Mr. McSweyn and Mrs. Laura E. Gibbons were married. She
died in 1888, leaving two children, George and Miss Jessie, now Mrs. D. C.
Shattuck, both residing in Memphis. Mr. McSweyn and Miss Iva Baldwin were
married in 1900. They have three children, James M., Katherine and Ruth.
He is also the proud ancester of five grand-children. Mr. McSweyn came to
Memi)his in 1906 when he and Mr. George McSweyn became financially inter
ested in the formation of the Memphis Saw Mill Company, This comi)any was
reorganized in 1913, with the father as president and the son as vice-president
and the name changed to the Memphis Band Mill Company. There is no phase
of the lumber business, from the stump to the consumer, in which Mr. McSweyn
has not had exi)erience. He is a member of the Chamber of Commerce, Rotary,
Colonial, Country and Lumbermen's clubs, president of the latter in 1917,
American and National Hardwood Lumber associations, Southern Hardwood
Traflic Association and Southern Alluvial Land Association.

200

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TERLING ADOLPHUS WITHERS, planter, merchant, man
ufacturer and political leader. Tunica, Mississippi, is a member
of one of the oldest, most cultured and most active families
in the northern position of the State. He was born in Her
nando, De Soto County, November 13, 1877, the son of John
Paxton and Ada Byron (Thompson) Withers. After having
received a common school education at home, he went through Nelson's Business
College in Memphis and at the age of twenty years moved to the Delta portion
of his native county where he began life for himself as a merchant at Lake
Cormorant and planting one hundred acres of land near there. The start was
not a large one, but he put into it an immense amount of industry and the high
degree of efficiency which has characterized his entire career. He prospered
in Lake Cormorant to the point where, in 1900, he moved to Tunica County, and
leased some six hundred acres of land at O. K., a landing on the Mississippi
River. There he had an opportunity for his splendid qualities to show and his
development was rapid. The following year he rented three hundred acres more,
and he farmed both tracts to the top limit. The next year he bought twelve hun
dred acres, part of which was in cultivation and the remainder of which he
began clearing rapidly. Now he and his father own some three thousand acres,
about half of which is in cultivation. Mr. Withers is president of the Planters
Oil Mill in Tunica, a $125,000 concern and is also a director in the Citizens Bank
of Tunica, as he has been since its organization in 1916. He represented Tunica,
Coahoma and Quitman counties in the State Senate during the Brewer adminis
tration and was the guest of the governor in the executive mansion during the
sessions of the legislature. He served his county for four years as a member
of the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta (Upper) Levee Board, and has served the entire
district in every period of high water for the past twenty years in personally
patrolling the levee in his neighborhood, taking a sector so long that no one but
a man of his wonderful physique could cover it twice daily on horseback and one
of his rare executive capacity could handle. He was chairman for the Red Cross
during the war in his county and now is chairman of the county executive com
mittee. He was vice-president and secretary of the Council of Defense during
the war and is chairman of the American Protective League, with enough courage
for any action that might have been necessary under the one and may be required
in the other line. He is also secretary and treasurer of the Tunica Business
Men's Club. He is an Elk, a Mason, member of the Tunica Gun Club, the Moon
Lake Country Club, and was a member of the old Chickasaw Guards Club of
Memphis. His favorite recreation is riding to the hounds and he is always at
the kill of either deer or fox.

205

m. f . C. Proofed

lOSIAH CLINTON BROOKS, physician, planter, merchant
and capitalist, Deeson, Mississippi, is a pioneer of that section
of Bolivar County and one of the most successful business men
in the Delta. He is a native of Alabama, having been born in
Huntsville, January 4, 1855. He attended Vanderbilt Univer
sity at Nashville, where he completed his medical course and
studied literature in Sumit, Alabama, receiving his diploma as doctor of medi
cine in 1880. When twenty-five years of age, he went at once to the Mississippi
Delta and settled at Concordia, in the northern part of Bolivar County. He
took post-graduate courses at the Tennessee University and at Bellevue in New
York. There was little settlement then in that section of the country except on
the high bank of the river and the banks of some of the alluvial bayous. He
spent nine years at Concordia practicing his profession with signal success. At
the end of that time the Riverside district of the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley
Railroad was being constructed and he moved from the river front back to
Deeson on the railroad right-of-way. At that time there was one residence
where the city of Deeson now stands, owned by Sydney Deeson, for whom the
place is named. The only other evidence of civilization consisted of a number
of negro shacks. But the virgin timber was ripe for the ax, and the fertile land
eager for the plow, and the early settlers, like himself, were virile men. About
the time that the United States and Spain disagreed. Dr. Brooks bought his first
Delta land, eighty acres, for two hundred and forty dollars. Dr. Brooks would
not sell this original eighty acres now for any price. His friends differ on
whether he considers it a nest egg or the goose that has laid so many golden
eggs, but he simply says that he will keep it because it was his first cotton land
in the Delta. However, neighboring lands inferior to this for which he paid
three dollars per acre, now sell easily for more than twice as much per acre as
he paid for the entire eighty acres. His first bale of cotton was sold in Mem
phis on the day that Dewey broke the proud Castilian heart by his victory in
Manila bay, and he adopted the name "Dewey" as the trademark for his cotton.
His holdings now aggregate seven thousand acres, including the Parks Planta
tion and Brooksland, where he lives and conducts his mercantile business. He
is a stockholder in the Newburger Cotton Company of Memphis, Tennessee,
Planters Bank, Delta Grocery & Cotton Company, Delta Bank & Trust Com
pany and the Peoples Compress Company of Clarksdale, Mississippi, and has
stock in several other small banks through the Delta. He and Miss Annie Wal
worth, daughter of Major Walworth, and niece of General Martin of Natchez,
Mississippi, married April 24, 1889. Their children are Douglas W. Brooks,
Margaret Barnard, now Mrs. W. T. Wynn of Greenville, Mississippi, and
Annie Clinton, now Mrs. John W. Palmer of Memphis, Tennessee.

206

h .ip /d

3a. Z. Jf ant

[ICE TURNER FANT, lawyer, planter and capitalist, Memphis,
Tennessee, like so many other prominent men of Memphis,
R(&5v was born and reared in Mississippi. His father, James W.
^V Fant, was one of the colony of gentlemen who settled in
Marshall County, Mississippi, at an early date and developed
there an ante-bellum civilization in which any country might
well take pride. He was a large planter and slave-holder, and gave four sons
to the Confederacy, two of whom never returned. Mr. Fant's mother was Eliza
M. Fant. Mr. Fant was born near Holly Springs, June 28, 1860. After having
attended the public and private schools at home, he went to the University of
Mississippi at Oxford, and, after having completed his course there, he studied
law and was admitted to the bar at Holly Springs in October, 1881, at the age
of twenty-one, as a partner of an older brother, the late Judge James T. Fant.
From the start the firm was a success, and during the time that it existed it
ranked at the head of the law firms of Northern Mississippi, both for the ability
of the members in their profession and for their high character and absolute
integrity. From the beginning of his career, Mr. Fant had a bent for business
law and later for business and finance itself. During the time that he was in
Holly Springs, he was president of the Bank of Holly Springs, one of the oldest
and most substantial financial concerns in the State of Mississippi. He also took
a lively interest in the public affairs of his State, never holding any political
office, but always vigorous and effective for what was best in principle and per
sonality in every campaign. He served his State as delegate to the Democratic
National Convention in 1892. Seeking a broader field for his activities, Mr. Fant
moved to Memphis in 1897, continuing the practice of law and immediately
taking a high position at the bar, as well as in the better social and political life
of the community. Gradually he began devoting more and more of his time
and attention to business and finance and less to the practice of his profession.
Some years ago he became connected with the syndicate which, with large Eng
lish backing, bought lands about Scott, Mississippi, and, as the Mississippi Delta
Planting Company, became the largest planters of cotton in the world, as well
as doing a great deal of experimental work, the benefit of which is given freely
to the world. Now Mr. Fant has retired almost entirely from the practice of
his profession, and devotes his time to his planting, mercantile and financial
interests. He and Miss Elizabeth Lewis Hull, who is a grand-daughter of the
late Justice A. M. Clayton of the Mississippi Supreme Court and one of the
distinguished jurists of the State, were married March 4, 1886. Their chil
dren are Mrs. W. H. Fortune and Arthur C. Fant, an attorney. Mr. Fant is a
member of the Memphis Country Club and Chamber of Commerce.

211

0. Jf. plebs^oe

I SCAR FITZALAN BLEDSOE, Grenada, Mississippi, one of
the oldest planters in the Mississippi Delta, is a native of
Columbus, Mississippi, where he was born April 8, 1840, the
son of Oscar Fitzalan and Mary (Hardwick) Bledsoe. His
family had migrated from Virginia to North Carolina in
Colonial days, where Colonel Anthony Bledsoe in command
of Western North Carolina cavalry did valiant service to the Revolution.
Thence they went with Robertson to Tennessee in the Indian days, fought to
maintain the Nashville settlement and had a county in the Volunteer State
named for them. His father had served in the Tennessee State Legislature and
in the Seminole War under Andrew Jackson, and at an early date moved to
Mississippi where he practiced law and became a considerable planter and slave
holder in the Tombigbee River country, now Lowndes County. However, four-
cent cotton depleted his estate to the point where in 1849 he mounted a mule and
rode west almost the entire width of the State settling at what is now Shellmound
on the right bank of the Yazoo River in the upper part of LeFlore County.
There he acquired some eight hundred acres of land for twenty-five to fifty
cents per acre and it is said that the cost of the log cabin that he had built on
the place was in excess of the entire cost of the land. The place still remains
in the family and the land is worth some $200.00 per acre. The father died
in 1854 leaving as an estate for the son only the Shellmound Plantation, but
little of which then was in cultivation. Mr. Bledsoe struggled manfully and
with ultimate success to acquire an education in letters and in law from the
meager income from the plantation. He attended the public schools in Columbus
and the old Franklin Academy and then went to the University of Mississippi
where he was graduated with first honors in I860 and was taking his law course
when the Civil War began. He served the Confederacy with signal bravery
for four years, tried to practice law in Memphis but found times so hard that
he had to sell his watch to pay his board, taught school at McNutt, Mississippi,
finally finished his law course at Oxford, practiced there and at Columbus, moved
to Grenada in 1870 where he lived until 1892, managing his Shellmound Plan
tation from there, and then moved to the plantation, where he remained until
1900 in active charge of the property and developing it greatly. Then he turned
it over to his son, Oscar Fitzalan, Junior, and returned to Grenada, where he
still makes his home, hale and hearty in the full enjoyment of his eighty useful
years and managing personally the thousand acres of land which he owns in
the lowlands adjacent to Yalobusha River. He was married first November
22, 1866, and later June 17, 1869, to Miss Sallie Vinson Cannon. They had
three children, Oscar Fitzalan Bledsoe, Junior, alone surviving.

212

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(B. Jf. Plebgoe, Jr.

SCAR FITZALAN BLEDSOE, JUNIOR, planter, Shell
mound, Mississippi, is the present active representative of one
of the oldest and most vigorous families in the State, living on
land which his grandfather opened with his slaves in 1849. He
was born in Grenada, Mississi])pi, September 7, 1878, the son
of Oscar Fitzalan, and Sallie Vinson (Cannon) Bledsoe. He
was educated at the Agricultural & Mechanical College at Starkville, Missis
sippi, taking a special course there in engineering and pursuing that course fur
ther at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. At the age of twenty
years, he went to Shellmound where his father owned a plantation which the
father's father had first cleared and began planting and merchandising. He
acquired at the start some twenty-three hundred acres from his father, about
half of which was in cultivation. Mr. Bledsoe put such a high degree of energy
and efficiency into the work that now he has more than doubled the size of the
original plantation and he has fully three-fourths of it in cultivation. In addi
tion to his large land holdings, Mr. Bledsoe is a director and stockholder in a
number of the larger and most successful manufacturing and wholesale firms
in LeFlore County. He is a member of the House of Representatives of the
State of Mississippi from LeFlore County for the term of four years following
1920. When the World War came on, Mr. Bledsoe \va.s not of the right age to
be accepted for service in the field, but he upheld the traditions of his family
by putting his time and his fortune in the scales at home. He was sales director
for every one of the campaigns in his county for the Liberty and Victory loans.
Red Cross drives and offerings of War Savings Stamps, and he carried each of
these far over the top. His family dates back in America to 1704, when George
Bledsoe died in Northumberland County, Virginia. Four generations back of
him the sturdy members of the family came with Robertson and Donelson down
the Cumberland River and a monument near Gallatin, Tennessee, bears witness
to this day to their prowess as Indian fighters, the inscriptions on it being :
"July 20, 1788, Colonel Anthony Bledsoe killed this date at Bledsoe's Lick" and
"April 9, 1793, Colonel Isaac Bledsoe killed this date at Bledsoe's Fort." Both
of these men were of the famous Long Hunters and it is for the members of
this family that the county of Bledsoe in Tennessee is named. Mr. Bledsoe is
a member of the Methodist Church and while at Vanderbilt was a member of
Beta Pi Chapter of the Greek Letter Alpha Tau Omega fraternity. He and
Miss Lulu Aldridge of Mississippi were married March 17, 1903. They have
three children. Lulu Bledsoe ; O. F. Bledsoe IV, and Katherine Vinson Bledsoe,
who have the distinction of having the paintings of two of their great-grand
fathers. Senators Jesse Speight and James Z. George, in the Hall of Fame at
Jackson, Mississippi.

217

Clias; (gateg
EW, if any, members of the Tennessee bar have had their
ability so generally recognized in so short a time after having
been admitted to practice as has Elias Gates, and it was solely
his ability to interpret the law and apply it to the facts in each
case that won him that recognition and brought the magnificent
practice which he has enjoyed for many years. But he
brought with him to the bar a splendid educational equipment in an erudite
mind, a sincere ambition to go to the bottom of each case as well as to the top of
his profession, and an enormous capacity for work. Born on August 19, 1873,
at Des Arc, Arkansas, the son of Ferdinand and Sallie Mayer Gates, he attended
the public schools of his native town. From 1884 to 1890, he was a pupil in the
public schools of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and was a member of the ninety-
sixth class in Philadelphia's Central High School. He then went to the Univer
sity of Pennsylvania, where he received his degree of bachelor of philosophy in
1894. Three years later he had earned the degree of bachelor of laws from
Harvard Law School, and at once moved to Memphis, where, in 1897, he began
the practice of law. In 1904 he became a member of the law firm of Lehman,
Gates & Lehman, and for years the late Leopold Lehman, past master of com
mercial and business law, then gradually retiring, was his Gamaliel. In 1911
the firm became Lehman, Gates & Martin, and in 1915, Gates & Martin, which
it remained until the end of 1919. Few lawyers appear so seldom in court, and
few have such a clientele seeking advice on legal phases of commercial and
financial activities, the drafting and interpretation of contracts, the settlement of
estates and the transfer of real estate. Mr. Gates has never sought nor held
political office, but has been highly honored by his associates in his profession.
He is a member of the Tennessee Bar Association ; was president of the Lawyers'
Club in 1918, was vice-president for Tennessee of the American Bar Association
for 1919-1920; was chairman of the legal advisory board, division two, Shelby
County, during the war; and is vice-president and a director of the Memphis
Bar & Law Library Association. He is chairman of the general committee in
charge of organizing and promoting the Jewish Hospital Association, and has
been a trustee of the Congregation Children of Israel since 1913. He was presi
dent of the Young Men's Hebrew Association from 1902 to 1904; president of
the Rex Club from 1912 to 1914, and has been president of the Egyptians since
1917. Still Mr. Gates finds time for reading and studying the legal classics.
He and Miss Theresa Cecilia Hexter were married April 18, 1905. They have
two children, Elizabeth Sarah Gates and Marian Henrietta Gates.

218

James! Cbtuarb g>tarfe

I AMES EDWARD STARK went into the lumber business in
Chicago, where he was born, spent his early years in it and
an allied line, and now may well be said to be at the top of it.
The son of James Henry and Mrs. Phebe Eliza Stark, he was
born June 24, 1868, and attended the public schools in Chicago.
In 1884, he went with the Lumber Exchange in Chicago, and
after four years with that concern he connected himself with the Lumber Trade
Journal, where he spent two years. In 1890, he joined the active forces of
George T. Houston & Company, of Chicago. He came South and spent five
years with Houston Brothers, then located at Bigbee, Mississippi. He moved to
Memphis in 1899, and three years later organized the firm of James E. Stark &
Company, Inc., which took a high stand from the first in this great lumber mar
ket and has grown steadily until it ranks second to none. From the first he
made a specialty of buying high grade lumber from the mills of the surrounding
territory, and through strict business integrity, first in wholesaling, later in
manufacturing hardwood lumber, veneers, flooring and other similar products,
has established a business of enviable reputation, both in the domestic, as well as
the foreign markets of the world. First, in connection with his export business,
which has grown to tremendous proportions, and later for pleasure, Mr. Stark
has spent many seasons in Europe and traveled time and again all over it. He
has also crossed the Pacific Ocean and cruised the beautiful green Caribbean Sea,
visiting the main cities of Central America. As his original business of James
E. Stark & Company, Inc., prospered financially, as well as in volume, Mr. Stark
began to branch out into other lines of lumber. Fie is not only president of the
original firm, but also of the Memphis Veneer & Lumber Company, president
of the Memphis Hardwood Flooring Company and vice-president of the Ten
nessee Hoop Company. He is one of the most active members of the Southern
Hardwood Traffic Association, having been president of that organization during
the years of 1917, 1918 and 1919. There he was of great, value to the entire
lumber trade, for his work in organizing the different departments of that asso
ciation and securing a fair and proper adjustment of lumber rates and rules
governing them with the transportaion companies. He is a member of the Ten
nessee Club, Memphis Country Club, Chamber of Commerce and the Lumber
men's Club. Leading factor as Mr. Stark has been in the development of the
lumber industry he still has had time to be equally as effective in all general
movements for the development of the community. He was married first in
Chicago in 1898 to Miss Jessica Houston, and after her death married to Miss
Marion Hatch, also of Chicago. His children are James Edward, Jr., and
Misses Jessica and Sarah Stark.

223

. 3^. J|umpf)rep

I ILLIAM RIVERIUS HUMPHREY, planter, cotton shipper,
banker, compress operator, and public spirited citizen of Green
wood, Mississippi, was born in Guilford, Chenango County,
New York, July 26, 1869, the son of George Frederick and
Matilda M. (Osborn) Humphrey. At the age of twelve years
he went to work in a flag stone quarry, and he put in his time
there and in farming in Chenango County until he was nineteen years of age,
securing what education he could at the common schools and at a business
college between the times that he was working. Then he taught school for a
time and at the age of twenty-one years he came south, stopping at Vicksburg,
Mississippi, where he worked for two seasons in the cotton office of John
Thompson & Company as bookkeeper. He moved to Greenwood late in 1894,
where he and Major M. C. Humphrey established the firm of Humphrey &
Company and began the buying and shipping of cotton. The firm started in a
small way, handling but three thousand bales the first year, but the high degree
of energy, efiiciency and sterling honesty which Mr. Humphrey put into it from
the beginning has sent it steadily to the front until now the firm does a business
of some 150,000 bales per annum. This is mainly in benders and the extra
staples. Major Humphrey died in 1910 and since that time Mr. Humphrey has
conducted the business as sole owner. Now the firm has fifteen buying branches,
mainly in Mississippi, but also extending into Tennessee and Texas, while it
maintains selling offices in New Bedford, Massachusetts, and in Liverpool,
England. In this connection Mr. Humphrey is a member of the New York
and New Orleans Cotton exchanges and an associate member of the Liverpool
Cotton Exchange. He is president of the Shellmound Plantation Company,
planting forty-eight hundred acres of cotton, and of the Taconic Plantation
Company, planting a thousand acres. He is president of the Sunflower Com
press Company at Indianola, and of the Rosedale Compress Company ; vice-
president of the Greenwood Compress & Storage Company ; director in the
Tallahatchie Compress Company; president of the Humphrey-Coker Seed Com
pany of Hartsville, South Carolina, and Greenwood ; of the Lawrence Printing
Company, and the Schilling Auto Company of Greenwood, and a director in
the Greenwood Bank & Trust Company. As president of the Greenwood Cham
ber of Commerce he is one of the most active factors in the growth of the com
munity. He is also a member of the Presbyterian Church, a Rotarian, an
Elk and a Knight of Pythias. When the Delta Bank failed in 1913, Mr. Hum
phrey through a sense of moral obligation although not legally liable, cast his
entire personal fortune into the scale. He gave up a quarter of a million dollars
but every depositor was paid in full. Mr. Humphrey and Miss Susan Baird
were married June 3, 1914. They have two children, William R. Humphrey,
Junior, and George Frederick Humphrey.

224

/)

-( / (' '. /.-V -cj/c' i_^.^- .

p. 0. i$lt#ee

jURRELL OTHO McGEE, pioneer merchant, planter, banker,
cotton buyer and capitalist, is one of the most progressive and
successful citizens of the Mississippi Delta. Born in Ander
son, South Carolina, November 18, 1857, the son of William
S. and Annie (Brock) McGee. They moved to Tate County,
Mississippi, where he was educated in the public schools and
under a private instructor. At the age of eighteen years he began work as a
clerk for Smith & Company, at Senatobia, Mississippi. Later he and his father
entered business under the firm of W. S. McGee & Son, which firm oper
ated a general store on the Lynnwood Plantation in Tate County, which he
managed quite successfully. In 1886 he moved to the Delta since which time he
has been engaged continuously in various lines of business in Leiand, Missis
sippi, where he has been one of the biggest factors in the marvelous development
of that wonderful section. His first connection there was as manager of the
large store owned by Gabbert, Moore & Company, in which he had an interest,
which firm was succeeded by the present firm of McGee, Dean & Company,
composed of C. C. Dean and himself, which is one of the strongest and most
successful firms in the South today. In 1899 he organized the Bank of Leiand
and has served as president since its organization, which bank enjoys the repu
tation of being one of the strongest and largest banks in the State. He is also
president of the Leiand Compress Company, which was organized due to his
efforts, and vice-president of The McGee Dean Company, large mercantile firm,
which supplies their large planting interest, and owns thousands of acres of
Delta lands ; also senior member of McGee, Dean & Company, cotton buyers,
exporters and planters, who have branch buying offices at Greenwood and
Clarksdale, Mississippi, Memphis, Tennessee, and New Orleans, Louisiana,
and selling offices at Boston, Massachusetts, New Bedford, Massachusetts, Provi
dence, Rhode Island, Gastonia, North Carolina, and Liverpool, England, and
who own and cultivate approximately twenty thousand acres of land, and are
known throughout the world for their honest dealing. He has vast other interests
financially in various lines. Mr. McGee is a member of the Baptist Church and
takes much interest in religious affairs. He is one of the best posted men on
history and affairs of Leiand and Washington County, big hearted, public spir
ited, known and appreciated by the entire community. On December 28, 1887,
he was married to Miss Cora Dean of Senatobia, who died in 1899, having two
sons and one daughter. Charles H. and Ralph received their education at Mis
sissippi College, Clinton, and Virginia Military Institute at Lexington, Vir
ginia, and are engaged actively now with their father in their extensive planting
and cotton business. Camille is a graduate of Blue Mountain College, Blue
Mountain, Mississippi, and also a graduate of the Conservatory of Music at
Boston, Massachusetts, where she finished with honors. In December, 1901,
Mr. McGee and Mrs. Addie Milam were married.

229

C. f . Mnlltm

,DWIN J. MULLENS of Clarksdale is one of the few natives
of Coahoma County, Mississippi, of his age, for he was
born there November 5, 1860, the son of B. S. and Mattie A.
Mullens, and he has been a conspicuous factor in transforming
it into the garden spot of the world, which it now is, from
the wilderness in which he first saw it, named, appropriately
at that time, after the Indian word which meant red panther. He has had the
satisfaction of seeing lands which he bought for six dollars per acre increase to
four hundred dollars, and he attributes most of this increase in value to drainage
and good roads, for both of which he has ever been a strong advocate, having
been appointed by the governor a commissioner of the first drainage district
organized in the county. Having received a common school education, jjartly
in Alabama and partly in Mississippi, he entered business for himself in 1900,
planting and merchandising under the firm name of E. J. Mullens at Clover Hill,
and with very little capital, but today he operates five thousand acres and is
rated far above a million dollars in his assets. He has no taste for politics, but
has consented to act as president of the drainage district and member of the
board of supervisors for the good that he could do for his community. In both
positions his unswerving honesty, devotion to every duty and sound judgment
were of great value to the taxpayers. He is first vice-president of the Planters
Manufacturing Company, director in the Planters Bank, director in the Delta
Grocery & Cotton Company, director in the Coahoma Cotton Sales Company,
stockholder in the Peoples Compress Company, director in the Johnson-Harlow
Lumber Company, director in the Friedman-Schultz Shoe Company and director
in the new wholesale drygoods company. But Mr. Mullens' real enjoyment is
derived from his church and charitable work. Growing up at a time when his
country was considered wild in the habits of much of its population as well as
in its lack of physical development, he was ever of a deeply religious turn of
mind, but never narrow. For several years he has been chairman of the Metho
dist Finance Committee, he and all of the members of his family being members
of that denomination. It was through him that the $100,000 Methodist Church
was built at Clarksdale. He is a trustee in the Mississippi Childrens Orphan
Home at Jackson, and has adopted one of the little boys from that institution.
His motto in life is to help his fellow man, regardless of who he is and what his
station in life may be, and he has aided many a struggling man back into the right
road. Mr. Mullens was married on March 18, 1896, to Miss Clara Bobo, daugh
ter of John Bobo, and a member of one of the leading families of the Delta.
Their children are E. J., Jr., and Mrs. Mary Lane Armstrong.

230

^. Jf . JlcJBoualb

I HEN Samuel Flatcher McDonald came to Memphis, Tennessee,
in 1901, it required $1,660 of his capital of $1,700 with which
to equip a small bakery on Madison Avenue just below Third
Street, and with the remaining $40 he bought ten barrels of
flour C. O. D., resulting in this flour being both his stock of
raw material for manufacturing and his cash capital for oper
ation. But if he happens to tell you this, there will be in his manner no sugges
tion of self adulation, but on the contrary a sincere expression that since Memphis
has been good enough to him to make this possible, he ought to try to be good
to Memphis. Memphians know that he has shirked no public obligation, first
with his time when time was the main thing that he had, and later with both his
time and his money as he had prospered. Mr. McDonald was born in Biggsville,
Illinois, July 9, 1871, the son of William and Rebecca (Nelson )McDonald. The
family moved to Kansas City, Missouri, in 1878, where he got some schooling,
but also had to work, having been the youngest elevator boy in the then drygoods
house of Bullene, Moore, Emery & Company. When he was ten years of age,
the family moved to Leavenworth, Kansas, where he attended the public schools
until he was sixteen years of age, when he went in a minor capacity with the
Lysle Milling Company. That was the only concern for which he ever worked
after quitting school. He remained there until 1901. During the latter part of
the time that he was with the Lysle company, he traveled selling flour for sev
eral years in the country south and west of Memphis, and realized from the
fertility of that land that Memphis had a great future. He finally came into
Memphis to see what sort of a city was the logical center for that section. He
saw the possibility here and at once took advantage of it, moving here in 1901,
when the commercial baking industry was in its infancy. A grocer then who
bought half a dozen "pones" as they were called here, was a fine customer.
Largely through the grade of his product and the service which he rendered to
the public, Mr. McDonald has seen the business grow in Memphis to its present
proportions and working upon his assumption that native Memphians neither
appreciate the Memphis of today nor realize the Memphis of the future, he is
laying all of his plans for a far greater business. Mr. McDonald long has been
an active member of the Associated Charities, and was chairman of its commit
tee which in 1914 brought the National Sociological Congress here, but his most
active work for the public good has been as an originator and constant worker
for the Chamber of Commerce Farm Bureau. He is a member of the Rotary
Club, Chamber of Commerce, Colonial Country Club, Al Chymia Temple and a
director in the Commercial Trust & Savings Bank. He married Miss Kate
Early Prest in 1895. S. Floyd McDonald is their only child.

235

. a. I^ansiom

I ILLIAM ANDERSON RANSOM, president of the Gayoso
Lumber Company, Memphis, Tennessee, is a native of Middle
Tennessee, and was born November 8, 1878, in Murfreesboro,
the son of James A. and LiUie (Anderson) Ransom. He was
educated in the public schools of Murfreesboro and later went
to Webb's School, Bellbuckle, Tennessee, where he finished his
education. When he was twenty-three years old he went into the lumber busi
ness for himself in Murfreesboro and at the age of twenty-four he married Miss
Lillian Hodge, of Murfreesboro. They now have one son (Charles R.), and a
daughter (Florence Hodge). Shortly after entering the lumber business in
Murfreesboro Mr. Ransom took his brother, Charles R. Ransom, into the busi
ness as a partner and for three years they successfully operated under the firm
name of W. A. Ransom & Company. The business was then moved to Nash
ville where they continued to do a nice business and in 1906 the business was
again moved to Memphis, where the Ransom brothers organized the Gayoso
Lumber Company — W. A. Ransom being president and general manager and
C. R. Ransom becoming secretary and treasurer. Since its organization the
Gayoso Lumber Company has steadily grown and expanded until the product
of its mills is known, not only from the Great Lakes to the Gulf and from the
Atlantic to the Pacific, but in foreign lands, where a nice export business is done
with the United Kingdom and the Continent. The company has large timber
holdings in St. Francis County, Arkansas. This property is situated near the
Bankhead Highway and is only twenty-five miles from Memphis, and as fast
as the timber is cleared from the land it is being turned into a model jjlantation.
Here Mr. Ransom intends building an ideal country home. He has selected a
beautiful building site surrounded by great oak trees and he proposes to install
every modern convenience known to the city home in his country place. Prac
tically one thousand acres have been cleared and more will follow as soon as it
can be made ready for the plough. The land is very fertile and produces fine
crops of cotton, corn and alfalfa. Mr. Ransom's latest purchase for the Gayoso
Lumber Company consists of eight thousand acres of fine hardwood timber near
Grenada, Mississippi. It is his idea to erect a large band mill in Grenada for
the purpose of cutting this timber. It will be necessary to build several miles
of railroad, erect office buildings, a hotel for the accommodation of employees,
open a lumber yard and the entire proposition will represent, when complete, a
large investment. He hopes to have this plant in operation within a short time,
and intends devoting the product of this mill largely to the export trade. In
addition to his interests outside of the city of Memphis, Mr. Ransom is always
deeply interested in the affairs of his home city and is a member of the Ten
nessee Club, the Memphis Country Club, the Colonial Country Club, the Lum
berman's Club and the Chamber of Commerce.

236

L.^^^^^-^^-;.-^^

C. 1. ^iblep

;LARENCE LEE SIVLEY, Memphis, Tennessee, one of the
leading lawyers of the Mid-South, and also a large planter of
cotton in the Mississippi Delta, was born in Hinds County,
Mississippi, near Raymond, March 14, 1871, the son of William
Rufus and Lelia Josephine Sivley, she being a niece of Judge
Stokes, long a leader of the bar at Hernando, Mississippi.
Judge Sivley's father, also a native of the same locality, was one of the large
planters and slave-holders in that section of Mississippi prior to the Civil War.
Judge Sivley's great-grandfather was a native of Holland and went to where
Huntsville, Alabama, now is at the same time that did the man for whom it is
named. He was a typical thrifty Hollander who reared on the creek below
Huntsville a large family which became prominent in both Alabama and Mis
sissippi. Judge Sivley's grandmother on his paternal side was Miss Eliza
Burleson of Decatur, Alabama, a family as conspicuous for its strength in the
early days of Alabama as it since has become in the public affairs of Texas and
the Nation. Judge Sivley grew up on his father's plantation and then went to
the Chamberlain-Hunt Academy at Port Gibson, Mississippi, where he received
his intermediate education and then to the University of Mississippi at Oxford,
where he took both the literary and law courses. Upon the completion of the
latter, he opened an office for the practice of his profession in Oxford, where
he enjoyed a constantly increasing practice until 1906 when the trustees of the
University recognized his ability and elected him professor of law in the insti
tution from which he had graduated thirteen years previously. He filled that
position with credit to both himself and the University for the term of 1906-7,
when he resigned and came to Memphis. The bar recognized at once in him an
able accession to its ranks and the public speedily reached the same conclusion
as to his capacity as a lawyer and his clientele grew steadily until 1910, when
he accepted the position as general attorney for the Illinois Central and Yazoo &
Mississippi Valley railroad systems, with headquarters in Chicago. He held that
for five years, but he loved the general practice of law better than having merely
one client, resigned in 1915 and returned to Memphis, where he is the head of
the firm of Sivley, Evans & McCadden, than which there is no stronger law
firm in the Mid-South. Judge Sivley has never sought public office, but was a
member of the Mississippi State Democratic committee for ten years and a
delegate to the National Convention in 1904. He is a member of the Phi Delta
Theta fraternity, the Tennessee and Memphis Country clubs and Chamber of
Commerce, and of the University and South Shore Country clubs in Chicago.
He and Miss Minnie Clopton were married November 29, 1899. Their only
child, Clarence Lee, Junior, died in 1908, at the age of nineteen months.

241

Br. ^. M. Toombs;

jERCY WALTHALL TOOMBS, Memphis, Tennessee, physi
cian and surgeon confining his practice to obstetrics and gyne
cology in which line he has risen rapidly to a point where for
some years he has been recognized by the medical profession
generafly as one of the leaders in the Mid-South, is a native
of Greenville, Mississippi, where he was born August 5, 1880.
His father. Doctor Reuben Sanders Toombs, was one of the leading medical
men of the Mississippi Delta and later of Memphis for a number of years. His
mother was formerly Miss Fannie Ray. His Christian names — those of two
Mississippi families highly distinguished both for their attainments and refine
ment, indicate the class to which the Toombs family belonged and the circle in
which its friendship and associations lay. The senior Doctor Toombs sent his
son to Georgetown College where he received at the age of twenty-one years
the degree of bachelor of arts, as the honor member of the class of 1901, being
its valedictorian. The young man then decided to follow the footsteps of his
father and went to Tulane University in New Orleans where he earned the
degree of doctor of medicine in 1905. His honors there were as signal as they
had been at college, for he was chosen orator of the day for the Founder's Day
celebration of Tulane University in his graduating year. He returned at once
to his home in the Mississippi Delta wdiere he began the practice of his profes
sion under the most auspicious circumstances. During the two years that he
remained there Doctor Toombs was district surgeon for the Yazoo & Missis
sippi Valley and the Southern railroads. He also was president of the Green
ville Board of Health for the same period. These positions together with the
general practice which came to him would have more than satisfied the ordinary
young doctor, but he sought a wider field and in 1907 came to Memphis. Here
he was district surgeon for the Illinois Central Railroad system from 1908 to
1916, when he resigned to give all of his attention to his then large practice.
Immediately upon coming to Memphis he was elected professor of physiology at
the College of Physicians & Surgeons, which chair he filled until 1909, when
that institution became the College of Medicine of the University of Tennessee.
Since then he has been professor of Obstetrics in the latter college. He has been
obstetrician-in-chief at the Baptist Memorial Hospital and at the Memphis
General Hospital since 1909. In 1915 he received the degree of Fellow of the
American College of Surgeons. He is a member of the Phi Delta Theta literary
and the Phi Chi medical fraternities. He is a thirty-second degree Mason, a
Shriner, a Knight Templar ; a member of the Chamber of Commerce, the Mem
phis Country Club and the Rotary Club. Doctor Toombs and Miss Amy Mor
ton were married February 15, 1915.

242

I » s ,

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la. C. Cobjnes;
IICHARD CARNOT TOWNES, planter, merchant and banker,
Philipp, Mississippi, was born January 16, 1871, at Palo Alto
Rml (High Tree ) Landing on the Tallahatchie River near Minter
^M City, the son of James Armstead and Emma (Kennon)
Townes. His father was a pioneer settler in that section of
the country, became probably the largest individual planter
in the Delta and for many years had a standing for integrity, honesty, charity
and ability second to none. Mr. Townes attended the public schools of Minter
City until he was fourteen years of age, when he went to the Webb School at
Bellbuckle, Tennessee, for two years and then to the University of Mississippi
for the same length of time. At the age of nineteen years he took charge of
some fifteen hundred acres of land belonging to his father on which he was
born, and managed that with success for two years. Upon having attained his
majority, he began planting on his own account with seven hundred and forty-
six acres, a portion of the place that he had been managing for his father.
Under the able tutelage of his father he has become one of the best planters on
the river, and has become one of the most successful. He owns now nearly five
thousand acres of the beautiful Tallahatchie River land, about two-thirds of
which he has in a high state of cultivation. He lives on his plantation in a
magnificent mansion supplied with artesian water and electric lights ; manned
by a corps of trained servants most of whom were born on the plantation, many
of them descendants of slaves in the family ; and with concrete walks connecting
the mansion with the various outhouses and quarters, all of which are in keeping.
In fact he has in the country every convenience of both the city and the country
with none of the nuisances of either. Aside from his plantation, Mr. Townes
is president of the Planters Bank of Philipp, and a stockholder in the Minter
City Oil Works ; the Delta Grocery & Cotton Company of Clarksdale, and
Graves-Dix (Inc.) of Memphis. Mr. Townes has never sought public office,
but at the request of Governor Brewer he accepted appointment as a member
of the Upper Yazoo Levee Board, where his sound business judgment, sterling
integrity and absolute honesty were of great benefit to the entire district for
four years. He is also one of the three commissioners who serve without pay
and have given Tallahatchie the finest road in the state, extending its entire
length and connecting with the Coahoma and LeFlore County systems. He is
a member of the Methodist Church ; of the Beta Theta Pi college Greek letter
fraternity; of the Greenwood lodge of Elks, and for twenty-five years has been
a member of the Tennessee Club in Memphis. He and Mrs. Townes have
traveled widely throughout this continent and Europe and Asia. Mr. Townes
and Miss Josie Ford of Shreveport, Louisiana, were married June 8, 1904.
They have no child.

247

g). H. Bobbs;

|YDNEY LEE DODDS, planter, manufacturer, business man
and philanthropist of Clarksdale, Mississippi, had attained
ample financial success in life, ever helping some weaker one
up the ladder as he himself climbed higher, but it remained
for the entry of his country into the World War to show the
metal that was in him. He cast himself and his entire for
tune into the scales. Too old for military service, he tendered to the govern
ment his services, his wagon factory at Clarksdale, his beautiful home at Biloxi,
Mississippi, in fact everything that he possessed, free from a cent of profit to
himself. He made many trips in the interest of war work, and never turned in a
bill for a cent for any expense incurred by those trips. He was made a member
of the appeals draft board for his native state of Kentucky, and served as chief
of the American Protective League for his section, where he ran down many
ugly cases and saw a number of men forced into the army or behind penitentiary
bars. When Liberty bonds began to issue, he not only bought heavily himself,
but instructed the head of each of the many concerns that he controlled to take
double all assessments and that employes were to take double the amount that the
employe might be assessed for each issue, and assisted them in doing so. He
has never sold a Liberty bond, but on the contrary has bought, not at the market
discount, but for par and accrued interest every one offered him by a widow,
preacher or veteran forced to sell. Mr. Dodds was born at Hickman, Kentucky,
October 5, 1865, the son of Johsua Hickman and Martha Freeman Dodds. He
had a public school education and worked his way for two years at ten cents per
hour through the college at Lexington. He worked on a farm at home at twenty
dollars per month and in 1888 went to the Mississippi Delta, hauling logs at
Shelby, driving the team himself. He and his brother bought one hundred and
seven acres, mainly on time, where Doddsville novv is. There they cleared, paid
for and developed finally five thousand five hundred acres. This was later sold
for a then fancy price. He has been from its organization a stockholder and
director in the Planters Bank ; is a stockholder and director in the Delta Grocery
& Cotton Company ; owner of the Dodds Wagon Company, recently consolidated
with the James & Graham Wagon Company ; stockholder and director in the
Friedman-Schulz Shoe Company; director in the Valley Drygoods Company;
president of the Valley Construction Company, and director in the Carnegie
Library. Mr. Dodds and Miss Anna Baltzer were married June 10, 1896.
They have two children, Sydney Baltzer and Miss Anna Lynne Dodds. Mr.
Dodds for years has laid aside a per cent of his income regularly for the edu
cation of worthy poor children. So far he has aided fifty-nine through college
and says that he hopes to make it a thousand before his death. He is an ardent
lover of clean out-of-door sports, especially hunting and shooting.

248

'15

^.¦^''^¦¦*'

'M

J. B. JHarks;

JEFFERSON DAVIS MARKS, Memphis, Tennessee, general
manager, secretary and treasurer of the Memphis Rice Mill,
and vice-president and general manager of the Joy Rice Mill
ing Company of Wheatley, Arkansas, was born January 16,
1866 at Osyka, Mississippi, a few miles inside the State of
Mississippi from the Louisiana line, the son of Joseph and Sarah
Francis Marks. He left school at the age of fourteen years and became a clerk
in a general merchandise store. He learned telegraphy and for a time served
as agent for the Illinois Central Railroad at Jackson, Mississippi, and at Amite,
Louisiana. In fact Mr. Marks spent most of his life in Louisiana until he came
to Memphis. In 1891 he went to Crowley, Louisiana, where he opened a store
and conducted it for four years and then went into the business in which he
has become one of the leaders in the South — that of milling rice. It then was
in its infancy. There were only ten mills in the United States when he built his
first one. In 1895 he became interested financially in the rice mill at Crowley
and took charge of its management. It was known as the Marks Rice Mill. In
1903 he erected the Ida Rice Mill at Rayne, Louisiana, and the Morse Rice Mill
at Morse, Louisiana. He conducted all of these institutions with such great
success that in 1911, he was induced to come to Memphis and become inter
ested with Mr. Joseph Newburger and Mr. Sylvan Levy in the Memphis Rice
Mill, which he erected and which he has managed from that time to this. It is
said by experts to be second to none in the rice belt for economy of operation and
the class of its products. Mr. Marks has been an important factor in the devel
opment of rice culture. In 1895 there were but five million bushels of the grain
produced in the United States and there was not an even fairly equipped mill,
the old pounder system being used for reducing the crop to an edible state. Now
the production amounts to some fifty million bushels and there are hundreds of
mills, the crop in Louisiana surpassing in value that of either her sugar or her
lumber. From the hazardous dependence upon rains for the necessary overflows
of the rice fields, the industry now has certain irrigation by pumps. In Louis
iana, Mr. Marks took a keen interest in public affairs. He was delegate from
the Seventh Congressional district to the Democratic National Convention in
1904, served long as an alderman of Crowley, was a major on the staff of Gov
ernor Jared Y. Sanders, chairman of the board of health when yellow fever was
kept out of Crowley by sanitation, and one of three commissioners which located
the State Rice Experiment Station at Crowley, an institution of great value to
the entire industry in the State. He was a member of the Louisiana Agricul
tural Board, representing the Seventh District. Mr. Marks and Miss Carlon
Sternberger were married January 14, 1891. Their children are Louis S. and
J. D., Junior.

253

J. ar. Cotton

)OSEPH TRIBBLE COSTON, Osceola, Arkansas, one of the
leading lawyers of eastern Arkansas, is a native of Tennessee,
where he had achieved prominence before going to Arkansas.
He was born on a farm near Flora, Lincoln County, Tennes
see, March 14, 1869, the son of James Joseph and Mary
Marinda (Smith) Coston. Educated in the common schools
of Lincoln County and at the law department of Vanderbilt University, he prac
ticed law at Fayetteville, Tennessee, from 1891 to 1900. The most important
case with which he was connected in Tennessee was his association in the suc
cessful defense of Colonel Holman when George L. Diemer sued him for
$10,000 for alleged breach of trust. However, Mr. Coston with characteristic
modesty says that he thinks his employment in Ihis case was intentionally more
beneficial to himself than to the colonel. Immediately upon going to Osceola in
1900, Mr. Coston took high rank at the bar and has held it ever since. Probably
the most important litigation that he has handled there in so far as its effect
upon the community at large is concerned was in connection with the drainage
systems. Northeast Arkansas was a pioneer in the South in the matter of
drainage. Many progressive strong men realized its necessity and ultimate
value to all. Others preferred to hold their lands for future advances in prices
and could not afford to do so and pay the heavy taxes which drainage would
necessitate. This meant an inevitable clash. Mr. Coston represented the pro
gressive element in the original litigation in which the constitutionality of the
drainage laws was at issue and secured from the Supreme Court a sweeping
decision upholding the act of 1909 and giving it a broad interpretation under
which it has been possible to install the magnificent system of drainage in
Mississippi County and later in the other counties of the St. Francis Basin.
Now you cannot put your foot down in Mississippi County without stepping on
soil that has been benefitted by drainage districts which Mr. Coston has organ
ized as attorney for property owners. Mr. Coston has never held public office
except that he was elected to the Tennessee legislature from Lincoln County
in 1898 and served with a most creditable record. His library of forty-five
hundred volumes is said to be one of the two best law libraries in the entire
South. During the World War he was in every Liberty loan and Red Cross
drive and was chairman for the lower portion of his county for the sale of war
savings stamps, to which he gave two days a week from March to October aver
aging two speeches a day. He is a member of the commission for examining
applicants for admission to the bar. He is a Methodist, Mason, Knight of
Pythias and Odd Fellow. Mr. Coston and Miss Cora Goodrich were married
October 10, 1894. Their children are James Goodrich, Sarah Clark, Anna Lee
and Mary Hale Coston.

254

y^-^j y^^^\ja-''~^-v--^ C3i?^-iZv4/z^^ -

7

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t.

J. i:. Malsib

^OHN THOMAS WALSH, merchant, banker, farmer and capi-
^ talist, was born near Chicago, Illinois, December 7, 1854, but
came to Memphis with his parents, who were of Irish extrac
tion, at the age of five years. He has lived here ever since, and
has been one of the most important factors in the growth of
the city. He attended the public schools of the city for a time,
but the condition of the family's finances was such that at the age of fifteen he
went to work in the cigar stand at the Worsham House, then located on the site
where the new Tri-State million-dollar hotel, of which company he is the presi
dent, soon will be erected. The following year, 1870, he went to work as a
clerk for M. J. Gorman in a grocery store. On the first of January, 1873, he
went to work on the Louisville & Nashville Railroad as a brakeman, later becom
ing a baggageman. His mother died of the yellow fever that summer, his father
having preceded her in 1861. With what he had been able to save he bought
out the cigar stand at which he had done his first work, and where his younger
brother, Anthony, had succeeded him. Anthony continued to manage that
business, while the elder brother remained with the railroad until the fall of
1877, when he and his brother, with what they had been able to accumulate,
organized the grocery firm of J. T. Walsh & Brother at the corner of Overton
and Main, which still does under the same name a magnificent business two
blocks further south. The business prospered from the beginning and no man,
not even the proprietors, ever knew how much groceries went without hope of
reimbursement to poor families in distress or how much money was paid out for
rent to prevent the ejection of widows. The brothers knew every man, woman
and child in North Memphis and almost the same might be said of the northern
portion of the county, and they had done favors for most of them. Their
kindly dispositions, obliging manners and capacity as merchants brought them a
tremendous trade, even far across the line into Tipton County. Much of their
surplus income was invested in lands in the northern part of the country at a
time when land was cheap. In 1909, Mr. Walsh was most active in the organiza
tion of the North Memphis Savings Bank of which his brother Anthony was
president until he died in 1912, and to which office he succeeded him. Mr. Walsh
for years was a power in politics and still is when he cares to exert himself. He
was elected a member of the Board of Public Works in 1893, police and fire
commissioner in 1904, and was vice-mayor from 1906 to 1909. He was on the
committee which built the General Hospital and on the Courthouse Commission,
and is a member of the Auditorium Commission. He married Miss Elizabeth
Bannon, July 22, 1879. Their children are: Anthony P., John T., Jr., Margaret
M., Helen M. and Elizabeth G.

259

1. H. ^alsiburp

T remained for a Michigan man — at that a lawyer — to come
South, develop the big idea in cotton planting and to become
the biggest producer of cotton in the world. This is only one
of the many achievements of L. K. Salsbury since he came
to Memphis. Born at Saline, Michigan, March 11, 1867, the
son of George and Corintha Salsbury, he was educated at
Albion College, Albion, Michigan, from 1884 to 1887, and in 1890 he was
graduated from Ann Arbor with the degree of bachelor of law, having financed
himself through both institutions. He practiced law in Grand Rapids until 1902,
the following year moving south, practically without means, where he entered
upon a business career which has been one of the most successful of any in
the Mid-South. His first business in the South was in dealing in timber lands.
Then he operated saw mills for a time. He spent eight months in Canton, Mis
sissippi, then a year in New Orleans, and then moved to Memphis. His first
conspicuous act here was the organization of the big corporation — the first of
its kind — which acquired the Robinsonville, Mississippi, plantation, which land
has recently sold for the highest price of any pure farm land in this section of
the country. He was president of the Mary Mac Plantation Company, which
operated that business, until he went to Europe in 1910-11 and financed the
Mississippi Delta Planting Company, owning thousands of acres of land near
Scott, Mississippi, the largest cotton producer in the world; employing three hun
dred white men and thousands of negroes ; spending $50,000 yearly conducting
the largest seed experimental station in the South, the benefit of which is given
free to the public; doing a big lumber manufacturing business and being the
largest sellers in the country of cotton planting seed. This is only one of the
big enterprises in which Mr. Salsbury is interested. He and a few associates
own tremendous timber tracts in Arkansas, and no business proposition is too
big for him to grasp its possibilities almost instantly, and handle if it possesses
merit. Mr. Salsbury has no taste for holding or seeking public office, but for
some years no man in Memphis has surpassed him in the promotion of any
movement for the improvement of Memphis. He has given liberally of his time
and his high degree of efficiency to every campaign for Liberty loans, hospitals
and in fact every worthy cause or eleemosynary institution. He closed a most
successful incumbency of one year as president of the Chamber of Commerce
in 1919. Wide travels not only in the United States and Canada, but all over
Europe and Egypt, have made Mr. Salsbury one of the broadest men in the
community. He is a Shriner, a thirty-second degree Mason, and a member of
the Colonial Country Club. He was married November 10, 1890, to Miss Ger
trude Shanks. The union has been blessed with only one child. Miss Helen,
who is the wife of Dr. Shields Abernathy.

260

J|. E. Malton

lARRY LUDLOW WALTON, Minter City, Mississippi, one
of the most successful planters, shrewd business men, progres
sive citizens and delightful companions in the entire Delta, is
a Quaker by ancestry and in religion, broadened by growing up
in Illinois and spending his young manhood on the wide prai
ries of Kansas during the boom and town-site-fight days. He
was born in Chester County, Pennsylvania, April 2, 1863, the son of Jeremiah
Barnard and Anna M. (Pyle) Walton. When he was a child the family moved
to Illinois, where he received a common and high school education and then
finished the course at Grand Prairie Seminary at Onarga, when he was nineteen
years of age. He worked on a farm near Champaign, Illinois, for two years, and
at the end of that time being just of age, he migrated to Kansas, stopping at
Scott City. This was in 1885, just as the professional boomers were becoming
experts in the building of cities over-night, selling the property the next day and
the next night laying out another city ; in the meanwhile having frequent pitched
battles over the location or removal of a county seat. Mr. Walton helped organ
ize the country around Scott City into Scott County, with Scott City as it county
seat and held it against all comers. Land was changing hands rapidly and he
was elected registrar of deeds, which he held for two terms or four years. Dur
ing his residence there he also engaged in the cattle business. After half a dozen
years in Kansas, Mr. Walton moved to JopHn, Missouri, just about the time
that lead and zinc were found there in large quantities. However, he loved the
tilling of the soil, and returned to Champaign, where he spent six years farming
and raising stock. Then he in partnership with an uncle went to Mississippi
where they bought seventeen hundred and fifty acres of the prettiest land in
the Delta at Sunnyside (now Walton) just a few miles below Minter City.
Many of the up-country men who moved into the Delta failed to grasp the pecu
liar local conditions and for that reason did not find it agreeable, but Mr. Walton
from the moment that he landed in the Delta entered heartily in the spirit of
affairs there, joined with the better element in every movement for the improve
ment of conditions and brought with him many excellent progressive ideas which
they were glad to adopt. He was the pioneer in tile drainage in LeFlore County.
He has thrice been drafted into service on the Board of Supervisors, where he
was a leader for good roads and for efficient administration of the county's affairs.
The county soon will have completed one hundred and seventy-five miles of
graveled highways. Some years ago he bought out his uncle's share in the
plantation and he now owns six thousand acres, half of which is in cultivation.
Mr. Walton and Miss Willie B. Robbins were married January 29, 1889. Their
children are J. Barnard, Harry Leslie and Virginia Sophia.

265

^. ?@. lotorance

[RESTON BROOKS LOWRANCE, Memphis, Tennessee, and
Ponca City, Oklahoma, for many years one of the largest con
tractors on the levees along the Mississippi River, a leading
planter in Mississippi County, Arkansas, active in many enter
prises for the upbuilding of Memphis and the surrounding ter
ritory, and now the executive head of one of the main oil
companies in the Mid-Continent Field, is a native of the mountains of North
Carolina. He was born in Catawba County, August 23, 1876, the son of William
Ethel and Fannie (Martin) Lowrance. The father had been a gallant soldier
of the Confederacy until he lost a leg in Virginia, and both parents were of sin
gularly high ideals, rearing a large family of sons, none of whom ever had his
honor, veracity or integrity (juestioned. Mr. Lowrance attended school at Stony
Point, near his home, and then took a course in Professor Lamond's Business
College in Asheville. At the time that he finished at the business college, work
on the Vanderbilt Estate at Biltmore, just out of Asheville, was at its height and
Mr. Lowrance went to work there for the Otis Elevator Company. The wiry
mountain lad, active, agile and industrious as a squirrel, made such an impres
sion on his superiors there that when the Biltmore contract was completed they
took him to New York, and he remained with the Otis Elevator Company for
several years, working in many of the larger American and Canadian cities. For
a time also he worked as a structural steel worker for Post & McCord. In the
meantime his elder brother, Charles J., had come to the Mississippi River and
formed a partnership with Captain T. S. Aderholdt of Friar Point in the levee
contracting business, and a younger brother, Lawson, had followed him in the
same line. In 1898, Mr. Lowrance joined them, entering the employ of the
firm of Aderholdt & Lowrance as commissary man while building the Dewey
Loop at Burk's Landing, Mississippi. Two years later the three brothers bought
Captain Aderholdt's interest in the firm and formed the partnership of Low
rance Brothers, from which Lawson later retired, and which for the next thirty
years moved more earth in constructing levees along the Mississippi, Arkansas
and Red Rivers than probably any other firm ever has moved. Later the other
brothers, George, Tait, Edward and Blair, came to the Mississippi River and all
the brothers formed the firm of Lowrance Brothers & Company and for many
years there were few contracts of any size on the levee line from Charleston,
Missouri, to the mouth of Red River of which they did not have a large share,
being always favorites with the engineers on account of their combination of
one hundred per cent capacity and integrity. Mr. Lowrance and Miss Frances
K. Acree of Petersburg, Virginia, were married October 22, 1901. They have
three children: Ruth, Bessie and P. B., Jr.

266

/:>-<,A/~/"Cc,-^---c,Q^

-^.

'/' . ' ' y^

Jl. C. ©enton

lUDGE MANFORD ESCA DENTON, Marks, Mississippi, has
been a leading figure ever since he went to Quitman County in
the development of that community both along material and
moral lines. He was born in Calhoun County, Mississippi,
January 16, 1872, the son of W. H. and Susan Lovelace Den
ton. He attended the grammar schools of Lafayette County,
and at eighteen years was graduated from the Normal School at luka. Five
years later he received his diploma from the Lhiiversity of Mississippi, having
taken the full course in law as well as a part of the course in letters. In the
meantime he had been first assistant at the Tula Normal School and principal of
Longtown Academy in Panola County. He began his successful career as a
lawyer in Belen, then the county seat of Quitman County. A close student, of
the highest moral character, ever attentive to any case intrusted to him and a
discriminating judge of the law, he rose rapidly in his profession to the point
where at thirty-six years of age, Governor Noel appointed him chancellor of
the Seventh district. He was reappointed in 1912 by Governor Brewer, but
resigned in 1914 to resume his practice and devote his time to his private affairs.
Previously he had served a term and a half as member of the Legislature. Ever
since the construction of the Yazoo-Delta line of the Yazoo & Mississippi Val
ley Railroad through Quitman County there had been talk of moving the county
seat from Belen to a point of better transportation, but it remained for him to
organize the Marks Townsite Company, buy half a section of land from the
late L. Marks at what then was Riverside, lay off the town of Marks, name it
for its pioneer settler and millionaire planter and move the county seat from
Belen there. The first drainage meeting held in the Delta was called by Judge
Denton, held in his office and resulted in a series of meetings culminating in the
organization of the Tallahatchie Drainage District. When the drainage laws of
the state were settled on the basis of the decision of the Supreme Court in the
litigation growing out of this district, he organized the first drainage district
under the new laws. He assisted in organizing the Riverside Bank and was its
president from 1910 until he resigned in 1915. On account of the inadequacy of
its river transportation, the impassability of its highways and the delay in build
ing railroads into it, the fertile lands of Quitman County were the slowest of any
in the Delta to develop, and its population until recently was sparse and, with a
few notable exceptions, mainly of the frontier type. Judge Denton was a leader
not only in the material changes which have occurred but also in elevating the
moral tone of the entire county. He and Miss Blanche Phiflips were married
February 27, 1898, and have seven children : Hal, Lex, Virginia, Dorothy, Sarah
Blanche, Paul and Joel.

271

illaorfjeab Mrisftt

;OORHEAD WRIGHT, Little Rock, Arkansas, executive head
v*rt ^^ '^^^ largest trust company in the State, and for years con-
l\ /¦ Mv spicuous in every movement for the material progress of the
J_y _|_ ^ State, was born in Little Rock, June 18, 1872, the son of Fulton
and Louisa (Watkins) Wright. After having attended the
public schools and E. C. Gould's private school in Little Rock,
he went to the Virginia Military Institute, where he was graduated in 1892 as
cadet captain. He spent the next year in the medical department of the Uni
versity of Arkansas, but the lure of business was stronger for him than the pro
fession of medicine and in the fall of 1893 he entered the employ of Cornish
& England as collector of rentals. The following year he entered the line which
has developed gradually and in good part through his efforts into the most suc
cessful one in the State. His connection with it at first was not conspicuous, as
he became collector of rentals for the firm of S. J. Johnson & Company. To
this was soon added a business in real estate and not long thereafter the firm
developed its department of mortgage loans. In 1899 the business was incor
porated as S. J. Johnson Company, and Mr. Wright was elected treasurer. The
original capital stock of the company was only $2,000. Later the S. J. Johnson
Company grew into a savings bank under the name of the Union Trust Company
with a capital stock of $50,000 and in 1911 Mr. Wright was elected vice-presi
dent and treasurer. Four years later he was elected president of the Union &
Mercantile Trust Company and now conducts that concern with a capital stock
of $700,000 in place of the $2,000 with which he started. It is the pioneer trust
company of the state and ihe largest, with every modern department fully devel
oped for service to the public. Mr. Wright is a member of the Little Rock
Country Club and the Athletic Association, of both of which he has been presi
dent ; the Quawpaw Club ; the Arkansas Bankers Association, of which he has
been president and is permanent chairman of its committee on thrift ; and was
secretary of the Cotton States Conferences in 1914 and 1915; vice-president of
the National Association of Real Estate Exchanges in 1914 and its treasurer in
1915; director of the Little Rock Board of Commerce since 1918, and one of its
committee on profitable farming since 1918, and on open shop; was on the
executive committee on war activities, and a director of the Little Rock branch
Federal Reserve Bank since 1918. He served in the Spanish-American War
as first lieutenant and adjutant of the Second Arkansas U. S. V., and was a
member of the State Council of National Defense and state chairman of the
National War Savings committee during the World War. Mr. Wright and Miss
Hildegarde O. Penzel were married November 23, 1903. Their children are:
Charles Penzel, Moorhead, Jr., and Fulton Watkins Wright.

272

1 ,¦»! • *

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B. m. aaobins!

;AVID WILLIAM ROBINS, Tupelo, Mississippi, leader in his
State in the enactment of legislation for good roads and drain
age, and in the practical application of that legislation ; mayor
of his city for nine consecutive terms ; planter ; stock-raiser,
and banker, is a native of Georgia, but went to Mississippi a
mere babe in arms and says that he is as loyal a Mississippian
as is any man born in the Stale. He was educated in the public schools of Lee
County and began his career as a farmer. In that as in everything else that he
has put his hand to he has succeeded. His three thousand-acre plantation just
southeast of the city of Tupelo, only a few years ago a tangle of timber and
undergrowth, now is one of the most beautiful in the entire Stale and probably
unsiirf)asscd for production by any in the upland section. He also owns a five
hundred-acre plantation at Shannon and another of twelve hundred acres near
Guntown. Cotton, corn and alfalfa are the main crops on the Tupelo place, while
cattle and hogs are specialties, in addition to cotton, on the other places. He is
a director in half a dozen banks in and near Tupelo. This is more than enough
to have occupied all of the time and energy of an ordinary man, but Mr. Robins
is no ordinary man. He wanted to be of some service to his community and the
world at large, feeling that merely to have made a fortune for himself was not
enough for a man to have done this world. His county suffered more from
lack of good roads and drainage than from any other preventable causes. In
1892 he suggested a drainage law and helped draft it. It became the first drain
age act in the State. He organized in Lee County the first district formed under
that act. This law provided for an assessment of twenty-five cents per acre for
drainage. Mr. Robins sponsored the amendment providing for financing all
drainage districts by bond issues. It was largely through Mr. Robins that the
first dredge was taken to Lee County for drainage work and it also was the first
in the State. Town Creek was the main object for drainage in Lee County. It
was some four feel wide and of about equal depth. Now it is sixty-five feet
wide and fifteen feet deep, and rains which formerly remained on the ground
for weeks after falling, now pass off so rapidly that thousands of acres of land
are tillable for the first time and many other thousands made more valuable.
Mr. Robins has been equally conspicuous in his road work. He is a commissioner
for the Third county district, for the county and for the State. He sponsored
the first concrete road in the county of which there are now some twenty-five
miles, with an equal amount under construction. Mr. Robins was born in Troupe
County, Georgia, August 3, 1865, the son of Jephtha and Eliza (Allen) Robins-.
He and Miss Imogene Kincannon were married December 27, 1893. They
have one child. Miss Elizabeth.

277

(g. C. lobe
FORGE COLLINS LOVE, for more than half a century a
citizen of Memphis, Tennessee, and one of her most successful
business men, long a member of the City Board of Public
Works, mayor for a short time and during that time one of the
best mayors that the city has ever had, was born at Patriot,
Indiana, July 28, 1845, the son of John and Annie L. (Col
lins) Love. He received his education in the public schools of his native city
and came to Memphis in 1862. His first activity here was in the operation of
a wood and lumber yard at the foot of Market Avenue, then on the main channel
of the Mississippi River. He remained in that line for four years and then
went into the steamboat business, later becoming the owner of a towboat used
in towing staves which plied the lower river to New Orleans. In this he was suc
cessful for six years. Then the wonderful business acumen of the man came into
play. In his old wood and lumber yard al the foot of Market Avenue, he had
become familiar with the cost of getting out and hauling hewn timbers. As a steam
boat man he got in touch along the wharves of New Orleans with the exporters of
slaves and learned the value of the forked leaf while oak along the bluffs of the
Mississippi River and of the giant cow oaks in the lowlands when converted into
pipe slaves and sold to the wine makers of l'~raiice, Spain and Italy and to the
brewers of the Teutonic countries to take the place of the white oak of Austria
and Hungary, then fast disappearing, in the manufacture of their big vats and
tuns. In 1872 he quit the river and became a pioneer in the then virgin forests
of the alluvial lands along the Mississippi River and its tributaries in getting out
the hewn sticks of while oak and exporting them, from which the slaves were
manufactured. For nearly a third of a century he was one of the largest and
most successful operators in the country along that line, his reputation with the
thousands of Slavonians who worked for him in the forests and with the for
eigners who bought his products being justly second to none for honesty and
integrity. During all of this time Mr. Love had lived in Memphis, accumulating
a comfortable estate which he invested judiciously mainly in real estate. He
had long taken an interest in politics never seeking office but ever for the elec
tion of men who stood for honesty, capacity and integrity. Finally, in 1904,
after having wound up his stave business his friends prevailed upon him to
stand for the Board of Public Works. He was elected and for years in charge
of the department of streets, bridges and sewers and later as mayor was most
valuable to the community. Mr. Love has been married twice: First in 1877
to Miss Lizzie D. Montana, who died in 1882, leaving one son, James W. ; and
second in 1884 to Miss Mary G. Graham. Their children are : Mary G. ; Oclavia
M., and G. C, Jr.

278

J^^ jU>

L^

V^ /L ^i/'^yt-^'^'^-^

J. 1. Solomon

JOSEPH LEVY SOLOMON, Helena, Arkansas, head of the
biggest cotton agency in that section, leader in every move
ment for the upbuilding of his community and one of the
largest planters of cotton in Phillips County, was born in
Helena, May 25, 1869, the son of Moses Lely and Pauline
Solomon. At Ihe age of nine years it devolved upon him to
assist in the support of a large family, and he went to work for I. Goldsmith
& Brother, now J. Goldsmith & Sons Company of Memphis, which firm had
opened a store in Helena in 1878 on account of the epidemic of yellow fever in
Memphis. Then he was with his uncle, Mr. Aaron Meyers, later Meyers & Ross,
in the retail grocery business for fourteen years. At the age of twenty-four
years, he organized the Solomon-Johnson Grocery Company, of which he was
the head, which soon went exclusively into the wholesale business, for which he
traveled three days in each week in Mississippi and the other three in Arkansas
and which on a capital stock of $25,000 did an annual business of ten times
that amount. When Mr. Julius Lesser, then head of the Lesser-Goldman Cot
ton Company, went to Helena to find a suitable man to take charge of his
agency there, it was but natural that a leading banker told Mr. Lesser that Joe
Solomon was the best man that could be found. The offer was made and
Mr. Solomon accepted. Since that time Mr. Solomon had been a most valuable
part of that tremendous cotton machine. He has developed the business of the
company in his section to where it now handles sixty per cent of the cotton
grown in that fertile and productive section of the Mid-South. Born and
reared in Helena, Mr. Solomon has ever had ultimate faith in it and the alluvial
land below it. In 1907, he and his brother Phillip bought the Williamson planta
tion of some twenty-four hundred acres adjoining Helena on the south. They
have developed this into a most valuable property. Two years later the building
which he was using for an office al the corner of Elm and Cherry Streets burned.
In spite of the advice of his friends, he at once erected a five-story office build
ing on the site and now has a long waiting list of would-be occupants. In 1918,
he and his brothers bought the Key-Ward Place at Wabash containing fourteen
hundred acres and Joseph L. and Philip Solomon bought half a block of the
most valuable business properly in the city. In 1919 he, his brothers and
Mr. Amos Jarman bought the Ratio Plantation of forty-seven hundred acres at
Ratio, Arkansas. He is vice-president of the Security Bank & Trust Companj
and the Citizens Ice Company ; secretary of the Citizens Compress Company
and for fourteen years has been president of the Helena Board of Trade, and is
vice-president of the Forrest City Compress Company. He and Miss Sophye
Altman were married June 6, 1892. Their children are Mrs. Myrtle S. Metz
and Pauline Solomon.

283

. a. Crabjlep

) ILLIAM ABIE CRAWLEY, Clarksdale, Mississippi, leading
manufacturer of ice in the Mid-South outside of Memphis, and
one of the most progressive and enterprising citizens of the
Mississippi Delta, was born in Kemper County, Mississippi,
September 24, 1856, the son of James Monroe and Adeline
(Clay) Crawley. At the age of eighteen years he went to
work for the old Mississippi Central Railroad Company as night operator at
Hazlehurst, Mississippi, and remained there just long enough to save money
with which to take the course in a business college in St. Louis, Missouri. Then
he worked for a time for a railroad company at Belmont, Missouri, and then
went to Richmond, Virginia, where he started in with the Richmond & Alle
gheny Railroad as train dispatcher, rising through the positions of private secre
tary to the general manager, and train master to purchasing agent. He came to
Memphis in 1895 and spent a year here in the oil business and then saw the
great opening in the Mississippi Delta, especially in the growing demand for
ice in that section. For several years he ran ice cars out of Memphis on the
old Louisville, New Orleans & Texas (now the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley)
Railroad through to New Orleans. When Clarksdale was, as it were, a mere
babe in a cradle, he foresaw its wonderful growth and induced the late Colonel
R. C. Graves, then head of the Bohlen-Huse Ice Company of Memphis, to join
him in the erection of an ice plant at Clarksdale. Mr. Crawley began with a
cash capital of $72.00, operating then as now under the name of the Crawley
Ice Company. The first plant at Clarksdale, which was the second one erected
in the Delta, had a daily capacity of ten tons, and was built in the edge of a
cotton field. Now it has a capacity of one hundred tons, and the land on which
the plant sits is worth $600.00 per front foot. Mr. Crawley has added to the
Clarksdale plant an ice cream factory with a daily capacity of 3,000 gallons.
Other portions of the Delta wanted ice also, and some lime ago Mr. Cra\\ley
established at Tutwiler a factory of the same size as the one in Clarksdale which
ships ice four ways from there daily, to all points in the upper portion of the
Delta. He has also added to his holdings a plant of one hundred tons capacity
and a storage capacity of seven thousand tons in Jackson, Mississippi, its main
purpose being to ice the vegetable trains of the Illinois Central Railroad. To
this also is attached an ice cream plant with a capacity of 2,000 gallons per day.
This plant uses a large portion of the dairy products of Hinds and adjoining
counties and for years Mr. Crawley has been actively encouraging dairying in
that section. He is the sole owner of these plants. Mr. Crawley and Miss Grace
Wier Hamill of Baltimore, Maryland, were married in February, 1887. Their
children are: W. A., Junior; Percy Hamill, and Miss Sylvia, now Mrs. H. C.
Patterson.

284

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^. €. ^imoujson

EVERLY SIMONSON, planter and public spirited citizen of
Luxora, Arkansas, was born in Montgomery County, near
Springfield, Illinois, October 22, 1871, the son of Michael and
Virginia Simonson. He received his early education in the
common schools of Montgomery County, Illinois, and finished
his education with two years in Bushnell Normal College of
his native State. After having engaged in farming and livestock raising in
Montgomery County for some years, he began to look around to see if he could
fine land either better than that of Illinois, or as good as that and cheaper in
price. In Mississippi County, Arkansas, he found both and from that day to
this has been a very bugler on the outer walls telling this fact to the world. He
and Judge J. Otis Humphrey of his home county had their attention turned to
the alluvial lands of northeastern Arkansas, and an investigation convinced them
that they should own some of that acreage. In 1902, they made their first pur
chase of about two thousand acres at $3.00 per acre, and later that year added
two sections of six hundred and forty acres each at $8.00 and three and one-half
sections at $2.00. In 1910 he bought five sections at $12.00 per acre, and later
the same year he paid $20.00 per acre for two additional sections. Nearly all
of this land was wild, only occasional ridges having been cleared and partly
cultivated. He and the Honorable Frank O. Lowden of Illinois had been
friends for years and Mr. Simonson told the governor about the fertility of the
Mississippi County lands. The result was that in 1911, Governor Lowden
bought Mr. Simonson's entire holdings of some eight thousand acres for $20.00
per acre. As Governor Lowden's agent, Mr. Simonson bought for the governor
enough adjoining land to make his Mississippi County plantation five by three
miles square and also 32,000 acres in the Arkansas River Valley. Since then
Mr. Simonson has been adding steadily to his own holdings near Luxora until
now he owns more than seven thousand acres. He is chairman of the board of
commissioners for the Grassy Lake and Tyronza drainage district, at its incep
tion the largest and most complete system in the United States, comprising three
hundred miles of dredge work and many miles of lighter work, and making
lands that then could be bought al from $5.00 to $15.00 per acre now rent for
$20.00 to $35.00 and produce $100 to $300 worth of crops per acre per annum.
In fact, no citizen of Mississippi County has been more active in the past eighteen
years than Mr. Simonson for the upbuilding of the county and the alluvial
empire in general. He is a member of the Southern Alluvial Land Association,
the Knights of Pythias and the Memphis Chamber of Commerce. Mr. Simonson
and Miss Eddie Sue Rush of Ripley, Tennessee, were married October 20, 1920.

289

J. ?Babnep ^mitlj

^f^ONATHAN DABNEY SMITH, planter at Hiflhouse, Missis-
^gs^ sippi and millionaire, was born in Hinds County, Mississippi,
JWq August 15, 1857, and grew up there one of several sons of
^l Mr. Lemuel Harden and Mrs. Mary Bass Smith, during the
Jw lean years for the farmers of that section of the country.
^!^ Realizing early that the opportunities of that section could
occupy but a small portion of his energy, and satisfy but little of his ambition,
he began working at twenty-two years of age as manager of one of the Richardson
Estate plantations in Arkansas. In 1888, he took charge of a plantation belonging
to the same estate at Green Grove, Mississippi. After some lime there, he took
charge of the plantation and business of Lombard Brothers at Deeson, in
Bolivar County, Mississippi, managing that properly with signal success for five
years. In 1895, he went into business for himself and in the intervening fifteen
years has become probably the largest individual planter in the Delta, owning
and controlling twenty-one thousand acres of as fertile and highly developed
land as is to be found. In 1916, with his stepson, B. R. Lombard, he bought the
famous General Bedford Forrest plantation at Green Grove, consisting of some
fourteen hundred acres, and in September, 1919, Mr. Smith and he closed
what is probably the record deal for an individual, even in that land of big
things, when he bought eight thousand acres of land for $1,600,000. Much of
his twenty-one thousand acres is valued al $500 per acre. He is also a stock
holder and director in the Planters Bank and president of the Delta Grocery
& Cotton Company, two of the strongest institutions in Clarksdale. No kindlier
man than Mr. Smith ever lived — none more willing to help anyone in distress,
to do a favor for a friend. No community ever had a better citizen, no locality
a better neighbor. No man will strive harder than he to prevent a difficulty, but
that he has courage to the nth degree has been shown upon every occasion after
he has exhausted every means to have peace with honor. His honesty is doubled
by no man who knows him and his sound judgment and wise counsel are relied
upon greatly by his neighbors and associates. He has never sought office of
any kind, but under the administration of Governor Noel, he served one term
on the levee board, where the same principles that have characterized him and
his family were applied to the public's business. He and Mrs. Minnie (Gaines)
Lombard were married March 24, 1895. They have no children, but the palatial
home in which they live at Hillhouse is the home for nine children of his
deceased brother and of Mrs. Smith by a former marriage, and that home is
just as wide open to his friends as was that of his father near Clinton, where
the latchstring always hung on the outside. He is a member of the Clarksdale
Outing Club, the Elks, the Clarksdale County Club and the Knights of Pythias,
loved by all who know him and respected by the entire county.

290

P^Lt^

A*r \

^//'^/ ^

. ^immousi

I ILLIAM WALTER SIMMONS, manufacturer, coal operator
^^ and merchant, Memphis, Tennessee, is a native of Alabama,
W^j born in Courtland, December 7, 1865, the youngest son of
jsa Alfred DeWoody and Martha Jane (Woolard) Simmons. A
short time after losing his parents he came to Memphis in 1882,
having been graduated from the Alabama High School in the
June previous, and at the age of seventeen years immediately began his business
career, engaging, first, in the cotton seed oil industry, afterwards the manufac
ture of barrels and cooperage material, becoming a stockholder in the Chickasaw
Cooperage Company and having succeeded Mr. J. L. Wellford in the manage
ment of that concern. In 1901, however, he resigned his position with that
company in order to enter his present business which has been his main life
work — the manufacture and sale of ice and the mining and sale of coal. In
1902 he organized the Broadway Coal & Ice Company and, as general manager
of that company, built plants in Memphis where ice is manufactured and sold
both in Memphis and the sorrounding territory. This company also supplies coal
in large quantities for domestic and industrial purposes to Memphis and the
Southern States. In 1906 Mr. Simmons organized the Broadway Coal Mining
Company, and as president of that company procured large acreage of coal
lands in Kentucky, built the town of Simmons, Kentucky, on the Illinois Central
Railroad, and developed large coal mines where a trainload of Lewis Creek coal
is mined daily and distributed through the wholesale coal department of the
Broadway Coal & Ice Company, of Memphis. Mr. Simmons, like many other
business men, does not devote all of his time to his individual affairs but is
active in all civic, state and national issues tending to the betterment of mankind.
During the World War when the army of workers behind the front was sorely
taxed, his mines responded to the call of his government for the first requisite —
more coal. He was a liberal investor in all issues of government securities and
contributed to all war causes and was actively engaged in all drives for the sale
and solicitation of funds for them. Mr. Simmons has no political aspirations
but a deep interest in all things pertaining to the welfare of his community and
nation. He has been a member of the Methodist Church since childhood, is a
Scottish Rite Mason of thirty-second degree, a member of the Memphis Mer
chants Exchange, of which he was president one term; the Memphis Chamber
of Commerce; the Tennessee Club, and the Memphis Country Club. He and
Miss Annie L. Mitchell, daughter of the late Dr. Edward Dana Mitchell and
Verona (Stratton) Mitchell, were married August 11, 1898. They have three
children: William Walter, Junior, now in Towne School of Science, University
of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia; Elizabeth, in Ogontz School, Philadelphia; and
Edward Dana Simmons, in Memphis University School.

295

Capt. i:. S>. iSberfjolbt

VETERANS of the World War who spent so many months in
training, can scarcely appreciate the experiences of Capt.
Thomas Sylvanus Aderholdt in the Civil War. Born in
Catawba County, North Carolina, August 22, 1846, the son of
John and Annie Witherspoon Aderholdt, he was but seventeen
years of age when he joined the thirty-second North Carolina
regiment and reached Daniels' Brigade, Rhodes' division. Army of Virginia, one
morning at 9 o'clock to enter battle of the Wildernes's the next day. From then
he missed only one of the battles which Gen. Lee fought, including the second
engagements at Bell Grove and Cold Harbor; Winchester, and Fort Stevens.
And no commander ever had better troops than those North Carolinians. They
might be forced back, more often killed in the front ranks, but never demoral
ized, and the star of none shone brighter for courage than that of Capt. Ader
holdt. The year after the surrender, he left his native mountains for the level
Mississippi Delta, working first as laborer for Capt. W. H. Stovall. In 1872,
he moved to Friar Point, then the most important point for that section. It was
before the days of railroads, and he engaged in the business of shipping by river,
the only means, as land transportation through the wilderness, then trackless
save for the trails of game and a few trappers, was out of the question. In 1875,
he went into the railroad and levee contracting business, which soon became a
tremendous undertaking with the construction of the Upper Yazoo levee line, the
rebuilding of the lower line and the building of the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley
Railroad. There Capt. Aderholdt's ability to handle men and direct large affairs
shone and for twenty years he was one of the leading contractors along the
river. In 1899, he gave that strenuous life up for the quieter one of planting
cotton in that magnificent land around Friar Point. In this he was most suc
cessful until the close of the season of 1919, when he sold out to his grandson
and his son, practically retiring from active business, with ample means, the
love of all who know him and the respect of the entire community. However,
his associates prevailed upon him to accept the presidency of the Friar Point
Compress Company, in which he is a stockholder, as he also is in the Coahoma
Milling Company and other enterprises. He is a member of the Methodist
Church and of all Masonic bodies except the Scottish Rite. He was mayor of
Friar Point from 1878 to 1882 and chairman of the Board of Supervisors for
sixteen years until he retired at the close of 1919. Capt. Aderholdt was married
twice: first in 1868 to Miss Virginia Luker and after her death to Mrs. Laura
B. Johnston in May, 1889. Having lost two children, he has seven living: Mrs.
Lily Chism, Mrs. Clara Tittle, Mrs. Maggie Lowrance, Mrs. Alma Bond, Miss
Gladys Aderholdt, Shirley Aderholdt and Thomas Sylvanus Aderholdt, Jr.

296

CPL^^O

\

^6}7ctt^:'€A:

^. ». lortlocfe

;AMUEL walker PORTLOCK, banker and financier, Mem
phis, Tennessee, comes from one of the oldest and most dis
tinguished families in the Slate. He is a great nephew of
President James K. Polk, and a nephew of the late Judge
Samuel P. Walker, who was unsurpassed by any man who ever
lived in Memphis for ability, culture and refinement. He was
born in Memphis, August 15, 1870, the son of Robert Griffith and Eleanor
Wormley (Walker) Porllock. He attended the public schools of the City of
Memphis and at the age of twenty-two years started in the line of business in
which he has achieved such a signal success. In 1892, he entered the employ
of the old Memphis National Bank as a stenographer and remained there until
that institution was absorbed by the Merchants Trust Company. After that he
went with the old City Bank when that was operating under a stale charter with
a capital stock of $100,000, his first connection being as assistant cashier. He
was one of the active factors in the growth of this institution until it reached
the point where it changed from a state to a national institution. He remained
with that institution, aiding in its growth, until April, 1917, when he resigned
to become the active vice-president of the Peoples Savings Bank & Trust Com
pany. This institution had an excellent board of directors, but for various
reasons it had not grown with much rapidity in deposits, amounting at that time
to $285,000. Mr. Porllock immediately put new life into it and from the time
that he went there the deposits and influence of the bank grew by leaps and
bounds. Within two years he had made such a success that the directors showed
their appreciation of his ability and services by making him the president of the
institution, which position he still holds. The deposits have grown from the
$285,000 that he found when he went there to $1,300,000 in June, 1920, and with
the directory which is behind Mr. Porllock in the bank it is growing with even
greater speed. The bank now owns its own building on Madison Avenue, which
is being remodeled into one of the handsomest banking houses in the city.
Mr. Portlock is also a director in the Electric Supply Company of Memphis, and
secretary-treasurer of the Limestone Products Company, a $100,000 corporation,
with headquarters in Memphis and large holdings at Black Rock, Arkansas,
where the finest of rock is quarried and crushed for road work, correction of
soils and for making lime. The demand for this product, together with its
cheap rail and water transportation charges, make it a most attractive propo
sition. Mr. Portlock and Miss Frances Slover were married April 26, 1911.
They have two children, Frances Eleanor, born in 1916, and Samuel W., Jr.,
born in 1918. He is a member of Calvary Church, the Tennessee and Colonial
clubs and Chamber of Commerce.

301

g>. I&. Heatfjermau

i AMUEL RICHARD LEATHERMAN, leading cotton factor
and financier of Memphis and planter in the Mississippi Delta,
was compelled to abbreviate his education at the Montgomery-
Bell Academy, Nashville, Tennessee, because the lean years
for the big Delta planters at that time was endangering the
family estate. He threw himself into the breach, becoming
associated with his uncle, the late Col. Richard F. Abbay at Commerce, Missis
sippi, and from that lime to this the energy, judgment and integrity which he
put into the business has made it grow until now it is second to none in this
section in volume and to none anywhere in character. Mr. Leatherman was
born at Commerce, Mississippi, the son of Dr. George W. Leatherman and Mary
Susan Abbay Leatherman, November 30, 1869, and grew up in Tunica County
familiar from his earliest days with the system of managing a cotton plantation.
When he was called back from school to take the active management, under
the general supervision of his uncle, of the property which his grandfather,
Richard Abbay, Sr., of Nashville, had bought there in 1832, the total yield
of the place was some two hundred bales of cotton. By opening new lands
and acquiring more, he has increased the production of the place to more than
ten times that amount, and in addition has acquired large holdings on the other
side of the river in the St. Francis Basin of Arkansas. From the date that
he took hold of the business in Mississippi, every bill was met promptly when it
became due, and this habit, for habit it became, backed by the assets of the
firm, gave it a credit which was ample for any expansion which it might desire
to make. Mr. Leatherman, with his mother and Colonel Abbay, his uncle,
organized the cotton factoring firm of Irwin-Leatherman Cotton Company
in Memphis some years ago, and from the first the same integrity, honesty,
industry and judgment that characterized Mr. Leatherman's career at Com
merce counted, and the business has steadily grown to be one of the best on
Front Street. Originally its secretary and treasurer, he recently succeeded
Colonel Abbay as its president. He and his mother now are sole owners of the
firm of Abbay & Leatherman at Commerce, Mississippi, but continue the busi
ness under the old firm name, under which he recouped the wavering family
fortune and laid the foundation for his own. Mr. Leatherman and Miss Ethel
Irwin, daughter of the late Colonel Robert S. Irwin of Tunica, Mississippi, were
married December 15, 1896. The union has been blessed by six children: Miss
Mary Abbay, to whom Lieut. Hugh Fontaine surrendered after having won
the aviation title of "ace" over the battle lines in France, where he brought
down four German planes; Miss Anne Irwin; Robert Irwin; Samuel
Richard, Jr. ; William Abbay, and Richard Abbay, deceased. The handsome
family residence on Union Avenue in Memphis, is the scene of many delightful
social affairs.

302

^7^4y7?Zay7 I

. ' v^il?;

S>laugfjter Campbell

NE hundred and forty-two dollars in cash, plus 100 per cent
"pep," 100 per cent faith in his adopted country, and 100 per
cent honesty enabled William Slaughter Campbell in twenty-
eight years to become one of the leading merchants in Clarks
dale, Mississippi, and one of the largest planters in the Upper
Yazoo Delta. Born in Clinton, Louisiana, on June 7, 1863,
the son of Mr. James A. and Mrs. Mary S. Campbell, he was educated at
Magruder College, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Kenmore High School, Amherst,
Virginia. At the age of twenty years, he began business as office man in the
store of his father al Port Hudson, Louisiana, and remained there until 1890,
when he moved to Clarksdale, Mississippi, in the mercantile business which
his father opened there. Two years later, with $142 in cash, he started in busi
ness for himself as a merchant and to this business soon began adding that of
planting. He had faith in the Coahoma County lands, knew the best when he
saw it and now possesses nearly five thousand acres of the best that there is to
be had and lying beautifully. The panics of 1897 and 1907 hit Mr. Campbell
hard as it did almost all of the other business men and planters in the Delta
and the lean year of 1911 was one that tried the souls of the strongest of
men ; but he was strong enough to weather all three of these storms. His
resolute courage stood him in good stead and he fought the financial battles
to a successful finish, winning a success of which any man may well be justly
proud. He has acquired a great deal of city property in Clarksdale which has
enhanced in value at a rate which is astounding, and is heavily interested in
many of the best concerns in the Delta, notably the Planters Bank in which he
is a director, the Planters Oil Works, the Delta Grocery & Cotton Company and
the Clarksdale Machinery Company. But his vision, clear as it ever has been
as to the ultimate values in the Delta, has not been confined to that section.
He has many and varied outside investments, among them being stock in the
Marland Refining Company, of Ponca City, Oklahoma ; in the Texas Oil Com
pany; in the Mobile Tractor Company, of Mobile, Alabama; in the Missouri
Life Insurance Company; the Gulfport Life Insurance Company, and the
New World Life Insurance Company. Mr. Campbell and Miss Carolyn Wild-
berger were married in Clarksdale on April 9, 1902, and have two girls, Eliza
beth Campbell and Mary Campbell. He is a member of the Catholic Church,
of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks No. 977, of the Clarksdale
Country Club, of the Outing Club and of the Tennessee Club of Memphis. His
genial disposition, affectionate manner and charming personality have made him
a wide circle of loving friends ; while his honesty, integrity and capacity have
given him a business standing second to none ; still to all he is the "Slaughter"
that he was when he was on the lower rungs of the ladder.

307

1. (S. Bean

I HEN Leonidas Guy Dean moved to Shaw, Mississippi, it was
just a wide place in the road having a saloon at either end
and one in the middle, with two small general stores sand
wiched in between them, and the general stores did very little
of the business of the settlement. No one has been a greater
factor than he in transforming it into the beautiful, wealthy
and progressive city that it now is. Mr. Dean is a native Mississippian, having
been born in Senatobia, August 2, 1866, the son of David L. and Martha
Elizabeth Dean. He went to the high school al Senatobia and at the age of
fourteen years he began his business career as shipping clerk for a wholesale
furniture house in Memphis. After four years at this work he joined his
father as a member of the furniture firm of D. L. Dean & Son al .Senatobia,
and two years later they opened a branch house at Coldwater, of which he had
charge. In 1888 Mr. Dean moved to the Delta, going into the livestock business
for himself at Leiand, but the following year, he moved to Shaw, opening a
mercantile house under the firm name of L. G. Dean, at the same time beginning
to buy land and plant cotton. He has expanded so rapidly in that line that
now the Dean Plantation comprises eight thousand acres of the beautiful and
fertile land about Shaw, while his leaseholdings aggregate six thousand more.
He also owns sixteen hundred acres of magnificent Arkansas land near the pro
gressive city of Earl. He has six gins through which pass about half of the
cotton that comes to the market al Shaw, and that is in the heart of the best long
staple district in the world. But Mr. Dean has not devoted all of his time and
attention to his own fortunes. He realized that after the levees, the greatest
need of the Delta soils was drainage for the inside waters, and he took such
an active part in that work that he was made president of the Shaw Drainage
District, which has either improved or made possible the cultivation of some
forty thousand acres of land, now the equal of any in the world. Next in
economic needs of the Delta come roads over which its ample products can be
moved to market. Again he took the lead, and plans now are completed by
which every road in the district will have been surfaced with gravel by the end
of the year. Men of Mr. Dean's calibre realized that the negro of today would
not be available as labor in the Southern plantations under the conditions of
yesterday, and he was a leader in building a $50,000 school for them. He is
president of the board of trustees which is building a $200,000 consolidated
school now for white children. Aside from varied financial interests at home,
he is a director in the Texas-Eagle Producing & Refining Company of Fort
Worth. He made an excellent sheriff for four years of Bolivar County. Mr. Dean
and Miss Eugenia C. Walker were married August 14, 1892. Their children are
Guy W., Wawice Eugenia and Miss Lonnie G. Dean.

308

^€^-7>\_

Pf.M J.

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». ^. Mt^

\ ILLIAM HENRY DICK, for many years one of the most
active men for every good movement in Tallahatchie County,
Mississippi, who recently moved from Philipp to Memphis,
Tennessee, is a native of Rock Island, Illinois, where he was
born I'^ebruary 19, 1872. He attended the common .schools
from 1880 to 1885 and spent the next four years in the high
school at home. In the spring of 1890, he took a four-months' course in a busi
ness college and in May of that year went with the lumber firm of Meikljohn &
Hatten at Manawa, Wisconsin, as a bookkeeper. Two years later he and
Mr. W. H. Hatten of that firm formed an association which has endured to this
day and developed into one of the big lumber concerns of the country. Their first
partnership was formed in the spring of 1892, to do a general wholesale lumber
business at Manawa. Mr. Dick prospered in this line until in 1896 he was able to
buy an interest in the Meikljohn & Hatten Lumber Company, and was chosen sec
retary and manager of the business at New London, Wisconsin. In 1907, Mr. Hat
ten and he organized the Tallahatchie Lumber Company, Mr. Hatten being the
president of the concern and Mr. Dick the vice-president in active charge of
the business. He bought for the company a large tract of land in Tallahatchie
County, Mississippi, then considered by most of the neighboring planters as
mere waste land covered with timber which could not be handled. Mr. Dick
erected a large and thoroughly modern mill at Philipp. He built his own rail
roads out into the timber from the tracks of the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley
Railroad, took the logs to Philipp and there manufactured lumber surpassed
by no mill. He had the reputation of being able to do this at less cost per
thousand feet than any other mill in the country. The average early northern
lumberman coming to the Delta was a reactionary from fear of higher taxes,
but Mr. Dick from the time that he landed in Tallahatchie County was one
of the most progressive citizens in it, no matter whether the proposed work
benefitted his land directly or not. There is probably no country road in the
Mid-South superior to that which Tallahatchie County has built to connect the
Coahoma and Leflore county systems. It is miles from Mr. Dick's land, but
no man in the county worked harder for the organization of the district and
the most advantageous sale of the bonds than he. He had been equally as active
for every drainage movement ever proposed. He was a pioneer among the big
lumbermen in the clearing of land. Just as soon as he got the timber off, he
began to reduce the land to a state of cultivation, and now the company owns
some magnificent plantations on the high banks of Tippo. Mr. Dick is a
member of Tripoli Temple, A. A. O. N. M. S., Wisconsin Consistory. He
and Miss Susa Blackwood were married June 29, 1898. Their children are
Misses Helen, Marjorie and NaOmi.

313

JB. ?l|. Mfjite

OSSEY HURDLE WHITE began work in Memphis as a lad
thirty-four years ago. Now he is the president and active
head of seven firms which do an annual business of nearly
six and a half million dollars per year. Mr. White was born
in Waverly, Tennessee, May 2, 1869, the son of Dossey Hurdle
and Sarah Ann (Phillips) White. He was educated in the
public schools of Hardin County, finishing his course with one year in Hardin
College at Savannah, Tennessee. In January, 1886, he came to Memphis and
went to work for the Langstaff Hardware Company at the rate of $2.50 per
week. But he had brought with him to Memphis a high degree of energy, an
ambition to go to the front, sterling integrity and absolute honesty. Before he
was of legal age, he had risen to the point where Mr. A. D. Langstaff sent him
out on the road as a traveling salesman. He remained in that work for five
years and then went with the stronger firm of the Simmons Hardware Company
of St. Louis, Missouri. After ten years of service with the Simmons Hardware
Company he realized that he was able to handle big propositions of his own
and had accumulated enough to go into business. On February 1, 1904, he
bought out the wholesale grocery business of A. B. Treadwell & Sons and began
the mercantile career in which he has been conspicuous ever since. On the
first of February that year he organized the White-Wilson-Drew Company,
which is still the firm name of the main business and which for years has been
one of the most progressive and active wholesale grocery houses in the South.
Mr. White's vision was clearer than that of probably any other Memphian as
to the possibilities of the fertile country on the other side of the Mississippi
River and above the city, and as his Memphis business became stronger he
began establishing stores up there. Now in addition to being president of the
White-Wilson-Drew Company, Memphis, he is president of the White-Dorroh
Grocery Company, wholesale grocers at Sikeston, Missouri, the Farmers Supply
Company, retail dealers, in the same city ; the Caruthersville Hardware Com
pany, and the White-Dorroh Mercantile Company at Caruthersville, Missouri;
and the Oberst Hardware Company of Blytheville, Arkansas. In addition he
formed and is president of the Continental Oil Company of Memphis, wholesale
distributors of lubricating oils, gasoline and kerosene. All of these houses have
been conducted since their organization with such energy, efficiency and honesty
that they all are leaders in their respective locations. Mr. White is a member
of the board of directors of the Guaranty Bank & Trust Company, one of
Memphis' strongest banks with $7,000,000 resources, and is also a member of the
Chamber of Commerce. He has never sought or held any political office.
Mr. White and Miss Martha Obenchain Hicks were married December 12, 1893.
They have one child. Miss Dorothy Drew White.

314

od .7x7 7/^A^

^^7217,

M. iH. (§arrarb

ILLIAM MOUNTJOY GARRARD, Indianola, Mississippi, one
of the leading cotton buyers and exporters in the entire cotton
belt, was born August 25, 1881, the son of William M. and
Zelpha (Barrett) Garrard. Although born in Lawrenceville,
Illinois, he comes from one of the oldest and most distinguished
families in Kentucky. His great-grandfather was one of the
earliest governors of that State and Garrard County was named for him. He
came to Mississippi when he was quite young and attended the University of
Mississippi at Oxford. Later he went to the State Agricultural & Mechanical
College at Starkville, where he was graduated in 1904. He began the same
year a career in which he has been eminently successful, at the same time
developing into one of the most useful men in this section. He began business
life as a bookkeeper for Humphreys & Company at Indianola, the firm then
being one of the large buyers and shippers of cotton. At the end of three
years he had learned the business and established a reputation for honesty and
efficiency which made it possible for him to get a start on his own account
in the same line. Pat A. Malone and General S. R. Keesler of Greenwood,
composing the firm of Malone & Keesler, cotton buyers and exporters, joined
him in forming and financing the firm of W. M. Garrard & Company, with
Mr. Garrard in charge of the business. The firm commenced business in 1907
with only $1,000 cash capital, but it had also in the character and capacity of
Mr. Garrard an asset which proved to be of great value. From the beginning
the business grew with rapid strides. Now it amounts to more than a million
dollars a year with the home office still in Indianola and with buying branches
in the principal cotton centers of the cotton belt and selling offices in the main
points of consumption both in the United States and in England. In addition
to his cotton interests, Mr. Garrard is also vice-president of the Sunflower
Bank of Indianola, president of the Indianola Elevator & Milling Company,
and secretary and treasurer of the Sunflower Compress Company, in all of
which he is a large stockholder. Mr. Garrard has never sought any political
office of profit, but for the past six years he has served as president of the
board of trustees for the Indianola city schools, to the development and man
agement of which he has given a great deal of valuable time. Mr. Garrard
has been a devoted member of the Baptist Church for many years, and for
years a member of the board of deacons. For five years he was superintend
ent of the Sunday school. He is also a member of the Mystic Shrine and of the
Elks, and at college he was a member of the Phi Delta Theta Greek letter
fraternity. Mr. Garrard and Miss Mabelle Smith were married June 14, 1908.
They have five children: William M., Jr., James Moseley, Mabelle, Mary Jayne,
and Robert Barrett Garrard.

319

3t. ^. Raines;

EN HARRISON GAINES, planter, merchant, ginner, cotton
buyer, mayor and ca])italist, although young in years, is the
patriarch of Boyle, Mississippi, in that he has lived there
longer than any other man. Yet Boyle is an important city and
Mr. Gaines was some thirty years of age when he went to
live where Boyle now is. What better proof can be had of
the equation that the wonderful fertility of the Mississippi Delta soil, plus
brains, industry and integrity equals rapid wealth? Mr. Gaines is a native of
Kentucky, having been born November 11, 1867, in Warren County, the son
of George Morton and Sarah Gaines. He received a common school education
and then went to Ogden College at Bowling Green. At the age of eighteen years,
he went to work for the Louisville & Nashville Railroad as a telegraph operator
at Birmingham, Alabama. After having become an expert telegrapher, he
quit the railroad and followed his profession all over the country, even as far
away as the City of Mexico. But in all of these travels, he saw no land like
that of the Mid-South, and the year 1893 found him in the coal business in
Memphis. This line was too narrow for his vigor and two years later he
went with Maj. G. W. McGinnis, then land agent for the Illinois Central and
Yazoo & Mississippi Valley railroads and the greatest of the early prophets
on the future of the Mississippi Delta. Mr. Gaines caught his chief's infection
and the more he saw of the Delta the more he became obsessed with the desire
to possess a portion of it. Few had foresight enough at that time to realize that
the wet, flat lands where Boyle now stands would increase ten thousand per
cent in value in twenty years, but he bought land there at $3 per acre, which,
in 1919, sold for $300. Boyle then was wild in its vegetation, in the animal
life of its forests and in the manners of its citizenship, and dreary in its vast
areas of water standing stagnant. He was a prime factor in the metamorphosis
from then until now. He owns and controls nearly eight thousand acres of land
of which nearly six thousand are in cultivation. His land holdings include
thirty-six hundred acres in Lake County, Tennessee, the only Delta County in
the State. As the first president of the Bolivar County drainage district, it
was largely through his energy that the eighty-five miles of canals were dug
which improved 140,000 acres of land. In 1915 Boyle realized that it needed
artesian water, but could not sell her bonds. Mr. Gaines took the entire issue.
He became mayor solely to improve the city, and concrete walks replaced the
buckshot quagmire. Mr. Gaines is president of the Bolivar Comi)ress Company
of Cleveland, and director and stockholder in many other industrial and finan
cial enterprises. He married Miss Nettie Francis, October 21, 1889. They
have two sons, Stanley F. and Rowland R.

320

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f . i:. ^ittton

[ESSE THOMAS HINTON, Memphis, Tennessee, president
and general manager of J. T. Hinton & Son, funeral directors,
was born in Poplar Plains in Fleming County, Kentucky, on
March 24, 1865, the son of Thomas Jefferson and Sarah Ann
(Fitch) Hinton. It was a sturdy stock from which he came,
honest and upright in their dealings with their neighbor, coura
geous and highminded in their obligations as citizens and faithful to the convic
tions of their fathers. He went to the public schools, meanwhile working with
his father in the bridge building business. In 1888 he learned through a travel
ing man, who did business with his father, that a position was open with
P. M. Stanley, at that time a leading undertaker of Memphis. Mr. Hinton
applied for the job and got it. He started at $50 a month. His attention to
every duty and the splendid devotion with which he went about his work,
carried him forward. Two years later the name of the firm was changed to
Stanley & Hinton. In 1892 Mr. Hinton, who had rapidly surged to the front in
the business, left the firm and went with J. F. Hoist & Brother. He gave to
this firm ten years of efficiency and devotion to duty. In 1902 the firm became
Hoist Bros. & Hinton, and so continued until 1913 when Mr. Hinton bought
out the interest of Mr. J. F. Hoist and the firm became J. T. Hinton & Son.
This firm is now as it has been since it was founded nearly eighty years ago
the leading undertaking firm in the Mid-South. Mr. Hinton, as a young man
in the employ of J. F. Hoist & Brother, drove the first ambulance that was ever
seen on the streets of Memphis. Now the firm operates three motor ambulances,
splendidly equipped with every convenience. One of them, lately added to the
ambulance department, is the finest ambulance in the world. The firm is delight
fully located in the beautifully furnished and splendidly equipped funeral home
at 1150 Union Avenue. The firm also owns the Hoist Building at 173 Union
Avenue which, for so many years was the home of the business, and which is
still used to take care of its large business. Mr. Flinton was married December
31, 1891, to Miss Lida Balzelle Burgess, also of Fleming County, Kentucky.
Mrs. Hinton is one of Memphis' talented and accomplished women. He is a
member of the Colonial Country Club, Memphis Rotary Club and Chamber of
Commerce. Though never desiring political office Mr. Hinton always takes a
deep interest in the ways of politicians, and is a sterling Democrat. He is
an officer of the Linden Avenue Christian Church. For many years the Hintons
lived on Eastmoreland Avenue. Of late years they have lived at the Hotel
Chisca. Mr. Hinton has two children, Mrs. Mary Louise Hinton Clark, and
Captain Frayser Hinton, vice-president of the firm, a veteran of the World War
and one of the city's promising young business men.

:25

^. iW. Joneg

|ROBABLY the most successful of the younger planters on the
Tallahatchie River in Mississippi is Selwyn Marshall Jones
of Glendora, and no man on the river has put more energy into
his business than he has. Mr. Jones was born in Torrance,
Mississippi, July 11, 1883, the son of Selwyn Marshall and
Rolena Ward (Eggleston) Jones. He was educated in the
public schools of Grenada, and spent two years in Mississippi College at Clinton,
and the same number of years in the University of Mississippi. At the age
of sixteen years he went to work as a turn-row rider on the plantation of
R. Dailey at Torrance. He spent two years working for Mr. Dailey and then
sought the wider fields afforded by the Mississippi Delta. His uncle, R. Lewis
Jones, was then one of the leading planters along Tallahatchie River. The
lad worked for his uncle until he was twenty-one years of age. Then he
inherited seven hundred and sixty acres of land where Black Bayou empties
into the river and took active charge of it. Well equipped by breeding, educa
tion, training and experience, possessed of a physique which seemed proof
against fatigue, a sincere ambition to go to the top of the ladder — all of this
dominated by sterling honesty — he put all that was in him into his manage
ment of the plantation. It showed from the first day that he took charge and
from the first the business prospered. The Mississippi Delta, with clearing,
fencing and draining during the workable days even when the crops do not
require attention, probably is the busiest place in the United States. The
drone receives about the same consideration that he does in the hive of bees
when the honey flow is light. And Mr. Jones' plantation was the busiest of the
busy. But if he required much of his men and mules, he gave more of himself.
It was never "Go ahead," but "Come on" for he was ever in the lead, and
every one on the place caught the contagion of his terrible energy. He ran the
place alone for three years, when he and Mr. Boykin M. Perkins formed the
firm of Jones & Perkins, which enjoyed five years of prosperity. Mr. Jones
then bought Mr. Perkins out and since that time has run the business alone.
Since the beginning of his career in the Delta, Mr. Jones has had great faith
in it and has been a rapid buyer of land until he now owns ten thousand acres,
located both in the Delta and at his old home near Torrance, where he has a
large stock farm. He is a director in the Greenwood Bank & Trust Company,
and the Henderson-Baird Hardware Company of Greenwood, and the Minter
City Oil Company, and a stockholder in the Bank of Tallahatchie at Sumner
and the Planters Bank at Clarksdale. As county supervisor, he was active in
giving Tallahatchie County her first gravel roads. He and Miss Mary Winter
Upshaw were married November I, 1912. They have two children, Selwyn
Marshall, Jr., and Mary Upshaw Jones.

326

y^^7i^:-'y-rt/y^,

. C. 1laj»ne

AHLON EASROM LAYNE, Memphis, Tennessee, head of
^^ the Layne & Bowler Company, the world's largest developer
MraJij of underground water supplies, was born July 31, 1865, on
)3d) a farm between Chillicothe and Ottumwa, Iowa, the son of
Franklin Mortimer and Augusta Virginia (Newcome) Layne.
The family left Iowa in December, 1872, and located near
Hurley, South Dakota, where Mr. Layne spent his youth, getting his education
in the local schools there until he was about nineteen years of age. He was at
the age of seventeen years when he did his first work in the line, after nearly
forty years in which he has achieved such marked success and of which he
says, "I truly believe that separation of oil and gas from Nature's storehouse,
also developing and commercializing the underground flows (Nature's balance
wheel between rain periods) is the greatest undeveloped piece of engineering
work now before the thinking world." His income from the first job was one
dollar per day wages. Small as this was, the work had a fascination for him, and
he stuck to the line, even though he then probably did not dream that he
would evolve a system which would become international in its use, and would
make lands which the geographies of his day described as hopeless deserts bloom
now like the Antilles. At ten days after having reached his majority, Mr. Layne
married and viithin less than six months induced his father-in-law to mortgage
three cows with which to buy a one-horse-pov^er well-digging rig for $89.
He made good, paid off the debt at 12 per cent interest and the following year
got a two-horse rig. From the first his guarantee was "No Water, No Pay"
and that is the guarantee today of the company. His industry, ingenuity and
sterling integrity went into the business from the start and has remained in
it every day. It grew until he increased his outfit to a six-horse rig and then
to steam power, from the beginning making many useful inventions. For eleven
years he sunk wells in the neighboring states and during the spring of 1901,
he went to Texas, saw the wonderful possibilities in the southern portion of
the State, and later installed a big plant at Houston to take advantage of them
and incidentally add many fold to the value of the lands. A factory was also
installed in Los Angeles, California, which is a benefactor to the arid lands
of the extreme Southwest. In 1913 the Layne & Bowler Company bought
the plant of the Allen Engineering Company in Memphis, overhauled and
enlarged it to where it is one of the most efficient factories in the entire South.
Beside these three factories, the company has ten branches and sales offices
and has installed over 7,000 pumping stations in the United States and ten
foreign lands. Mr. Layne and Miss Bertha Adelta Basye were married August
10, 1886. They have four sons, Lewis M., Leslie A., Lloyd F. and Ollyn A.
Layne. Mr. Layne is a member of the Methodist Church.

331

®r. ». f . 3tatj>

;R. WALTER JEFFERSON LACY, Lyon, Mississippi, who
owns and lives on the Ankticook plantation, near Clarksdale,
of twelve hundred acres, was born March 24, 1877, in DeSoto
Parish, Louisiana, the son of Elijah Wimbuck and Frances
(Scott) Lacy. In the early period of his life he was the
victim of rheumatism to a degree that deprived him of attend
ing school, and was educated by private tutors. Later he entered the Kansas
City Veterinary College, was graduated in 1906. At the time the United States
Bureau of Animal Industry was called on to expand to meet the present meat
inspection law, and control the diseases of animals, he entered this service,
it having exceptional educational advantages, being stationed first in the Kansas
City Stock Yards, thence to Austin, Minnesota ; Wichita and Parsons, Kansas,
two years at Parsons, having jurisdiction over stock entering the grazing lands
of the Osage Indian reservation, then the land of the blanket Indian, now a
famous oil region ; thence to Omaha and Nebraska City, Nebraska ; thence to
St. Joseph, Missouri, and thence to Nashville, Tennessee. Out of the latter
station he was assigned to Coahoma and Tunica counties, Mississippi, in the
spring of 1910. Prior to taking up the veterinary profession, he was engaged
in the horse and mule business, operating five years in Illinois, Iowa and Mis
souri. Doctor Lacy thought he had seen the finest of the nations farm lands,
in his former locations, and the successful corn belt farmer was the acme of
agricultural success, but when Clarksdale was made his headquarters, and he
had covered his territory, he realized there was the spot of fertility and the
land of opportunity. After eighteen months organizing and directing ihe
bureau's work there he was transferred to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and was
returned to Clarksdale in 1912 to close up the bureau's work. He then resignea,
rather than leave the Delta. He bought a half interest with Mr. E. J. Mullens
in twelve hundred acres of semi-developed land, operating as the firm of
Mullens & Lacy, until 1920, six hundred of which came to him in the dissolu
tion of the firm, and formed the nucleus of his present holdings. The other
was added by timely purchases of surrounding lands. He owns, with Mr. T. C.
Oberst, Swan Lake plantation of sixteen hundred acres, adjoining his. Ankti
cook is Indian for "grape-vine" telegraph. Here all details are under his
personal direction and under his guiding hand it is the show place for Coahoma
County, unsurpassed by any for degree of development and character of
improvements. For several years he has paralleled the cotton plantings of the
Sloneville Experiment Station, and also co-operates with ])lant specialists of
other areas. He is a stockholder in the Planters Bank, Clarksdale, Delta Grocery
& Cotton Company, Clarksdale, and Memphis Packing Corporation. He was
married to Miss Birdie Mullens, in Clarksdale, October 11, 1911. His favorite
mode of travel is by motor and he will vary widely from the usual course of
travel to visit a farm of reported excellence, a spot of historical importance or
scenic splendor.

332

f. tE:. Ma^^tv

|OHN THOMAS MASSEY, manager of the states of Ten
nessee and Arkansas for the Standard Oil Company of Louis
iana, has attained to that important position with the biggest
business organization in the world, solely in pursuance of its
policy of putting the most efficient men in the high executive
positions. Mr. Massey was born in Lafayette County, Mis
sissippi, near Oxford, November 5, 1882, the son of William C. and Mary E.
Massey. At the age of nineteen years he began his career as stenographer for
the Illinois Central and Gulf & Ship Island railroads and remained with them
until 1903. Later that year he was with the Southern Car & Foundry Company
at Annislon, Alabama, and with the Atlantic & Birmingham Railroad in the
same capacity. Seeking a broader field where there would be greater opportunity
for the talents which he possessed, Mr. Massey came to Memphis and on
January 1, 1904, entered the office of the Standard Oil Company of Kentucky
as stenographer. He was promoted to chief clerk and remained with that
company until its properties in Tennessee were purchased by the Standard Oil
Company of Louisiana. Mr. Massey continued with the Standard Oil Company
of Louisiana in the same capacity for some time, but Mr. C. O. Scholder, then
manager of the local office, saw that everything that Mr. Massey did had been
well done and that he possessed initiative. Big businesses are ever in need of
good men and Mr. Scholder promoted Mr. Massey to assistant manager, which
position he filled until Mr. Scholder was promoted to the position of vice-presi
dent of the company with headquarters in New Orleans, Louisiana, in charge of
the sales department and the business of the company in a number of southern
states, including Tennessee and Arkansas. Knowing Mr. Massey's thorough
qualifications for the head of the Memphis office, Mr. Scholder made him his
successor. He is recognized as one of the most systematic business men of the
city, and one of the most efficient managers of the .Standard Oil Company in
this section. Ever since Mr. Massey became the chief clerk in the local office
of the Standard Oil Company, that office has been recognized as one of the
best in the city in which to work. While it is true that a full day's work had
to be done and done correctly, that office was a pioneer locally in reducing the
hours for employees, in giving them half holidays on Saturdays, in paying good
salaries, in making promotions based solely upon merit, and in having the
most convenient and sanitary conditions for all of the office force. Mr. Massey
has taken no active part in politics, but is a member of the Rotary Club, the
Chamber of Commerce and the Colonial Country Club, and active in every move
ment for a better Memphis. He and Miss Nannie Louise Driver were married
December 28, 1902, and have one child, a daughter.

337

#. Jf . g>cf)lecl)t

F. SCHLECHT came to Memphis in 1915 with the agency
for the Dodge Brothers motor car and a degree of energy
which enabled him to build up a business employing more
than one hundred men and conceded by executives of big
concerns, and automobile sales managers to be the most com
plete and efficient, and to have the best arrangement of any
similar concern in the South and the equal of any in the United States — a
business establishment aristocratic in its order and cleanliness and democratic
in that every one is treated alike. The price of a Dodge car is the same to
every customer, and no one has ever claimed the standing offer of a car
free to any, man who can show that another got one more cheaply than the
list price, or one ordered after his. The system, energy and judgment that
Mr. Schlecht has put into the business is attested by the fact that he had
on file at one time five hundred orders, which the factory had been unable
to fill. In the management of his business, Mr. Schlecht has evolved a plan
which secures maximum results in the way of efficiency from each employe
at the same time developing his loyalty and attracting his affection. Each
week he meets with the heads of all of the departments, reviewing the past
week and deciding on the procedure for the next week. A question box is
maintained where each employe is urged to make suggestions. Any of these
that look good to the heads of departments are tried out for sixty days and
if at the end of that time they prove of value, the emi)loye who made it is
paid for the idea. At the end of each year the employes are Mr. Schlecht's
guests at a banquet, where they receive bonuses. The result of this and con
stant good treatment has been no shortage of labor, even during the severest
war times. At the 1918 banquet every employe who attended the 1917 banquet
was present save those who had entered the service and one who had died.
Although Mr. Schlecht came to Memphis in 1915, not knowing a man nor
the name of a street, he headed a team in the 1919-membership drive of the
Chamber of Commerce which won the silver cup for having secured most
members and every day of the drive, except one, he was the leader. He was
then named chairman of the chamber's entertainment committee, and arranged
the elaborate affairs for General Pershing and others of lesser fame, together
with having completed for President and Mrs. Wilson what the secret service
men said was the most complete plan made for that trip. He is appreciated
by the trade most for having organized the Memphis Automobile Dealers'
Association, of which he is vice-president. He is also president of the Kiwanis
Club and a member of the Colonial Country Club. Gustave Frederich Schlecht
was born in St. Louis, Missouri, October 15, 1880, and educated there, the
son of Charles and Louisa Schlecht. He and Miss Matilda Kreidler married
June 12, 1903. They have one child, Richard W.

338

aa.i.
OBERT LEE BROWN, Memphis, Tennessee, one of the lead-
ing coal mine operators of the Mid-South, was born Decem-
R(^\ her 30, 1869, in Obion, Tennessee, the son of Calvin S. and
(^J Margaret Virginia (Martin) Brown. He was educated in
the grammar and high schools of Obion and then took the
course in Professor William R. Moore's Training School at
Glass, Tennessee. From these he went to Vanderbilt University in Nashville,
Tennessee, where he took first the literary course and then the law course,
completing the latter in 1892 with the degree of bachelor of law. However,
active business life appealed to Mr. Brown stronger than did the profession
of law, and in September of the year in which he was graduated, he came
to Memphis and entered the coal business, in which line he has remained ever
since and in which he has gone to the top. As the head of the Brown Coal
Company he was for the first twenty years of his business career one of the
leading retailers of the city, but in 1912 he retired from the retail business so
far as Memphis was concerned. In the meanwhile he had acquired and
operated coal mines in Alabama, and in 1905 he began the acquisition of mines
in Western Kentucky. He sold his Alabama interests and concentrated in
Kentucky. In the meanwhile he had also developed into one of the best coal
operators in the United States. He put into coal mining operations a degree
of energy and skill which sent their output up the high mark, and into the
sale of the product of the mines an efficiency, integrity and ability which
made the business highly remunerative. Now he is the head of four large
Western Kentucky coal mining companies, three of which are located on the
lines of the Illinois Central Railroad and one of which is on the Louisville &
Nashville Railroad. As a producer of coal, his companies are the fourth
largest in that section of the state. In addition to being president of the
Brown Coal Company, he is also president of the Gibraltar Coal Mining Com
pany and of the Mercer Coal Company. He also operates sales offices and
coal yards in Louisville, Kentucky, on a large scale, having bought from Gen
eral T. Coleman Dupont the business there in that line of the Central Coal &
Iron Company. Mr. Brown has always been active for every movement for
the improvement of Memphis. He led in the organization of the old City
Bank, now the National City Bank, and was the first president of that institu
tion. Later he sold his stock in that bank and for a long time has been a direct-
tor in the First National Bank. He has also long been interested in farming,
owning and operating several of the best farms in this section. He is a mem
ber of the Memphis Country Club, the Tennessee Club and the Chamber of
Commerce. Mr. Brown and Miss Ella May Starrett were married February
5, 1896. They have one child : Miss Amy A., now Mrs. George Swiggart Miles.

343

J|. S. iWorris;on

A. MORRISON, banker, planter and lumber manufacturer,
Earle, Arkansas, was born in Vevay, Indiana, March 5, 1877,
the son of B. S. and Julia I. Morrison. After having received
a common school education he decided to cast his lot with
the progressive section of the country near Memphis, where
he has prospered greatly and where he has been an active
factor in the development of his adopted home. He settled at Earle when
there was nothing in the location of soil or resources of that site to indicate
that it had a right to be any better than a number of other small cities in the
St. Francis Basin. He and Judge John F. Rhodes, long a leading figure in
the material and political welfare of Crittenden County, formed a connection
in the real estate and land abstract business. They soon became the largest
dealers in land in that section of the State. Mr. Morrison had enough vision
to realize that the fertile level lands of the Basin could not long remain low
in price like they were at that time in comparison with the other lands of the
United States which were not nearly so productive. He and Judge Rhodes
were large buyers of wild land on their own account. Much of this they held
for a short time and sold at a handsome profit. Many tracts were developed
by them to some extent and then sold. Other tracts they sub-divided and sold
in small tracts so as to hasten the settlement of the country and in a number
of cases they laid the open land off in town lots. Their abstract business
also grew to a large size. Mr. Morrison and a few other men of his type —
men who essentially are doers and not mere talkers— happened to settle in
Earle. With them it was naturally a matter of co-operation for the good of
the community and it was but a short time until the small town began to feel
the effect of their presence. The net result of their activity was the rapid
growth of the town into a city which for some years has been generally con
sidered the best and most active city in the St. Francis Basin, setting the
example and pace for all of the others in all lines of progress and civic activity.
The spirit of the city enthused the surrounding country and they taxed them
selves heavily for good roads into Earle from all points of the compass. In
the meantime, Mr. Morrison had acquired some of the best of the fine alluvial
lands in that section of the basin and became one of the most substantial
planters of cotton. He is also heavily interested in valuable timber lands in
Louisiana. For two years following 1911, Mr. Morrison was secretary of the
St. Francis Levee Board, and he is vice-president and executive officer of the
Bank of Commerce at Earle, the strongest financial institution in his section
of the State. Mr. Morrison and Miss Lillie Hogin were married in 1898.
Their children are, Rebecca A., and Hamp A. Morrison.

344

y\x^\jy^KJ>JT^^-^

a. f . iWogelep

HERE is no greater hustler in Coahoma County, Mississippi,
than Arthur Jenkins Moseley. Born in Panola County, Missis
sippi, the son of Dr. Hillery and Martha J. Moseley, he went
to work at ten years of age in a drugstore but after fifteen
years of this work, he sought the more strenuous life of the
Delta, then just beginning its period of astounding growth,
in which he took a most active part. For some twelve years he had charge
of the large planting and mercantile interests of Mrs. L. E. Bobo at Lyon, then
he engaged in planting on his own account. No man, even in the Delta at that
time where the nervous strain was heavy, ever put more steam pressure behind
his work than did Mr. Moseley. It showed instantly and the business grew
in volume and income from the start and Mr. Moseley had soon acquired a
fortune, which still is growing and which is enjoyed by his host of friends
as much as by himself. So bright is his disposition and so warm is his affec
tion for his fellowman that he would be happy in their company if they were
prosperous while he was in adversity, and miserable if he alone possessed all
of the good things in life. Mr. Moseley thinks that Coahoma County is the
finest county in the world, not only in which to live but also in which to invest,
and all of his business connections are there. In addition to his planting
affairs, he is a stockholder and director in the Planters Bank, the Clarksdale
Savings Bank, the Johnson-Harlow Lumber Company, the Clarksdale Machinery
Company, the Peoples Compress Company, the Clarksdale Trust Company, and
president of the Coahoma County Milling Company, vice-president of the Delta
Grocery & Cotton Company, doing a tremendous wholesale grocery and cotton
factor business, and vice-president of the Delta Hardware & Implement Com
pany, wholesalers in both of those lines. When Uncle Sam went into the
war, he gave his only son, Albert J., who was accidentally killed just after
receiving his discharge. Mr. Moseley went into "high" in all of the loan cam
paigns. He was county chairman for the first Liberty loan drive and district
chairman in all of the others for Coahoma, Tunica, Bolivar, Washington and
Humphreys counties. In each drive his territory went over the top 100 per
cent, and Coahoma "put it over" larger than any other county in the state.
Mr. Moseley and Miss Hettie Bobo were married February 27, 1895, and have
only one living child. Miss Louise. With no taste for office-seeking, Mr. Moseley
served one term as a county supervisor. He is a member of the Chamber of
Commerce, of the Clarksdale Country Club and the Clarksdale Outing Club, of
the Clarksdale Lodge of Elks and of the Clarksdale Rotary Club. He has
traveled widely in the United States and in Canada. No man is better known
in his section than he and better loved by all who know him.

349

1. C. iWafjannaf)

LBERT ELLSWORTH MAHANNAH, Memphis, Tennessee,
has erected here the largest hardwood sawmill in the United
States, which turns out lumber which his firm makes into
bodies for the largest automobile factory in the world and into
wheels for eight other large motor cars. The plant, in full
operation, with the additions being made will have four thou
sand men on its payroll. Mr. Mahannah was born February 20, 1864, in Cort
land, Ohio, and received a public school and collegiate education. He came
South in 1900, operating at various places in the mill and lumber business for
five years and then came to Memphis, operating a mill of only medium size
under the name of the Mahannah Lumber Company, where Plum Street and
the Illinois Central Railroad join. Mr. Mahannah, finally in the right location,
showed himself to be one of the best of sawmill men and his business grew
from the start. He sold his plant to the Kelsey Wheel Company of Detroit,
Michigan, in 1912, and has managed the plant since then for them, having sold
his product to them for several years preceding this which made it advantageous
for Mr. Kelsey to finance a plant which Mr. Mahannah should manage in the
center of the hardwood belt, making wheels and bodies for the eight large auto
companies complete. Mr. Mahannah erected in the North Memphis plant, what
experienced mill men say, is the best hardwood sawmill in the United States
and the largest. It has a ten-hour capacity of one hundred and twenty thousand
feet, or nearly a quarter of a million feet if operated day and night to its
capacity, and yet with every appliance for the mechanical handling of the
material and product known to the trade and many new inventions along that
line, the plant at full capacity will require four thousand men. The dry kilns
are second in size only to those erected at Dayton, Ohio, for the Wright Brothers
to fill their airplane-war-contracts. The completed plant will have a monthly
capacity of fifty thousand automobile bodies and eighty thousand sets of auto
mobile wheels. All of the Cadillac, Studebaker, Hupp, Dodge, Maxwell, Paige,
Hudson and a large part of Ford wheels are made in the Kelsey plant. Ford
takes all the wheels that the plant can supply to him. Mr. Mahannah bought
nineteen thousand acres of land for the company out from Rolling Fork,
Mississippi, and is building the highest priced log railroad in the United States
on which to get out this timber. Miles of the tract of timber is subject to back
water in flood seasons from around the end of the levee system. Mr. Mahannah
was married November 7, 1882, to Miss Ida L. Davis. They had four sons,
Floyd R., Joseph C, Albert A., and Maxwell E., all of whom are at the
Kelsey Wheel plant. He married the second time to Miss Elizabeth Breen,
on April 7, 1915.

350

^^

J

7

\ '

<:?

t^^4L^7 yfAJ. <X^7''Cit..C>C.>V<:

©r. (§. M. Jlleux

EORGE WHITFIELD MEUX, Stanton, Tennessee, physician,
planter and breeder of fancy livestock, was born June 4, 1881,
in the house which his grandfather built in 1834 one mile
southwest of Stanton when he moved there from Virginia
and which has been in the family ever since. He is the son
of James Steger and Jo (Somervell) Meux, the Somervell
family being equally distinguished in Tennessee, Virginia from the colonial
days and in England, with the Meux family, for its vigor, refinement and cour
age. Doctor Meux attended the common schools of Stanton and then went to
Webb School at Bellbuckle, Tennessee. Then he went to Vanderbilt University
at Nashville, Tennessee, where he received his degree of bachelor of arts in
1903. The next three years of his life were put in with the medical department
of the same University and in 1906 he received from it his degree of doctor of
medicine. He finished his preparation for the practice of his profession by
spending the year 1907 in Bellevue Hospital, New York City, and then came
to Memphis where he spent two years in practice. In 1908 his father died
and in 1909 Doctor Meux returned to Stanton, where he engaged both in
the practice of medicine and in looking after the large estate that his father had
left. When the grandfather moved to Haywood County he bought three hun
dred and twenty acres of land and built upon it. The father of Doctor Meux
added considerably to the house as he did also to the tract which his father had
acquired and the adjoining eighty acres which his grandmother bought after
the death of her husband. Doctor Meux followed in the footsteps of his father
in both lines. Now his palatial home, situated on the Memphis-to-Bristol High
way is equipped with every modern comfort and convenience of the city without
any of its nuisances. Although having attained success in his profession. Doctor
Meux is doing all that he can to retire from it, hut the people of his section are
also doing all that they can to prevent his doing so. He is the owner of three
thousand acres of land and derives his pleasure from the scientific and diver
sified cultivation of it. He feels that he is doing the country a real service by
this and that his life will not have been in vain if he shall have helped his
country to raise larger crops on the same area of land. He is also a breeder of
fine shorthorn cattle, Poland-China hogs and blooded horses. He owns in Hal
Baxter one of the two living sons of Brown Hal ; and Ed Geers, premier reins-
man of the world, in his delightful memoirs, rates the Hal blood as the most
virile of all harness stock. Hal Baxter has never been trained for the track, hut
has done a trial mile in 2:12. Doctor Meux belongs to the American and Hay
wood County medical associations. He and Miss Martha Garnett of Somer
ville, Tennessee, were married April 27, 1915. They have two children: fo
Somervell and Martha.

355

m. 3. Sarbst

HE Honorable Walter B. Parks, planter, merchant, banker
and capitalist, Merigold, Mississippi, is a native of the State,
having been born August 27, 1867, at Oxford, the son of
William Beatty and Calista Virginia (Hudson) Parks. He
received his early education at the Toccopola High School and
at the early age of eighteen went to Texas, where he engaged
in the farming business at Belton. Although he made a success there, he did
not see the future in that State that he realized was open for an active man
in the Mississippi Delta, and at the age of twenty years he returned to Missis
sippi and located at Shelby. He went into the store of A. M. Wynn, then doing
a general mercantile business there, working first as a clerk. Later Mr. Wynn
opened a branch store at Merigold and Mr. Parks went there in 1890 as chief
clerk, but soon was promoted to bookkeeper and shortly thereafter to manager
of the store. He remained with Mr. Wynn there until 1894, when he went into
business for himself in Merigold under the firm name of W. B. Parks. Two
years later he had developed to the point where he added planting to his mer
cantile business, beginning with one hundred and sixty acres. He has increased
his holdings steadily from that time until this. Now he owns an eighteen-hun-
dred-acre plantation at Merigold, where he resides. He owns a three-thousand-
acre plantation at O'Reilly, Mississippi. Having been born in the hills, Mr.
Parks' vision is not confined to the fertile lands of the Delta. He realized
the possibilities of the uplands also and some years ago bought in Hinds County,
near Jackson, Mississippi, a tract of forty-five hundred acres, where he is
engaged in the livestock business on a large scale. He raises white-faced cattle,
hogs and sheep on this upland plantation. Mr. Parks also is the owner of some
fifteen hundred acres of land in fee simple in Louisiana, and the geology of
that section, based upon the present oil wells, indicates that there are anticlines
under his land. But Senator Parks has not devoted by any manner of means
all of his time to making money for himself. He has found time to be of service
to his county and his State. He represented Bolivar County in the lower house
of the State Legislature for the 1912-14 term, and the following four years
served with distinction and usefulness in the upper house, being of especial
service in the matter of agriculture, roads, banking and drainage. He is presi
dent of the Bank of Merigold ; vice-president of the Cotton Exchange Bank of
Cleveland; director in the Delta Grocery & Cotton Company, and in the Bank
of Clarksdale ; director in the Merchants Bank & Trust Company of Jackson ;
director in the People's Compress Company of Clarksdale, and stockholder in
many lesser enterprises. He and Miss Mary Elizabeth Wynn were married
October 4, 1900. Their children are Misses Annie Claire, Virginia and Frances.

356

\

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Hy7C&'-

Mill mt^

\ILL PYLES, Blytheville, Arkansas, one of the leading whole
sale merchants, bankers and public spirited men of northeast
ern Arkansas, was born in Troy, Tennessee, November 4, 1869,
the son of Hugh M. and Tennie B. Pyles. His father was
engaged in the saw mill business with Mr. George W. Windell
of New Albany, Indiana, and Mr. Windell induced the father
to send the young man there to complete his education. Then Mr. Pyles went
to work for Hayden Brothers, buying lumber in Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas,
Kentucky, Tennessee and Mississippi. He bought lumber later in the same ter
ritory for two other concerns and then when the Louisville & Nashville Railroad
was building its Cumberland Valley line he went there and worked in the com
missary department long enough to learn the grocery business. In 1901, Mr.
Pyles went to Osceola, Arkansas, and organized the Burton Grocery Com
pany, for which he traveled. Blytheville was in his territory. Then it was
but a small place, but Mr. Pyles foresaw its future. While still traveling for
the Burton company he began trying to form a wholesale grocery concern at
Blytheville with the thorough understanding that it was to take over the Burton
company. The result of his efforts was the organization in May, 1904, of the
Arkansas Grocery Company at Blytheville, with an authorized capital of
$50,000, of which $30,000 was paid in, which took over the Osceola concern.
Mr. Pyles traveled for the new house until December, 1912, when his capacity
was recognized by the directors of the company to the extent that he was made
vice-president and manager of the company. The company then had its capital
all paid up and a surplus of $5,000. Mr. Pyles pushed the business with such
rigor and discretion that a few years later he was made president of the com
pany. Soon thereafter he opened at Hayti, Missouri, a branch of the Arkansas
Grocery Company. Now, under his direction, the company has a fully paid up
capital of $200,000 with a surplus of $35,0000 and no concern in northeast
Arkansas stands higher than it does. In 1917, Mr. Pyles undertook the reorgani
zation of the Farmers Bank. It then had a capital and surplus of $37,500. He
added a trust department and changed the name to Farmers Bank & Trust Com
pany. Under his guidance as president, the institution now has capital, surplus
and undivided profits aggregating $120,000, is a member of the Federal Reserve
Bank System, and passed the financial crisis in Blytheville of 1920 without a
question of its solvency. During the World War, Mr. Pyles was sales director
for all Liberty and Victory loans and Y. M. C. A. and Salvation Army campaigns
and all went over the top in less than their allotted times. Mr. Pyles and Miss
Ora Caldwell were married in February, 1890. Their child. Miss Eva, now is
Mrs. Leslie Hooper. After having been a widower many years, he and Miss Ada
Scott were married in September, 1902.

361

a. p. Eeege

I LBERT BAILEY REESE, banker, planter and financier, Itta
Bena, Mississippi, was born in Yalobusha County, Mississippi,
February 21, 1885, the son of Albert Bailey and Susie (Mac)
Reese. He attended the grammar schools of DeSoto County
and the high school at Itta Bena, and then went to the Agricul
tural & Mechanical College at Starkville, Mississippi, where he
took and maintained a high standing, physically, mentally and morally, being
vice-president of the Y. M. C. A. At the age of nineteen years he went to work
for the Bank of Itta Bena on the bottom rung of the ladder which he has
climbed so rapidly in sixteen years that now he is one of the outstanding factors
in the rapid development of that rich section of the Mississippi Delta. He was
"runner" for the bank for the first year and then earned promotion to the posi
tion of bookkeeper. In three years he was made cashier. In the meanwhile the
institution has become the First National Bank of Itta Bena and he still is the
cashier as well as one of the directors. He is also a director and cashier of
the First Savings Bank of Itta Bena; a director in the Itta Bena Compress Com
pany ; interested in the Holland-Delta Cotton Company, buyer and exporter of
the long staples of that section ; part owner in fifty-two hundred acres of magnifi
cent land in LeFlore and Humphreys counties; director in the Dixie Rubber
Company of Memphis, and a stockholder in the Crull-Whittington Wholesale
Dry Goods Company of Greenwood, Mississippi. He is interested in several
hundred acres of land near El Paso, Texas, on which there are such strong
indications of oil that the owners have refused several times what they paid for
the land. He is also secretary and treasurer of the Delta National Farm Own
ers Association, which has jurisdiction under the New Orleans branch of the
Federal Land Bank over LeFlore, Sunflower, Humphreys and part of Tallahat
chie counties in farm loans. The new home of his bank has a special department
and equipment for caring for this important work. In 1919 he divided a four-
thousand-acre tract into one-hundred-acre blocks and sold them to negroes, thus
creating a colony with every indication of success for the inhabitants. During
the war, Mr. Reese was one of the most active men in LeFlore County for the
success of all of the campaigns put on for Liberty bonds, Victory bonds. War
Savings Stamps, the Red Cross, and in fact, every patriotic cause. He has been
an active and devout member of the Methodist Church for a number of years
and for the past ten years has been president of the board of stewards and
superintendent of the Sunday School for the congregation of that denomination
in Itta Bena. He is also a trustee for the Humphreys Consolidated High School
at Itta Bena. Mr. Reese and Miss Maude Sullivan of Webb, Mississippi, were
married December 24, 1905. They have one child, Albert Bailey Reese, Junior.

362

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[ALTER THOMAS REEVES, wholesale grocer, Tupelo, Mis
sissippi, was born in Greenville, Georgia, March 2, 1866, the
son of Madison and Mary (Render) Reeves. After having
finished his education at the Greenville High School he became
a traveling salesman for a grocery house in Georgia, in which
line he remained until 1899, when he came to Memphis and
became connected with the Oliver-Finne Company. He sold groceries for that
firm on the road for seven years and at the end of that time had selected Tupelo
as the place in which he would go into business on his own account. He organ
ized the Reeves Grocery Company there with a capital stock of $40,000, he being
elected president and general manager of the company. The first year the
company did a gross business of $350,000 on that capital stock. Mr. Reeves
was in a line that he knew thoroughly. To this information and the amount of
capital stock, he added industry, sterling integrity and absolute honesty. In the
fourteen years that he has been at the head of the company, he has increased
the capital fourfold until now it is $160,000 and the annual volume of business
is in excess of a million dollars. The company covers a territory seventy-five
miles in every direction from Tupelo with its five traveling salesmen, and has
earned a reputation both among its debtors and creditors which is second to
none in the Mid-South. Since his residence in Tupelo, Mr. Reeves has been one
of the active factors in the wonderful readjustment of that entire county. Lee
County has probably the best roads in the State and they have been built for
the least money in proportion to their class. Mr. Reeves was an early advocate
of their construction and is a staunch supporter of the good-roads movement.
He is a leader in the cause of higher and better education, and with that end in
view is president of the board of trustees for the Tupelo Military Institute, one
of the leading educational institutions in that sction of the State. In fact there
has been no movement in years for better citizenship and civic progress that
he has not supported with his time and his money. He is a steward in the
Methodist Church and district lay leader for the church. He is commissioner
from Mississippi for the magnificent Tri-State Methodist Hospital which that
denomination is erecting in Memphis. He was recognized as one of the leading
wholesale grocers of the South by being elected a director in and a vice-president
of the Southern Wholesale Grocers' Association. In a business way, in addi
tion to his grocery firm, he is interested in the Cotton States Life Insurance
Company of Memphis, of which he is vice-president, and is a director in the
Peoples Bank & Trust Company of Tupelo. Mr. Reeves and Miss Lena Milam
were married February 18, 1901. They have three children: Walter Thomas,
Junior; Stafford Render, and Milam Reeves.

367

e. E. g)pbeg

UGENE LANIER SYKES, banker, planter, laywer and lead
ing citizen of Aberdeen, Mississippi, is a native of that section
of the country and a member of a family which has been con
spicuous in Mississippi for many generations, each successive
generation furnishing leaders for every movement for the
upbuilding of the community along all good lines. Mr. Sykes
was born on Glenwood Plantation, near Aberdeen, August 21, 1873, the son
of Major Augustus James and Georgia Augusta (Sykes) Sykes. His educa
tion was in keeping with the traditions of the family, for at the completion of
the courses in the common schools at home, he was sent to Agricultural & Mechan
ical College at Starkville, where he spent the sessions of 1887 and 1888. Then
he went to the University of Mississippi at Oxford, where he remained until
1891. From 1895 to 1897 he was a student at the law school of the University
of Virginia, where he was graduated in the latter year, with the degree
of bachelor of laws. He spent the following year at the New York Law School,
New York City, and at the end of that time was admitted to the practice of
the profession in New York City. During the following three years he was
rapidly establishing a splendid practice there, when the death of his only brother
made it necessary for him to return to Mississippi and take active charge of the
family's large estate. Since that time he has devoted his time and attention
to his large banking, plantation and general business interests to the exclusion
of the law. Upon his return to Mississippi he was elected president of the
First National Bank of Aberdeen, one of the strongest financial institutions in
that section of the State in which his family had been interested heavily since
its organization. The growth of the bank since he assumed charge of it in 1911
is best proof of the ability that he has put into it. He is also the president and
active head of the Sykes Plantations, under which name the large planting and
livestock interests are operated, and which comprise several thousand acres of
the finest of the black prairie land in eastern Mississippi. The largest of these
plantations is at Muldon, where Mr. Sykes devotes most of the land to the
production of hay and to the raising of Hereford cattle and the finishing of
mules, which he buys in large numbers up-country while they are young. He is
also president of the Monroe Cotton Oil Company of Aberdeen and a large
owner of real estate in the city. He is a member of the Methodist Church ; an
Elk ; a Mason ; a member of the New York Bar Association ; the Memphis Coun
try Club, and the Tennessee Club of Memphis. Mr. Sykes and Miss Jennie
Prewett Shoup of New York City were married December 23, 1898. Their
children are: Miss Dorothy Wayne, now Mrs. Frank Hall of New Albany, Mis
sissippi; Eugene Lanier, Junior; and Conwell Shoup Sykes.

368

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LBERT J. SIMMONS, planter, merchant and capitalist, Clark-
dale, Mississippi, is a native of Fayette County, Tennessee,
where he was born August 27, 1876, the son of John Wesley
and Anna Ophelia (Rodgers) Simmons. During the days of
his youth, Fayette County was not enjoying its former or rec
ent prosperity, and Mr. Simmons was tutored at home and in
the public schools of his native county. Later he worked on roads, at farming
and clerking in a store in Moscow to secure further education, which he did
in the West Tennessee Normal School and at Nelson's Business College in Mem
phis, where he displayed such aptitude and diligence that he took the full course
in three months, the time that he had spent clerking standing him in good stead
at the business college. Upon the completion of this course, Mr. Simmons went
to work for the Illinois Central Railroad in Memphis as clerk in the freight
office. After a short time he accepted a position as bookkeeper for a Front
Street firm. On October 12, 1903, he and Miss Elsie Gurney of Blue Mountain,
Mississippi, were married. They have one son, Harold Rolston Simmons, born
in 1912. After filling the position of cashier and credit man in Memphis till
1906, he moved to the Mississippi Delta and settled at Lyon and became book
keeper for the store and planting business of Mr. E. J. Mullens, a man of
exceptionally high character and capacity. It required but a month for Mr. Mul
lens to realize that in Mr. Simmons he had a man capable of far more than a
mere clerkship, and hence he was promoted in December, 1906, to manager of
the plantation. Mr. Simmons rendered Mr. Mullens good service in that capac
ity for two years, and by that time he had become strong enough to go into
business on his own account. He leased a plantation of some twelve hundred
acres and began on it a career for himself which has been a marked success in
every sense of the word, for, while he put a high degree of energy into it, he
still has found time to be of service to his community in all movements for its
upbuilding. He is an active member of the Methodist Church and is superinten
dent of the Sunday School at Lyon. In 1914 he bought from Mr. Parks the
East View place, half a mile from Clarksdale, where he has built a beautiful
home equipped with every modern convenience, a big store, an electric gin and
added everything necessary to an up-to-date plantation, for the plantation was
improved when he bought it. Now he cultivates more than a thousand acres
there, and there is none better in Coahoma County. He is a stockholder and
director in the Delta Grocery & Cotton Company ; a stockholder in the Peoples
Compress Company, the Johnson-Harlow Lumber Company, the Memphis Pack
ing Corporation, the Seven States Oil Company, the Seven States Products
Company and the Mobile Tractor Company, being distributor in the State of
Mississippi for the tractor company's output.

Hi

C. m. S>train

[LARK RAYMOND STRAIN, one of the leading manufac
turers and business men of Tupelo, Lee County, Mississippi,
is a native of that county, having been born May 18, 1869, at
Verona, a few miles south of Tupelo, the son of James Hen
derson and Sarah Jane (Lilly) Strain. After attending the
public schools and Bingham's Military School in Orange County,
North Carolina, Mr. Strain came to Memphis and entered the employment of
the Oliver-Finnie Grocery Company as city buyer. He remained with that con
cern from 1891 to 1899. While a resident of Memphis, Mr. Strain was a mem
ber of the Chickasaw Guards, a director in the club and first sergeant of the
military company. When the Spanish-American War came on Mr. Strain went
into the national service with Colonel Kellar Anderson on the first call for volun
teers and served until the end of the war with the Second Tennessee Infantry.
He entered as sergeant major on the non-commissioned staff and while at Camp
Meade, Pennsylvania, was promoted to second lieutenant. At Columbia, South
Carolina, he was again promoted to a first lieutenancy. Following the muster
ing out of the regiment, Mr. Strain returned to Lee County, Mississipiji, where
with the aid of his father, he formed the Tupelo Cotton Oil Company, his father
being the first president of the concern. The following year the charter of the
company was amended to the Tupelo Oil & Ice Company, and the business
expanded to take in the latter product. Mr. Strain was made president and
general manager, which position he still retains. Under his direction of the com
pany it has grown to be one of the recognized establishments of its kind in the
Mid-South. He is one of the two men who are responsible mainly for the organi
zation of the Tupelo Fertilizer Factory and the erection of a large plant there
which has been such a tremendous factor in the improvement of the agricul
tural condition in that section of the state and which does a large business all
over the Mid-South. He is director in the company. Mr. Strain is also vice-pres
ident of the Tupelo Compress Company, a director and member of the executive
committee of the Bank of Tupelo, vice-president of the Tupelo Hotel Company,
vice-president of the Lee County Fair, vice-president of the Tupelo Golf &
Country Club and member of the Memphis Country Club. Mr. Strain has never
sought political office for profit, but for the last six years has consented to serve
as a member of the Tupelo Board of Aldermen and in that capacity has charge
of the municipal light and power plant, and so valuable has been his services to
the community in that line that he has recently been re-elected. Mr. Strain
and Miss Musette Carew Biggs of Collierville, Tennessee, were married Febru
ary 7, 1900. They have four children, James Raymond, Cecil Clark, Janye Lilly
and Etta Corinne. Mr. Strain and family attend the Methodist Church.

374

UaJP^. 4A . ^\\xxXXi^

C i&. g>mart

[HOMAS HENRY SMART, owner of the Memphis Overland
Company, has done more in Memphis during the seven years
that he has lived here than most men have accomplished in a
lifetime. He was born in Dudley, England, October 19, 1884,
the son of Thomas Henry and Alice (Clark) Smart, while the
senior Mr. Smart was there as an expert accountant for a firm
in Boston, Massachusetts, where the family returned when the junior Mr. Smart
was a mere babe in arms. Few men of his age in Memphis are better educated
and more widely informed than he is, and yet he never lost a day from work in
his life to go to school, but he spent an untold number of nights in securing his
education. He attended the Boston public schools during his younger years, but
from the day that he was twelve years of age he has earned every bite of bread
that he has eaten. He says that he grew up in almost every city in the United
States, but there was not a week from the time that he left home until he was
twenty-six years of age that he did not spend at least five nights in a night
school if there was one in the city, and if there was not one, that he did not
study, taking the full course in numerous correspondence schools. At sixteen
years he was a master mechanic's apprentice in Meriden, Connecticut. Apt in
that work as he has been in every line to which he has devoted his attention, he
soon became a mechanic, then a tester and then a demonstrator. At twenty
years of age he was a salesman for the White Steamer Company in Philadel
phia, and in four years he had worked up to where he was head retailer on the
sales floor in the New York agency of that company. He traveled then for
three years for the White, Hudson and Overland companies, becoming repre
sentative for the Overland car for all the territory south of the Ohio River.
Lindsey Hopkins then had the Overland agency in Atlanta and it was a losing
proposition until he secured Mr. Smart as his manager. Under Mr. Smart's
management the company made handsome profits the first year. Returning to
the Willys-Overland Company for a time, Mr. Smart saved his money and in
September, 1913, came to Memphis and bought the agency for the Overland
cars for West Tennessee, North Mississippi and Eastern Arkansas. This was
but a small business then, as there were but five accounts in the territory. The
first act that Mr. Smart performed was to go from the Peabody Hotel over to
the Business Men's Club (now Chamber of Commerce), join the club and
volunteer for service in any campaign for the good of the city. He has been in
most of them since. It took him three weeks to sell his first Overland car here.
Since then he has sold approximately nine thousand, being second only to the
Fords, and built many buildings for Overland agencies in this territory. The
Overland home was the first modern one erected in Memphis. He married
Miss Irene Bella Amey, April 17, 1904. They have no child.

379

5. ^. Crattiforb

^^^AMES ALBERT CRAWFORD, Memphis, Tennessee, capital-
^^^ ist, retired planter and banker, was born in DeKalb, Missis-
J^{\ sippi. May 8, 1861, the son of Judge Mastin Duke and Martha
Sv (Rush) Crawford. Judge Crawford was of North Carolina
^^^5; stock and in ante-bellum days was a large land holder and
Jj^^J slave owner in Mississippi. Soon after the Civil War he
invested in Texas lands, but in 1869 sold them and his Mississippi holdings and
moved to California, where he was a pioneer, acquired large possessions under
Spanish grants and settled in Los Angeles, then a town of five thousand inhabi
tants. Mr. Crawford went to Sackett's School in Oakland, California, where
he won the scholarship medal and then to the University of Michigan, where
he graduated in the law course in 1886 as historian of the class. He was licensed
to practice in the courts of Michigan and California and in the United States
courts, but chose a business career. He was married May 15, 1888, to Mrs. Lil
lie Brown Heathman, widow of James M. Heathman, from whom she had
inherited some property at Heathman, Sunflower County, Mississippi. They
met while she was the guest of Mr. Crawford's mother in Los Angeles. She
was the daughter of James H. Brown of Madison County, Mississippi, who had
built for his winter home on the Gulf of Mexico, Beauvoir, later the home of
Jefferson Davis and now the Mississippi Confederate Soldiers' Home. In later
years Mr. Crawford tried to buy this property back into the family, but finding
that the State wanted it for so laudable a purpose, he withdrew from the con
test. Shortly after their marriage, Mr. and Mrs. Crawford went to Heathman
with the intention of renting out the property and living in California, but
Mr. Crawford saw the wonderful possibilities of the Mississippi Delta, and,
instead of going west, they settled there. For the next thirty-two years Mr. Craw
ford was unsurpassed by any man as a factor for the development of the Delta.
He increased his holdings until he owned in all twelve thousand acres, and he
reduced no less than ten thousand acres of land from virgin wilderness to the
highest state of cultivation of any plantation in the Mississippi Delta. He had
no taste or time for public office, but three of the best governors of the State
— Stone, Lowry and Longino — induced him to serve on the levee board. His
palatial home at Heathman, just south of the railroad, equipped with every
modern convenience of the city and surrounded by a grove of one hundred
acres of giant forest trees was for years the show place of the Delta. Aggres
sive, courageous and positive; a gentleman by birth, education and association;
refined, kind, courteous, fair and generous to all, Mr. Crawford was loved by
the entire community, of both races, who sincerely regretted the recent sale of
the Heathman plantation and his determination to spend the remainder of his
life largely in travel with Mrs. Crawford over the world.

380

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IR. DAVID MAX HENNING, surgeon, Memphis, Tennessee,
^^ began the practice of his profession under the most auspicious
DrajJ circumstances possible, and has lived professionally up to the
[SW high standard set by his father, and personally up to the equally
high one set by both of the distinguished families from which
he is descended. He was born in Memphis, October 15, 1875,
the son of Dr. Bennett Greaves Henning, for years one of the most successful
and beloved physicians in this section, and equally conspicuous as a leader in
financial, social, business and political circles. His mother was Miss Cornelia
Frayser, of one of the oldest, best and most talented families in the Mid-South.
The lad was given the best of early education in Memphis and then sent to
Phillips Exeter in New Hampshire, where he completed his literary education
in 1894. He then went to his father's plantation in Lauderdale County, Tennes
see, and spent two years strengthening his constitution for the strain that was
later to be put upon it. In 1896, he returned to Memphis and entered the Mem
phis Hospital Medical College, then at the zenith of a wonderfully brilliant
career in which his father was and had been a large factor. He received his
degree of M. D. from that institution in 1900, and two years later received
the same degree from the College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York. Ever
since that time he has attended some one of the clinics of the larger cities for
a few weeks every year. Returning from New York in 1902, Dr. Henning
immediately began the practice of his profession in Memphis with his father,
specializing in surgery, devoting a large part of his attention to rectal surgery.
Soon after having received his license to practice in Tennessee, he was made a
member of the staff of St. Joseph's Hospital in rectal surgery and later in gen
eral surgery and has been a member of the staff in those lines ever since. He
served as one of the clinical professors of rectal and general surgery in the
Memphis Hospital Medical College for years and later was chosen as a lecturer
in rectal surgery for the University of Tennessee Medical College. He is a
member of the American, Memphis & Shelby County, Mississippi Valley and
Tennessee State Medical societies ; the Memphis Country and Tennessee clubs ;
the Menesha Outing and the Horse Shoe Lake Hunting & Fishing clubs ; the
Chamber of Commerce, and the Shrine, and has traveled widely in Europe and
the Far East. He entered the army medical service as captain in March, 1918,
with Base Hospital No. 57, served as chief of a surgical team on the Belgian and
French fronts, was promoted to major, and after his discharge returned to Mem
phis, limiting his practice to surgery. He and Miss Charlie Scott married April
25, 1911. Their daughters are Charlie Scott, Cornelia and Elizabeth.

385

ft. ft. ftopgon

jOWELL HARRISON HOPSON, although yet less than fifty
years of age, is one of the oldest inhabitants of Clarksdale,
Mississippi, and one of the few there of his age who can
claim that city as their native home. When such pioneers as
he began to show the world the wonderful possibilities of the
^J^£^^^^i^}7^ Coahoma County, the county was so sparsely settled and the
influx of population so much greater than the normal increase in the human
race that Clarksdale sprang almost overnight from a small village into a metro
politan city. Mr. Hopson has been a conspicuous leader in every movement for
the good of the community. The son of Howell Harrison Hopson and Elizabeth
(Mallory) Hopson, early settlers in Coahoma County, he was born in Clarks
dale, October 26, 1875. He attended the common and high school at Clarksdale
and finished his education at Bethel College, Russellwood, Kentucky. At the
age of twenty years, Mr. Hopson returned from college and took personal
charge of his own land, in the suburbs of Clarksdale, where he began the career
as a planter in which he has been such a conspicuous success from the begin
ning. No man in the county surpassed him in his capacity to handle negroes — to
organize them for work and to inspire them with absolute confidence in his
honesty; and his influence and example along those lines have been of great
value on other plantations throughout the community. Mr. Hopson's planta
tion and the mercantile business conducted by him in connection with it have
been very profitable to him, and with the earnings from those sources he has
become financially interested in many of the best business concerns of Clarks
dale. He is a stockholder in the Delta Grocery & Cotton Company and a mem
ber of its board of directors ; a stockholder and director in the People's Compress
Company ; a stockholder in the Bank of Clarksdale ; a stockholder in the Delta
Bank & Trust Compan)'; a stockholder in the Friedman Shoe Company, and a
stockholder and director in the Mississippi Valley Dry Goods Company. He
is a member of the Methodist Church ; of the Benevolent and Protective Order
of Elks, No. 977, Clarksdale ; of the Coahoma County Chamber of Commerce,
and of the New Country Club. He has traveled widely throughout the United
States. Mr. Hopson has never sought political office, but served one term by
appointment as a member of the Board of Commissioners for the Ujijier Yazoo
Levee District, where his intimate knowledge of conditions and re(|uiremeiUs,
his sterling honesty, his sound judgment and good business sense were of great
benefit to the entire district. II also served as a member of the City Commis
sion during 1916 and 1917. He and Miss Catherine Rivers Harris were married
July 1, 1897. Their children are Howell, Jr.; Richard Nelson, Elizabeth I\lal-
lory, Catherine Harris and Mary Clark.

386

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JENRY ROBERTS COLBY, Memphis, Tennessee, distributor of
Delco-Light, has spent his business life in promoting the use
of three of the greatest inventions of modern times in so far
as the systematizing of business, diffusion of knowledge and
and adding to the comforts of country life are concerned. He
spent his first two years in business with the National Cash
Register Company, without whose product the modern business could not be
conducted ; the next six with the Mergenthaler Linotype Company, second only
to Guttenberg in making the written language rapid and cheap enough to reach
the masses, and then with the Delco-Light Company, which has been one of the
main factors in adding to the country home one of the greatest former city
advantages, electric lights. Prior to the last few years economists throughout
the land have been greatly concerned over the steady movement of people from
the country to the city, a large portion of this movement being of the class of
people whom the country districts could not afford to lose if its efficiency was
to be maintained. The water problem for the country has been solved years
ago, and it remained for Delco-Light to take the last of the city conveniences to
the country. That this has been done and is rapidly extending its range of
usefulness is shown by the fact that in the four years that Mr. Colby has been
the Memphis representative of the concern he has placed five thousand plants in
the homes and stores in Western Tennessee, Northern Mississippi and Eastern
Arkansas, which is the territory covered by Mr. Colby from Memphis. Mr. Colby
was born in Dayton, Ohio, March 27, 1881, the son of the Reverend and Mrs.
Henry Francis Colby. His father. Dr. Colby, was a minister of the Baptist
Church, and held the pastorate of one congregation in Dayton for thirty-five
j'ears, beloved by his flock and respected by the entire community. Mr. Colby
was educated in the city schools at Dayton and finished his course in Denison
University, Granville, Ohio, where he belonged to the Sigma Chi college fra
ternity. Prior to coming to Memphis in 1916, he had traveled for the concerns
with which he was connected not only all over the United States and Canada,
but all over Europe as well, having seen all that was worth seeing in fifteen
different countries. Since coming to Memphis he has been very active in every
movement for the progress of the community. He is a member of the Masonic
fraternity, having attained to the thirty-second degree ; is a member of the Mystic
Shrine, Al Chymia Temple; a member of the Kiwanis Club, and of the Cham
ber of Commerce. He has never sought or held any political office. Mr. Colby
and Miss Katherine Ehrenhart were married November 9, 1905. They have
three children, Jane, born in 1910; Gardner, born in 1916, and Bradford, bom
in 1918.

391

. a. I^pan

|HILIP ANDREW RYAN, Memphis, Tennessee, one of the
leading lumber manufacturers of the South, was born in
Muscatine County, Iowa, November 1, 1862, the son of Dennis
and Kate (Dalton) Ryan. He attended the district schools
of Muscatine County and the high school at Letts, Iowa, and
then entered a business college at Fulton, Illinois. At the
end of that time, he left school and went to Omaha, Nebraska, where he entered
the employ of a wholesale firm handling heavy hardware. He spent four years
in that line in Omaha and then went to Chicago, where he became associated
with the firm of Kelly, Maus & Company, doing a large business along the same
line. He remained with that firm for seven and a half years and then entered
the employ of the Deering Harvester Company, where he spent three and a half
years. He then went with the International Harvester Company for a year and
a month, when he and Mr. Tom McParland formed the firm of Ryan & McPar-
land in Chicago, dealing in hardwood lumber with a specialty of wagon and
implement stock in which Mr. Ryan was expert by reason of his experience with
the harvester companies. They conducted a successful business as lumber deal
ers in Chicago for six years, and then Mr, Ryan came to Memphis, buying a
saw mill in South Memphis and commencing the manufacture of lumber. Mr.
McParland remained in Chicago looking after the sales end of the partnership.
When the panic of 1907 came on, Mr. McParland lost faith in the South and
wanted the firm to give up the mill here. Mr. Ryan possessed far more vision
and realized that upon the restoration of normal conditions the lumber manufac
turing business in the South would be one of the best lines of business in the
country for one who understood it and was willing to back his faith with his
money. The result was the dissolution of the partnership, Mr. McParland
securing the northern end of the business and Mr. Ryan the Memphis mill. He
personally ran the mill during the panic and weathered the storm, somewhat
shaken, as was everyone else, but still with his business and organization intact
and ready to take advantage of the era of prosperity which he foresaw. He
formed a partnership with Mr. J. V. Stimson of Huntingburg, Indiana, in the
manufacture of lumber in New South Memphis, but after two years sold out
to Mr. Stimson and made heavy investments in timber in Texas, operating
under the name of Phil. A. Ryan Lumber Company. He built a big mill at
Onalaska, operated it for three years, sold it and erected a finer one at Lufkin
with a daily capacity of 50,000 feet, which he now operates. Mr. Ryan and
Miss Margaret McCarthy were married in Omaha, October 16, 1888. They
have three living children: Miss Claire Veronica, now Mrs. Harry E. Scott;
Miss Kathryn Francis, now Mrs. George A. Roussel, and James Joseph Ryan.
Mr. Ryan's pastimes are golf and social games of euchre and 5tK).

392

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If you got off the train at Clarksdale, Mississippi, and asked
any voter in Coahoma County where you could find Oscar, he
would know that you referred to John Oscar Baugh, for they
all know him and all like him. This is evidenced by the fact
that he held office for twenty-three years, never having been
defeated and being the first man in that county who was elected
sheriff on two occasions for second terms. The son of John W. and Alice Baugh,
he was born in Coahoma County, February 1, 1873. Educated at the county
common schools and the Memphis High School, he took charge of his planta
tion near Sherard when he was seventeen years of age. Eight years later he
was representing his beat on the county board of supervisors. He held that
position for fifteen years, and was of great benefit to the entire county for the
stand which he took for all improvements, especially better roads and stronger
levees. His own magnificent plantation lay just behind one of the largest levees
along the Mississippi River. Upon the expiration of his term as supervisor, he
took over the office of sheriff and tax collector, where his administration was
marked by a high order of efficiency. At the expiration of his legal limit of four
continuous years in that office, his people induced him to return to the board of
supervisors, where he served them again with the same fidelity to every trust
that has ever characterized his career. After four years there, he was again
elected sheriff and served two terms again, from 1916 to 1919, inclusive. Follow
ing this for almost the first year which he can remember, Mr. Baugh was able to
devote all of his time to his private affairs, which have grown to magnificent
proportions. He was one of the organizers of the Delta Grocery & Cotton Com
pany and still is a stockholder. _ He is a stockholder in the Friedman-Shulz
Shoe Company ; in the People's Compress Company ; in the Valley Dry Goods
Company ; in the Bank of Clarksdale, a wholesale drug concern, and many other
smaller enterprises. Having lived in Coahoma County all of his life, he has seen
it grow and develop from almost a complete wilderness subject to overflow at
every period of high water to the bright place which it now occupies in the sun,
and he has been a factor in nearly all of this development. He still lives in the
old family home at Sherard, but spends a great deal of his time in Clarksdale
looking after his interests there. He has added a magnificent plantation at Rena
Lara to his original holdings at Sherard, having some 3,200 acres in cultivation.
Mr. Baugh was married to Miss Stella Garrett April 29, 1897. They have one
child, a daughter. Miss Thankful, who was born in 1907. They are members of
the Episcopalian Church, and Mr. Baugh is a member of the Elks Club, No. 977,
at Clarksdale ; a Knight of Pythias and an Odd Fellow. He has traveled widely
throughout the United States and Canada.

297

Carl H. Pretoer

WENTY years to the day after having been graduated from
the law department of the University of Mississippi in the
record-breaking time of six and a half months. Earl Leroy
Brewer, as governor of the state, stood in the same hall and
delivered diplomas. Born to Capt. R. R. and M. E. Brewer
on August 11, 1868, at Midway, Carroll County, Mississippi,
educated in the public schools and the State University, he began the practice of
law in Water Valley on June 15, 1892, just five days after having been given his
diploma. In September he and Julian C. Wilson, a classmate, later chancellor of
that district and now a leader of the Memphis bar, formed the firm of Brewer &
Wilson, which at once took high rank and maintained it until 1901, when it was
dissolved. An orator, of congenial disposition and a natural leader of men, his
friends put him up for the State Senate in 1895, where he served with distinc
tion four years as the youngest member of that body. In 1892 he was appointed
district attorney for the Eleventh district and elected soon thereafter for the
full term, where the vigor of his prosecutions added lustre to his growing
fame. He resigned in 1907 to enter the race for governor with Scott and Noel,
Truly, Sisson and Thomas. Noel won, but four years later the campaign which
Mr. Brewer had previously made bore full fruit and he was nominated and
elected without opposition to succeed Governor Noel. During his incumbency
many measures for the benefit of the people were placed on the statute books.
The legal rate of interest was reducd from ten to eight per cent, with tax
exemption for loans at six per cent. Progressive road and drainage laws were
enacted. The initiative and referendum proposed for insertion in the state's
organic law, as also was the amendment to make valid the verdict of three-fourths
of a jury in civil cases. Meteoric as his political career had been, it was
equalled only by the wisdom which he showed in closing it. His ambitions had
been fulfilled by the high honors which his fellowmen had conferred upon him,
and he had justified their faith in him by honest, efficient and faithful administra
tions, but at the sacrifice of his own affairs. In 1903 he had moved to Clarks
dale, and there he returned to resume his legal profession with Dan Brewer and
Ed. Brewer under the firm name of Brewer, Brewer & Brewer. As a cotton
planter and dealer in lands, he added greatly to his income. He married Miss
Minnie Block on October 5, 1897. They have three children, Minnie, Earlene
and Claudia. He is a Mason, a K. of P., a Knight Templar, an Elk, a W. O. W.,
and Odd Fellow, and a member of the Presbyterian Church. Of striking appear
ance, engaging personality and attractive manner. Governor Brewer is conspic
uous in any gathering; and greatly enjoyed by all who come in contact with him.

398

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C. #. Callicott
[ALLIWAY GODFREY CALLICOTT, merchant, planter and
capitalist. Alligator, Mississippi, is a native of the state of
Mississippi, although he began his business career in Oklahoma.
The son of Calliway and Flavia (Busby) Callicott, he was
born December 4, 1886, in Coldwater, Tate County, Missis
sippi. He attended the common schools in his home county,
and then went to the Branham & Hughes preparatory school in Springhill, Ten
nessee, and finished his education at a young age in Bethel College, Russellville,
Kentucky. At the age of seventeen years, he went into the hardware business
with his father in Tulsa, Oklahoma, under the name of the Tulsa Hardware
Company. The following year his father died, and Mr. Callicott continued for
five years to conduct the business successfully. He was in a section of the
country where the development was rapid and hence many opportunities were
offered for one of his ability and activity to go to the front, but he yearned for
his native Mississippi and concluded that the greatest chance for success lay in
the Delta. In 1908 he sold his hardware business in the west and moved to
Alligator. The following year Mr. W. B. Nichols, Mr. N. M. Park and he
organized the Planters Mercantile Company at Alligator, Mr. Callicott having
charge from the first of. the office and credit department. They began with
planting two thousand acres of land and doing a general furnishing business.
The business prospered from the start and on January 1, 1914, the same gentle
men organized as a branch of the Alligator firm as the Planters Mercantile Com
pany of Coahoma, Mississippi. With the beginning of the following year, the
original partners dissolved, Mr. Nichols taking the new branch house at Coahoma
and Messrs. Callicott and Park retaining the parent house at Alligator. They
increased their land operations to thirty-five hundred acres and both continued
actively in the business until April 6, 1920, when Mr. Park's long and useful
career was closed by death. Mr. Park had married Mr. Callicott's mother in
1909, but as there was no issue of that union Mrs. Park retains her husband's
interest in the business and she and Mr. Callicott continue it under the same
name. Mr. Callicott has invested his capital which was not needed in the Alli
gator business in a number of the best institutions in the Delta. He is a director
and stockholder in the Bank of Clarksdale ; a stockholder in the Coahoma County
Cotton Company ; a stockholder in the Delta Grocery & Cotton Company ; a
stockholder in the People's Compress Company at Clarksdale ; a stockholder in
the Planters Manufacturing Company at Clarksdale, and a stockholder in the
Bellevue Cotton Oil Company at Memphis. Mr. Callicott and Miss Susie Park
were married May 4, 1910. They have two children, Calliway Macon, born
July 9, 1911, and Dorothy, born January 5, 1916. He is a Methodist, Shriner,
Elk and Sigma Alpha Epsilon.

403

. C. JBetoep

j ILLIAM CURTIS DEWEY, Memphis, Tennessee, for nearly
a third of a century has been one of the most potent factors
in the material, moral and social development of Northeastern
Arkansas, where he lived for a number of years and where
his firm, the Chapman & Dewey Lumber Company, owns
about sixty thousand acres of land. He was born in Rockford,
Illinois, August 29, 1859, the son of Simeon John and Rebecca Mira (Curtis)
Dewey. His family moved to Kansas City, Missouri, and he was graduated
from the high school there in 1877. His first work was with a grain commission
house in Kansas City. In 1879 he engaged with Chapman & Company in the
railroad tie and timber business with headquarters at Glasgow, Missouri. In 1883
he severed his connection with Chapman & Company to accept the appointment
from President Arthur of postmaster at Glasgow, but resigned at the end of two
years. After a short and successful period in the lumber business for himself,
Mr. Dewey and his former employer, Mr. W. H. Chapman, joined in the organi
zation of the Chapman & Dewey Lumber Company, Incorporated, operating a
number of mills along the Missouri River. This company was very successful
from the beginning, and about the time that the railroad was completed between
Kansas City and Memphis, it began to acquire tracts of virgin timber in Poinsett,
Craighead and Mississippi counties, Arkansas. These operations were extended
until the company at one time owned one hundred and five thousand acres. In
1890 Mr. Dewey moved to Jonesboro and began operations for the company.
He erected a saw mill at Marked Tree and followed this with two box factories
at Jonesboro. The company was a pioneer in the use of cottonwood lumber for
boxes. It has grown rapidly until it now is one of the largest manufacturers
of hardwood lumber in the United States with mills and factories at Marked
Tree and in that vicinity manufacturing lumber and box shooks. \\'hen the
Chapman & Dewey Lumber Company began to buy Arkansas lands the officers
of the company had little thought of any value other than the timber. The
St. Francis River country was then about as wild in vegetation, game and popu
lation as any portion of the United States. Annual overflows shut down the saw
mills and prevented cultivation except on the highest ridges. When the agita
tion for levees began, Mr. Dewey realized their value to the countr)-, joined
in the movement and for four years was a valuable member of the levee board.
After the completion of the levee system, the company began selling cut-over land
to actual settlers on easy terms, and developing plantations for itself, having
about five thousand acres in cultivation in 1920. Mr. Dewey and Miss Eola
Heryford were married in Glasgow, Missouri, November 14, 1883. Their chil
dren are: William Chapman and Henry Curtis Dewey.

404

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C. C. 3Bean

i HARLES CRAWFORD DEAN, pioneer merchant, planter,
banker and capitalist, Leiand, Mississippi, was born near Sena
tobia, in Tate County, Mississippi, on January 28, 1858, the
son of John M. and Martha E. Dean, an old and aristocratic
family of Tate County. He received his education in public
schools and attended Southwestern Baptist (now Union) Uni
versity at Jackson, Tennessee. At the age of twenty years he began work as
clerk for Callicott, Veasey & Company at Coldwater, Mississippi. In 1891 he
moved to Leiand, and formed a partnership with B. O. McGee, his brother-in-
law, under the name of McGee, Dean & Company. Since that time he has been
continuously in the mercantile, planting and cotton business. The firm has con
tributed more toward the development of the town of Leiand and surrounding
country than any other institution, now being the largest and strongest cotton
buying and exporing firm in the Delta, having branch buying offices at Greenwood
and Clarksdale, Mississippi; Memphis, Tennessee, and New Orleans, Louisiana,
and selling offices at Boston and New Bedford, Massachusetts; Providence,
Rhode Island ; Gastonia, North Carolina, and Liverpool, England. It enjoys a
world-wide reputation for honest and fair dealing. His firm also owns and culti
vates approximately twenty thousand acres of rich Delta land which is highly
improved and especially adapted to cotton, of which commodity they raise about
twelve thousand bales annually. With no desire for public office, Mr. Dean was
induced to become a member of the Board of Supervisors of Washington County,
which position he has held for six years. He is now president of the board. He
had never held other public office, except as a member of the Board of Trustees
of the public schools, of which he is serving as president, and which is erecting a
$125,000 school house. He has always stood ready to serve his community in
whatever capacity he felt he could be of service. Mr. Dean is president of The
McGee, Dean Company, Incorporated, which is the largest and strongest mercan
tile firm in the Delta, which store supplies the various plantations owned by his
firm. He has served as vice-president of the Bank of Leiand since its organization
in 1899, which bank enjoys the reputation of being one of the largest and strong
est banking institutions of the State. He is vice-president of the Leiand Hard
ware Company ; secretary and treasurer of the Leiand Compress Company ; a
stockholder of the Quinn Drug Company of Greenwood, Mississippi, is one of
the largest landowners in the Delta and widely interested financially in various
lines. Mr. Dean is a member of the Baptist Church, being a senior deacon, and
takes much interest in religious affairs, and a public spirited citizen. On Decem
ber 28, 1897, he was married to Miss Capitola McGee. They have five children :
Charles Otho, his son, is a graduate of the University of Virginia, Misses Capi
tola and Catherine are receiving their college education at Hollins College, Roan
oke, Virginia, and Misses Miriam and Carol are in school at home.

409

ft. J. ©abis;

|ENRY JEFFERSON DAVIS, for many years one of the most
active men in the development of Clarksdale, Mississippi, and
Hilra recently a prominent factor in Memphis, Tennessee, was born
(v^ Monroe County, Mississippi, the son of John Thomas and
Mary (Cook) Davis. His father enlisted in the Second Missis
sippi regiment at the opening of the Civil War, and served till
its close. After receiving a high school education, he went to the Mississippi
Delta in 1886, and the following year became a traveling salesman, his employer
recognizing his ability by gradually extending his territory over the entire Southern
States. Mr. Davis was married in 1893 to Miss Pattie Belle Partee, and wishing
to concentrate his work, secured another position with Mississippi Delta territory
and Memphis headquarters. His first investment was a small one in the rich
Delta land, but all the time, the Queen City, Clarksdale, seemed a place with a
great future. Accordingly in 1905 Mr. Davis organized the Clarksdale Machin
ery Company, taking controlling stock himself, and being president and general
manager of the business. His standing in the community was shown by the fact
that many of the leading business men in Clarksdale took stock with him in this
enterprise and his directors were the most substantial men in that town. Mr. Davis
was interested in public affairs and took an active part in the development of
Clarksdale. While serving as exalted ruler of the Elks Club, plans were made
for the handsome new building that bears his name on the corner stone. He
served as mayor of Clarksdale in 1909 and 1910, and the administration stands
out for its efficiency from an economical point of view, and its cleanliness from
a moral standpoint. A modern water and light plant was installed by the munici
pality and the paving of the streets had an auspicious beginning. The beautiful
school building was completed and negotiations were begun which resulted in
securing a Carnegie Library for the town. In 1913 Mr. Davis' state of health
demanded a rest, so he sold his machinery business, and also the saw mill which
he was then operating. After a period of recuperation he again engaged in the
manufacture of lumber in Mississippi, but moved his residence to Memphis in
order to keep in closer touch with the lumber market. He is now an active mem
ber of the Lumbermen's Club in Memphis, and from that place looks after his
milling business in Mississippi and planting interests in Arkansas, having some
time ago, with an associate, acquired a large body of land eight miles from Mem
phis near Hulbert. Mr. Davis holds automobile license No. 1 for Clarksdale,
which is the souvenir of many amusing experiences. He retains a heavily signed
petition asking him to keep off the public highways of Coahoma County, because
his machine endangered the lives of occupants of horse-drawn vehicles. Mr. and
Mrs. Davis have one surviving child, Marian, who has been prepared at St. Mary's
School to continue her education in Washington.

410

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i ILLIAM RICHARDS EARLY, Indianola, Mississippi, banker,
planter and business man, was born in Meridian, Mississippi,
March 26, 1876, the son of E. V. and Laura R. Early. He
received his education at Franklin Academy, Columbus, Mis
sissippi, and at Marion Military Institute, Marion, Alabama.
In 1896 he located at Leiand, where he began his career as a
clerk for the Stovall Company at a salary of $10.00 per month and board. He
remained there but a few months and then went to work for himself writing
life insurance. In 1900 he formed a partnership with Senator W. B. Parks in
the mercantile business at Merigold, and the following year was in the mercan
tile business on his own account. At the end of that time, he realized that there
was an opening in the banking line in that fast-growing section of the country
for more institutions and that he was fitted to succeed in that line. Other finan
ciers were of the same opinion, and in 1902, he, together with Mr. E. P. Peacock,
president of the Bank of Clarksdale, and Mr. T. J. Portevent, organized the
Shelby Bank, and Mr. Early went there as cashier of that institution. At the
end of two years, his ability in that line had become so conspicuous that he was
elected cashier of the Sunflower Bank of Indianola and went there to take the
position. In that position he was a success from the first day, as he had been
in the other lines that he had been in, and it was there that he found the oppor
tunity for his own development together with that of the bank. He pushed
the business so rapidly that at the end of eight years the directors made him
president of the institution. He has remained in that position ever since and
has made of the Sunflower Bank not only one of the strongest financial con
cerns in the Mississippi Delta, but also one of the leading factors for the devel
opment of that wonderfully rich territory. Soon after his going to the Delta,
Mr. Early appreciated that the fertility of the soil was the source of wealth to
that section and he began acquiring choice tracts as he was able to do so. Now
he is the possessor of more than five thousand acres of the best land to be found
for the production of cotton, and is one of the leading planters of the Delta.
In addition to his bank and plantation interests Mr. Early is a director in the
Sunflower Compress Company and the Indianola Cotton Oil Company. He
also has investments in many smaller institutions in that section organized for
the more rapid development of that section. During the World War, he served
as food administrator for Sunflower County. He is a member of the Episcopal
Church and Hamassa Temple, Mystic Shrine. Mr. Early and Miss Pauline
Baker were married, February 22, 1903. Their children are: Pauline, Laura
Virginia, Frances Eugenia, Josephine Holmes, Mary Louise, Jean Kent and
W. R. Early, Junior.

415

Htniit Jf lettfjer

JESLIE FLETCHER, banker, retired planter and retired mer
chant, Indianola, Mississippi, was born in Madison County,
Alabama, August 25, 1865, the son of Richard Mathew and
Rebecca (Mason) Fletcher. Mr. Fletcher was able to get a
little education up to the time that he was fourteen years of
age, but at the end of that time went to work on a plantation
which his father owned there. He remained there for seven years in that occu
pation, which precluded the opportunity for further school attendance, but a
keen mind coupled with a rare capacity for observation and absorption has made
Mr. Fletcher a well-rounded-out man of splendid information. When he became
of age, he left home and went to work on his own account on a farm which he
rented in his home county of Madison. He remained there for twenty years
and was one of the best farmers and most substantial men in that fine old county,
but in 1906 he realized that there were opportunities for a man of his talent in
the Delta far superior to those of the hill country and hence moved to Indianola,
near which then small town he had acquired a tract of some fourteen hundred
acres of land. Since that time he has been one of the strongest factors in the
material and moral development of Sunflower County and soon became recog
nized as one of the best planters in his section of the country. Until 1915 he
devoted his time and attention to the plantation. At that time he was elected
president of the Bank of Indianola, which position he still holds. The bank
novv has a capital stock of $50,000 and a surplus of $35,000, and is considered
one of the strong and substantial financial institutions of the Delta. In 1917
Mr. Fletcher bought the Indianola Mercantile Company and with that as a
foundation organized the Indianola Grocery Company, through which he con
ducted for two years an active and successful wholesale grocery business
throughout the central Delta section. However, in 1919, Mr. Fletcher justly
felt that he had been in the front rank of active business campaigns long enough,
and hence he sold the Farmers Grocery Company to Mr. M. D. Gilmer. He still
retains some fifteen hundred acres of magnificent cotton and corn land, but he
has turned that over to his two sons for management. He still retains the presi
dency of the Bank of Indianola and his financial interest in that institution, but
has retired from active business and merely looks after these investments,
together with the interest that he has in many lesser enterprises, mainly in Sun
flower County. He has never sought public office, but has served his city as a
member of the board of aldermen. He has been a member of the Methodist
Church since childhood. He and Miss Katie Burton were married November
23, 1886. Their children are Miss Louise, Miss Lorine, W. B. and L. S.
Fletcher.

416

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I ILLIAM BRAND HOFFA, Grenada, Mississippi, for more
W^^^ than a quarter of a century probably the most active man
ray for the development of that city and the county of the same
l§W name, was born in the western portion of the county. May 2,
1867, on Auvergne Plantation, near what was then the Choc-
chuma and Tuscahoma ferries on Yalobusha River, the son
of J. M. and Elizabeth Donelson (Martin) Hoffa. His great-grandfather
Hoffa migrated from Germany to Pennsylvania about 1725, and Mr. W. B. Hoffa
is also of the Reed, McNair and McKnight stock, all prominent in the colonial
and revolutionary affairs of that State. On his maternal side, Mr. Hoffa comes
from the equally distinguished Donelson and Martin families of Tennessee. His
mother was born in 1834 on the plantation where her son was born and which
he still owns. She was a grand-niece of General Andrew Jackson and a daugh
ter of Colonel George W. Martin, who was General Jackson's secretary in the
Natchez campaign and on General Coffee's staff at the battle of New Orleans.
President Jackson placed Colonel Martin in charge of the United States land
office at Chocchuma in 1833, then an important point in the development of that
section of the country, now only a memory. Mr. Hoffa was educated in the
common schools of Grenada County and spent a year at the Agricultural &
Mechanical College, Starkville, Mississippi, but most of his present broad edu
cation comes from the influence of his cultured mother both directly and in
inculcating into him the desire to mingle with people of education and refine
ment and to read good literature. When quite young Mr. Hoffa went into the
general insurance business in Grenada. From that he developed into general
promoting, but always in that line he had uppermost in his mind the development
of Grenada into a real city and Grenada County into the foremost one in the
State. In this line as well as in the personal investments that he made in tim
ber lands and plantations, he was eminently successful, until today he is one of
the most substantial men in the county. For years he owned one of the most
valuable timber tracts in the country and would not sell it until recently when a
purchaser agreed in the contract to manufacture the lumber in Grenada. His
pioneering for good roads was conspicuous and he is a life member in both the
United States and Mississippi good roads associations. During the war there
was not a meeting for any public purpose affecting his district which he did not
attend. He was chairman of the council of national defense for Grenada
County; of the first Y. M. C. A. war drive; of sales for the Fifth Liberty loan;
for Grenada, Yalobusha and Montgomery counties in the war work fund
drives, and very active in all other patriotic lines. Mr. Hoffa wa's married first
to Miss Mary Crofford Moore. She died in 1901 and he and Miss Vclma Per-
rin Cloud were Married January 16, 1907. They have three children.

421

C. ft. fterrin

LIFTON HOLMES HERRIN, planter and merchant, Robin
sonville, Mississippi, brought to the Mississippi Delta a strong,
clear mind, a sound physique, boundless energy and a sincere
ambition to go to the front, but in his boyhood dreams at his
home in the hills of Yazoo County, Mississippi, he did not
even dream that his later life would be anything like what he
has achieved. He was born near Yazoo City, June 25, 1872, the son of J. C.
and Clara (Kennedy) Herrin. The circumstances of the family at that time
were such that he was able to get but a very limited education in the county
common schools, and at the age of thirteen years he went to the little town of
Bentonia and began his career as a clerk in a drug store. He remained there
for three years. In the meanwhile an elder brother, Mr. William K. Herrin,
had migrated from the family home to the Delta and gone to work for Mr. C. L.
Robinson, who owned then the magnificent plantation surrounding the town
which was named for him. The elder brother had become assistant manager
for Mr. Robinson, and he secured a position in the store for the younger brother.
It was in 1888, at the age of sixteen years, that Mr. Herrin went to Robinson
ville as manager of and buyer for the plantation store, which also did a consid
erable business outside of Mr. Robinson's place. The two brothers remained
with Mr. Robinson for ten years after the latter one went there, gradually
having been entrusted with the management of the entire business. In 1898
they leased the twenty-eight hundred acres that Mr. Robinson had in cultivation,
at the same time taking over all of the stock in the store and all of the personal
property. It was then that the two brothers had the first chance in their lives
to make money for themselves, and they put all that was in them into the busi
ness at Robinsonville. Both were thoroughly equipped for the management of
any plantation, and that one in particular. Under their energy it prospered
from the day that they took charge of it until 1906, by which time they had
acquired considerable property of their own. Mr. W. K. Herrin then moved
to Clarksdale and Mr. C. H. Herrin continued to look after the business of the
firm in Robinsonville. Together they bought the EUerton Dorr plantation in
the edge of Clarksdale for what then was a record price of $125.00 per acre.
Now the firm of Herrin Brothers owns and operates some four thousand acres
of land in Tunica and Coahoma counties. In addition to this, Mr. Herrin is a
director in the Citizens Bank of Tunica and in the Tunica Cotton Company of
Memphis ; and a stockholder in the Memphis Packing Corporation ; and the
Country Club, the Friedman-Shultz Shoe Company, and the Valley Dry Goods
Company of Clarksdale. He also has large interests in the Burkburnett oil field.
He and Miss Mabel Ledbetter married September 15, 1908. They have no
child.

422

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3. M. iiit-b

lOHN MELCHOIR KIRK, Gunnison, Mississippi, leading
planter and business man, is a native of the Delta, having been
born September 1, 1859, on Waxhaw plantation, Bolivar
County. His father was a native of South Carolina from the
famous Waxhaw settlement, Lancaster District, which still
boasts of the honor of having been Andrew Jackson's first
home. The elder Mr. Kirk was one of the early settlers in the Delta, whither
he had taken his slaves and begun to reduce to a state of cultivation the great
est wilderness and the most fertile land that the United States possessed. The
younger Mr. Kirk followed in the footsteps of his father. He has been a tre
mendous factor in the wonderful development of the Delta. For more than
half a century he has felt its sorrows and enjoyed its successes. He has seen it
transformed from an occasional clearing on some high ridge, surrounded by
dense forests and denser canebrakes into the high state of cultivation which it
now enjoys and which men of his type are extending rapidly. He has strug
gled with the floods of the Mississippi River, even seen that mighty force change
the original Waxhaw plantation from the left to the right side of the river, and
its insignificant dykes grow into the magnificent levee system. Mr. Kirk attended
the public schools of his native county of Bolivar, then went to the high school
at Frankfort, Kentucky, and finished his education in the University of the
South at Sewanee, Tennessee. At the age of twenty years he went to work on
his father's plantation at Waxhaw, but at the end of seven years, he was given
entire charge of the property then known as the Kirkland plantation, now owned
by him. His real expansion began in 1894, when he bought the Melchoir place
of two hundred and fifty acres. Two years later he acquired the Boykin Plan
tation of nine hundred and sixty acres. At different times he has bought three-
fourths interest of the entire Stokes property, and recently acquired the best
part of the Mary Mac plantation at Robinsonville, at a record price for Delta
lands. In all he had added twelve thousand acres to the original family estate
and now cultivates six thousand seven hundred acres. He is not only one of
the best cotton planters in the Delta country, but a pioneer for that section in
the theory and practice of diversification. Mr. Kirk is the son of John Cousar
and Edvinia Ann Kirk. He has married twice: first to Miss Bessie Shattuck,
June 7, 1887, their children being John S. Kirk; Miss Mary, now Mrs. W. C.
Adams of Corinth, Mississippi, and Miss Bessie, now Mrs. Pierce Ballon of
Memphis. The first wife died in 1896 and Mr. Kirk and Miss Mary Embree
Wall were married June 29, 1904. Their only child is Miss Elizabeth. Mr. Kirk
is a Mason and a member of the Episcopal Church. He has traveled all over
the United States, Europe, South America, Canada, Alaska and Hawaiian
Islands.

427

fofjn OT. latoler

I ROM a small mercantile business at Dublin, Mississippi, in
1907 on borrowed capital and a one-mule crop on rented land
the following year, John Wilson Lawler has run his planta
tion up to about forty-three hundred acres, including the plan
tation on which he worked as manager only a few years ago
for the salary of $25 per month. He was bom in Coahoma
County, Mississippi, December 22, 1875, the son of John Ernest and Martha
Montgomery (Robinson) Lawler. When but a lad the family moved to Florida,
where he attended the common schools, and academy at Leesburg. His education
was continued at Emory College, Oxford, Georgia, under the direction of Bishop
Candler, who was then the head of that institution. At twenty-one years of age
he went to Epps, Alabama, rented twenty acres of land, and made one crop.
The lure of the fertile Delta was too strong, and at the end of the first crop in
Alabama he returned to Coahoma County, Mississippi. For a year he man
aged the J. R. Coates Plantation of eleven hundred acres at a salary of $25 per
month. Four years ago he absorbed this plantation with his growing land
interests. After a year on the Coates Plantation, Mr. Lawler worked as sales
man for a merchant, and later in various other lines of salesmanship until 1907.
On December 6, 1906, he was married to Miss Medora Hilliard, only daughter
of Capt. H. E. Hilliard of Dublin, Mississippi. In 1907 on the indorsement of
Capt. Hilliard for $1,500 Mr. Lawler borrowed that amount from the Bank of
Clarksdale and began business for himself as a merchant at Dublin. The next
year he was a one-mule farmer on twenty acres of land that he rented and had
worked in connection with his store. His crop was nine bales of cotton. The
next year his lease holdings reached one hundred and twenty acres, the next
six hundred acres, the next eight hundred and fifty acres, and in 1913 he was
cultivating more than twenty-four hundred acres. After more than four years
of these operations, he began buying lands with the earnings which had accrued
from his planting of the leased lands. His first purchase was five hundred and
thirty-four acres, the second, the Coates Plantation of eleven hundred acres.
In 1916 he added the Lee property of fifteen hundred and eighty-two acres, and
the Peacock place of one hundred and ninety-two acres, and in January, 1920,
he bought eight hundred and seventy-five acres more, until now he owns about
forty-three hundred acres, including the town of Dublin east of the railroad
where his residence sits. He is a director in the Bank of Clarksdale and the
Delta Grocery & Cotton Company, a stockholder in the Mississippi Valley Dry
Goods Company, the Tom James Oil Company, and stockholder and president
of the Coahoma County Cotton Company. Mr. Lawler was a member of the
committee of five, who in four days without a subcommittee put Coahoma
County over the top in the Victory loan for $1,368,950.

428

/^y^.d, <7yC:^^.-^^^,A

iH. C. Heafee
5 EMORY ERNEST LEAKE, Tupelo, Mississippi, one of the
leading factors in the rapid growth along all good lines of that
prosperous community, was born in Tupelo, September 20,
1874, the son of Memory London and Lina (Coleman) Leake.
He has lived there all of his life, except that during 1878 the
family was living for a time at Holly Springs, Mississippi,
when the terrible scourge of yellow fever swept over the South. His mother
fell a victim to it there and he and his father refuged in Louisville, Kentucky,
where the father died a few days later, leaving him an orphan at four years of
age in a strange land. Mr. Leake says that he was tagged, valued as any other
livestock and shipped by express to his uncle, Mr. H. C. Medford, at Tupelo.
He was educated at the common schools in Tupelo and then went to the Uni
versity of Mississippi at Oxford, where he took the law course with the end in
view of following in the footsteps of his uncle who was long one of the leaders
of the bar in northeast Mississippi. He received his degree of bachelor of laws
in 1900 and, returning to Tupelo, became the junior member of the law firm
of Medford & Leake. He was engaged actively in the practice of that profes
sion and with great success for some eight or nine years, when his eyesight
began to fail under the strain of constant use. He then began to give more and
more of his time and attention to general business and less to the lavif. How
ever, Mr. Leake still practices with Mr. J. W. Boggan under the firm name of
Boggan & Leake, but devotes most of his time and energy to the firm of Leake
& Goodlett, wholesale and retail dealers in yellow pine lumber. He laughingly
says that he is the short leaf and that Mr. Goodlett is the long leaf. It is one
of the largest lumber concerns in northeast Mississippi. Mr. Leake is finan
cially interested in many other of the leading institutions in his section. For a
long time he was a director in the First National Bank. Afterwards he was
president of the Farmers Bank & Trust Company, and now he is president of
the Peoples Bank & Trust Company. He is also president of the Auto Sales
Company, and a director in the Mississippi Auto Company and in the Tupelo
Insurance Agency. At the University of Mississippi, he was a member of the
Delta Tau Delta Greek letter fraternity, is a member of the Knights of Pythias
and has taken one Masonic degree. For many years Mr. Leake has been a
member of the Missionary Baptist Church and one of the most active members
of the Tupelo congregation of that denomination. He is a deacon in the church,
was for a time superintendent of the Sunday School and now is superintendent
of the junior department of the Sunday School. Mr. Leake and Miss Laura
Emma Hunter were married, July 23, 1900. The union has been blessed with
five children : Shirley, Medford, Martelle, Memory and Robert.

433

ft. i. iHixon

|UGH IVY MIXON, Marianna, Arkansas, one of the leading
bankers and business men of eastern Arkansas, was born near
Marianna, November 19, 1874, the son of Dr. John Wesley
and Frances Elizabeth (Jones) Mixon. lie was educated in
Searcy, Arkansas, and finished in the old Searcy College in
1892. Returning to Marianna he took charge of the books of
Mixon Brothers. He remained there for ten years and then took an active part
in organizing the Bank of Marianna, of which he was chosen cashier. He has
remained in that position ever since. However, his activities ramify almost the
entire range of his section. Aside from being a stockholder in the Bank of
Marianna, he is a stockholder in the Johnston-Cox-Mann Company, a leading
wholesale grocery in that section. He is also a director in the Miller Lumber
Company, a pioneer manufacturing concern in Marianna and Mr. Mixon owns
a controlling interest in the Mixon-Mitchener Company, a general insurance
agency which is easily the ranking agency in Marianna. He was one of the men
who organized the Soudan Corporation and bought the Soudan Plantation of
5,500 acres, one of the most valuable pieces of property in the St. Francis Basin.
He is a stockholder in several smaller corporations. In the capacity of treasurer
or collector Mr. Mixon handles through his bank all the funds of the county
and city, road and drainage districts, the St. Francis Levee board and a number
of local improvement districts. He is actively interested in the subject of
education and for the past ten years has served as secretary of the local school
board to whose efforts was due the erection of the handsome high school build
ing in the city. He was one of three who headed the movement to secure a
charter for an Elks' lodge at Marianna and was placed on the building com
mittee which erected the beautiful home the lodge now owns and occupies.
Some ten years ago the members of the Baptist Church in Marianna constructed
a house for worship at a cost of $30,000. Mr. Mixon was a member of the
building committee and was one of a small number who shouldered the respon
sibility of the inevitable church debt which existed at the completion of the
edifice. After a few years' struggle under the handicap of this heavy obligation
it was realized that no progress could be made, so a meeting was held at which
Mr. Mixon acted as chairman and within an hour the amount was subscribed
and immediately paid, so that today the church property, now valued at $50,000,
is entirely free of incumbrance. During the World War, Mr. Mixon was chair
man of the War Savings Stamp sales for Lee County and also fuel administra
tor for the same county. He is a Mason and an Elk. Mr. Mixon and Miss Lida
Mae Clarke of Marianna were married February 22, 1899. They have three
children, Hugh Clarke, Miss Ilattie Mae and Miss Pauline Mixon.

434

,¦' I / \/

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V

. p. i?itJ)olg

I ITH nothing but his own industry upon which to rely, Mr. Wal
ter B. Nichols of Clarksdale, Mississippi, has worked up to
where he plants six thousand acres of land in Mississippi and
Louisiana, and to where his personal and business standing
is second to none amongst his friends, neighbors and acquaint
ances. He was born in DeSoto County, Mississippi, October
20, 1868, and at the age of twenty years, branched out as manager of Major
J. A. Kirby's plantation at Penton, Mississippi. After fourteen years of valu
able service there for his employer, he became his own boss as planter and mer
chant near Tunica, Mississippi. In 1908, he moved from there to Alligator, in
Bolivar County, Mississippi. There he leased the Pritchett and the McCraney
properties, and also opened a mercantile house. By 1914 he had saved enough
to begin investing his own money, and he from knowledge and experience was
certain that Delta lands were the best investment in the world. He bought the
Hannah property, near Clarksdale. The following year he acquired the Pritchett
place which he had been leasing and operating, and later bought the Rotiquenta
and Hunter plantations in Concordia Parish, Louisiana. Now he owns three
fine plantations, with a separate business on each of them. With all of this
expansion, Mr. Nichols has the rare distinction of never having asked exten
sion upon a note. This habit and the known solid foundation of his investments
have given him a credit and business standing of which any man justly may be
proud. In 1915, having bought stock in the Delta Grocery & Cotton Company,
he moved to Clarksdale, where he erected a beautiful residence. He is now a
vice-president of the Johnson-Harlow Lumber Company. He is a stockholder
in the Planters Bank. He owns Nichols & Company at Alligator; a half interest
in W. B. & V. A. Nichols of Roseacre, Mississippi, and eighty-five per centum
of the Clayton Planting Company of Clayton, Louisiana. Together the planta
tions owned and controlled by him aggregate no less than six thousand acres,
and the business at each of them is conducted with the same honesty and capacity
that have been his standards through life. He is strictly a self-made man and
has the fullest respect and esteem in every community where he is known. He
is a member of the Methodist Church, exalted ruler of the Benevolent and Pro
tective Order of Elks, Lodge No. 977; of the Coahoma County Chamber of
Commerce; the Clarksdale Rotary Club, and the Clarksdale Outing Club. He
has never sought office. Mr. Nichols and Miss Elma C. Scott were married
January 5, 1899. The issue of that union consists of three boys, Walter Scott
Nichols, Ira Barnes Nichols and Alva Earl Nichols. His parents were Joseph
Sumner and Sarah J. Nichols.

439

f . 3. iHoore

'OHN IKE MOORE, Helena, Arkansas, lawyer, banker and for
many years one of the leading men in eastern Arkansas along
all progressive and good lines, is a native of Mississippi. He
was born in Lafayette County, February 7, 1856, the son of
E. D. and Nancy A. Moore. When he was but one year old
the family moved to Helena, where he has lived ever since.
After having gone through the public schools of Phillips County he went to the
University of Arkansas in 1877 and in 1881 was graduated from the academic
department. In the following year he spent five months at Cumberland Uni
versity in Lebanon, Tennessee, which for more than two generations has been
the alma mater of so many of the great lawyers of this section of the country.
Returning home, he was admitted to the bar in 1882. From the beginning of
his career he has taken a very active part in the public affairs of his State, not
in the way of seeking lucrative offices out of which to make an easy living, but
accepting positions where he could be of service to the people. He began his
first term in the Legislature of the State only one year after having been admit
ted to the bar, thus beginning a public career which for nearly forty years has
been most beneficial to the entire State. During ten years in the legislature he
stood out strongly for everything that was good and constructive and ever was
efficient in his opposition to all that was for private instead of public weal. He
returned to the Legislature in 1901 and again in 1903, when he served as
speaker of the house. In the meanwhile he had served his country from 1894
to 1900 as county and probate judge, probably the most important office in
Arkansas so far as the progress and welfare of each county is concerned. He
was elected in 1905 and again in 1913 to the State Senate, and by reason of
being the presiding officer of that body in 1907, he served for four months as
acting governor of the State during the early portion of the disability of the
Honorable Sebastian Little. However, the public service to which Mr. Moore
points with the most justifiable pride is the part that he took in the construc
tion of the magnificent capitol of the State. From 1909 to 1917 he was one of
the five commissioners which had charge of that work. He was also a member
of the Constitutional Convention in 1918, and from the beginning of the delib
erations of that august body was recognized as one of its real leaders. For
many years he was one of the most active men in securing governmental aid
for the levee system from the point of Crowley's Ridge to Laconia Circle. He
is also president of the Peoples Savings Bank & Trust Company. Mr. Moore
and Mrs. Gant, formerly Miss Male Davidson, were married in 1887 in Helena,
Arkansas. They have one son, John Ike Moore, Junior. Mrs. Moore is a
former president of the State Federation of Women's Clubs.

440

iUu^ <^fif^

C^O</^«^-^tT3

(_) a^'y

CM. partee, ^r.

I HARLES WATKINS PARTEE, SENIOR, Belen, Mississippi,
for more than a third of a century one of the conspicuous men
in Quitman County in the devlopment of her fertile lands along
Cassidy's Bayou, and in the elevation of the moral tone of the
community, was born in Gibson County, Tennessee, March 22,
1844, the son of Squire Boon and Martha Alexander (Doug
las) Partee. In about 1847 or 1848, the family moved to Mississippi and settled
on the beautiful plateau a few miles to the northeast of Como, where the elder
Mr. Partee became a planter of much consequence, acquiring large tracts of land
and many slaves. The son was educated in the common schools of Panola
County and remained on his father's plantation until the breaking out of the
Civil War. But at seventeen years of age he was full of courage and chafed
under the refusal of his parents to his request for permission to join Captain
John R. Dickens' company, the Sardis Blues. Mr. Partee had a brother in
that company and the parents finally consented to his joining, which he did at
Union City, Tennessee, where quite a lot of Confederates were drilling. This
command became Company F, Twelfth Mississippi Infantry, C. S. A. They
were rushed to Virginia, arriving just in time to miss the first battle of Bull
Run, but in time to guard the prisoners taken there. The company was in the
battle of Seven Pines, in which the brigade lost fifty per centum in killed and
wounded of its strength. After the second battle of Manassas, Mr. Partee went
to Mississippi and helped his father move a large number of his slaves and live
stock to the Delta, locating on Lost Lake five miles from where Belen now is.
Mr. Partee's father, long before the war, had realized that the fertile Delta
lands would become of great value, and as fast as he made money, he invested
it in Delta land and negroes. Mr. Partee joined Jace Floyd's independent
cavalry company which operated around Memphis regulating some conditions
which had arisen in that vicinity and then became Company H of Alex. Chal
mers' Battalion, which still later became the Eighteenth Mississippi Cavalry,
C. S. A. This regiment did valiant service under General Forrest in the battles
of Harrisburg, Tishomingo Creek or Bryce's Crossroads, and was with him to
the end at Gainesville, Alabama. Mr. Partee's father died during the war and
a lot of his Delta lands were forfeited for non-payment of taxes. Mr. Partee
had five brothers in the Confederate army: A. Y., R. D., Hiram, J. K. P. and
S. B. Partee, Junior. He and Miss Elizabeth Jackson were married October
22, 1871. They have five chfldren: C. W. Partee, Junior, Mrs. H. J. Davis,
Mrs. I. C. Denton, Mrs. G. O. Denton and Mrs. W. H. Hardy. He now owns
a comfortable home and plantation in Quitman County, and over in Rankin
County, Mississippi, has a large tract of land which he has made into a stock
farm.

445

M. ^. mitcfjie

) ILLIAM ALBERT RITCHIE is just completing the first score
of his residence in Clarksdale, Mississippi, and they have been
active years, in which he has added no small part to the devel
opment of the community aiul accumulated much of this earth's
goods for himself. He was born August 26, 1885, at Wingo,
Kentucky, the son of Arthur W. and Mary Walker Ritchie. He
attended the grammar and high schools in Kentucky and in 1904 moved to the
more active city of Clarksdale, Mississippi, where he still resides, and probably
always will. He formed a partnership with Mr. Oscar Carr, becoming the junior
member of the firm of Carr & Ritchie. It is the oldest real estate firm in Clarks
dale and has from the first done a big business in Clarksdale city property, and in
Delta farm and timber lands. All of these lines have increased in volume greatly of
recent years and the business is still growing at a rapid rate. In addition to this
land dealing, the firm has added that of investments in high-class securities. It
also is interested in various mercantile concerns and in planting some of the
finest cotton lands in the Delta. Mr. Ritchie has invested heavily of his private
fortune in some of the strongest concerns in his section. He is a stockholder in
the Planters Bank, which stock is generally considered about the best and safest
investment in Coahoma County. He is also interested financially in the Johnson-
Harlow Lumber Company ; in the Lombardy Planting Company, whose lands on
Sunflower River are surpassed by none in fertility; in the Belen Planting Com
pany, and where can better land be found than on Lost Lake and Cassidy's
Bayou?; in the Mississippi Valley Dry Goods Company; in the Friedman-Shultz
Shoe Company; in the Clarksdale Realty Company, and in Oakridge Cemetery
Company. Mr. Ritchie has shown his sound judgment in the class of lands in
which he has invested his own means, and proved it innumerable times in the
statements which he has made to intending purchasers. Now he is recognized
as one of the best posted men in his section on the actual worth as well as value
of real estate. This information, coupled with his industry and sterling honesty,
is of great value to the man who goes to his office either to sell or to buy land.
That this value is appreciated is reflected in the growing volume of the con
cern's business. Mr. Ritchie is recognized not only as one of the most active,
but also as one of the best citizens of Coahoma County. He is a staunch member
of the Presbyterian Church, and lives a life very close to the strict tenets of that
denomination. He is also a devoted Mason, having taken both the York and
Scottish Rites, being a Knight Templar in the one and having taken the thirty-
second degree in the other. In addition to these he is a member of the Shrine,
an Elk, a Rotarian and of the Chamber of Commerce. Mr. Ritchie has never
married.

446

yj Cl/i^'^y^^ui^'yT--iyd^W'h~

^am l^embert

JAM REMBERT, planter, Memphis, Tennessee, with cotton
acreage in three states tributary to Memphis, was born in
Shelby County, just out from Woodstock, Tennessee, July 1,
1845, the son of Samuel S. and Anne (Duncan) Rembert.
His father had moved to the Woodstock section in 1800 when
the State of Tennessee was but four years of age and when
what now is Memphis was but a small landing for flatboats on the Mississippi
River. Like so many other of the most refined Southern children and women,
Sam Rembert was an emigre to Canada during the Civil War and received his
education in the University of Canada in Toronto. He also took a course in
a commercial college there. Returning to Tennessee, he began planting cotton
in 1868 on a two hundred and forty-six-acre tract near Woodstock, which he
still retains. He sold cotton for five and six cents per pound, less than the seed
in a bale of cotton later was worth, and then he threw away the seed if he was
fortunate enough to find a place to dump them. But even under those condi
tions he prospered. In 1884 he rented from the then leading cotton firm of
Thomas H. Allen & Company some six hundred acres of land on Hushpuckena
Creek in Bolivar County, Mississippi, which had belonged to and been cleared up
by Andrew Jackson Donelson, secretary to General Jackson. He cultivated that
place for two seasons. His real investments in the Mississippi Delta began
in 1898, when Mr. Rembert bought some three thousand acres on the Missis
sippi River front in the upper portion of Bolivar County. He has owned that
land ever since and has developed it to where it is one of the best plantations on
the river. It is near the famous Waxhaw Plantation of Mr. John Kirk, one of
the oldest and most productive in the Delta. Mr. Rembert made his home on
this plantation for many years, but as the hand of time began resting more
heavily upon his shoulders he ceased to care for the strenuous life of managing
so large an estate and gradually has passed the details of this place over to
his son, Sam, Junior, who lives upon it. He is also the owner of a smaller
tract of fine alluvial land in the lower portion of Mississippi County, Arkansas,
near Wilson, and of several farms in Shelby County. Mr. Rembert spends most
of his time in Memphis, making his home with his daughter, Mrs. Busby. He
retains the active management of the Arkansas and Tennessee property in his
own hands because one of his inherent energy cannot stand to be idle. He also
makes occasional trips to the Mississippi Delta, spending some time with his
son in the general supervision of the big plantation there. He is a member of
St. Mary's Episcopal Church. Mr. Rembert has never sought or held any
political office. He and Miss Nannie Brown were married in the early seventies.
She died in 1885, leaving two children, Sam, Junior, and Miss Mamie Lee, now
Mrs. J. J. Busby.

451

. ?B. ^b3ain

1 ILLIAM BEAUREGARD SWAIN, Hollyknowe, Mississippi,
one of the most energetic men in the development of the fer
tile Mississippi Delta, and until he retired from most of his
active operations, one of the largest cotton raisers in the
world, is a native of Holmes County, MississipjM, where he
was born August 20, 1861, the son of S. R. and Harriet A.
Swain. Growing up during the Civil War and the wreck of reconstruction which
followed in its wake, he was able to get no education save a little in the com
mon schools of his home county. At the age of fourteen years he went to work
on the farm of his father and remained there until he was twenty-one years of
age. Then he went to the Mississippi Delta, rented a place of one hundred
acres near Sloneville, in Washington County, and went to work for himself.
There was more land in that country then than anything else with the exception
of water, for the three consecutive great floods of 1882, 1883 and 1884 swept at
will over and through the insignificant levees of that day, bankrupting many
who owned cleared lands and placing them on the market for sale for taxes,
while the wild lands had but lillie value. When Mr. Swain first went on Bogue
Phalia there was not more than one hundred acres of land cleared between
what are now Shaw and Leiand, the cultivating being on the higher river front
and along the highest banks of the bayous and Deer Creek. Mr. Swain was
one of those strong hearted men of vision who realized from the time that he
saw the fertility of the soil that the hardy race of men who had migrated west
along that parallel of latitude would not let that source of wealth and useful
ness to the world lie idle — that they would surmount the obstacles. And he
bore a man's part in that heroic work. They who now view the level fields of
cotton in the Delta from the window of a Pullman car, or from an automobile
speeding on a concrete road through miles of land cultivated like a garden do
not realize the fortitude and resources required of men of Mr. Swain's type in
attacking the virgin forests of cane, giant oaks and larger gum trees with a
cross-cut saw, an ax, a sledge, a wedge and a brand of fire, and yet between
1887 and 1915, Mr. Swain bought nearly ten thousand acres of land almost
entirely covered with virgin forests and reduced all of it to the highest slate of
cultivation, a record equalled by few if any other man in the Mississippi Delta.
In 1917 and 1918, Mr. Swain sold all of his holdings except one thousand acres
al his home on Bogue Phalia which he cultivates largely to have something to
occupy his lime. He also owns a delightful summer home in Colorado. He is
a member of the Baptist Church in Leiand and of the Elks Lodge (n Green
ville. Mr. Swain and Miss Mamie Hobbs were married December 30, 1903.
They have three children : W. B., Junior ; Miss Jeffie Clair, and W. D. Swain.

452

:m.

to'!5Wr^>

Clarence 3^. ^mitb

;LARENCE R. smith has the distinction of having built up
in Cleveland, Mississippi, and of now operating what not only
is one of the largest and most completely organized retail mer
chandise establishments in the entire Stale of Mississippi, but
also what probably is the largest department store located in
any town in the United Slates of the size of Cleveland. Mr.
Smith was born March 9, 1866, in DeSotoville, Alabama, the son of Louis R.
and Susan Smith. He was able to secure only a common school education and
at the age of seventeen years moved to Mississippi and began his career there
in construction work on the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley Railroad. He put in two
and a half years in that line of work and then turned toward mercantile lines.
He spent three years as a clerk in the general store of T. B. Johnson at Cleve
land, and then went into the drug business for himself under the name of C. R.
Smith, which later was to become almost a synonym for "merchant" in Bolivar
County. At the end of a couple of years he disposed of his drug business and
for a dozen years sold fire insurance. Having saved some of the money that he
made out of the insurance business, he began planting cotton and opened a mer
cantile establishment under his own name of C. R. Smith in 1903. From the
first the energy and natural bent for merchandising that Mr. Smith put into
the business told. The following year the first portion of what is now the Smith
Block was constructed, and four years later the business had developed to the
point where an addition was necessary, and still four years later, his stock and
patronage required another enlargement of the establishment. The building
now covers a ground space of eighty-five by one hundred and forty-five feet,
two stories high, with a warehouse forty by one hundred and twenty-two feet.
The seven departments in which every need of each customer can be filled crowd
this space to capacity, while the arrangement for each of the departments is
perfect for the service of the customers and the ease and rapidity with which
the clerks can handle the goods. Mr. Smith went to Cleveland when the identi
cal spot where his big store now stands was a brake of big blue cane. He had
been a big factor in its every development from that date to this. He has served
three terms as mayor of the city, and for four years represented his county in
the State Legislature. He was a member of the Mississippi (Lower) Levee
Board for a term, from 1910 to 1914, filling the important post of president of
that body. He is a director in the Valley Grocery Company, a stockholder in the
Bolivar Compress Company, and many other enterprises, as well as a large
owner of land and town property, and a member of the Methodist Church. He
and Miss Mamie Williams married November 22, 1893. Mrs. Guy B. McLe-
more is their only child.

457

^ebagtian ^traub

lEBASTIAN STRAUB, merchant, planter, manufacturer and
one of the most efficient citizens of Helena, Arkansas, along
all lines of progress not only for the city itself, but also for
the entire community, was born in that city February 14, 1874,
the son of Nicholas and Carrie Straub. He attended the pub
lic schools of the city for a short time, but at the age of fifteen
years quit school to go to work in the store of his father. When he was eighteen
years of age his father died and the courts made Mr. Straub of legal age so that
he might be able to take official charge of the business with his brother, W. N.
Straub. They operated a general merchandise store under the firm name of
N. Straub Sons Mercantile Company until 1919, when it was formally incor
porated with that name. W. N. Straub was made president; J. P. Rider, vice-
president, and Sebastian Straub, secretary and treasurer, and since that time
the progress of the concern has been steadily upward. At the same time Mr.
Straub and his brother formed the firm of W. N. & S. Straub, to which were
transferred the cotton planting and supply interests of the other company.
They have large plantations in Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana aggregating
eleven thousand acres, of which five thousand are in cultivation, three thousand
acres cut-over and three thousand acres in virgin timber. Mr. Straub is president
of the Helena Building & Loan Association with a capital stock of $1,250,000;
the Helena Cotton Oil Mill, with a capital of $200,000; the Eastern Arkansas
Oil & Gas Company, with a capital of $100,000; the Lucky Dog Mining Com
pany of St. Joe, Arkansas, for mining zinc ore in Searcy County, with a capital
of $15,000; the Helena-Ferguson Road District, for which $1,900,000 has been
raised by the sale of bonds for the building of sixty-two miles of concrete roads
through Phillips County; the Beaver Bayou Drainage District, which has opened
thirty-six miles of canals; the Long Lake Drainage District which has recently
been organized, and of the Rotary Club ; a director in the Helena Board of Trade ;
the Security Bank & Trust Company; the Lewis Mill Supply Company, and
the Citizens Ice Company; a holder of stock in the Interstate National Bank,
the First National Bank and the Security Bank & Trust Company. He is also
treasurer and tax collector for the Cotton Belt Levee Company. He is a mem
ber of the executive committee of the Business Men's League, and chairman
of the Helena Terminal Association Board, which is doing so much to rejuvenate
the river traffic and thus maintain freight rales on a reasonable basis. He is a
past grand knight of the Knights of Columbus, and a member of the City Club.
During the recent Elaine riots he was acting sheriff and chairman of the Com
mittee of Seven. Mr. Straub and Miss Marie Worlham of Memphis were mar
ried July 13, 1899. Their children are Sebastian, Junior, and Charles W. Straub.

458

y^yj^i^^^t.^^7^!L:^auy -^^^T^-^^yf-

f. ®. Conner

¦USTIN DEWEY TOWNER, doctor of dental surgery, Mem
phis, Tennessee, one of the leading practitioners and teachers
of dentistry in the Mid-South, was born in Lynnville, Tennessee,
May 12, 1877, the son of Justin Dewey and Samantha (Bugg)
Towner. He attended the public schools of Giles County until
he was twelve years of age and then went to Martin College
in Pulaski, where he remained from 1889 to the spring of 1892. The next year
he spent at the Webb Brothers School in Bellbuckle, Tennessee, and during the
terms from the fall of 1893 to the spring of 1895, he was a pupil of the Wall &
Mooney School in Franklin, Tennessee. From there he went to the Vander
bilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, where he was graduated in 1898 with
the degree of D. D. S. He practiced dentistry at Pulaski from the time that he
got his license until January, 1903, with signal success but at the end of that time
he felt that he was able to occupy with the same degree of success a larger field
and hence moved to Memphis. He brought with him a thorough equipment,
ample experience, confidence in his ability and a determination to go to the top.
His efficiency was recognized by the profession almost from the time that he
opened his office here and it was but a short time before the public generally
came to the same conclusion. His clientele has grown steadily until now, judged
both by its numbers and by its class, it probably is unsurpassed by that of any
dentist in the Mid-South. Doctor Towner was not content with the mere prac
tice of his profession, lucrative though it was, but was anxious to do something
else in the world, even at a financial loss to himself. In 1909 he organized the
College of Dentistry of the University of Memphis and was its dean until two
years later, when it was merged with the University of Tennessee and became
the School of Dentistry of that larger institution. Immediately upon the merger
he established and taught the chair of mouth hygiene, oral prophylaxis and
pyorrhea. Doctor Towner is a member of the Memphis Dental Society, the
Tennessee State Dental Association, the National Dental Association, and Acad
emy of Periodontists, the Delta Sigma Delta dental college Greek letter frater
nity and the Alpha Tau Omega college literary and social fraternity. He takes
a keen interest in the affairs generally of the community and is the representa
tive of the dental profession in that active body of men who compose the Rotary
Club. He is also an active member of the Chamber of Commerce and is a mem
ber of the Memphis Country Club. He is a member of the Travel Club of
America and as such has for a long time been a systematic and most extensive
traveler of his native country. Doctor Towner and Miss Mary Estelle Wall of
Franklin, Tennessee, were married October- 27, 1898. They have two children:
Annie Mary Towner and Justin Dewey Towner, Junior.

463

3B. p. Moollarb

|RURY BOYCE WOOLLARD, planter and merchant, Clarke-
dale, Arkansas, for thirty years one of the leading factors in
the development of the upper end of Crittenden County, was
born in Senatobia, Tate County, Mississippi, January 23, 1868,
the son of Leander Guy and Mary Elizabeth (Boyce) Wool
lard. The Woollard family is an old one in northwestern Mis
sissippi and for many years has been prominent in the development both of the
hill and later of the Delta section of that Stale. Mr. Woollard was educated in
the common schools of Tate County, but left home at the age of twenty years
and went to Arkansas, where in 1889 he formed an association with the Clarke
family of Peoria, Illinois, which has endured almost unbroken for more than
thirty years and through two generations of his family and three of the Clarke
family. Mr. C. B. Clarke had acquired a large tract of land at what now is
Clarkedale and was then beginning to open it up for cultivation. Mr. Woollard
first became the assistant manager of the plantation in 1889 and remained there
for three years. At the end of that lime he accepted a position as manager of the
J. B. Adams plantation in the older and more highly developed Arkansas River
country and remained there for two years and then he returned home where he
spent three years on the farm of his mother. He had lived too long in the fer
tile level lands of the low countries to be satisfied again with the hills and in
1896 he returned to Clarkedale. In the meanwhile Mr. C. B. Clarke had died
and the plantation had passed to the possession of Mr. Sumner R. Clarke.
Mr. Woollard continued in active charge of the plantation during the entire
time that this Mr. Clarke owned it and also for a time after he died and the
estate passed into the hands of Mr. Robert D. Clarke. When he assumed full
charge of the property in 1896, only fifteen hundred of the thirty-eight hundred
acres were in cultivation. He cleared up twenty-three hundred acres and when
Mr. R. D. Clarke offered the major portion of the plantation for sale, it was
generally rated as being the most highly developed plantation in that section of
the county and as being in the highest state of tilth. In the meanwhile Mr. Wool
lard had acquired some eighteen hundred acres of his own adjoining the Clarke
place, and his wife having died in the summer of 1918, he gave up the active
management of the Clarke property for the purpose of inspiring his sons to do
something for themselves in the development of the family property. Mr. Clarke
sold the major portion of his property, but retained one thousand acres adjoin
ing Mr. Woollard's land and since that time he and Mr. Woollard have been
equal partners in that. Mr. Woollard and Miss Annie Lafayette Slaton were
married October 11, 1893. Their three children are: Oliver Slaton, Leander
Guy and Drury Boyce Woollard, Junior.

464

,,///3 0'y<^t)U^^f^yj^

../

^. 0, Purton

lUGUSTUS OTEY BURTON, planter and real estate man,
Blytheville, Arkansas, is a native of that State, having been
born July 17, 1873, in Jackson County, near Newport, the son
of Thomas Jefferson and Clara N. Burton. He attended the
public schools but at an early age started out to make his own
way in the world, and he has succeeded in making it a most
successful one. He came to Memphis when he was nineteen years of age and
secured a job as a clerk in a retail grocery store. He was doing well in that place
but he yearned for his native State, and after two years he moved up to Osceola,
Arkansas, and went into the retail grocery store of the Pullen Company. He
remained with that firm for five years, when he had accumulated enough to go
into business for himself and he then opened a retail grocery store under the
name of A. O. Burton. In this venture he was successful. From the time that
he went into business on his own hook, his progress up the ladder of success
was steady and certain. In 1902 he went into the wholesale grocery business
under the name of the Burton Commission Company. He remained in Osceola
for two years following this and then cast his eye toward the more progressive
city of Blytheville, where he organized the Arkansas Grocery Company, whole
sale grocers, of which he was vice-president and general manager. This institu
tion under his guiding spirit has developed into one of the strong commercial
institutions in northeastern Arkansas. By this time he had expanded to a point
where his vision was not confined to the selling of groceries. He had the fore
sight to realize that the magnificent lands of Mississippi County were the cheap
est in the country in proportion to their actual value based upon earning capacity,
and he backed his judgment by investing in them from time to time until now
he is the owner of some two thousand acres in a high state of cultivation, and
in addition to this some six hundred acres of cut-over timber land. In 1907
he retired from the active management of the grocery concern and entered the
real estate business, in which he still is engaged. Mr, Burton does not indulge
in an overflow of words and promises, but is decidedly a man of action, public
spirited and liberal. Show him a proposition in which his home community
may be benefited and he puts money, energy and religion into it. Modest in his
demeanor, a good listener and an active doer, his counsel is sought as often as
any one of many who are making local history. Mr. Burton is one of the type
of men who are known by their works. During the war he took a most active
part in war work for his section of Arkansas. Mr. Burton and Miss Joe Bert
Mayo of Memphis were married January 26, 1899. Their children are A. O.
Burton, Junior, born in 1907, and Mayo Burton, born in 1910.

469

. 3. prasibearsJ

[ILLIAM IRVIN BRASHEARS, Memphis, Tennessee, for
merly successful railroad man, banker, merchant, cotton planter
and saw mill operator, and now equally so as an oil producer,
lumber dealer and cotton factor, is a native of Mississippi. He
was born in Pike County, February 28, 1872, the son of
George Miller and Lou Brashears. He received his education
in the common schools of the neighboring county of Amite in the far interior
town of Gillsburg. Early in life he went to work for the Yazoo & Mississippi
Valley Railroad system as a telegrapher, and in that capacity worked for the
company at a number of stations. In the course of that line of work he landed
at Gunnison in the fertile Yazoo Delta, where he also became agent at the local
depot. He saw in the timber standing on the land and in the cotton produced
where it was cleared a rare opportunity and the foundation for great wealth in
the community and began to take an interest in affairs other than those con
nected with the railroad. In 1911 he became cashier of the Bank of Gunnison
and not long afterwards secured an interest in the Gunnison Mercantile Com
pany. He was efficient and prospered in both of these enterprises and in 1914
sold his interest in them and acquired some two thousand acres of land at Pace,
Mississippi, of which thirteen hundred acres were in timber and the remainder
open for planting. He placed a saw mill on the timber land, and renting five
hundred acres in addition to the seven hundred acres of open land which he
owned, went extensively into both the mill and planting business on his own
account. The lumber line of the business offered more outlet for the intense
activity of a man like Mr. Brashears than did the planting line and in 1916 he
sold the open land, retaining the mill and timberland. About the same time he
expanded his milling business by buying a mill at Drew, Mississippi. He oper
ated both of these mills during 1917 and I9I8, and during that time he came to
Memphis and organized the Chisca Lumber Company as an outlet for his own
product as well as to engage in the hardwood lumber business generally. It is
one of the leading concerns in this section of the country dealing in hardwoods.
In 1917 he also was active in the organization of the Scott-Thomas Cotton Com
pany, prominent cotton factors in Memphis. In the fall of 1919 he began to look
into the oil fields of Texas and bought leases on some four thousand acres near
Wichita Falls with such judgment as to location that when he contracted for
the drilling of five wells on five acres on a fifty-fifty basis, he brought in five
wells. Now he has eight wells, is the president of the Delta Oil & Refining
Company, a $5,000,0(X) corporation. Mr. Brashears and Miss Estelle Green of
Utica, Mississippi, were married in April, 1898. Their children are Willie Green
and Robert Clayton Brashears.

470

CC^f^A^f

<^^^ I.

C C. g>almon

I HOMAS EMORY SALMON, Memphis, Tennessee, one of
the leading cotton planters in the upper Mississippi Delta, as
well as largely interested in cotton lands in Arkansas, was
born in Senatobia, Mississippi, August 28, 1872, the son of
Joseph M. and Annie Wells (Williams) Salmon. His parents
came from South Carolina to Mississippi at an early date
and were among the early settlers of Tate County, where his father spent the
remainder of his life except during the time that he served the Confederacy, in
whose army he was a gallant soldier until he received a wound which sent him
home. He was a farmer who had the respect of the entire community in which
he lived. Mr. Salmon was educated in the public schools of Senatobia until he
was sixteen years of age and then went to work on one of the plantations of
J. T. Gabbert & Company, beginning at the bottom. He saw in the level fertile
lands of the Delta to the west of him more opportunities for his mental and
physical energies than in the hill country, and hence secured a position on the
plantation of C. L. Robinson at Robinsonville as assistant to W. K. Herrin in
the management of the plantation and store. He remained there for four years
and then went with Tate Brothers, where he was in charge of their plantation
and mercantile business. From there he went to Green Grove, Mississippi, where
he was with Mrs. John P. Richardson for thirty days, when he resigned and in
1904 went into the planting and mercantile business on his own account. It
was in that year that he rented from the late John L. Cooke his twelve hundred-
acre plantation on Beaver Dam, between Maud and Dubbs, Mississippi. He has
managed the affairs of that plantation with such signal success for Mr. Cooke,
the estate and himself that he still has charge of it and has been able at the
same time to lay the foundation on which he has built up a nice estate for him
self. In all he has some four thousand acres in cultivation in cotton, corn and
hay, including the Cooke property. He bought ten hundred and forty-five acres
for himself a few miles east of Coahoma, Mississippi, and in conjunction with
B. B. Brooks he owns some seventeen hundred acres of fine land in Lee County,
Arkansas, near Brickey's. Those who are familiar with the three plantations
agree that Mr. Salmon is one of the best farmers in the lowlands of this sec
tion. He has found time from his private affairs to serve Tunica County as
treasurer from 1902 to 1912, and as a member of the board of supervisors from
1916 to 1920, where his sterling integrity and sound judgment were of great
value to the county. He also was a member of the board which built the Agri
cultural High School in Tunica. Mr. Salmon and Miss Estella May Scott were
married May 1, 1898. They had four children, of whom two. Miss Evelyne and
Raymond Farley Salmon, are living.

475

C. €. aiexanber

DWARD EVERETTE ALEXANDER, lawyer, Blytheville,
Arkansas, was born in Fruitland, Missouri, September 17,
1882, the son of Oliver and Lillie Lucretia Alexander. He
attended the common schools of Fruitland and Leemon, and
the State Normal School at Cape Girardeau, Missouri, and
then went to the Tennesseee State University at Knoxville,
where he received the degree of bachelor of laws in 1907. He was admitted to
the practice of law in Tennessee in the spring of that year, but within a few
months he moved to Arkansas and was admitted at Benton to the bar of that
State. In September of that year he went to Blytheville, where he began the
practice of his profession. There is no superior land to that which surrounds
Blytheville and it remained only for the type of men that he is to make of it the
thriving city which it is. From the start he was one of the active factors in
every movement for the upbuilding of the community in which he settled. He
had been so active that in 1914 he was elected by Mississippi County as its rep
resentative in the Legislature of the State. There his constructive ability showed
to its best advantage. He was chosen as chairman of the ways and means com
mittee of the house, the most important post in that body so far as the general
welfare of the State is concerned. But the greatest work that he did for the
entire State and especially for his own and his neighboring counties in the
St. Francis Basin was in the matter of road legislation. There was not a road
in the entire basin which was passable or could be made passable except during
the latter periods of the dry seasons. Few, if any, counties, have adequate roads
without the issuance of bonds with which to do the primary work, and in
Arkansas, neither the State, the county nor the city can issue bonds for any
purpose, but Mr. Alexander framed his law so that the county could be divided
into districts, and in the event that either the land owners or the citizens wanted
certain roads, they could bond the district and construct them. It is under the
provisions of this act that practically all of the magnificent highways now
under construction in Arkansas are being built. So valuable had been the serv
ices of Mr. Alexander in the lower house during the session of 1915, that at its
expiration he was prevailed upon to go to the State Senate representing the
Twenty-ninth district, comprising Mississippi, Poinsett and Jackson counties.
He was equally efficient in the regular and extra sessions of 1917-19. In both
bodies he was an ardent supporter of suffrage, prohibition and the Wilson
administration. He is an A. T. O. of Tennessee University, past exalted ruler
for two terms and district deputy grand exalted ruler of the Elks. He and
Miss Ouincy C. Tipton of Cottonwood Point, Missouri, were married June 30,
1908. They have one child, Quincy Oliver Alexander.

476

WW^^Wi'^'^

i. C. ftumesi

'AURENCE CABELL HUMES, banker, Memphis, Tennessee,
was born in Abingdon, Virginia, August 4, 1880, the son of
Lowry and Edmonia (Barton) Humes and the grandson of
General W. Y. C. Humes, who served on the staff of General
Wheeler during the Civil War. The family moved to Mem
phis when Laurence was a child and he received his education
in the public schools of the city. Shortly after leaving the Lake Avenue High
School he decided to learn the banking business and went to work for the First
National Bank as an exchange clerk. He was then nineteen years old but the
same sterling qualities that made his grandfather one of the most trusted and
also one of the ablest generals of the Confederate army began to assert them
selves and his fellow workers soon began to realize that while many young men
work only for the immediate results, Laurence Humes was looking for the
future. Hard work coupled with natural ability along financial lines brought
promotion from one position to another. From exchange clerk he was pro
moted to general bookkeeper, then auditor and finally assistant cashier. He
occupied this position in 1918 when some of the leading financiers of this terri
tory decided to found a large banking institution, to be known as the Guaranty
Bank & Trust Company. One of their problems was to find a cashier who not
only knew the banking business thoroughly but had the ability to make and
keep friends. "Larry" Humes, as he is known to his friends, seemed to have
these qualities to a remarkable degree and he was asked to become vice-presi
dent and cashier of the new institution, launched with a capital of $500,000. The
new bank was successful from the start and within two years' time the deposits
went to six million dollars, a record for a new institution in Memphis. Although
competing with banks of many years of service in the community the Guaranty
Bank & Trust Company at the end of the second year of its existence found
itself in fifth place among all the banks of the city. As the bank forged ahead
the eyes of the banking world naturally turned to the men at the helm of the
new institution with the result that Mr. Humes soon had the reputation of being
one of the city's most successful bankers. He made friends rapidly and his
popularity naturally resulted in honors coming to the young banker. He was
made president of the Memphis Clearing House Association, which with the
possible exception of New Orleans, is the largest in the South. Mr. Humes
also was named first vice-president of the American Institute of Banking, being
one of three bankers in Memphis who ever have had this honor. Mr. Humes
is a member of the Memphis Country Club, the Colonial Country Club, Tennes
see Club, Chamber of Commerce and Bankers Club of Memphis. He is a thirty-
second degree Mason and a member of the executive council of the Tennessee
Bankers Association.

481

C. C. ftansion

; HARLES CLINTON HANSON, for nearly twenty years
most active in all movements for the improvement of Mem
phis, especially along educational and altruistic lines, and in
the matter of injecting thorough system into all public affairs,
is a native of Alabama. He was born March 29, 1867, at Opel-
ika, and had no education in early life except what he was
able to acquire from the public schools of his home county, when not busy on
the farm where he was reared. His first commercial experience was as tele
graph operator, and in 1890 he became agent for the railroads entering Eufaula,
Alabama. Later the same year he became chief clerk to the traffic manager of
the Ocean Steamship Company and Central of Georgia Railroad at Savannah.
Later he was joint terminal agent for the Central, the C. & W. C. and the
P. R. & A. at Augusta, and still later special agent for the executive officers of
the Central of Georgia and Ocean Steamship Company at Savannah. In 1898
he leased the compresses of those companies. Three years later he was the
president of the Atlantic Compress Company with headquarters in Atlanta. In
1902 he became president of the Gulf Compress Company with headquarters
in Memphis, where he has lived since June, 1908. Now he owns and controls
the long chain of compresses throughout Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi and
Alabama, operated under the name of "The Churchill Compresses." He was
elected president of the City Club in 1912-1913, and again in 1919; is president
of the Bureau of Municipal Research ; secretary-treasurer of the Mississippi
Valley Compress Association ; trustee of the Shelby County Industrial & Train
ing School. He and Judge J. P. Young rejuvenated the Bolton College farm,
and Mr. Hanson is chairman of the board of trustees for that institution. He
was for seven years a member of the State Board of Education, and has a won
derful library of books on education, and has ever been deeply interested along
those lines. Mr. Hanson is both a York and a Scottish Rite Mason, having
attained to the thirty-second degree; a member of the Shrine; of the Knights of
Pythias; of the Knights of Khorassan ; of the Kiwanis Club; of the Memphis
Country Club, and of the Chamber of Commerce, and president of the Memphis
Chapter of the International Business Science Society. Mr. Hanson succeeded
the late Dr. R. B. Maury as head of the Audubon Society for Shelby County,
and is doing a noble work, not only through propaganda but also in actual prac
tice for the preservation of birds. His farm in the Bolton College neighborhood
is a bird sanctuary. While Mr. Hanson is a Democrat, he has never sought nor
held any public office, but has given freely of his time and his money for all
public movements. Mr. Hanson was married in June, 1889, to Miss Marie Adele
Shorter, daughter of Col. Henry R. Shorter, of the distinguished Alabama family
of that name.

482

Ci}4:P\yf,y^^^j^-

f . 1. ftalej^

I ESSE LEE HALEY, one of the largest planters of cotton in
the world, Itta Bena, Mississippi, is a native of Tennessee,
where he was born in Maury County, December 22, 1857, the
son of Charles Washington and Rebecca (Cook) Haley. He
managed to get four months' education in the free schools and
at the age of seven years went to work, first as a cotton picker
and later at any odd job that he could find. He continued this manner of life
until he was eighteen years of age and then borrowed enough money with which
to go to Greenwood, Mississippi, where he picked cotton, repaying out of his
wages what he had borrowed. Then he rented a place of fifteen acres across the
river from Greenwood for a year and added to this, doing the work himself. Of
powerful physique, fine sense and high ambition he worked as few men could
have done and this combination applied to the fertile land of the Yazoo River
created wealth. At the end of twelve years of renting it was possible for him
to buy the Grand View Plantation of five hundred and fifty acres. He man
aged this with signal success until the '90s, when he sold it and bought the Itta
Bena Plantation, formerly owned by Governor Humphreys. This contained
twenty-two hundred acres and he ran his holdings up to no less than twelve thou
sand acres by 1917. Then he began selling some of his LeFlore County lands and
investing in Issaquena County, where he now owns some twenty thousand acres, in
addition to large holdings he retained in LeFlore County and in Itta Bena, where
he still makes his home. He has more than seven thousand acres in cultivation,
operating half a dozen gins and two saw mills. Mr. Haley was elected tax
assessor of LeFlore County before he was of age and had to wait until he was
twenty-one before being able to qualify for the office. He served four years as
sheriff and tax collector and has been a supervisor for fifteen years and for the
past nine years has been president and vice-president of the board. He was a
member of the Upper Yazoo Levee Board for seven years. He has been an
alderman of Itta Bena during its twenty-four years of existence. In fact, with
no education, with no backing, veritably a stranger in a strange land without
money, Mr. Haley by sheer merit, ability, energy and the use both of his brawn
and his brains, worked himself up to where for more than a generation he has
been one of the most conspicuous, useful and dominating figures in a county
unsurpassed in the United States in the personnel of its citizenship. He is a
member of the Methodist Church and Greenwood Lodge of Elks; a Knight of
Pythias ; an Odd Fellow ; a Knight of Honor, and a member of the Masonic
lodge of Itta Bena. Mr. Haley was married February 25, 1897, to Mrs. Mattie
Elizabeth Parker, nee Blount. Their children are Mina Lou, Rebecca Ann, and
Jesse Lee Haley, Junior, beside Roxy, Mrs. Haley's child by her former marriage.

487

James; ftenrp Sofjusion

^AMES HENRY JOHNSON of Clarksdale, Mississippi, is
Jwl one of the few successful business men in that Delta section
Wj) whose wealth is not built upon a foundation of cotton culture,
Wi but still his success has been as great as has that of those who
went into planting. His general insurance agency is said to
be the largest in Mississippi and unquestionably is one of the
largest and most highly respected in the entire South. He is a native Missis
sippian, being the son of Wiley J. and Orentine Sherer Johnson, of DeSoto
County, where he was born on June 4, 1867. The father died when he was only
eleven years of age and he was compelled to go to work in Hernando, where
the family had moved. The lad was compelled to go to work and got only
such education as was possible in the public schools during the springs and
summers until he was sixteen years of age, and when business was light in the
store for which he went to work at $6.00 per month. By the end of 1890, he
had been raised to $50.00 per month ; which was about all that he could hope
for as a clerk there at that time. His brother having been elected sheriff of
Tunica County, he then went there as chief deputy. After one year the sheriff
died and Mr. Johnson remained as chief deputy for his successor, but resigned
January 10, 1895, and moved to Clarksdale, where he opened a general insurance
agency. His painstaking attention to every detail of the business, absolute hon
esty and attractive manner caused the business to grow from the start and each
year finds a greater volume of business coming into his office. His ability as
an expert in his line was recognized by his fellow agents in the State and he
served three years as president of the Mississippi Local Underwriters Associa
tion. He is president of the Johnson-Harlow Lumber Company, vice-president
of the Clarksdale Machinery Company, chairman of the finance committee of
the Delta Grocery & Cotton Company, and secretary and treasurer of a number
of smaller concerns. For the past twenty years he has been secretary and treas
urer of the board of stewards of the Methodist Church. He has held many of
the highest offices, both local and state, in the Knights of Pythias, various
branches of Free Masonry and the Elks. He is a director in Ihe Chamber of
Commerce, trustee and secretary of the high school board, and trustee and chair
man of the Carnegie Library. He was very active in Red Cross, loan and sav
ings stamp campaigns during the war, and as county sales manager for the Vic
tory loan, put the county's allotment of $1,500,000 over two days before the
opening of the drive with the aid of five executive committeemen. He has
served as alderman, acting mayor and postmaster. He married Miss Oney Shaw,
January 22, 1896. Their children are Katherine, James H., Junior, Elizabeth,
Oney Shaw and Mary Louise.

488

'7yy9<:^7^-

A,

V,

5. prigfjt (^oobbar

I ONE of the younger business men of Memphis is better known,
better liked or more progressive than James Bright Goodbar,
son of James Monroe and Mary E. (Morgan) Goodbar, con
nected with the wholesale shoe firm of Goodbar & Company
since 1901 and active vice-president of that house since 1908.
Soon after the long, honorable and successful career of Mr.
James M. Goodbar was closed by his death on June 13, 1920, Mr. J. Bright
Goodbar was chosen to succeed him as the head of the firm which his father
had established here sixty years prior to that time, when he moved from Nash
ville to Memphis and with Colonel Thomas L. Bransford and his son, John S.
Bransford, went into the wholesale shoe business under the name of Bransford,
Goodbar & Company. The firm had a record for integrity surpassed by none,
and broken only for the four years that Mr. J. M. Goodbar served the Confed
eracy. Born in Memphis August 12, 1881, he was educated in the Memphis
University School and finished his course at Phillips Exeter Academy, Exeter,
New Hampshire. Upon his return from the academy, he entered immediately
into his father's business, where he has risen rapidly. Now he is a director in
the Bank of Commerce & Trust Company, and in the Peoples Bank & Trust
Company. He is a member of the Tennessee Club, the Memphis Country Club
and Wapanocca Outing Club. He early caught the contagion of the campaign
for the South to raise its own rations, and realized that the only way in which
this could be accomplished was to fill the land as quickly as possible with pure
bred hogs of the finest strains. He bought Jack's Top King, one of the classi
est Duroc-Jersey sires of today, in the auction ring for $10,500 from Ira Jack
son, then leader in the breeding of sires of that strain. Jack's Top King was
installed as the head of the herd of pure-breds that Mr. Goodbar had accumu
lated on his stock farm just east of Memphis, and at the Southern Circuit Duroc
sales, where world's records for prices have been made only to be broken, his
blood lines have commanded wonderful prices. Mr. Goodbar was an ardent
supporter of Edward H. Crump from his earliest campaigns, and although Mr.
Goodbar wanted no office, Mr. Crump induced him to become a member of the
first civil service commission in Memphis, the only public office which he has
ever held. On November 16, 1904, Mr. Goodbar and Miss Virginia Lee Wil
liams, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin R. Williams, members of an old and
aristocratic family of Fayette County, Tennessee, were married, the climax of a
love that each had had for the other since they were mere children. They have
a daughter and a son, Laura E. Goodbar and James Monroe Goodbar II, named
for his grandfather. Their home on Central Avenue, and, during the seasons of
open weather, their country place, are the scenes of many delightful social
affairs.

493

OT. ^. »iusfielb

i ALTER SLOANE WINGFIELD, junior member but active
head of the cotton planting firm of W. S. Barry & Company,
Shellmound, Mississippi, is a native of Mobile, Alabama,
where he was born August 11, 1859, the son of Walter Sloane
and Elmyra Wingfield. The elder Mr. Wingfield was one of
the leading educators of the Gulf Coast and it was from him
that the son got the rudiments of his early education. However, the father
died when the son was but fourteen years of age and the lad was left almost
entirely upon his own resources. In the meantime, however, he had attended
Madison College, at Sharon, Mississippi, for a time. At the age of sixteen
years Mr. Wingfield went to the Mississippi Delta, locating first near McNutt
and then spending a while near Schlater. While still very young he went to
work for Mr. William S. Barry, who owned some land in the upper portion
of Leflore County. He put such a degree of energy, integrity and ability into
the business that it was but a short time until Mr. Barry and he made an
arrangement by which Mr. Wingfield was to have an interest in the business
and in a short time after that they became partners in the firm of W. S.
Barry & Company. The partnership started with Mr. Wingfield in charge
of some fifteen hundred acres of land that Mr. Barry owned at Shellmound.
Mr. Wingfield soon made that one of the show places of the Mississippi Delta.
It was a magnificent piece of property when he took charge of it so far as
the character of the land went, and he was one of the pioneers on the Talla
hatchie River in the matter of tile draining as well as one of the first to erect
comfortable, convenient and attractive painted cottages in place of the old shan
ties for the negroes on the plantation. These progressive measures showed
from the beginning in the class of labor that he was able to get and retain
the plantation and in the crops that they were able to bring from the land
with the tiles taking off the surplus moisture and letting the air into the soil.
From the day that Mr. Wingfield took charge of the plantation he showed
himself to be one of the best planters in that land of splendid managers, and
the business soon adjusted itself to where he was left practically alone in
charge of the large and growing affairs. Under his direction the business
has expanded to where the firm of W. S. Barry & Company has ten thousand
acres instead of the original fifteen hundred and where it is recognized as
one of the leading producers of cotton in the Delta, as well as one of the most
progressive firms. Mr. Wingfield is a member of Sunflower Masonic Lodge
No. 223, a Knight Templar, a Knight of Pythias, and a member of the Green
wood Lodge of Elks. He is also a charter member of the Presbyterian Church
at Greenwood. For a number of years he was a most valuable member of the
County Board of Supervisors. Mr. Wingfield has never married

494

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C. ia. ©abig
; HARLES ROBERT DAVIS, merchant and planter, Bailey,
Tennessee, was born on the plantation near which he now
lives October 15, 1866. He was the son of Charles Robert
and Laura (Taylor) Davis. His father came from South
Carolina to Memphis, Tennessee, in 1845, and for many
^^^^^^1^^^ years was one of the leading merchants and citizens of that
city, being a member of the large grocery firm of Parker, Elder & Davis, in
which he remained until 1858, when he retired to his plantation, a few miles
east of the city. Mr. Davis, after attending the public schools of Shelby
County, attended the University of Virginia, from which he graduated in 1887
with the degree of Bachelor of Laws. He returned to Memphis, where he
practiced law for two years, when, on account of his father's ill health, he
abandoned his profession to take charge of his large farming interests. He
was married to Miss Eddie L. King, Mt. Pleasant, Mississippi, April 17, 1889.
Seven children have been born to them — Laura (now Mrs. C. W. G. Elliott),
Rosa (now Mrs. E. H. Koch), Edward King (manager of Davis Brothers'
Store), Charles R. Jr., John Archer II, Wifliam H. (died November 1, 1917),
and Thomas Gaston Davis. In connection with his farming interests, in 1894
he entered into a partnership with his brother, J. A. Davis, in the general
mercantile and ginning business at Bailey. He is still actively and success
fully engaged in these enterprises. He owns about seventeen hundrd acres
of land near Bailey, and it is one of the most valuable tracts in Shelby County.
Twenty-five years ago he felt that the lands of his section should raise a more
valuable species of cotton than that which was current and he became a pioneer
in the long staple product. He has bred his cotton up until he now has per
fected a staple far above the ordinary upland cotton in value. He is also a
believer in the principle that the farm should be self-supporting, and raises
a large acreage of corn and forage crops each year. He has always strongly
encouraged the breeding of fine cattle, hogs and sheep for the South. In
politics Mr. Davis has always manifested a keen interest, not in seeking a
lucrative office, but solely in the hope of making general conditions better for
all. He served as a valuable member of the County Court from 1902 to 1906
and was elected to the State Legislature in 1904 and again in 1916. During
the session of 1905 the Shelby delegation introduced and secured the passage
of the anti-racing law, and the Jim Crow law applying to street cars. During
the session of 1917 they passed the anti-fee bill which was so popular with
the people and so unpopular with the office holder. The bone dry law was
also passed during this session. Mr. Davis is a member of the Woodmen
of the World, the Masonic Fraternity and the Christian Church.

499

3r. ^. MatsJon

I AMES SAMUEL WATSON, Drew, Mississippi, who went
first with his father to the Garden of Eden or the Promised
Land, as was known, in those days, the locality where now
stands the beautiful little city of Drew, was born in Holmes
County, Mississipi, February 11, 1874, the son of Richard H.
and Martha Watson. In the early days of the United States
his family had been one of the wealthiest in the Southern States. They came
from England and Scotland to North Carolina before the Revolution and
were the owners of forty thousand acres of land in that State under a grant
from the English crown. But recently there stood near Trenton, North Caro
lina, the ancestral home of the Watson family, one of the most magnificent
in that section, its stairways of solid walnut and everything else in keeping with
that degree of grandeur. However, times had changed when James S. Watson
was a youth, but he showed a capacity to change in them and this has been
proven by the fact that, left an orphan and practically without means at the
tender age of seven years, he has amassed a fortune for himself and at the
same time found leisure to be of material service to others and to his com
munity. While but a child he went to Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and there man
aged to supplement, in a high school, the education which he had gotten from
his mother. In fact, he worked for $15.00 a month with which to get money
to go to school. He returned to Mississippi and at the age of sixteen years
went to woork for a big lumber company in Bolivar County. He remained
actively and with great success in the timber business for seventeen years,
returning to Drew and being a partner with Fred Grittman in the stave business
there in 1906. After his return to Drew, he became interested in planting and
now he is one of the leading producers of cotton in Sunflower County. He
has also made large investments in oil properties and owns leases on some
twenty thousand acres in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi. In 1916 he became
sheriff and tax collector for Sunflower County and held that position until
December 31, 1919, making one of the best executives that the county has
ever had. During the World War he was chairman of the exemption board
for Sunflower County, and he was conspicuous in every campaign for Liberty
Loans, Victory Loans, and Red Cross funds, both with his time and with his
money. He is a stockholder in the Merchants & Planters Bank of Drew, and
also in the Manning Gin Company, which recently bought out the Buckeye
Cotton Oil Company's plant there. He is also a stockholder in the Coahoma
County Cotton Company of Clarksdale, Mississippi. He is a member of the
Baptist Church, a Thirty-second degree Mason and a member of Hamassa
Temple. Mr. Watson and Miss Alice Pearson were married January 7, 1894.
Their children are: J. C. Watson, Miss Lottie (now Mrs. Wilsford), Miss
Mildred and Miss Eva Watson.

500

y'^^^yi-zT'y'yy^ H

f. ft. Malton
^OHN HARTWELL WALTON, Drew, Mississippi, planter,
banker, and one of the leading business men of Sunflower
County, is a fair specimen of what a man of industry, energy,
ambition and vision is able to accomplish in the fertile lands
of the Mississippi Delta. He was born in Attala County,
tS^^^^^@j Mississippi, December 26, 1872, the son of John Jackson and
Sarah Jane Walton. Both the family and the section in which he was reared
were far from being prosperous at that time and he was able to get in the
way of education only a portion of one term in a country school. At a very
young age he went to work at anything that he could find to do. Upon
becoming of age, he began farming for himself on fifteen acres of land in
Attala County and remained at that for two years. At the end of that time
he reached the conclusion that there were opportunities far greater for him
in the Delta than in the hills of Mississippi and hence he went in 1890 to where
Drew now is. He landed in "Promised Land," a small clearing, now the pros
perous little city. That was before the Yazoo Delta line of the Yazoo &
Mississippi Valley Railroad was completed and in that whole section of the
country there were but two hundred acres of land in cultivation, the remainder
of the country being the densest canebrakes and virgin forests of the most mag
nificent hardwood imaginable. In fact, immediately after the completion of the
railroad through there a few years later, twenty-three saw mills sprang up
within twenty-one miles of railroad, their output being almost entirely oak.
Mr. Walton bought forty acres of land to start with west of the main portion
of the town. He cleared this himself and at once began planting cotton. He
made up with energy, integrity and sound judgment what he lacked in finances
to start with and now he has the pleasure of living in a magnificent home on
the original forty-acre tract, while he cultivates two thousand acres of the
best alluvial land. He has been active in the financial as well as in the agri
cultural development of the Delta. In 1906 he co-operated in the reorganiza
tion of the Merchants & Planters Bank of Drew, then with a capital stock of
$25,000. He has been a director in it for seven years and for the past two
years its president. Now it has a capital of $100,000 and one of the finest
bank buildings in Missisisppi. He is a director in the Crull-Whittington Dry
Goods Company of Greenwood, and a stockholder in the Planters Oil Com
pany of Clarksdale, Coahoma County Cotton Company of Clarksdale ; Bank
of Clarksdale, and the Webb-Summer Oil Mill Company of Webb. Mr. Wal
ton and two associates are the owners of the Farmers Gin at Drew. He also
holds valuable oil lands in Texas near the Burkburnett field. Mr. Walton
and Miss Gertrude Pearson were married December 27, 1894. They have
three children : Jesse, Eunice and John H. Jr.

505

©r. H. C. JfeemsJter

iUCIAN CARL FEEMSTER, Tupelo, Mississippi, a leading
surgeon and physician of North-East Mississippi, is one of
the best educated men in his state in the line of his profes
sion, and to his credit it may be added that the major por
tion of his education is due to his own exertions. Dr.
Feemster was born in Nettleton, Lee County, Mississippi,
Septetmber 28, 1873, the oldest of eleven children of William Orpheus and
Margaret Ann (Foster) Feemster. At the age of sixteen years he had com
pleted the course in Providence College at Nettleton, but he was not satisfied
with having gone through the curriculum there and spent the next three years
at the National Normal University at Lebanon, Ohio, where he received the
degree of bachelor of science in 1891. Thence he went to the College of
Pharmacy in Baltimore, Maryland, and was graduated from that institution
in 1895 with the degree of graduate in pharmacy. Deciding that he would
take the practice of medicine and surgery for his future career, he turned his
face South and came to the old Memphis Hospital Medical College, which
then had a faculty probably the equal of any in the United States and which
was the alma mater for so many of the really great physicians and surgeons
of the South. He received his degree of doctor of medicine from that insti
tution in 1897 and after having served during 1897 and 1898 as house surgeon
in St. Joseph's Hospital in Memphis, he returned to Nettleton and began the
practice of his profession of medicine and surgery. After several years of suc
cess at his old home he moved to Tupelo in 1913, and from the time that he
went to that larger field he has stood at the head of his profession. His fellows
in his own State have honored him by making him president of the East
Mississippi-Ten Counties Medical Society, and the Mississippi State Medical
Society, of both of which he still is a member, as he is also of the Southern
Medical Association and the American Medical Association. He is also a ruling
elder in the Presbyterian Church in the United States, a Mason, a Knight of
Pythias, a Woodman of the World and an Odd Fellow. During his vacations
Dr. Feemster worked to make money for the next session's expenses, and in
doing so visited every State east of the Mississippi River excepting Wisconsin
and Michigan. Dr. Feemster has succeeded not only in the practice of his pro
fession, but also in the business world. He is a director in the Peoples Bank
& Trust Company of Tupelo, owns a plantation of eleven hundred acres some
ten miles southeast of the city and is the sole owner of the Feemster Building,
a handsome combination of stores below and offices above. He and Miss John
McGaughey were married November 30, 1900. They have two sons, L. C. Jr.,
and John McGaughey, and one daughter, Louise Feemster.

506

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L7

3. €. «j5eU

)OHN EVANS UZZELL, planter and merchant at Pecan Point,
Arkansas, with plantations near Bassett, Arkansas, and a
residence in Memphis, Tennessee, is a native of Mississippi
County, Arkansas, where his ancestors were among the earliest
settlers in the St. Francis Basin, and among the most vigorous
of those sturdy men whose constant fighting has developed
that fertile country in only a short time from a wilderness into one of the
most prosperous sections of the United States. The Uzzells of the United
States date their ancestry from Thomas Uzzell, one of those high spirited young
Frenchmen who volunteered with the Marquis de la Fayette to aid the American
colonies to wrest their independence from the British crown, and who com
manded a ship in the fleet which came over and turned the tide of the War
of the Revolution. The Frenchman liked this side of the water and after the
collapse of English authority, he settled in Isle of Wight County, Virginia,
where he became a man of large landholdings and also the owner of many
slaves. However, he emancipated all of his slaves and after his death, his only
surviving son, Elisha, sold the Virginia estate and moved to Maury County,
Tennessee, where he lived at Columbia until 1859, when he moved to French
man's Bayou, Arkansas, and lived the remainder of his life there with his
son, John Wesley Uzzell, who was the father of Mr. John E. Uzzell. John
Wesley Uzzell married Lavinia Tipton Evans from Tipton County, Tennessee,
descended from the Tipton family which was such an important factor in
Tennessee from the Wautauga settlement in the mountains to the banks of the
Mississippi River and for whom the County of Tipton was named. Mr. John E.
Uzzell was going to school in Covington, Tennessee, to Judge James Byars in
1884, when his father died and he returned to Frenchman's Bayou and took
charge of the family estate. He developed it rapidly and sent his younger
brother and sisters to school. In 1892, he married Miss Nettie Lee, daughter
of Robert W. Friend, for many years one of the most conspicuous men in
Mississippi County. They lived for many years at Pecan Point where Mrs. Uzzell
owned a magnificent plantation, but in the meanwhile Mr. Uzzell had bought
out the interests of the other heirs to the plantations which his grandfather
had entered from the United States Government on Frenchman's Bayou, near
Bassett, and they sold the Pecan Point place. Now Mr. Uzzell devotes his
time to the cultivation and development of that property. At Pecan Point he
was in charge of all of the campaigns for war activities and the community
went far over its assessment in every drive. In addition to his planting
interests, Mr. Uzzell is a stockholder in the Bank of Wilson, the Citizens
Bank of Osceola and the Tom James Oil^ Company, as well as many smaller
enterprises. He and Mrs. Uzzell have two children, Jack and Charline Uzzell.

511

(§. i:. tlTaplor

[EORGE THOMAS TAYLOR, planter and capitalist, Mem
phis, Tennessee, was born in Linden, Perry County, Tennes-
G^ see, March 11, 1862, the son of Alfred Merideth and Sarah
^y (Dodson) Taylor. He received only a common school edu
cation. In 1890, he moved to Union City, Tennessee, where
he engaged with wonderful success in the grain, elevator
and farming business. Later he bought a magnificent piece of property in
Pemiscott County, Missouri, that and his Obion County, Tennessee, land being
unsurpassed by any in the country in its capacity to produce corn. It was
during the time that Mr. Taylor was living in Union City that Tennessee
was in the final throes of the long fight for and against the legal sale of
liquor. Mr. Taylor was a life-long Republican by inheritance. His father
and his grandfather were old line Whigs, even to the degree that they stood
up to their convictions in the days of secession. It was that party which
carried the State overwhelmingly for remaining in the Union on the first
secession election. After Sumter the bulk of the Whigs went for secession,
but the Taylor family remained steadfast, and Mr. Taylor had eight uncles
in the Union army, and not one in the Confederate army. The natural place
for the Whigs after the close of the war was in the Republican party and it
was into that organization that Mr. Taylor's family went. When the Prohi
bition-Democrats and Republicans had coalesced in the organization of the
Tennessee General Assembly in 1911, Mr. Taylor as a clear-headed successful
business man of the highest integrity was chosen as treasurer of the State
and ex-officio insurance commissioner by a union of Regular Democrats and
Brownlow Republicans. His administration of the financial affairs of the
State was just as successful as has been his conduct of his private affairs
and he made one of the best treasurers and insurance commissioners that the
State has ever had. During the time that he was in office, he removed from
Union City to Memphis, remaining in the grain and elevator business with
the same degree of success which attended his business in that line in Union
City. Except during the two years that he was in office at Nashville, Mr. Taylor
has not really sought public otftce, but he has always taken a lively interest
in the aft'airs of his party, which has twice sent him to represent it in national
conventions. Fie is a most astute politician and from time to time takes a
hand, for amusement largely, in the selection of delegates and committees by
the various conventions and it is seldom that the cause which he espouses
is not victorious in the end. In 1915 he bought two plantations aggregating
thirty-five hundred acres in the Mississippi Delta, and since that time he has
devoted most of his time to them. He and Miss Mattie Lee Irvine were
married May 15, 1890. Their sons are: Wood, Hal and Bob Irvine.

512

Jf. ft. g^mitb

;AIS0N heathman smith, lawyer, head of the cotton
shipping firm of G. K. Smith's Sons, former mayor of
Indianola, Mississippi, one of the most active factors in the
creation of that prosperous little city, and although only reach
ing the prime of life still one of the oldest native-born citizens
of that community, was born November 30, 1879, the son of
George Kinnebrew and Augusta A. (Heathman) Smith. His grandfather
had moved to Sunflower from Yazoo County, Mississippi, in the early fifties,
bringing slaves with whom he floated logs down the Sunflower and Yazoo
rivers, and also with whom he began clearing up land for cultivation in cotton.
That was in the days when the Sunflower River country was a real wilder
ness, when there was law in the statute books of the State applying theoreti
cally to that section of the country but when there was practically no one to
administer it in the name of the State — when every man was his own law if
he was able to enforce it, and if he was not able to do so, he either yielded
to some stronger force in the community or left the country. The Smith
family was of the dominating class, but the domination was ever with an
eye to the final establishment of order through the laws of the land and the
duly chosen officers under those laws. The grandfather died about the time
of the Civil War leaving a large estate in lands. Mr. Smith's father was
prevented from following his brothers into the Confederate Army by the loss
of a hand while out hunting, and he saved the estate which was badly involved,
and became one of the leading if not the leading factor in the development
of Sunflower County. Indianola probably owes its existence on the map to
him and to his son, Mr. Faison Smith. Mr. Smith's mother. Miss Augusta
Heathman, also belongs to one of the oldest and most substantial and most
useful families in the county. Mr. Faison Smith was educated in the common
and high schools of his native county and then went to the University of Missis
sippi, where he took both the literary and law courses, receiving the bachelor
ships both of laws and sciences. His father in the meanwhile had been the main
factor in moving the county seat from Johnsonville to Indianola. He engaged
in selling his plantation there to those who wanted homes or business houses,
giving them long time in which to pay and financing them in building. Mr. Faison
Smith joined him in this, abandoning the law at the end of a year. He later
organized the cotton buying and shipping firm of G. K. Smith's Sons of which
he is the head and he is also president of the Indianola Cotton Exchange.
He is a member of the Baptist Church, a Mason and belonged to the Phi Delta
Theta fraternity to the university. He and Miss Jessie L. Gooch of Durant,
Mississippi, were married April 13, 1900. Their children are: George K. Ill,
Faison H., Jr., and Miss Jessie G.

517

Clpbe l^obingon

|LYDE ROBINSON, banker, planter and business man, Blythe
ville, Arkansas, although still young in years, is one of the
oldest citizens of that prosperous little city, for he was born
in East Blytheville, September 4, 1876, the son of Thomas H.
and Mary (Allen) Robinson. He received his early educa
tion in the public schools at Blytheville, and in 1893 went to
Huntingdon, Tennessee, and in 1896 finished his education there in the South
ern Normal University. He returned at once to Mississippi County and began
his business career as a clerk in the general merchandise store of R. Semmes &
Company at Pecan Point. The following year the great flood came down the
river and found the St. Francis Levee system too young and weak to with
stand it. Many crevasses occurred and such a large proportion of the lands
were inundated that the people were anxious to convert their cattle into
money. Mr. Robinson went out as a cattle buyer and did a big business in
that line. By the following year he had become strong enough financially
to go into business on his own hook and opened a store under the name of
Clyde Robinson & Company at West Pecan Point. In 1899, he and his brother,
Edwin W. Robinson, opened a store at the neighboring landing of Barfield.
The business prospered at both of these places until 1906, when Mr. Robin
son was elected recorder and clerk of the Circuit and Chancery courts. Upon
assuming his office he moved his residence to Osceola, the old county seat of
Mississippi County. In 1908, he had sharp opposition for re-election to the
office, but his administration had been so good and his popularity had grown
to such an extent that he led the ticket. Blytheville having been made also a
county seat for Mississippi County, he moved his home there in 1909, and
in the latter part of that year, just prior to the expiration of his term of office,
he organized the Peoples Bank of Blytheville. He was elected the first presi
dent of that institution and has served in that capacity ever since, having made
the bank one of the strongest and most popular in the entire St. Francis Basin.
He is also president of the J. C. Cobb undertaking establishment, which has
recently erected a beautiful new home in Blytheville. In addition to his banking
business, Mr. Robinson owns five thousand acres of the fertile land of that
section, of which the major portion is in a high state of cultivation and the
remainder in good timber. Mr. Robinson represented Mississippi County in
the Legislature for the terms of 1911 and 1913, first by appointment of Governor
Donaghey to fill a vacancy and then by election. He is a member of the Wood
men, Elks, Odd Fellows, Blytheville Chamber of Commerce and Back Bay
Hunting & Fishing Club of Gulfport, Mississippi. He and Miss Mary Phillips
were married August 3, 1903. Their children are: Thomas Holston, Sam
Phillips, and Mary Elizabeth Robinson.

518

¦y.- "^^l^. ,

y ^

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^y ^^ y^<: ^ -^

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7U,<}ly.

Mriab laap

|RIAH RAY, banker, planter and retired merchant of Itta
Bena, Mississippi, is a shining example of the manner in
which the sturdy men who went to the Mississippi Delta have
prospered with the development of that rich section. Mr. Ray
was born March 6, 1850, near Greenboro, in Choctaw County,
Mississippi, the son of John Wesley and Mary Ann (Strick
land) Ray. His father was a farmer over there and when the South went
out of the union of the States, he went forth to try to maintain the right of
the State of Mississippi to its sovereignty. That he enlisted to fight and not
for a frolic is proved by the fact that he went with General Nathan Bedford
Forrest, and rode with him all the way through to Gainesville. After the
surrender there, the father returned, broken in fortune, but able to hold on
to his farm. On this the lad went to work as a full hand at the age of fifteen
years, where he put in his time until 1874. Then he moved over to the fringe
of the hills and engaged in the strenuous career of cutting and rafting logs,
mainly cypress, down the Coldwater, Tallahatchie and Yazoo rivers to Vicks
burg. He followed that vocation for six years and at the end of that time
he was attracted to the rich Leflore County land and settled at Siberia, near
the Marye Plantation. He and Mr. T. S. Marye formed the firm of Marye &
Ray, Mr. Ray conducting a general merchandising business there under that
name with great success for eight years. It was the real foundation of
Mr. Ray's fortune. By the end of eight years, Mr. Ray had grown financially
to the point where he moved from Siberia to Itta Bena, selling his interest in
the Siberia business to Mr. Marye. At Itta Bena he went into the same line of
business and this grew steadily from the beginning. Mr. Ray still regularly
takes out a license to do a merchandise business, but he has practically retired
from its management. Two years after going to Itta Bena he took part in
the organization of the Bank of Itta Bena, now the First National Bank, and
was elected its vice-president and later president. The bank opened with a
capital stock of $25,000. In 1900 the capital was increased to $100,000 and now
the surplus is the same amount. The bank has just completed a home for
itself made of stone and costing $60,000, and is one of the strongest financial
institutions in that section of the Delta. Mr. Ray is also a director in the
Itta Bena Compress Company. In addition to his stock in these concerns,
Mr. Ray owns a plantation of twelve hundred acres, having started plant
ing thirty-five years ago with three hundred and twenty acres. He also owns
valuable city property in Itta Bena. Leflore County has had a habit for many
years of electing only its most substantial, efficient and honest citizens to its
board of supervisors. The people elected Mr. Ray in 1908 and again in 1912.
Mr. Ray has never married.

523

. (§. ^ritijarb

j ILLIAM GRIFFIN PRICHARD, planter, Seyppel, Arkansas,
W^ was born in Coldwater, Mississippi, July 11, 1871, the son of
raW Alexander Allison (Dick) Prichard, and Mrs. Prichard, form-
1§W erly Miss Ella Elizabeth Chaffin. He was educated in a com
mon school near Coldwater, but at the age of nineteen years,
he reached the conclusion that there was far more opportunity
for his industry and ambition in the Delta country to the west of him than was
aft'orded by the hills in which he had been reared. He was fortunate in that
the first three connections that he formed in the lowlands were with the best
of planters there. His first work was with the late Mr. John L. Cocke at
Dubbs, in the lower portion of Tunica County. After several years there,
Mr. Prichard went with the big firm of King & Anderson on one of their plan
tations near Friar Point, Mississippi, where he remained for three or four
years. In 1902 he went across the Mississippi River and took charge of the
plantations of the late Otto Seyppel at the river landing named for him in
the lower portion of Crittenden County. It was here that Mr. Prichard's
genius for planting and his business capacity had a fair chance to develop.
He proved himself equal to every opportunity that arose and his success has been
one of the most conspicuous of any planter along the river. In that country
of planters, he is considered as having no superior in judgment as to the plant
ing, cultivation and gathering of crops of all kinds which grow in his section.
His advice is constantly sought along those lines and its value is appreciated.
Now his plantations in that section aggregate some four thousand acres with
thirty-two hundred acres in cultivation. This land is mainly the beautiful, high
sandy ridge land along the Mississippi River. Since 1917, Mr. Prichard has
also been president of the Bass Planting Company, which owns some fifteen
hundred acres of land in the same locality. F'rom time inmiemorial that section
of the country has had intercourse with the outside world only by means of
the Mississippi River. Mr. Prichard was one of the pioneers in securing the
legislation by which the people could tax themselves sufficiently heavy for the
construction of hard-surfaced roads and then one of the most active factors
in the development of the road system, to which he has given liberally of
his money and his valuable time. He has taken an active interest In politics,
not in the sense of seeking office for himself, but solely with the end in view
of getting into high positions those who would best serve the community.
He is a member of the Memphis Chamber of Commerce. He was married
October 17, 1914, his wife having formerly been Miss Bettie Burgett. She
was born at Seyppel and is a member of one of the oldest and most highly
respected families in Eastern Arkansas.

524

7

/ /(j t '^ J 7

. ©. barker

; ILLIAM DOZIEL PARKER, Greenwood and Moorhead,
Mississippi, one of the real, hardy pioneers in the develop
ment of the Mississippi Delta, especially Sunflower County,
was born in Rankin County, Mississippi, June 19, 1872, the
son of Samuel Tobias and Margaret Annie Parker, but he
(jj^^ji^l^^j) has been a resident of the Delta country since 1877. As a
lad he went to work, first driving a team hauling brick and then logs. Sun
flower County then was probably unsurpassed anywhere in the country for the
magnificent timber which its fertile lands contained. Its dense forests then
were virgin in clear cow oak and long-bodied red oak, while many brakes held
millions of feet of somber cypress. The wild life of the camp in these big
forests and their subjugation held ever a strong fascination for the full-blooded
young man and if he had any sporting blood in his veins it found ample scope
in the chase after deer through the more open glades and fighting bears in
the denser jungles, while the nights were made hideous by the hooting of the
big horned owls interspersed with the screams of panthers, and the morning
and evening twilights were filled with the doleful howling of wolves. It was
in this close communion with real nature that Mr. Parker lived for fifteen years,
spending that length of time with the Sunflower Lumber Company, being a
contemporary of Sydney L. Dodds, president of that company, and in that
time doing as much as any one man to convert the wilderness which he had
invaded into the state of high production which it enjoys today and which
is increasing so rapidly. Mr. Parker was one of the early timber men who
had vision enough to foresee that the lands after the removal of the timber
would have a greater value than they then had and in 1899 he bought a tract
of two thousand acres. He closed out the timber and saw mill business which
he had been engaged in for some years and began devoting his time to planting
cotton and dealing in lands. He increased his land holdings to six thousand
acres. He had the same success in his land dealings which he had enjoyed
in the timber and mill business. In 1919 he sold thirty-four hundred acres of
his holdings, retaining some forty-five hundred acres, which he plants. In
1920 he built a magnificent colonial home in Greenwood, where he lives, but
retains his interests in Sunflower County, being a director in the Citizens State
Bank and a stockholder in the Co-operative Oil Mill of Moorhead. He is
also a stockholder in the Memphis Packing Corporation of Memphis and in
the Indianola Elevator Company of Indianola, Mississippi. He served as a
member of the Board of Supervisors of Sunflower County. He is a member
of the Greenwood Country Club. Mr. Parker and Miss Nora Duncan were
married July 25, 1900. Their children are: Misses Annie Kavanaugh ("Kad-
die"), Suzette and W. D. Jr.

529

^. %. iiargftall

IRTHUR LEROY MARSHALL, Ruleville, Mississippi, al
though yet in the prime of a vigorous life, is one of the old
est native citizens of that section of Sunflower and at the
same time one of the leading factors in the conversion of the
wilderness that he first saw there into one of the garden spots
of the world. The son of Berry Stowers and Louisa G.
(McKenzie) Marshall, he was born January 19, 1862, four miles from where
Ruleville now is. Then it was a howling wilderness, practically inaccessible
except by river and its primeval forests probably never surpassed for the num
ber and size of its trees and the density of its canebrakes. Wild animals from
bears and panthers down roamed the virgin forest at will, some affording easily
gotten food for man and most of them preying upon any attempt at hus
bandry or agriculture. But the land which supported this wild growth was
capable of supporting equally as magnificent growth of useful vegetable and
animal life and it is the men of which Mr. Marshall is a type who in so short
a period of years have restrained the flood waters and brought this fertile soil
to where it does the bidding of mankind to supply the world with clothing
and food. Mr. Marshall had a grade and high school education and then
in 1881 took a special course in engineering and surveying at the McNutt High
School. At the age of twenty years he began work on the estate of his father.
His share of this after the death of the father was only 160 acres, as there
were six children to be provided for. Even the small inheritance which he
got was heavily involved with debts. At the present time he cultivates some
twenty-two hundred and forty acres of as fine long staple cotton land as there
is to be found on the face of the earth. He has seen the Yazoo Delta branch
of the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley railroad system come through his section
of the country, beautiful little cities spring up every few miles along its right-
of-way, and the broad fields grow broader both to the east and to the west.
Mr. Marshall has been a leader in the moral and educational upbuilding of
the county, and exemplifies a high ideal of citizenship that commands the
respect of all, even the tough and rowdy who made the once unsavory reputa
tion of the "Yellow Dog." He is the type of leader who is public spirited to
the point of sacrificing his private affair for the public good. He was a
delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1920 at San Francisco
which nominated Governor James M. Cox. He was a member of the road
commission for two years, 1912 and 1913, and served as alderman for Rule
ville for four years. He is a Methodist, a Shriner of Hamassa Temple and
a Knight of Pythias. He and Miss Sadie Davidson were married May 4, 1890.
They have only one living child, a daughter. Miss Louisa Marshall.

530

UV »i.*..

..^>'-x''--

,/^-

ftenrj» Eoeb

jENRY LOEB, business man and philanthropist, Memphis,
Tennessee, is a native of Memphis, having been born here
August 29, 1860, the son of William L. and Amalia (Karla-
bach) Loeb. He was educated in the public schools of Mem
phis and Christian Brothers College. Three days after hav-
^ ing reached his majority, Mr. Loeb started a successful busi
ness with the late Sam Mook, in the gentleman's furnishing business, at the
corner of Main and Jefferson. After six successful years Mr. Loeb with
drew from the firm and embarked for himself in the same line, with a laundry
attached. This he operated for many years under the name of Henry Loeb, at
the corner of Main Street and Monroe Avenue. Mr. Loeb added shirt making
to the business, under the name of the Henry Loeb Shirt Company. Later,
he disposed of that branch of the business. In 1892 Mitchell H. Rosenthal
joined Mr. Loeb in the business and from that to this the main firm name has
been Henry Loeb & Company, operating Loeb's Laundry and a number of sub
sidiary concerns. In 1905 the business was moved from Main Street to the
new building, erected and owned by the concern, at Madison Avenue and
Bayou Gayoso, one of the most commodious buildings for its end in the coun
try and containing an equipment and system second to none in its line in the
United States. Mr. Loeb is vice-president and a large owner in the cleaning
firm of Kraus & Company, his partner, Mr. Rosenthal, being president; a direc
tor in the Model-Bluff City Laundry; a director in the Frank B. Hunter &
Company Insurance Corporation ; a director in the Belgium Cleaning & Dyeing
Company ; a stockholder in the John O. Flautt Carriage Company ; a stockholder
in the Wolf River Sand Company, and many other enterprises. He is a mem
ber of the Rex Club and the Congregation Children of Israel. During all of
his business life Mr. Loeb has been one of the largest givers to charities of
all kinds in Memphis. He was one of the leaders in reorganizing the United
Charities into the Associated Charities and in putting it on a firm basis. Since
that time he has been a potent factor both through his own liberal contributions
of money and especially through the valuable time and sound business judgment
as well as kindness of heart that he has given to the organization in keeping
it on a high plane of efficiency. Mr. Loeb is a lover of out-of-door sports,
both with the rod and the gun. He was one of the heavy contributors and
solicitors for the original Baptist Hospital fund. He has been a generous sup
porter of the Memphis Zoo and a substantial patron of the Memphis Amateur
Athletic Association. Mr. Loeb and Miss Lulu Goldsmith were rharried Feb
ruary 8, 1892. They have four children : William, Henry Jr., Amelia Lee and
Margaret. Each one of his boys was a lieutenant in the World War.

535

^. la. i^eesiler

, AMUEL REEVES KEESLER, cotton buyer, planter, capital
ist and public spirited citizen of Greenwood, Mississippi, was
born in Rockhill, South Carolina, November 17, 1866, the son
of Samuel Golden and Sallie (Gaston) Keesler. At the age
of ten years he went to work in a store and with the wages
that he earned went to the United States Arsenal at Charles
ton, South Carolina, which now is the Porter Academy. He completed the
course there when he was twenty-three years of age and entered a shoe store
in Charlotte, North Carolina. He remained in Charlotte until 1900, when he
Borrowed $75 and went to Greenwood as a clerk in the furnishing goods store
of Mr. A. M. Craig. Two years later he joined Mr. C. E. Wright in the
business which now is the C. E. Wright Ice & Coal Company. When the ice
plant burned, Mr. Keesler went with the Greenwood Compress & Storage Com
pany as assistant manager, but in a short time his capacity became so apparent
to the directors that he was made vice-president and general manager, which
position he held for thirteen years with such capacity that the receipts were
increased from 17,000 to 100,000 bales per annum. In the meanwhile he and
Mr. Wright had built the water and light plant, had erected the first telephone
line in the county and fathered the sewer system for the city. In 1904 he and
Pat A. Malone formed the cotton buying firm of Malone & Keesler, which
ever since that date has been one of the largest and most reliable cotton
buying and shipping firms in the Mid-South. Since 1906 he has devoted prac
tically all of his business time to his cotton interests, in the meanwhile having
bought and sold heavily of Delta plantations. Now he owns and operates some
twenty-five hundred acres, and aside from his interest in the firm of Malone &
Keesler, is a member of the firm of W. M. Garrard & Company of Indianola,
Mississippi, and of the firm of E. C. Brown & Company of Hope, Arkansas,
both in the same line. He is vice-president of the Wade Flardware Company of
Greenwood and of the Tri-State Tractor Company and owns stock in the First
National Bank and Greenwood Banking & Trust Company. Under both Gov
ernors Vardaman and Noel he was major-general commanding the State
National Guard. For fifteen years he was president of the Greenwood City
School Board and built two fine school buildings at a cost of half a million
dollars. He has been a trustee of the Public Library since its foundation, and
fathered the Y. M. C. A. community work for boys. He served a term as
supervisor for Leflore County and was on the good-roads commission which
floated the $600,000 bond issue, and is a director in the Chamber of Commerce.
He and Miss Charlotte M. Parish were married June 4, 1894. Their children
are: William P., Charlotte Wright, Isabella Marr, Mary Nash, Ethel Gaston, and
Ella Fountain. A son, S. R., Jr., was killed in France in October, 1918.

536

/?,.& A

T^iyi^ £,_

aa. C. Srltiin

HE late Robert Clell Irwin, Tunica, Mississippi, for half a
century one of the strongest factors in the material and moral
development of the upper Mississippi Delta, was born in Meck
lenburg County, North Carolina, April 5, 1840, and died March
3, 1909, full of years, righteousness and riches in the land
in which he had prospered and which he had done so much
to make great, surrounded by a large and loving family and respected by all
who knew him. His parents were James Irwin, Jr., and Elizabeth (Rogers)
Irwin, of that sturdy Mecklenburg Presbytery stock which declared its inde
pendence before the American colonies acted. When Robert was but ten years
of age, the family started to Tunica County, traveling overland in carriages
and wagons with their slaves and livestock. When the party reached Nash
ville, Tennessee, the parents became ill and completed the journey by steam
boat, leaving Robert and his fourteen-year-old brother, John, to finish the
trip overland in charge of faithful slaves. The parents reached their destina
tion a month ahead of the children. The father acquired tremendous acreage,
below where the City of Tunica now is, and sent the son to Hanover College
in Indiana. Mr. Irwin was there when the Civil War opened and hastened
South to join the Confederacy, where he was a gallant cavalryman from
April, 1861, to May 10, 1865, when he was discharged. He served largely
under Forrest and was one of the largest contributors to the monument erected
in Memphis to his former commander. But that was characteristic of the
man, as there was no movement in his section for the general good
or improvement to which he did not give freely both of his time and his
means. After the surrender he returned to Tunica County and threw him
self with all of the force of his character into the reclamation of his
country from the wreck of the war and its redemption from carpet-bag rule.
As a member of the Ku Klux Klan and an uncompromising Democrat, he
was a strong factor in both. He never sought office, but for fourteen years
was a member of the Upper Yazoo Levee Board. When the railroad built
through his plantation and located a depot at Tunica, just north of him, he
opened a store there, later becoming president of its first bank and still later
of the Planters Oil Mill. Mr. Irwin and Miss Annie Elizabeth Owen were
married May 9, 1865. Their children, in addition to three who died young, are :
Mrs. Georgie Elizabeth Abbay, Mrs. James Thomas Lowe, Mrs. William Rice
Kirby, and Mrs. S. Richard Leatherman ; and their grandchildren are :
Mrs. Percy Howard, Robert I. Abbay, Miss Elizabeth Lowe, Mrs. James S.
Driver, Jr., Robert I. Lowe, Miss Charlie Lowe, Jack Lowe, Campbell Mangum,
Glyndah Marie Lowe, Bob Irwin Mangum, Mrs. Hugh L. Fontaine, Miss Ann
Leatherman, S. R. Leatherman, Jr., Irwin Leatherman, and William Leatherman.

541

C. C. ftusbesi

.HARLES CALHOUN HUGHES, Memphis, Tennessee,
originator of the Bynn Yann System of selling groceries and
head of Bynn Yann's Company, is a native of Coosa
County, Alabama, where he was born August 13, 1867, the
son of John Dauson and Jane Hughes. The family moved to
northern Mississippi when Mr. Hughes was quite young, and
he received his early education in the public schools of Lafayette County.
Then he took a course at the luka Normal Institute at luka, Mississippi, and at
the completion of the course there he went to the National Normal University
at Lebanon, Ohio. He holds the degree of bachelor of science and master of
accounts. Mr. Hughes had completed all of these courses before having attained
his majority and spent the first few years of his mature life as an educator. In
1888 he organized Tula College, at Tula, Mississippi, and was its president from
the beginning until 1904. For five years following that time he was principal of
the public schools at Delhi, Oklahoma. In 1912 he became president of the
Union Fire-Sides of America Life Insurance Company, which position he
retained until 1916, during the last two years of that time being also secretary
of the Business Men's Club of Oxford, Mississippi. Then he moved to Memphis
and began actively the development of the Bynn Yann's System, which he
claims is the most economical and attractive manner yet devised for passing
groceries from the retailer to the consumer. The plan was tried in a small way
in 1919, during the latter part of which year Mr. Hughes perfected the system.
In the early part of 1920 the idea began to spread and soon assumed the propor
tions of a prairie fire from Memphis into Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas,
Alabama, Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma and Missouri. Within a few months
ten stores were opened in Memphis and near one hundred fifty in the adjacent
territory. All of these stores are operated under the system originated by Mr.
Hughes and to some extent under his direction, he having an income from each
of them. Mr. Hughes states that the great desire for the remainder of his
business career is to reduce the cost of groceries to the consumer through the
Bynn Yann stores which he hopes to establish throughout the country, and
that his further ambition is to be able to assist those in need, because of their
being in need, whether they deserve it or not. His daily walk and conversation
with that high ideal in mind makes him a most useful member of any community.
He believes further that boosters live and knockers die ; that Yesterday is dead —
why mourn it? that Tomorrow is unborn — why depend on it? and that Today
is ours — why not use it? Mr. Hughes is a Missionary Baptist, a Mason and
a member of the Chamber of Commerce. He married Miss Flora Little in
1892. The union has been blessed by six children : Zella May, Guy T., Qua D.,
Coe Rel, Ora Dell and Eda Hughes.

542

J. 0. #os;born

[AMES OLIVER GOSHORN, who owns in Memphis, Ten
nessee, the largest factory in the United States for the manu
facture of plow and cultivator handles, was born in Dan
ville, Illinois, June 26, 1880, the son of Thomas and Lillian
Goshorn. Left an orphan at eight, he began life working on
farms of Indiana and Illinois until nineteen years old. Denied
the usual opportunities for securing an education, he managed to get in a few
scattering weeks each winter. At eighteen he had saved enough to take a four
months' term at the Northern Indiana Normal, Valparaiso, Indiana. March
found him again at work on an Illinois farm, where he found employment
at eighteen dollars a month. He answered the president's call for volunteers
in September, 1899, and was sent to the Philippines in November, where he spent
two years in active service. On his return home in 1901 he entered a business
college in Indianapolis, Indiana. Five months later with his savings exhausted,
he began his business career as a stenographer and bookkeeper at eight dollars
a week. Coming South in 1903, he entered the employ of a cooperage firm
in Arkansas, in which business he remained for four years, working as office
man, mill foreman and timber inspector. July 5, 1907, he pitted his brains and
energy against money and formed the partnership of Dugger & Goshorn, buying
out the G. B. Lesh Manufacturing Company's plant in New South Memphis.
This firm was manufacturing plow and cultivator handles, employing ten men,
and marketing about $30,000 worth annually. No sooner had he taken charge
of the new business than the panic of 1907 struck. His partner became dis
couraged and quit in November. Months of hard work and discouragement
followed, but he finally got the business on a paying basis, incorporating it in
July, 1910, with $30,000 capital stock. In July, 1913, the capital stock was
raised to $100,000. The business was constantly enlarged until, when destroyed
by fire in February, 1919, it employed from one hundred and twenty-five to one
hundred and fifty men, had outdistanced all competitors and was doing an annual
business of over $250,000, selling throughout the United States, Canada and Mex
ico. In March following the fire, the firm of Dugger & Goshorn Company was
liquidated and Mr. Goshorn began the erection of a modern plant, designed espe
cially for the manufacture of plow and cultivator handles and wagon gear woods.
The new shop, with all machines driven by individual electric motors, began
operation June I, 1920, with double the capacity of the old plant, and is now
making more handles than all competitors combined. He attributes his success
to hard work, perseverance, faith in, and service to his God. He is a member of
the Chamber of Commerce, Lumbermen's Club and Rotary Club, and takes an
active part in the civic and religious life of the city. Mr. Goshorn and Miss
Mary Dugger were married January 27, 1904. She died February 27, 1919,
having been the mother of seven children. He and Miss Marion Pitman
were married March 18, 1920.

547

Jfreb (Grittman

RED GRITTMAN, planter and capitalist. Drew, Mississippi,
although a native of Germany, showed himself to be one hun
dred per cent American during the World War when he gave
so liberally of both his time and his money to the Liberty loan
and Red Cross drives, and when two of his sons, although
under age for the draft, volunteered for military service under
the Stars and Stripes, one of them succeeding in entering the army. Mr. Gritt
man was born in Baden, Germany, June 28, 1865, the son of Jonas and Sophie
Grittman. After having received a common school education, he came to the
United States in 1882, landing in New York City, and went to work for a pack
ing house. He remained there for eighteen months and then went to Canada
for a short time. Returning to the United States he worked on a farm in Iowa.
The following year he moved to Red River County, Texas, and made a cotton
crop. In 1887 he was engaged in railroad construction and in timber cutting
in southeast Missouri. In fact, he spent some twenty years in the timber and
stave business, pursuing it with signal success almost all over the United States.
In 1894 he opened a series of stave camps near Merigold, Mississippi. Two
years later, with the backing of Mr. W. B. Parks, he went into the business of
exporting staves. In 1898 he moved to Sunflower County, Mississippi, the upper
portion of which then was practically a wilderness, and opened a line of stave
camps near where the town of Drew afterwards was built. The following
year he formed a partnership with Mr. J. M. Goff, now a leading man of Mem
phis, and opened a general supply business, their store being the second one built
in Drew. In the same year, he organized the firm of Grittman & Peters. This
firm manufactured staves by the millions for export to France, Germany and
England. In 1903, Mr. Grittman helped organize the first bank established in
the northern portion of Sunflower County and he became vice-president of the
bank. In 1904 he organized the Clear Lake Lumber Company. The following
year he organized the Bank of Drew and became president of it. Believing in
the future of Delta lands he began clearing four hundred acres in 1902. Ten
years later his planting interests had become so large that Mr. Grittman practi
cally withdrew and sold all his other business interests to manage personally
his planting operations. At the present time he is the owner of two thousand
acres of farm land, and in partnership with Mr. W. R. Barksdale of Memphis
he owns fifteen hundred acres more which is also under his management.
Mr. Grittman is a director in the Merchants & Planters Bank of Drew, and in
Ihe Bank of Clarksdale and the Coahoma County Cotton Company of Clarks
dale. He is a Methodist, Shriner and an Elk. He and Miss Lilly Graham were
married October 25, 1896. Their children are : W. S., Julius D., Miss Katherine,
Howard and Edward Grittman.

548

d

7

-^

-,- r. yic

E. C. (©arnett

[OBERT CALVIN GARNETT, Indianola, Mississippi, planter
and business man, was born in LeFlore County, Mississippi,
R^i October 22, 1871, the son of Warren Henry and Lula Ann
^tv (Lowrey) Garnett. After having completed the course in
the common schools of Holmes County, Mississippi, he attended
the State Agricultural & Mechanical College at Starkville for
three years and then took a commercial course in a Memphis business college.
A native of the Delta, his eye was always set on it and at the age of twenty
years, he went to Indianola and began his career as bookkeeper in the general
merchandise store of G. W. Faison & Son. He spent three years with that firm
in Indianola and Shaw, and then went to work in the store of his father at old
Johnsonville, now Baird, where he did also a general merchandise business.
After a year there, Mr. Garnett went to work for the Memphis house of Mallory,
Crawford & Company, being the first grocery salesman that that old firm ever
had in the Delta. After a year with that firm, he spent the same length of
time as bookkeeper for the firm of McGee, Dean & Company of Leiand. In
those positions he had seen most of the Delta, but in it he found no other place
that has the attractions for him that Sunflower County possessed and in 1898
he returned there and engaged in planting cotton in its fertile soil. He soon
became one of the successful planters in his county and one of its leading citi
zens, as his father had been after having moved there from the adjoining county
of LeFlore. His father had been a member of the board of supervisors in
Sunflower County, and in 1902 the son was elected to the same position. In
1911 he was elected sheriff and tax collector for his county and served for four
years from January 1, 1912. On retiring from the sheriff's office Mr. Garnett
added dealing in real estate to his plantation business and during the year 1919
his firm sold plantations and timber land in the Delta to the aggregate value of
one million dollars. Mr. Garnett was one of the organizers of the Bank of
Indianola and at one time was its president. However, he gave this position
up to devote all of his time to his plantation, real estate, general insurance and
other private business, in which, thanks to his ability and sterling honesty, he has
been signally successful. He is a warden in the Episcopal Church, of which he
has been a member for many years. In Free Masonry, he is a Knight Templar
and a member of the Mystic Shrine, and twice has been chosen illustrious mas
ter of Council Lodge at Indianola. He is also a member of the Knights of
Pythias and of the Odd Fellows. Mr. Garnett was married April 22, 1896, to
Miss Georgia Bookout. Of this union there is but one living child. Miss Corine
Estelle Garnett, but Mr. and Mrs. Garnett have adopted a small boy, Claude
Kellum Garnett, whom they are rearing as their own.

553

C. ^. ©alton

I DWARD AVANT DALTON, senior member of the important
real estate firm of Edward A. Dalton & Son, Clarksdale, Mis
sissippi, is a native of Tennessee, having been born in Mem
phis, August 5, 1869, the son of Rufus L. and Margaret
(Price) Dalton. Conditions at that time were such that Mr.
Dalton was able to get the benefit of only two years at school,
from eight to ten years of age. Then he went out into the world to make his
own way and the first work that he got was as cash boy in one of the large dry
goods stores of the city. He remained in that position until he was thirteen
years of age and then began on the bottom rung of the ladder in the line in
which since that time he has gone to the top, and in doing so been such a valuable
factor in the development of this section of the country, especially the wonderful
Delta of the Mississippi River. At thirteen years of age he went into a large
real estate office as office boy and remained with that firm for five years. When
he was eighteen years of age he went into the timber and lumber business. Dur
ing the eight years that he remained in that line he added to the routine of the
real estate business which he had previously mastered a thorough knowledge of
the timberland business. He owned and operated saw mills and by personal
experience in logging and milling got to be recognized as one of the best judges
in the country of the amount of timber on a tract of land, the ease or difficulty
of its removal, and the ultimate value of the product after the timber should have
been put through the saw mill. Then he returned to the real estate business
where he was able to put the information which he had collected to a valuable
use. He spent twelve years in Leiand, going there when that now prosperous
city was of but little importance and being one of the large factors in laying the
foundation upon which the Leiand of today has been so well builded. From
Leiand he came to his old home in Memphis where he spent nine years with
marked success in the real estate business. In 1913 he picked out Clarksdale
as the center of the section in which there would be a rapid development. He
moved from Memphis there and has been one of the most important factors in
the wonderful growth of that city and the surrounding country since that time.
His firm has handled a large proportion of the big deals there since that time.
In fact, it makes a specialty of large propositions. Mr. Dalton's son, Mr. Rufus
L. Dalton, the junior member of the firm, is one of the most active and one of
the youngest Shriners in the State. His oldest son, William Edward, was
killed in France as a member of Company A, 113th Machine Gun Battalion,
Thirtieth Division, A. E. F. Mr. Dalton has been married twice: first January
5, 1893, to Miss Mamie Brown, and in 1905 to Miss Laura Price of Oakland,
California.

554

yy-/ ^.^. "y 7^17; 7/77- i:^

^i:^\^7^

^. ai. Corlep
f^ ROM a dependent orphan at the age of thirteen years to an
F^n unusually wealthy, public-spirited and influential citizen in the
W6 space of thirty years, all by his own pluck, energy and brains,
Wl is the career of Samuel A. Corley of Coahoma County, Missis-
'ci\i\/\^/v^^f^ sippi. He was born February 14, 1871, the son of John W.
\©^^^^^^Si^ arid Mary (Nolan) Corley, and came with them to Coahoma
County in 1872. After their death he worked in the plantation store of Colonel
William H. Stovall for six years, obtaining what public-school education he
could. Then he went to the Wyatt-Sharp Business College, completing the
three-months' course in six weeks. Then he spent several years in timber
business and went into the mercantile business in Bartlett, Texas, where, in
December, 1896, he and Miss Frances Smith were married. The following year
they returned to Farrell, Coahoma County, Mississippi, where Mr. Corley went
into the ginning business, later adding a store and gradually accumulating land.
His sterling business qualities showed themselves from the start and by 1920
he had acquired some fourteen hundred acres of the finest land to be found
on the face of the earth, which he cultivates in connection with his tremendous
mercantile business. In addition to this, Mr. Corley is connected with various
other successful business enterprises, among them being vice-president of the
Commercial Bank of Clarksdale, and a director in the Johnson-Harlow Lumber
Company, Ihe Webb-Sumner Oil Mill, Coahoma County Cotton Company, Coa
homa County Milling Company and several oil wells in Kentucky and Texas.
He is also a member of the Knights of Pythias, the Chamber of Commerce and
the Rotary Club of Clarksdale. Mr. and Mrs. Corley live with their two children.
Miss Mayrene and Aubrey, in Clarksdale, where he is actively connected with
every movement for the improvement of the city and county and the same
splendid business ability which made his life a success is of great value to his
community. In addition to his own business affairs Mr. Corley has had the
guardianship of the six children of his dead brother, making ten people in all for
whom he attends to business. In the late World War, Mr. Corley gave con
tinuously of his time and served on many important committees. He was a
member of the Thousand Dollar War Savings Club and took a membership for
every member of his family of ten, save for one nephew who was in France
offering his life for the cause. In the beginning of the war, Mr. Corley obli
gated himself to take one per centum of all of the calls of the government on
his county, both Liberty loans and donations. He kept this obligation with the
same faith that he has kept every other obligation in life and he will go down
in history as a true patriot. No young man ever went to him for advice or help
without receiving more than he expected. No worthy cause ever failed to receive
aid from Mr. Corley.

559

S>. 1. Calbouu

5 AMUEL L. CALHOUN of Memphis, Tennessee, one of the
best known and most successful life insurance men in the
Mid-South, was born in Owensboro, Kentucky, on September
8, 1868, the son of the late Margaret and John R. Calhoun.
After completing the course in the public schools of his home
city, he was instructed in law and English literature for years
by the late Professor Garrett of Princeton University. Mr. Calhoun began
the practice of law in Owensboro at the age of eighteen years, following that
profession for a number of years with a marked degree of success, at the same
time developing his natural talent for oratory. In 1894 he went to New York
from thence to Boston for the purpose of doing special advertising, returning
to his native State during the tempestuous political times of 1896. From child
hood, Mr. Calhoun had loved politics ; in fact at the age of fourteen he stumped
the Second Congressional district of Kentucky for the Democratic congress
man, W. T. Ellis. He reached an agreement with Mark A. Hanna, commander-
in-chief of the McKinley forces, that in the event of McKinley's receiving the
electoral vote of Kentucky and of Bradley's being elected governor the United
States government would liquidate the Kentucky war claims which had been
held in abeyance for so many years. Then Mr. Calhoun threw himself actively
into the Kentucky campaign, being one of the main factors in delivering the
electoral vote of Kentucky for McKinley, and in securing the election of Brad
ley. Through the loyalty of Bradley and the tireless energy of Mr. Calhoun's
only brother. Captain C. C. Calhoun, now of Washington, D. C, the pre
election agreement with Senator Hanna was carried out and the old war claim
debt was paid in full. Largely through Mr. Calhoun's personal efforts, his
home State was relieved of that burden of indebtedness under which she had
been laboring for so many years. In 1898 Mr. Calhoun, profiting by his broad
knowledge of national affairs, again embarked upon a nation-wide advertising
campaign. In 1902 he became connected with the State Mutual Life Assurance
Company of Worcester, Massachusetts, in Evansville, Indiana. He also became
prominently identified with the political life of Indiana, but upon the advice of
friends he refused the nomination for congress and in February, 1904, he came
to Memphis, where his political views coincided with his friends' views. Since
that time he has been general agent and financial representative in Tennessee for
the State Mutual and has induced them to invest millions of dollars in Memphis
on account of his belief in her future. During the World War, Mr. Calhoun
demonstrated his loyalty to the boys in the trenches by delivering hundreds of
his 4-minute speeches in their behalf. Mr. Calhoun and Miss Jessie M. Jaseph,
youngest daughter of the late Colonel Jaseph of Evansville, Indiana, were mar
ried on October 20, 1897. The children of this union are Lloyd J., Harriett M.,
John C, and Samuel S.

560

,^<i3t^K>-^t-o^C;«<r, C6 <ai-^:!<^W-^'^'r ^

.77^

Zj^^ f^^^e:,v

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L^

3r. TO. Jf arlep

|OHN WILLIAM FARLEY, lawyer, Memphis, Tennessee, is
a native of Flardeman County, where he was born on the farm
of his father near Whiteville, March 4, 1878, the son of
William E. and Susannah E. Farley. He comes of an old West
Tennessee family, his great grandfather, Farley, having set
tled near Macon in Fayette County, in 1835. His grand
father, W. W. Farley, was a lifelong Democrat, reared in Fayette County but
later he moved to Hardeman County, where he served for many years as sheriff
and clerk of the county court. Mr. Farley's father traveled in the Memphis
territory as salesman for a wholesale dry goods house for fifteen years. Mr.
Farley grew up on the farm out from Whiteville and attended the Jefferson
Institute at Whiteville. At sixteen years of age he went to work for the Ten
nessee Midland Railroad, now the Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis Railroad,
as a clerk at Jackson, Tennessee. He was so proficient in his work there that
at the age of twenty-one years he was chief clerk and cashier in the office. His
work attracted the attention of the general officers of the company and he was
promoted to a position in the auditing department in the main office at Nash
ville. He remained there but a short time and then resigned to enter Vander
bilt University, where he was graduated with the degree of bachelor of laws
in 1902. Shortly afterwards, Mr. Farley accepted a position in the general
offices of the Southern Railway in Washington, District of Columbia, but spent
only a short time with that company, resigning to enter Columbia University and
pursue his studies in the law. He received his degree of master of laws from
that institution in 1903 and the following year the degree of master of diplo
macy. Determined to go to the end of the study of law, he received in 1906
from the George Washington University the degree of doctor of civil law. The
faculties of these institutions in Washington were composed of the leading men
of learning in the United States. While at school, Mr. Farley became a mem
ber of the Kappa Alpha fraternity, and since has joined the Masons and the
Lawyers' Club. While in Washington, Mr. Farley passed the civil service
examinations and worked for a time in the pension office and later in the bureau
of corporations. Mr. Farley resigned his position in 1905 and came to Memphis
to practice law. He was chairman of the committee of one hundred young
men which raised a fund to help build the present Y. M. C. A. building; was
secretary of the committee which secured the State Normal School for Mem
phis ; is lecturer on medical jurisprudence at the University of Tennessee ;
supervised the taking of the 1910 census for his district; was Republican nomi
nee for congress in 1916; and is chairman of the City Market Commission. He
and Miss Tempe Somervell Meux were married December 7, 1910.

565

5* ^* Collin£{

lOHN REASON COLLINS, Memphis, Tennessee, one of the
largest distributors of coal in the South, also a large operator
of coal mines of his own, is one of the best posted men in the
country in that line of industry. He was born January 29,
1865, at Hartford, Kentucky, the son of James F. and Mary
(Midkiff) Collins. He attended the public schools at home
until he was eighteen years of age and then went to Render, Kentucky, where
he spent three years working around coal mines, first on the tipple, then as
clerk and later as bookkeeper. Then he went to Central City, Kentucky, and
entered the employ of the Central Coal & Iron Company as a bookkeeper. It
required but a few years for Mr. Collins to realize the possibilities for the
expansion of the company's business throughout the South and also for the
officials of the company to appreciate that Mr. Collins had the capacity to make
that expansion. The outcome was that in 1893, Mr. Collins came to Memphis
and took charge of the office of the company here, and from that time he has
been one of the largest factors here in that line of industry. In 1897 he organ
ized, with Memphis as the home office, the Southern Coal Company, taking
over the branch office of the Central Coal & Iron Company and becoming dis
tributor in this section for that concern, he being the sole owner of the distribut
ing company. From that time on the expansion of the business was more
rapid. In 1905 he put a salesman for the company in New Orleans, Louisiana,
and the business there developed to the point that in 1914, he opened an office
there. The following year he extended to the West with the opening of an
office at Dallas, Texas. In 1918, he went into the Alabama field with the open
ing of an office at Birmingham, and the year following he sent the Southern
Coal Company into the Louisville (Kentucky) territory. Now it is one of the
largest distributors of coal in the entire South, but does no mining. However,
Mr. Collins is the owner of two coal mines of his own. In 1918, he acquired
valuable coal properties at Delmar, Alabama, and formed the Delmar Mining
Company, which has an output of some two hundred tons per day. Iq 1920
he formed the Saragossa Mining Company, with large holdings at Saragossa,
Alabama, incorporated under the laws of Delaware with stock of no par value,
and having an output of five hundred tons per day. He owns both of these
companies. In addition to his coal business, Mr. Collins is interested with
Mr. F. W. Dugan in the Dugan Lumber Company, with mills at Byng, Missis
sippi. He is a member of the Tennessee Club, Colonial Country Club and
Chamber of Commerce in Memphis, and the Edgewater Golf and South Shore
Country Clubs of Chicago. He was married in 1887 to Miss Kate Hardwick.
They have two children. Miss Annie and Kathryne. He was married again,
December 23, 1914, to Miss Elsa Fleischauer.

566

V r-h-^ - -* (

^e.^/^<-<^^l^

iv A f 7'

m. ^. ^tDift
[ILLIAM ARCHIBALD SWIFT, Swiftown, Mississippi, for
Wy^ thirty years one of the strong men in the development of the
^J lower portion of LeFlore County from the wilderness that it
[Sw then consisted of into the high state of material and social
progress of today, is typical of those pioneers who force their
way to the front no matter what obstacles stand in the way.
He was born in Carroll County, Mississippi, not far from Duck Hill, May 2,
1854, the son of William Archibald and Susan (Stokes) Swift. The death of
his father left him an orphan at the age of nine years, so that he was able to get
little education, only a few years at the public schools in Grenada County. At
the age of twelve years he went to work on a farm near Duck Hill and remained
there for two years, when he and his mother moved to Providence, Mississippi,
where he began farming to make a support for his mother and himself. He
remained there for twelve years and then moved back to Duck Hill. By the time
that he got back to Duck Hill, although young in years, he was mature far
beyond his actual age for the hard times that he had endured had developed
him rapidly. A man of less ambition and courage would have surrendered to
the difficulties in the way from the days of his youth up and have been con
tented to live a life of mediocrity, but Mr. Swift was not of that class of
humanity. He prospered at Duck Hill during the eleven years that he lived
there the second time, and with prosperity his vision broadened. He felt that
there was more opportunity for him in the fertile lands of the Delta than in
the hills and in 1890 he bought two thousand acres of land in the southwest
corner of LeFlore County, miles from any railroad at that time and several
miles from the Yazoo River, the only means of communication with the out
side world, and, except in the dry season, the roads to that were all but impas
sable. Only five hundred of the two thousand acres were in cultivation, and
Mr. Swift, with his indomitable energy began the task of putting the rest of
the land under the plow. After a time the railroad came down from Itta Bena
and Mr. Swift had the pleasure of seeing his section become one of the finest
and most highly developed in the Delta. He cleared up fifteen hundred acres
of woodland and some years ago when his son married, he gave him a nice
plantation, and now gives his time to the active management of the portion of
the estate which he retained. The railroad station at his plantation was named
for him and in 1908 was incorporated as a village. He is a director in the
First National Bank at Itta Bena, one of the strongest financial institutions in
that section of the State, and also a stockholder in many other institutions.
He is a Mason and a member of the Baptist Church. Mr. Swift and Miss Mary
Sibley were married March 2, 1878. Their children are Joe Willie, Emma,
Mary and D. F. Swift.

571

aa. Jf . Currie

[OBERT FRANK CURRIE, merchant and planter, Craw-
fordsville, Arkansas, one of the active factors in the develop-
R^gX ment of the central portion of Crittenden County, is a native
^v of Tennessee. He was born in Henning, April 26, 1873, the
son of David Bernard and Jane Evelyn (Phillips) Currie.
His grandfather. Doctor D. P. Phillips, a native of Orange
Courthouse, Virginia, and a graduate from the Jefferson Medical College in
Philadelphia, was one of the early gentlemen to settle in that county, long
before the advent of the first railroad. Mr. Currie's father also was one of the
most active men in the development of that portion of West Tennessee, having
erected the first steam gin in Lauderdale County. He gave four years of his
life to the Confederacy and died in 1877 when his son, Robert, was four years
old. The family lived then in Henning, Durhamville, Ripley, Brownsville and
Memphis, settling in Chelsea just beyond the then city limits, where he went to
school, also going to the Sunday school of the "Brick Church," into which he
was baptised. They moved then to Grenada, Mississippi, where he attended
school, until the family moved back to Memphis. He was then twelve years of
age and about that time went to work, attending the Hope night school at night
and by days working for the late Gumming Johnson's "Pure Sure, Hope Soap"
factory. He worked as an apprentice and mechanic for a time for D. Schwart-
zenberg & Company and then put in some years with the old Milburn Gin &
Machinery plant. It was during the time that he was with that company that
he and some other lads working there did the novel act of employing a teacher
themselves. Miss Minnie Moseley, to teach them at night while they worked in
the day. He also attended Leddin's Business College, and for a time clerked
and kept books for Mr. Gatchell. In 1889, he went to Vincent, Arkansas, and
clerked for some years in a country store, also being agent for the railroad
company. In 1897, with a cash capital of $300, he went into business for him
self there as a merchant, and the first year did a business aggregating $18,500,
shipping three hundred bales of cotton. Later Joseph B. Stuart of Memphis
put $2,000 into the business with him and the firm was Stuart & Currie for
two years when Mr. Currie bought him out for $4,500. He also bought out
Herbert F. Avery at Crawfordsville and moved there as a merchant in 1900.
This business has been pushed by him until today it is one of the best in his
county. He has also bought, developed and sold a great deal of land, still
retaining a nice tract. He served four terms as mayor of Crawfordsville up
to 1917, and for nine years preceding 1920 was president of the special school
district. He married January 7, 1899, Miss Phebe I"., daughter of Major R. F.
Crittenden. Their children are: Francis Crittenden, Robert Frank, James
Lewis, Mary Louisa and Roberta Genevieve.

572

SToftn ^eetf)

[OI-IN DEETH, Memphis, Tennessee, head of the Deeth Manu
facturing Company and one of the most progressive men in
the city for the development of the community along all good
lines, is a native of England, having been born September 5,
1875, at Leicester, the son of William Ephriam and Hannah
(Murray) Deeth. The father gave the lad a good education
at Loughborough College, S. W., London, England, where he finished the course
in 1893. Upon going out into the world, young Deeth yearned for wider oppor
tunities in which to exercise his activity than he saw in the settled old country
of his nativity, and in 1893 came to the United States, locating in Orange, New
Jersey, where he had distant relatives and where he spent six months. Through
friends whom he had made he met the Honorable Russell A. Alger. The for
mer Secretary of War took a strong liking to the lad and gave him a position in
his gigantic lumber business in Michigan. Later he drifted into the manufac
ture of fruit and grape products. He spent some time in Chicago in connection
with that line of work and in 1897 came to Memphis. When he arrived here
he was without resources in the common use of that word as applicable only to
money or financial credit, but in his indomitable energy, vivid imagination, clear
vision and sterling integrity he possessed resources which no amount of money
could buy. When these were coupled, as in his case, with a rare faculty for
making friends and in inspiring them with confidence in him, it was but a short
time until he had capital at his command. He worked in various capacities here
for two years and at the end of that time he had the backing of some of the
wealthiest and best business men in the city in the organization of the Vine
Products Company. They put in the money. Mr. Deeth supplied a degree of
information as to the bacteriology of all kinds of fermentation that was amazing
to his associates and probably never surpassed by any man in the Mid-South.
He not only knew the chemistry of these minute entities, as he knew his alpha
bet, but he knew equally well how to make them work for the production of a
given result, and beyond this possessed the executive ability to manage the busi
ness properly. The company opened auspiciously, but changed conditions after
two years caused its liquidation. Mr. Deeth then became president of the National
Fruit Products Company, but sold his entire interest in that after nine years of
active service. In 1915 he organized the Deeth Manufacturing Company, of
which he is the active head and practically sole owner. It has been a success
from the beginning. Mr. Deeth is a member of the Chamber of Commerce and
of Calvary Episcopal Church. He and Miss Kate Minnie Brown were married
in Memphis January 15, 1902. They have two children: Hilda and Muriel, with
whom they lead a delightful life in their beautiful home on Kenilworth Place.

577

iilrg. ftelen B. laosfeboom
J^RS. HELEN D. ROSEBOOM, pioneer business woman of
MyQ) Clarksdale, Mississippi, and probably the most extensive
JaM woman-dealer in real estate and investment broker in the
^W Mid-South, is a native of Iowa, later moved to Illinois and
moved from there to the Delta solely because, after a thor
ough investigation, she saw the great possibilities of that sec
tion of the country. Mrs. Roseboom is the daughter of Edward and Katherine
Dowdell of Iowa Falls, Iowa, where she was born September 19, 1874. The
lands of her native State were fertile, but the climate was severe and the sea
sons were short. She heard of the wonderful alluvial valley of the Missis
sippi River, largely the soil of her home State moved by Nature to a more gen
erous clime, and in 1905 made a trip over the entire Delta of Mississippi to
learn from her own eyes what was this land of which she heard so much. It
surpassed her expectations, and after a careful inspection of the entire Delta,
she bought a plantation then just outside the city of Clarksdale. For ten years
she continued to live in Illinois, but came South each season to look after her
Mississippi interests. The lure of the Delta finally became too strong longer to
be resisted, and, in 1915, she moved her domicile to Clarksdale. From the time
of her first purchase in the Delta, she felt certain that the Mississippi lands
should and would equal if not surpass those of Illinois, Indiana and Iowa, for
the annual yield of the crops on the Southern lands exceeded by far that of
the Northern ones, but still the price of the one was far below that of the other.
She saw the lands of the Delta begin to increase in price, and then the prices
to go up by leaps and bounds. The game was attractive, offering rare opportuni
ties for energy and vision in the future. In 1916 she went actively into the real
estate business, opening an office under the firm name of H. D. Roseboom.
From the first she dealt not only in plantations but also timber lands, and the
"pep" that she put into the business made it grow from the start. Later she
added investments to the business, and prospered also along that line. That now is
her main business, and it is one of the biggest in her line in the Delta, and
probably the biggest in the country directed and owned entirely by a woman.
She has the happy faculty of being able to inculcate into her customers the faith
which she has in the Delta lands. Ever since she moved to Clarksdale, she has
been one of the strongest boosters for the community, and one of the most
efficient workers for its development. Mrs. Roseboom is a stockholder in the
Planters Bank, in the Valley Dry Goods Company, in the I'^riedman-Shultz
Shoe Company, and the Coahoma County Country Club. She is a member of the
Presbyterian Church, of the Country Club, of the Southern Alluvial l.anil .As ni
dation, the Chamber of Commerce and the Moon Lake Club.

578

vx^

m^T^r?

%£li^ yJayi/ ^yi^..

iWrg. JH. ft. Jilillen

|RS. MATILDA HAUPT MILLEN, widow of the late James
Knox Milieu, Memphis, Tennessee, one of the leading busi-
M^U. ness women of this section of the country, with a large plan-
^^ tation in Mississippi, comes from one of the oldest families
in Memphis. Many years ago her grandfather, D. Burchhalter,
moved here from Switzerland and for a long time operated,
up in the northern part of Chelsea, a large tannery, and was one of the leading
business men of the city. The family was of the old Swiss-John Calvin faith
in religion and its members were pioneer communicants in the "Old Brick,"
now Third Presbyterian Church. Mrs. Millen was born in Shreveport, Louis
iana, June 3, 1876, the daughter of Jacob and Matilda (Burchhalter) Haupt.
The family was on a visit there at that time, but soon returned to Memphis,
where Mrs. Millen grew up, attending the public schools and later completing
her education in the Clara Conway Institute. She and Mr. Millen, who was a
native of Tipton County, Tennessee, were married January 29, 1896. For
many years he was connected with the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley Railroad
Company, and was one of the most widely known and popular men connected
with that system, especially between Clarksdale and Jackson, Mississippi. He
realized long ago that there was a wonderful future for the fertile lands of
the Mississippi Delta, and, in 1903, he bought a tract of some three thousand
acres on the left bank of Sunflower River, just below the Mississippi State farm
and where Lombardy now is. It is recognized as one of the finest pieces of
land in the entire Delta. All of it is cleared and in the highest state of cultiva
tion. When Mr. Millen died, June 29, 1916, Mrs. Millen took active charge of
the management of the plantation in which she has been highly successful. She
has erected at Lombardy a palatial country home, probably the finest on any
plantation in the Mississippi Delta, dividing her time between there and her
Memphis residence on Pasadena Place. She has recently bought a tract of land
almost adjoining the city of Clarksdale. She has also bought recently some
fifty-five hundred acres of land in Crittenden and St. Francis counties, Arkansas,
which she is developing rapidly. During the entire movement of troops through
Memphis in the World War, Mrs. Millen gave two days each week to the can
teen service of the Red Cross, feeding thousands of soldiers. She is interested
in the Delta Grocery & Cotton Company, Clarksdale Savings Bank, Mississippi
Valley Dry Goods Company, Friedman-Shultz Shoe Company, Clarksdale Realty
Company, Delta Oil Company and Planters Manufacturing Company of Clarks
dale ; and a member of the Second Presbyterian Church, Memphis County Club,
Nineteenth Century Club and board of managers of the Leath Orphanage &
Porter Home of Memphis. Her children are Gilmore, James K., Matilda, now
Mrs. Rezneat Darnell, Frances and Louis.

583

». p. iWallorp

I HE late Captain William Barton Mallory was surpassed for
half a century by no man in his leadership in all movements
for the commercial, civic and political progress of Memphis,
Tennessee. He was born in Hanover County, Virginia, August
11, 1835, the son of William Cole and Sarah Mallory, his
family having been conspicuous for its virility, virtue and utility
from the earliest days of the State. He died in Memphis, June 8, 1919. His
palatial home where for years he kept open house was where the Methodist
Hospital now stands. He received his early education in the common schools
of his community and finished his education near Washington. His first work
was as an accountant for the road then building and now the Chesapeake &
Ohio Railroad. At the age of twenty-one years he moved to Charlottesville,
Virginia, and shortly thereafter was elected captain of the Monticello Guards,
a militia company which was as old as the country and which had been in all of
the wars since the Revolution. It was called into active service during the
John Brown raids and Captain Mallory at the head of it stood guard at Brown's
execution. Although Virginia did not secede until April 16, 1861, Captain
Mallory started to the front with his command on April 8 and reported for duty
at Harper's Ferry. When the Nineteenth Virginia Regiment of Infantry,
C. S. A., was organized, the Monticello Guards became the senior company,
and as its commander. Captain Mallory served until Appomattox, a gallant and
useful officer. Soon after the surrender he came to Tennessee, locating first at
Clarksville and shortly afterwards coming to Memphis. After having farmed
for a time he entered the brick manufacturing business. Later he acquired an
interest in the Hernando Insurance Company. Then Captain Mallory went into
the line in which most of his life in Memphis was spent and in which he became
such an outstanding success — the wholesale grocery and cotton factoring busi
ness. The firm of Harris, Mallory & Company was formed with him as
the junior member. In 1879 he and Mr. W. J. Crawford joined in the organi
zation of the firm of Mallory, Crawford & Company which for twenty years
was one of the strongest grocery and cotton firms in the South. In 1899, Mr.
Crawford withdrew and the firm became W. B. Mallory & Sons Company, of
which Captain Mallory was the head until his death. Captain Mallory and a
few associates organized the Commercial Publishing Company in 1889 and
launched a paper out of which The Commercial Appeal has grown. He was the
company's only vice-president. He was married first to Miss Martha Harris of
Christian County, Kentucky, their children being: Mrs. R. W. Harris, Mrs. J.
T. Harahan, B. L., and J. H. Mallory. His second wife was Miss Sophia
Newell of Clarksville, Tennessee. Their children are: Mrs. Hart, Mrs. 1. B.
Hudson, Mrs. K. G. Duffield, W. W., and A. H. Mallory.

584

(]j/l //yr,/ /- n

/-

f. iH. #oobbar

¦J^IXTY years head of a business which he founded, save for
^^ four years when he followed the forlorn hope of the Confed-
S^J eracy, building that business to $1,000,000 per year with its
JSW mudsills laid upon honesty, integrity and fair dealings, yet
finding time to be active in every movement for the upbuild
ing of his community, commercially, industrially and finan
cially; to mingle with his fellowman socially, and to serve his Maker with
his time and money — such was the career of Mr. James Monroe Goodbar, of
Memphis, Tennessee. Born in Overton County, Tennessee, May 29, 1839,
the son of William P. and Jane McKinney Goodbar, he was educated at
Sparta. He clerked in Nashville for a year and concluded that Memphis
afforded greater opportunities than Nashville. Coming to Memphis in 1860
with Colonel Thomas L. and John S. Bransford, Mr. Goodbar commenced
the wholesale shoe business under the name of Bransford, Goodbar & Com
pany. Scarcely was the business organized when the Stars and Bars were
unfurled and Mr. Goodbar followed that flag until it went to its final rest.
Returning to Memphis, he organized the firm of Goodbar & Gilliland, which
continued in the wholesale shoe business until 1876, when it was succeeded by
the present firm of Goodbar & Company, than which there is none more solid
nor substantial. Famine, pestilence and war had not shaken his abiding faith
in the city which would be and has become the center of its magnificent territory.
Following the terrible times of '78 and '79, when so many firms left here for
other locations, Mr. Goodbar remained and took a man's share in recouping
the lost fortunes of the community. He had no taste nor time for office, but
when Memphis was compelled to surrender its charter and virtually got into
the hands of receivers to escape an unbearable burden of debt, Mr. Goodbar
accepted appointment upon the Board of Public Works, where his sound judg
ment, faithful performance of all duties and sterling honesty were of ines
timable value to the community. He was married in 1867 to Miss Mary E.
Morgan of Hernando, Miss. They had three children, William M., a planter
in Arkansas ; J. Bright, associated with his father in business, and Miss Mamie
O., now Mrs. Charles P. O'Fallon of St. Louis, Missouri. Mr. Goodbar lived
a delightful life in his home. No. 1484 Central Avenue, the most magnificent
in this section when it was built and still, in the grandeur of its stone lines and
the state of its surroundings, surpassed by few. A member of the City Club, the
Menasha Outing Club, and for years an elder of the Second Presbyterian Church,
full of years, piety and means, Mr. Goodbar might well have said on his death
bed, June 13, 1920, with the saint of old, "For mine eyes have seen Thy glory
and the glory of Thy handiwork, and now. Lord, letest Thou Thy servant depart
in peace."

589

0. m. ftoucfe

;EMPHIS lost, in the death of Oliver Kershner Houck, on May
M^y 30, 1920, him who by universal acclaim was held as her first
JaM citizen, whose benefactions measured both by the efficiency of
1§W the time which he gave, the comparative volume of his financial
donations and the range which they covered, surpassed those
of any other Memphian of his generation. He gave to the
point of prodigality within his means. He sought nothing for himself. He
knew more men in Memphis than did any other man and loved them all. If
any man had aught less than a kind feeling for "O. K.," as he was universally
known, he dared not express it from fear of convicting himself of not being
right. His deathbed profession of religion contained no element of fear of
an unpleasant hereafter as its inspiration, but in the clear logic of the Apostle
of Tarsus and the stately diction of the man of Uz, and with the sublime
faith of both Paul and Job, had as its motif a sincere sorrow that on this earth
he had been deprived of the joy of the companionship of Jesus the Anointed
which he knew would be his delight in the endless hereafter. In sacred liter
ature it will rank for time next to the Holy Writ, and but for the severe threat
in the final portion of the Book of Revelation, it probably would be incorporated
therein. At thirteen years of age Mr. Houck quit school and went to work.
An amazing degree of energy, a marvelous capacity both for details and for
grasping the main point, one hundred per cent efficiency, absolute honesty, ster
ling integrity, the most loving and lovable of dispositions, ever seeing the humor
of any situation, bore him steadily to the fore in the business world and as a
factor for the best of his community. He was an honorary member of the
Chamber of Commerce, and a life member of Saint Elmo Commandery No. 15,
Knights Templar, and a thirty-second degree K. C. C. H. He had filled the
highest office in practically every stage of Masonry. He was a member of nearly
all of the local secret societies, the main social clubs and head of three humor
ous organizations. In 1910 he was chairman of the Musketeers Committee of
the Business Men's Club, now Chamber of Commerce, which raised $50,000 to
advertise Memphis, and almost annually after that head of the princi])al organ
izations for raising funds for all public purposes, and at the time of his death
was chairman of the committee which sent the membership of the Chamber
of Commerce far beyond all expectations. His last benefaction was a gift on
his dying bed to the Hospital for Crippled Children. O. K. Houck was born
February 25, 1862, in Decatur, Illinois, the son of John Cassell and Rebecca
(Kershner) Houck. The family moved to Nashville, Tennessee, in 1873, and
he came to Memphis and on October 17, 1883, opened the store which now is
the O. K. Houck Piano Company and which he made the leading music estab
lishment in the Mid-South. Mr. Houck was never married.

590

^^..J:'% \H-(^-i ^^ o^f^-

I --:^

l<'r

(J:

®r. iP. (g. ftennins

HE late Doctor Bennett Greaves Henning, a leader in Mem
phis, Tennessee, for more than a third of a century not only
in the practice of his profession of medicine, but also in
the social, religions, economic and political life of the com
munity, was born October 16, 1849, in the small settlement
of Durhamville, Lauderdale County, Tennessee, the son of
Doctor David Meriwether and Anna (Greaves) Henning. The father was the
son of a Methodist minister, a man of culture, refinement and, before the Civil
War, wealthy in land and slaves. A Whig, he naturally opposed secession, but
when the die had been cast he crossed the Rubicon with his people and was
faithful to the Confederacy to the end. The son grew up on his father's plan
tation and received his education under Judge James Byars in Covington, Ten
nessee, who had the rare faculty of grounding his pupils thoroughly in the rudi
ments and inspiring them with a desire to continue learning after leaving school.
The family's slaves and consequent opportunity to live the easy life of the ante
bellum planter having been swept away by the Civil War, the lad chose medi
cine as his profession in emulation of his father and went to Jefferson Medical
College in Philadelphia, where all of the old good doctors of this section of the
country were educated. Thence he went to Bellevue in New York City, then
the largest medical school in the United States, where he was graduated in 1870,
winning an internship in Bellevue Hospital, but having to wait several months
until attaining his majority before he could be given his diploma. He spent
some month.'s in the office of Dr. Austin Flynt, Senior, in New York, and through
his influence was appointed to a position in the Jersey City Hospital, but soon
resigned that and came to Memphis to practice. Here the late Doctor D. D.
.Saunders a]i|)ointed him i)rosecutor of anatomy in the old Medical College located
at Front and Exchange Streets, also being made attending physician to the dis
pensary maintained by the college, out of which finally grew the city board
of health. About that time the late Doctor Herber Jones moved to Memphis
and the two young doctors formed a partnership. In 1872 Doctor Henning had
Doctor Jones named as his successor in the dispensary and went to Europe,
where he pursued his studies. He returned to Memphis, passed through the
1873 yellow fever epidemic, reported the first cases in 1878 and 1879 for which
he was burned in effigy and publicly insulted, but when the ensuing epidemics
justified his diagnosis, he quickly gained probably the largest general practice
that any man in Memphis ever had enjoyed and retained it until he voluntarily
retired. He was a fire and police commissioner from 1904 to 1910. He was
married October 15, 1874, to Miss Cornelia Frayser. Their children are Doctor
David Max Henning, Mrs. L. D. Fort and Mrs. B. G. Covington. He died
in April, 1918.

595

Jfrebericfe 0VQi\i

[N the death of Frederick Orgill on October 31, 1919, Memphis
lost one of its most successful, beloved and delightful citizens.
Mr. Orgill was born in Memphis, Tennessee, November 2,
1859, the son of Edmund and Lucy (Willins) Orgill. His
father had come from England and established the firm of
Orgill Brothers & Co. in 1847. At the age of fourteen years
the father took the son back to England for his education, and he attended
Trent College at Burton-on-Trent. Later he returned to the United States and
attended a normal business college in Brooklyn, New York. At twenty-one years
of age he entered the mercantile world as an employe of the Weibusch & Hilger
Hardware Company in New York City, where he remained for two years, when
he returned to Memphis and went into the firm of Orgill Brothers & Co., where
he remained the remainder of his life. In 1898 the firm was incorporated and
he was elected the vice-president, his father being the president. As the ha,nd
of time rested more heavily on the shoulders of the father, the affairs of the
company were assumed by the son until 1905, when the father died. Mr. Fred
erick Orgill was chosen to succeed him. He was the active head of the business
from then until his death, expanding its scope greatly and adding to the glory
of the name of Orgill, which has stood for nearly three quarters of a century
for all that is good in the mercantile line. He carried the business each year
higher and higher, but it was done by brains and not by the lifeblood of the
employes, as was shown at the time of his death by the sincere expressions of
all of them, not only the office force, but even the truckmen. Their floral trib
utes were not only among the most beautiful, but carried with them the most
touching sentiments of the mass that were received. But Mr. Orgill did not
devote all of his time to his business. He found time whenever there was any
thing to be done for the upbuilding of the city to give the movement both his
time and good judgment. He was the first president of the Tri-State Fair
Association, which from that small start has grown into the magnificent institu
tion of today. He was a life-long member of Calvary Episcopal Church, long
a vestryman and during the latter part of his life chairman of its finance com
mittee. He was a Mason, a Shriner, a member of the Chamber of Commerce,
the Country Club and the Tennessee Club, of which he served a term as presi
dent. He was vice-president of the Hernando Insurance Company, was for a
long time the active vice-president of the old State National Bank and at the
time of his death a director in the Central-State National Bank. He was presi
dent of the Southern Hardware Jobbers Association in 1916 and 1917. He and
Miss Annie Dennington were married December 27, 1883. Their children are
Frederick Dennington, Arthur Reginald and Kenneth Willins Orgill.

596

y

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'/yy'

^V'/

K 71.. r^afy>

3F. i9. Jf all£{

Ihe late James Napoleon Falls, for seventy-five years a citizen
T^Ji of Memphis, Tennessee, for four years a soldier in as good
mi a company as the Confederacy boasted of, and for half a cen-
^ tury a leader throughout the Mid-South in business, manufac
turing, financial, social and religious circles, was a native of
Macon, Fayette County, Tennessee, where he was born Feb
ruary 20, 1841, the son of Gilbreath and Frances (Manees) Falls. Mr. Falls'
grandfather migrated from Iredell County, North Carolina, to Athens, Alabama,
During his stay there. Gilbreath Falls, father of James Falls, was born. From
there they moved to Somerville, Tennessee. Mr. Falls' grandfather was one
of the first of the race of hardy aristocrats who moved from across the moun
tains and created that wonderful community from La Grange, up to old Bel
mont, and across to Bolivar. The American line of the family was established
by Charles Falls, who came from England in 1635. Mr. Falls' great-great
grandfather fell on a Revolutionary battlefield, whereupon his fourteen-year-old
son, with his father's sword, slew a Tory in the act of robbing the body. Mr.
Falls' father came to Memphis in 1845, and under the name of G. Falls &
Company established the pioneer cotton-buying and exporting firm. The son
was educated privately in Memphis, then at McLemoresville, Tennessee, and
finished his course at Antioch College, Yellow Sulphur Springs, Ohio. Return
ing home about the outbreak of the Civil War, he enlisted promptly in the Bluff
City Grays, later Company "B" of the 115th Regiment, Tennessee, and still
later mounted under Gen. Forrest. He fought from Belmont to GainesviUe,
except for a short time after the battle of Murfreesboro, where he surrendered
to be with a mortally wounded brother, but escaped immediately after his
brother's death. He was wounded at Shiloh. Returning to Memphis in 1865,
he joined his father's firm, then Falls & Cash. He was a pioneer in the cotton
seed oil industry, first building a mill in 1873 at Friar Point, Mississippi, later
the Valley Oil MiU in Memphis, and last the Dixie Oil Mill in Little Rock,
Arkansas. The Merchants Cotton Press & Storage Company was then the
largest institution in Memphis. Mr. Falls was president of that concern for
twenty years. He had the distinction of being the first man to establish here a
factory for the manufacture of ice — the People's Ice Company, and in that con
nection sinking the first artesian well in Memphis, where the Linden Station
is now located, and, as president of the Chickasaw Building Company, erected
the Falls Building, the largest exclusive cotton office building in the world. Mr.
Falls and Miss Clara Dunn, daughter of Dr. Lawson Biscoe Dunn and Malinda
Lewis Dunn, were married at Walnut Bend, Arkansas, November 8, 1871. Their
children are Clara Frances, now Mrs. J. Alexander Austin ; Lawson Dunn ;
Minnie Lee, now Mrs. Rayburn Dunscomb ; John William II and Melinda Eliz
abeth, now Mrs. WilHam Poston Maury. Mr. Falls died May 15, 1919.

601

Samesi lee

Ihe late James Lee, knowii for nearly half a century in
Memphis, Tennessee, as Captain James Lee, Jr., during the
major portion of that time easily one of the leaders in every
movement for the material and moral development of Memphis,
a natural leader of men by the force of his intellect and
the precision of his statements, efficient to the highest degree
and eminently successful in all of his undertakings, both public and private,
was born March 8, 1832, in Stewart County, Tennessee, where his father,
James Lee, Sr., had migrated at an early date from Maryland and become a
pioneer iron magnate. The senior James Lee also operated a line of steam
boats between the upper Cumberland River and New Orleans and in the early
days made Memphis the headquarters for his line of steamers. The younger
James Lee was one of the best educated men of his day in Memphis. He
received his education in the University of Nashville and then finished at
Princeton University, where he received his bachelor of arts degree in 1853,
following this with the full law course at the same institution. Returning
home he was a successful practitioner, both at Dover and Clarksville, Tennes
see, until 1860, when he moved to Memphis, forming a partnership first with
General James R. Chalmers, and later with Captain H. C. Warinner. Captain
Lee enlarged at the Memphis bar the success that he had previously made and
rapidly became recognized as one of its leaders at a time when the local bar
was at its zenith. His firm was without a peer in the matter of marine law,
and the equal of any in all branches of civil law. In the meanwhile Captain
Lee's father had laid the foundation for a magnificent river business, but the
hand of time was resting heavily upon him and Captain Lee decided to abandon
the law in 1877 and greatly to the regret of his fellow members of the bar
and of the firm's large clientele, he, at the age when most men have been
proven in the business world, quit his profession and took charge of the Lee
Line Steamers. He put into the steamboat business the same acumen, energy
and integrity that he had in his profession of law. From the first he competed
successfully with the Great Anchor Line and eventually took from it the
prestige in the central river business. During the low ebb of the tide in the
affairs of Memphis, he bought heavily of real estate, his faith giving courage
to others. He never sought public office, but accepted appointment in 1883
from the governor as a member of the fire and police commission of which he
was vice-president. Captain Lee and Miss Rowena Bayliss were married
November 18, 1858, in Dover, Tennessee. Their children were: Miss Rosa,
Mrs. Sallie Lee Phillips, Robert E., James III, Bayliss G., Miss Georgia, now
Mrs. Robert A. Parker, George Peters, Miss Ora Belle, Shelby Rees, and Miss
Rowena, now Mrs. Walter C. Teagle. He died February 12, 1905.

602

yTZy.^^

^x^

^ i - ..y' c^ o' "t\

Cbarles; ^cott

jHE late Charles Scott, Rosedale, Mississippi, was surpassed
by no man if equalled by any as a developer of the Missis
sippi Delta, for a third of a century was one of the most
conspicuous, useful, successful and delightful men in Missis
sippi, and dying left a name unsullied by any act or word
unworthy of a gentleman. Denied opportunity for any scholas
tic education after fourteen years of age, he became by private study one of
the most scholarly men in his State and one of its greatest lawyers ; rushing
as a mere slip of a lad at the age of fifteen years under General Daniel W. Adams
to the relief of Vicksburg, he became an aide on his staff; followed the irresistible
attraction which General Forrest had for men of courage, daring and high
spirit ; surrendered with him at Gainesville, Alabama, a veteran of as hard cam
paigns as the world has ever seen three and a half years before he was old
enough to exercise the right of suffrage; and disfranchised by federal recon
struction laws, he led the forces in his county of Bolivar, where more than
ninety per cent of the population was negro, in the overthrow of carpet-bag
rule and restoration of native Anglo-Saxon supremacy. The fortunes of the
family wrecked by the collapse of the Confederacy, he taught school and
served as night clerk in a Vicksburg hotel while completing his own educa
tion and reading law, and became the largest cotton planter in the world and
the head of the bar, having been admitted to the practice by special act prior
to having attained his majority. At the end of a series of years as lean for
the Mississippi Delta as those which Joseph prophesied to Pharaoh of old for
the Delta of the Nile, Mr. Scott found himself in such financial straits that he
called together his creditors to make an assignment of all of his assets for their
benefit. They unanimously declined to accept an assignment, voicing their
faith in his integrity and capacity with an offer to finance him and an expres
sion that he better than any one else could work the problem out. He paid
dollar for dollar with interest, including depositors of the bank of which he
had been president, developing from the residue an estate which at the time of
his death was one of the handsomest in the Delta. He fought the last duel in
Mississippi under the code due to political bitterness. The success of the
Delta was his joy ; its reverses, his sorrow ; his faith in it like unto that of
Job, and his great life work was in securing federal aid for levee work. When
the flood of 1897 was at its height from many crevasses he gave a "High
Water Luncheon" on the second floor of his palatial home while water raged
below, not as Nero fiddled while Rome burned but as notice to the world that
Delta courage was unshaken. Mr. Scott was born in Jackson, Mississippi,
November 7, 1847, the son of Charles and Elizabeth M. (BuHus) Scott and
died October 16, 1916.

607

3r. il. ^llen

I HE late John Mills Allen, Tupelo, Mississippi, soldier, lawyer,
statesman, banker, manufacturer, business man and planter,
unsurpassed in the Mid-South in his affection for his fellow-
men and their love for him, a humorist whose presence was
enjoyed by all, and a sage whose counsel was sought and
judgment valued in any serious proceeding, was born July 8,
1846, near the town of Baldwyn, some twenty miles north of Tupelo, the
son of David Mullins and Sally Ann (Spencer) Allen. His ancestors on
both sides were prominent in colonial and early statehood days in Henry
County, Virginia, for their refinement, culture and leadership. His father,
mother and three children drove in a carriage from Virginia to Tishomingo
County, Mississippi, about 1840, bringing their effects and slaves in wagons.
His father was an old line Whig and as such opposed secession, but when the
line was drawn, he promptly got on the Mississippi side of it and gave six
sons to the Confederate service, one even younger than John. At the age of
fifteen years, John went into the Federal lines around Corinth and got valuable
information for the Confederates. Later he joined his older brothers under
General Lee and was at the second battle of Manassas and at Antietam.
Returning to Mississippi, he joined a company under Doctor J. B. Gambrell
and spent the last year of the war under General Forrest, being especially
valuable as a scout and receiving a slight wound. His father had been wealthy
prior to the war in slaves, land and other property, but the conflict wrecked
his finances and Mr. Allen, upon his return, went to work on the farm.
Later his brother-in-law. Colonel Jephtha Robins, sent him to Cumberland
University, Lebanon, Tennessee, and later to the University of Mississippi,
where he was graduated in 1870. He moved to Tupelo and became the junior
member of the law firm of Robins & Allen. Colonel Robins retired, his son,
Mr. J. Q. Robins entered the firm and it remained Allen & Robins until
Mr. Allen retired from practice in 1906. In 1875 he was elected prosecuting
attorney for his judicial district and for sixteen years following 1884, he
served in the lower house of the National Congress, the intimate personal
friend and bitter political enemy of the leading Republicans, especially Presi
dent McKinley and Speaker Thomas B. Reed, the former of whom appointed
him a commissioner for the St. Louis World's Fair. He was a charter mem
ber of the American Bar Association and a regular attendent upon its meetings.
as welt as those of the State Bar Association, the Confederate re-unions and
the Democratic national conventions since 1872. Mr. Allen and Miss Georgia
Taylor were married December 24, 1872. She still mourns his death, which
occurred October 30, 1917. Their two surviving children are Miss Annie
Belle, wife of Mr. S. J. High and Miss Georgia May, widow of Mr. R. A. Weaver.

608

i-rL^^-^^ /UyL

». ft. Pates;

I N THE death of William Horatio Bates in Memphis, Tennessee,
November 26, 1918, the city lost one of its oldest, most useful
and most highly respected citizens. Mr. Bates was born Octo
ber 24, 1841, in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, the son of Daniel and
Sarah (Lavender) Bates. He received his early education
under Professor Howe at Mount Pleasant, and later attended
the public schools at Fort Madison, Iowa. His father before him was in the
printing and newspaper business and Mr. Bates, at an early age, went into his
office. It was there that he learned the cases and laid the foundation upon which
he later builded until he became, long before his death, one of the best master
printers in the United States. He came to Memphis in 1863, and after having
worked for a time at his trade, he became foreman of the composing room of
the old Argus and later of the Bulletin. In the meantime The Appeal, which
had fled the city upon its capitulation to the Union Army, had returned with
the straggling Confederates, and Mr. Bates became its foreman. For a time
he also was head of the composing room of the old Avalanche. In 1869 he
became su])crintciident of the ])rinting and stationery dc])artincnt of the Mem
phis & Charleston Railroad, where he remained until 1876, when he became the
junior member of the printing firm of S. C. Toof & Company, with which
firm he spent the remainder of his life, becoming its head at the death of
Mr. Toof. The firm soon took and steadily maintained the lead in its line in
the Mid-South, and in some branches of its art achieved not only a national,
but also international reputation. It was in this firm that Mr. Bates was best
known. He had no taste for office-seeking or office-holding, but in 1878, when
Memphis was in sore need of good men at the head of her affairs, he was pre
vailed upon to become one of the members of the city council, and again, after
the city had acquired the Artesian Water Company and the sentiment was strong
for taking it out of politics and operating it solely for the good of the people,
he accepted appointment, in 1903, as a member of the commission and was
elected its chairman. In later years he was often urged by elements which could
have elected him to become a candidate for mayor, but steadfastly declined.
He, for many years, was a staunch member of the congregation of the Linden
Avenue Christian Church, and a member of DeSoto Masonic Lodge. His recre
ations were with the gun and rod, and for many years he was the secretary of
the Wapanocca Outing Club, where he enjoyed the duck marshes and his friends
enjoyed the fruits of his marksmanship. He also was a member of the Hatchie
Coon Fishing Club. Mr. Bates and Miss Mary Ida Borcherdt were married
October 13, 1871, and they were most devoted companions for nearly fifty years
in their handsome home on Linden Avenue, where she still mourns him.

613

3^. #. iHorrottJ

N THE death at Battle Creek, Michigan, on the morning of
I Thursday, May 6, 1920, of Robertson George Morrow, Memphis
^ lost one of her most useful, successful and beloved citizens,
^ a man of broad vision and possessing the ability to make his
visions realities. Mr. Morrow was born in Paducah, Ken
tucky, December 10, 1861, the son of George and Sallie
(Robertson) Morrow. After having attended the Paducah schools, he entered
the business world as a bookkeeper for Jos. L. Friedman & Company in 1880.
Three years later he entered in Paducah the furniture business, the line in
which later he was to achieve one of the greatest successes in the United States.
He remained in that business until 1892, when he came to Memphis and organized
the Memphis Furniture Manufacturing Company. He was the first president
of the company and held that office until the time of his death, and he was the
active head of the organization from its formation until his health began to
fail a few months prior to his death. From the day that the plant began opera
tions, he proved himself a master manufacturer and later in the disposal of the
product of the plant equally as efficient as a merchant. His ability, high degree of
efficiency and sterling honesty rapidly sent the concern to the front, and he
quickly became one of the leading citizens of Memphis. By the time that the
Memphis Furniture Manufacturing Company had become master of its imme
diate field, Mr. Morrow began to expand into other southern territories. He
became in turn the head of the New Orleans Furniture Manufacturing Company,
the Little Rock Furniture Manufacturing Company, the Vicksburg Furniture
Manufacturing Company and the Oklahoma Furniture Manufacturing Company,
in all of which the success of the parent concern in Memphis was duplicated,
until Mr. Morrow, long prior to his death was the active head of the largest
furniture manufacturing organization in the entire world. He had moved the
manufacture of furniture out of southern timber for southern use from Michigan
to the South. For years he was equally as prominent in the social life and
charitable work of the city as he was in the business phases. He was a member
of the Tennessee and the Memphis Country clubs. Chamber of Commerce, and
president of the Associated Charities. Mr. Morrow was a man of most attrac
tive personality and manner, cosmopolitan from wide travel all over the United
States and portions of South America, devoted to and adored by his friends, of
strong convictions, ever ready to express them when occasion demanded it
and always willing to back them. He had no personal taste for politics but was
active when better administration of public affairs was involved. He and
Miss Kate Bond, daughter of Mrs. Jerome Hill of Bolivar, Tennessee, were
married in St. Louis, Missouri, November 26, 1895. Their children are
Robert G., Jr., Lewis and Irene.

614

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C. C. Mristt

[HE late Charles Edward Wright, Greenwood, Mississippi, to
whom the Mississippi Delta owes that great boon — artesian
water — has the rare distinction of having had his worth to the
community recognized during his lifetime by the erection in the
high school grounds of Greenwood of a massive granite boulder
into which is carved a drinking fountain and upon which is
placed a bronze tablet bearing witness that in May, 1895, at a depth of nine hun
dred and one feet, he brought in the first overflowing well of water in the Missis
sippi Delta. The sanitarians of a generation have not done as much for the
health and therefore the possible progress of that section. While that possibly
was the most conspicuous of his useful acts, for thirty years he was one of the
most active men in the Mississippi Delta for its material development, finding
time both to build up and successfully operate a tremendous business for himself
and also to give a great deal of his time and ability to the public. Greenwood
showed her appreciation of the man by stopping every wheel of industry and
every line of activity during the hour of his funeral. Mr. Wright was born
in Macomb, McDonaugh, County, Illinois, September 11, 1862, the son of Fran
cis L. and Pamclia (Pace) Wright. He worked for a time as a lad on the farm
and then for the government on steamboats removing snags from the Mississippi
River and its tributaries. It was while in work that he went to Greenwood in
the winter of 1889. He visualized its future and although having but small means,
decided at once to cast his lot with that community. He and his brother,
Mr. Brantley, started business there in a small bottling plant. He bought
Mr. Brantley's interest, and later established a general transfer business. He
and Mr. T. Staige Marye formed the firm of Marye & Wright and added an
ice factory to the bottling plant. In 1894 the firm was given the municipal light
ing contract. Three years later he installed the city water works system, includ
ing fire plugs. In 1901 he contracted with the city for its light, water and sewer
systems, completed them the following year and in 1903 transferred them to the
city. By that time his private affairs were of such magnitude as to need all of
his time, but he consented to accept the position of city commissioner to operate
these systems. He held that position until his death and also since 1919 had
been a valuable member of the county board of supervisors. He sought no public
office, but accepted those positions as a public duty. Mr. Wright also was presi
dent of the First National Bank from 1908 until his death. His main firm was
the C. E. Wright Ice & Coal Company, including those lines in connection with
the manufacture of ice cream and bottling soft drinks. He was accidentally
killed by a railroad engine in Greenwood, September 23, 1920, leaving to mourn
him his widow, formerly Miss Daisy Price, whom he married May 6, 1896, and
a son, C. E., Jr.

619

Col. ©. iHl. I^ugsiell

[OR more than half a century no man stood more strongly for
all material development, the highest code of honor and the
most refined standard of gentility in Coahoma County, Mis
sissippi, than did the late Colonel David Moor Russell of
Jonestown, and behind all of these high ideals of the man
there was that indescribable something which intuitively made
other men desire to follow his example. The son of Davis Moor and Mary
(Flint) Russefl, he was born April 19, 1832, at Gainesville, Alabama. Edu
cated at Milton Military Academy, he entered Yale, but showed his high spirit
by being one of the forty from the South who resigned when President Hadley
stated that Southerners represented "blood money." Rejected on account of his
lungs from active service in the Confederacy, he became commissioner for the
Confederacy in purchases from England, had innumerable narrow escapes from
the blockades, and was in the House of Commons the night that Gladstone made
his speech favoring the Confederacy. Returning, Colonel Russell helped plan
the Confederate raid on the banks at St. Albans, which caused the greatest
thrill that rock-ribbed Vermont ever had. Just after the close of the Civil War,
Colonel Russell took the negroes who had been his slaves and who had no
idea of quitting him, to Coahoma County, Mississippi, and bought one hundred
and twenty acres of land unsurpassed anywhere for fertility. Living in a double
log house, he began clearing the land for the plow, and named the place Mata
gorda. He developed the plantation to nearly five thousand acres, and there is
no better estate of the size in the Mid-South, still cultivated by the negroes
whom he brought from Alabama and their descendants. Colonel Russell had no
taste for partisan politics, but when he went to vote on the morning of the
day that R. E. Bobo and R. N. Harris redeemed Coahoma County from Radical
rule, he found his name on the only ticket for legislator. The last Radical
candidate had left the county the night previously. For years he gave his time
to the Upper Yazoo Levee Board, long its president, and during his administra
tion of that most important office the greatest strides were made for the pro
tection of the country and without the slightest suspicion of any irregularity of
even favoritism. Colonel Russell was married first in May, 1861, to Miss Mary
Bliss of which union there was no issue. He and Miss Margaret T. McManus
of Brookline, Massachusetts, were married February 28, 1911, and his noble
life came to a close at her Brookline home August 4, 1918. The remains were
buried in his boyhood home, where the schools all closed for the pupils to honor
his memory by attending the ceremony. Mrs. Russell and Capt. John B. Hood,
named for his father of illustrious Confederate fame, were married Sept. 18,
1919, and live at Matagorda. Colonel Russell had reared Capt. Hood after
General Hood's death.

620

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®. C. PobDers;

[HE late Duke Cayce Bowers was almost as much a pioneer in
T),^. Memphis as were Overton, Jackson and Winchester and it is
^\A doubtful if any other man has been of more real benefit to
(Sy the city than he was, although his active career occupied but
nine years. When he came to Memphis almost every store in
the residential sections of the city carried whisky and beer
which were sold for cash and groceries which were sold for credit — a condition
morally zero and economically below the freezing point for those who had
thrift enough to pay their bills were held to the grindstone paying also
the bill of the shiftless. The politicians had made most of the people believe
that if liquors and groceries were separated, all would have to go to the center
of the city to buy their necessities. Hence it was only to laugh on the morning
of August 19, 1902, that Memphians read at the corner of Polk Avenue and
McKinley Street the sign "Mr. Bowers' Store No. 1" and saw inside a $300
stock of groceries, without liquors of any kind, without even tobacco, and this
offered for cash only and without being delivered. The first day's gross receipts
aggregated eight cents, but the people gradually learned that Mr. Bowers added
a uniform profit of 14.2 per cent to the cost of each item, 10 per cent for the
expense of doing business and the remainder for his profit. The average
of his competitors was above 30 per cent. By the end of the first year he
had done a business of $41,000, and the second year aggregated $99,205. The
laugh of competitors turned to fear, then to war. Jobbers who sought his trade
were boycotted. Manufacturers who marked their wares for retail prices carry
ing more than 14.2 per cent profit refused to sell to him. The issue became
national. He won. Customers flocked to his store. Soon "Mr. Bowers' Store
No. 2" made its appearance on Vance Avenue, and others followed in rapid
succession. Mr. Bowers had shown himself superior to failure earlier in life.
Now he showed himself equal to success and the business grew by leaps and
bounds until 1911, when Mr. Bowers had established thirty-seven stores, all
conducted along the lines of the first one and all successful. He advertised
sales for cash only, but said nothing of the numberless recipients of his charity.
Mr. Bowers was born in Mobile, Alabama, November 17, 1874, the son of Calvin
T. and Ida (Cayce) Bowers. He lived for many years at Clinton and Colum
bus, Kentucky, failed in the grocery line in Columbus doing a credit business,
worked as a newsboy for the Union News Company, labored for a stave mill
at Columbus, succeeded in a cash store there and then came to Memphis. In
1911 his health failed under the severe strain and he sold a half interest in his
stores, spending the remainder of his life in charitable and philanthropic work.
He and Miss Ethel Gibbs were married October 24, 1900. He died December 22,
1917.

625

. ft. ^toball

5HE late Colonel William Howard Stovall, of Stovall, Missis
sippi, and for a long time a citizen of Memphis, Tennessee,
was for many years a leading factor for all that was good in
the public affairs of both communities. He was born in Colum
bia, Tennessee, February 20, 1834, and died April 5, 1916. He
bore the name of his father. The maiden name of his mother
was Martha Minter. After having attended the schools at Columbia, he went
to school at Jackson, Tennessee, to Doctor James Holmes, and then took the law
course at Cumberland University, Lebanon, Tennessee. Just after graduating,
he moved to Memphis and entered the practice of his profession. When the
Civil War came on he went out with the first Memphis men in what they
always claimed was the first regiment in the State to offer its services to the
Confederacy, but when another organization finally was awarded the honor of
being Number 1, they took the name of One Hundred and Fifty-fourth (Senior)
Regiment. It was composed of the young men of high birth and high spirit of
this section and was not surpassed in courage, valor, daring and devotion to
the cause by any command in the entire Southern army. Entering the service
as a lieutenant, he came out at the close of the war adjutant of the regiment.
Colonel Stovall returned at once to Memphis, but an injury to his eyes forbade
his resuming the practice of law. In 1866 he was married to Miss Louise Irene
Fowler, daughter of Colonel J. W. Fowler, who owned land in Coahoma County.
Mississippi, just below Friar Point, where Stovall now is located. Colonel
Stovall went there and engaged in planting soon after his marriage, becoming
one of the pioneers of Coahoma County and for the next half century a leading
figure not only in the material and economic progress of the Upper Mississippi
Delta, but also by the example of his high character, elegant manner, and sterling
integrity equally a leader in the social and moral elevation of the community.
His most conspicuous public service was in connection with the organization of
the Upper Yazoo levee district and pushing that levee system until it has become
the best on the Mississippi River. He was a leader in forming the district and
was for years president of its commission. Colonel Stovall's first wife died in
1875, leaving one son, John W., a polished gentleman and successful planter,
who died in 1913, survived by his widow and daughter, Louise, who live at
Stovall. On July 7, 1891, Colonel Stovall was married to Miss Roberta Lewis
Franks of Texas, who survives him, living at Stovall on Belmont Plantation,
which Colonel Stovall bought and developed. Their son Howard, named for
his father and also living at Stovall, an ace in the Thirteenth Aero Squadron,
U. S. A., was decorated by his government for valor in action in France.

626

^^/^.^.tr/^

^ntbonj> »als!b

5 EM PHIS suffered a severe loss when Anthony Walsh was taken
from this earth, June 11, 1912. Mr. Walsh was born near
Chicago April 1, 1856. The family moved to Memphis in
1859, where his father died in 1861, leaving his widow little
means but a great heritage in the two sons, Anthony and his
elder brother, John T. The lads had to aid their mother in
making her and their own support, and it must have been this community of their
purpose in life from their earliest recollection that made them the most devoted
of brothers. Throughout the entire life of the younger brother, they held in
common all that it was possible for two men to hold. Their meager earnings
as lads, their ample wealth in later years, their hopes and ambitions, their sor
rows and disappointments, their reversals and their successes, were all in com
mon. The mother and elder brother had been able to keep Anthony in the pub
lic schools in Memphis until he was thirteen years of age. Then it was neces
sary for him to do his bit and add his mite. He found a place at that young
age in James Dalton's grocery store at Main street and Overton avenue, where
a few years later he and his brother founded the firm of J. T. Walsh & Brother,
which was the foundation of their fortunes. After a year at Dalton's he suc
ceeded his elder brother in the cigar stand at the old Worsham House, at the
corner of Main street and Adams avenue, and ran that for three years after
his brother had bought it in 1874 out of what was left of the family estate after
the death of their mother from yellow fever in 1873. In 1877 the brothers
had saved enough to form the firm of J. T. Walsh & Brother, later moving it
to the corner of Main street and Commerce avenue, where it still stands, doing
a tremendous business. From the first it prospered and long has been the cen
ter of the activities of the northern portion of the city, as well as the meeting
place for the northern portion of this and the southern portion of Tipon County.
In 1904 he and his brother saw the need of a bank in the northern part of the
city and organized the North Memphis Savings Bank. The only trouble that
they had in securing the $50,000 capital stock with which the bank opened was
to prevent a few people from taking all of it. The bank opened April 4, 1904,
with Mr. Walsh as president and deposits at the close of that year of $250,000.
Its growth even from the start was beyond the fondest dreams of the promoters
and has continued to date under the presidency of John T. Walsh, who suc
ceeded his brother. Now the capital is $250,000 and deposits aggregate nearly
six million. Although a strong factor in politics, Mr. Walsh sought no office
for himself, but in 1881 was elected a member of the City Board of Education.
He played the game because he liked to help his friends. He and Miss Annie
Walsh were married in 1881. They had no child.

631

f . ;^. tTobjnesJ

the death of James Armstead Townes, April 12, 1914, the
upper Mississippi Delta lost one of its most useful, successful
and honored pioneers. Mr. Townes was born in Grenada
County, Mississippi near the city of Grenada, March 4, 1844, the
son of Richard Carnot and Eliza (Meek) Townes. The fam
ily was of old Virginia origin, having settled in Amelia
County at an early date and borne an honorable record in the early
history of the Old Dominion, which the Mississippi branch ably sus
tained. Mr. Townes was in college when the Civil War came on and
immediately joined the cavalry, where he displayed the same courage and devo
tion to duty which characterized his entire career. He was wounded on Shiloh
field. In 1867, with one horse, one mule and a few farming tools as his equip
ment, he moved to the Delta, settling on Tallahatchie River near where the town
of Philipp now is located. Then began the development of what became one
of the most wonderful characters that ever lived in the Delta. He started in a
small way with clearing land and planting cotton and corn, but he put into the
work great energy, and rare judgment, and into his business one hundred per
cent integrity and honesty, all accompanied by a lovable disposition and a kindly
heart. His acreage, his business and his reputation grew from the start until,
long before his death, he was recognized as the best planter, the best merchant
and the best man on the Tallahatchie River. He started in a very small way
in a big jungle, the like of which is not now to be found in the Delta, but so
remarkable was his capacity that he acquired twelve thousand acres of the best
land to be found anywhere and reduced a large portion of it to a high state
of cultivation. Mr. Townes was married June 9, 1868, to Miss Emma Kennon
of Oxford, Mississippi. They had seven children, of whom six survive : Ken
non Townes, Richard C. Townes, Florence Townes (now Mrs. W. P. Holland
of Clarksdale, Mississippi), Lacey Townes, Evan Townes, and Anna Townes
(now Mrs. W. D. Garner of Minter City, Mississippi). As the boys became
of age or the daughters married, Mr. Townes gave each a plantation and in
this way disposed of half of his estate prior to his death. Mr. Townes was
almost a lifelong member of the Methodist Church, and with his own means
erected in Minter City a house of worship for the congregation. Mr. Townes
was not only a great developer of the Delta along material lines, but no other one
man in his section did more than he to improve the moral tone of the com
munity. That country then was a frontier and it was too commonly the custom
for men to settle their differences with weapons, but in innumerable instances
they were induced to state their differences to Mr. Townes, and his arbitrations
were always so just and his standing in the community so high that no man
could justify himself in failing to accept it.

632

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C. H. tTotones;

I HE late Charles Lewis Townes, Minter City, Mississippi, and
Memphis, Tennessee, although stricken fatally with an acute
disease when in the midst of apparently good health and only
a few years after having reached his majority, had already
earned the reputation of being one of the best planters of cot
ton in the Mississippi Delta. He was born at Minter City,
February 6, 1889, the son of Charles Lewis and Mary (Harper) Townes. The
senior Mr. Townes had been one of the pioneer settlers of the fertile lands along
the Tallahatchie River. He acquired large holdings of wild land near Minter
City at an early date and for a number of years was one of the most potent
factors in the wonderful development of that rich section. He gave the son
every advantage in the way of education in order that he might be able to
occupy, without embarrassment, the station in life to which he was entitled.
When only twelve years of age the lad went to the Webb Brothers School at
Bellbuckle, Tennessee, where he remained until 1905, receiving a mental train
ing and acquiring habits of thought and of action which were of great value
to him throughout his entire life. In the meantime the father had moved to
Memphis, where he spent the remainder of his life and where he was one of
the conspicuous and active figures in the growth of Memphis for a number of
years, and one of its most substantial and highly respected citizens. Here the
youth attended the Memphis University School and then he went to the Uni
versity of the South at Sewanee, Tennessee. From there he went to Harvard
University, where he finished his education with the degree of master of arts by
the time that he was twenty-one years of age. He was in position to select for
his career any line. Mr. Townes chose to follow the footsteps of his father
and the traditions of his family. The life of the southern planter with his
broad acres appealed to him. Having spent his early life on the plantation,
the routine of the work there was not new to him, but he also saw the other
end of the game — the marketing of the crop to the best advantage. Hence,
before he assumed the direct management of the plantation, he spent a season
in the cotton office of F. M. Crump & Company, one of the most progressive
of the cotton buying and shipping firms of Memphis. At the end of that time
he moved to the plantation near Minter City, where he immediately became rec
ognized as one of the most successful planters in that section of h\^ men, cul
tivating some five thousand acres. During the World War, he gave freely of his
time to his government, serving in 1917 and 1918 as fuel administrator for
Mississippi. Mr. Townes and Miss Evelyn Pope of Memphis were married,
December 29, 1917. She and a son, named for the father, survive him. Mr.
Townes died of the influenza October 15. 1918. while on a visit to Memphis.

637

?|. ?|. mees;e

jHE late Hubert Holt Reese was probably the most successful
cotton broker and certainly one of the best financiers and most
attractive man in Memphis. He was a native of Virginia,
having been born in Bedford County, November 12, 1858, the
son of John and Sallie (Holt) Reese. As a lad he worked on
his mother's farm in Bedford County and received his educa
tion in private schools until he was eighteen years of age when he went to
Norfolk and began his career as office boy for the Reynolds Brothers' Cotton
Company. During his stay in Norfolk, he and two other young friends, Jacob
Axson Evans, now of Memphis and Fergus Reid, made a cruise an a sailing
vessel to Liverpool. Later in life Mr. Reese made from Memphis a trip abroad
in far more style. After a few years with the cotton company in Norfolk,
Mr. Reese went with the Seaboard Cotton Compress Company, of which he soon
became manager. During the time that Mr. Reese was connected with the
Reynolds Brothers' Cotton Company, Theodore H. Price also became a clerk
in the same office. Later, when the firm of Hubbard, Price & Company was
organized in New York, Mr. Price offered Mr. Reese the position of the firm's
representative, first in Macon and later in Savannah, Georgia, where he remained
until 1889, when Mr. Price withdrew from the firm and it became Hubbard
Brothers & Company. Mr. Reese by that time had become one of the best
posted men in the South in the cotton commission business. He brought that
experience, coupled with a most attractive personality, sterling honesty and a
high degree of effT,ciency with him to Memphis in 1889 as the representative
here of Hubbard Brothers & Company. He retained that position and maintained
that high character until his death here, February 16, 1916. Since that time
the business has been conducted on the same plane by his only son, Hubert
Kearsley Reese. Mr. Reese opened the first office in that line in this important
cotton center, was the first and he and his son were the only representatives
of that firm here and the office has the distinction of being the only one of
great age that has been maintained without interruption through the panics
and various vicissitudes of the cotton market during the past thirty years.
Mr. Reese was always active in any movement for the upbuilding of Memphis,
both materially and socially. For years he was a director in the old Mercantile
Bank, having resigned prior to its collapse. He was also a director in the
Memphis Terminal Corporation and a member of its executive committee, and
president of the Union Land & Improvement Company. Fie was one of the
veteran members of the Tennessee and Chickasaw Guards clubs and a charter
member of the Memphis Country Club. Mr. Reese and Miss Rebecca Kearsley
were married January 30, 1889, in Charlestown, West Virginia. She and their
only child, Hubert Kearsley Reese, survive him.

638

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1. iS. pjarr

[HE late Captain Henry Newton Pharr, in his conception of the
St. Francis Levee system, rare tact and untiring energy in
organizing it, leadership in maintaining the organization through
its early disasters, and engineering skill and sterling honesty
in locating and constructing its line from New Madrid, Mis
souri, to the mouth of the St. Francis River, did more for the
wealth and glory of the State of Arkansas, and for Southeastern Missouri than
any other man has done, and there was no desire on his part for any profit
beyond that which would accrue to the alluvia! basin at large. Captain Pharr
was born in Cabarrus County, North Carolina, March 5, 1834, was reared near
Raleigh, Shelby County, Tennessee, and died October 20, 1897, at LaGrange,
Arkansas, where his home had been for years. Captain Pharr's great-grandfather,
Walter, migrated from Ulster County, North Ireland, to North Carolina, via
Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in 1763, and fought in the Revolutionary War.
He and his wife were Scotch-Irish Presbyterians. Captain Pharr's father,
Robert Pharr, married Agnes Allen in Carolina and moved to Tennessee in 1838.
When but a mere lad, the father died and the real leadership of the family was
assumed by Henry Newton. He got the best education that he could at the
common schools in his vicinity and managed to attend the college at LaGrange,
Tennessee, where he had in a French teacher, a most efficient tutor in mathematics
from whom he learned both the science and the language. He pursued this
science, first as a land surveyor and then in its higher branches, until he became
one of the leading engineers in the country. At the outbreak of the Civil War
he enlisted in a company of the Rangers of Des Arc, Arkansas, where he then
resided, was wounded under Sterling Price at Wilson's Creek, recuperated at
home, rejoined the army, as an engineer officer fortified Island No. 10, became
captain of Company B, Third Engineer Regiment, Cheatham's Division, Hardee's
Corps, Johnston's Army, C. S. A., and remained for the surrender at Benton-
ville, South Carolina. Returning to Tennessee, he hauled cotton, farmed the
Pillow place near Helena, bought a place near LaGrange, Arkansas, worked as
an engineer on the Lower Yazoo and Louisiana levees, assisted in the construc
tion of many railroad lines, bought in 1886 some 3,500 acres of land in Lee
County, Arkansas, from 1890 to 1893 canvassed the owners of 2,500 square
miles in Arkansas and 1,000 in Missouri in the St. Francis Basin, converted
them into levee men, was first president of the preliminary organization, and,
until his death, the chief engineer of the St. Francis levee boards of both
Arkansas and Missouri for its levee line of two hundred and eighteen miles.
Captain Pharr and Miss Stella Iloggue Scott were married September 1, 1870.
Their only living child is Harry Nelson Pharr, his father's worthy successor in
levee work.

643

Eeopolb iiarfeg

I HE late Leopold Marks, for whom the City of Marks, Missis
sippi, is named, was one of the most remarkable men developed
in and who helped so greatly to develop the Mississippi Delta.
As a youth he fled from his native city of Labau, West Prussia,
to escape service in the German Army and in search of the
freedom and opportunities of the United States, landed in
New York at the age of seventeen years with eighteen cents in cash, knowing
neither the language nor any man who lived where it was spoken, was main
factor in creating a great county of which he was the first representative, aided
in building its main city which bears his name, and died leaving a posterity
worthy of its ancestry, six thousand acres of magnificent land and a spotless
name revered by all who knew him. Mr. Marks was born February 7, 1851,
the son of I. Marks, a merchant and planter. He was educated in the grammar
and high schools in Germany. In New York he worked long enough to be
able to furnish a pack with jewelry which he peddled across country until he
reached Friar Point, Mississippi, and went thence across the Delta to where
Marks now is. There he bought a small trading boat which plied the Coldwater
River. He had vision enough to realize that the dense forests of that section
would not be neglected while the world needed lumber and that the fertile
banks of Cassidy's Bayou and Coldwater River could not long lie idle if
people were to be clad. He bought at forty cents per acre, and even less, lands
that became worth $300 to $400 per acre. Later he opened a store at Marks
which grew into a tremendous business and for years was the main trading
point for a big scope of country. His mercantile and planting business grew so
rapidly that for years prior to his death he was the leading man in the big Delta
territory east of Clarksdale. In 1877 he took such an active and efficient part in
the organization of Quitman County that he was sent as its first member of the
State Legislature, where he served for eight years. He was a strong advocate
of an adequate levee system and served for years as a commissioner for the
Upper Yazoo district. When the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley Railroad started
to build its line from Lake Cormorant directly to Tutwiler, he gave without cost
the right-of-way through his plantations and ten acres of land in Marks, without
cost. In fact, he was a leader in thought, in time and with his money in every
movement for the improvement of the county. Liberal almost to a fault, no
worthy cause or needy person failed to receive his beneficence, and during his
entire career he made it a point to provide work for any one who wanted it.
He and Miss Pauline Marks were married in 1875. They had five sons, Sain M.,
Henry H., Marcus L., Maurice I. and Robert F. Mrs. Marks died in 1900 and
he married Miss Sadie Whitehead. Their children are Edwin and Lucille.

644

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J. ^, Clarke

jN TFIE death of Senator James Paul Clarke, October 1, 1916,
the State of Arkansas suffered a loss which she immediately
recognized as that of one of the two greatest citizens in the
entire history of the State by erecting his statue in the National
Hall of Fame. Senator Clarke had served his adopted State
as a member of the lower house of the legislature, state
senator, attorney general, lieutenant governor, governor and senator in the
national congress. He was born in Yazoo City, Mississippi, August 18, 1854,
the son of Walter J. and Ellen (White) Clarke. He received his early education
in Mississippi and in 1878 was graduated from the law department of the
University of Virginia. In the following year he entered the practice of his
profession in Helena, Arkansas. From the beginning he took high ground as
a lawyer and maintained that position until the time of his death. Although
the major portion of his time was consumed in politics, in which all of his ambi
tions were fulfilled, he was at all times a leader at the bar of Arkansas and
during his three terms in the United States Senate recognized as the equal of any
lawyer in that body. He had been a resident of Arkansas but seven years when
he was elected to represent Phillips County in the Legislature in 1886. Upon the
expiration of that term he was elected to the State Senate for the four-year
term, during the better half of which he was president of that body and as
such really lieutenant governor. He passed from that position, in 1893, to that
of attorney general of the State and in 1895 assumed the governor's chair.
Declining a renomination, he challenged Senator James K. Jones for the United
States Senate without success, and the next six years practiced his profession
of law in Little Rock, at the expiration of which time he easily succeeded
Senator Jones, taking his seat March 4, 1903. He was twice re-elected by
his constituents and took such high rank in that august body that when the
Democrats regained control of it he was chosen its president pro tempore, and
again elected to that position. This honor was not in recognition of pure party
service, for where he deemed a principle involved he could not submit to his
party's dictation, as shown by his support of the measure for direct election
of senators ; opposition to the ship-purchase act and the eight-hour act, and
support of the Panama Canal act. It was purely in recognition of his sterling
integrity, scholarly attainments and unquestioned honesty. He was independ
ent of any person, faction or influence in his seeking of office, his campaign for
election and his course after election. Popular clamor passed by, not into, his
ears. His only guide in office was what was right, just, honest and honorable,
and he never sought the advice of any man in determining these points.

649

(S. t!r. Protrnax

IHE late George Taylor Brodnax, who built up in Memphis the
T largest jewelry and diamond business in the Mid-South, and
e!o whose mail order jewelry business at the time of his death
liCj was the largest in the United States, was born April 9, 1869,
in Mason, Tennessee. He was the son of Richard Thomas
and Sallie (Taylor) Brodnax, having come from two most
cultured familes. He attended the pubilc schools in Mason and later finished his
literary education in the private school of Judge James Byars in Covington,
Tennessee. Later he took a business course in Memphis, and also a course
in telegraphy. When Mr. Brodnax was fifteen years of age his father, who
had been an extensive planter and large merchant, died. It was at the lowest
ebb in the tide of finances in West Tennessee and the family estate was
wiped almost entirely away. Mr. Brodnax accepted a position as telegraph
operator at Hernando, Mississippi, but soon returned to Memphis, where he
was connected for three years with the jewelry firm of C. L. Byrd & Company.
Then he went into the bicycle business, but after a few years returned to the
Byrd firm, where he remained until 1897. By that time he had saved $3,500 and
with that modest capital he entered on his own account into the jewelry business
in which line he had become thoroughly proficient. He was soon joined by
Mr. T. J. Deupree who, until his untimely death, was a strong factor in the
upbuilding of the business. From this modest start has grown the present exten
sive business which bears the name of Geo. T. Brodnax, Inc., and stands out as a
monument to his undaunted courage, remarkable ability as a merchant and abso
lute honesty. His geniality was apparent in every position, and at all times a
pleasant greeting and a hearty smile were ready for his humblest employe as
well as for the most valued patron of the store. Mr. Brodnax never sought or
held any public office, but during his entire business career he was active in every
movement for the upbuilding of Memphis and the surrounding territory. He
was a man of boundless energy, clean-cut and aggressive in business, but of a
kindly nature so that he could be approached at any time as a genuine friend,
while his wide range of travel both for business and pleasure had broadened
him into a cosmopolitan. He was a member of the Chamber of Commerce,
Tennessee Club, Memphis Country Club and Colonial Country Club, having
been president of the last named organization at the time of his death, February
19, 1917. Mr. Brodnax was married June 20, 1894, to Miss Lucy Watkins,
daughter 'of Dr. Thomas Richard and Sue (Cannon) Watkins, both old and
refined families. A kind and indulgent father and loving husband, his home
life was ideal. Their children are : Sue, later Mrs. Jobe and now Mrs. Wilkins
Williamson ; Frances Margaret, now dead ; George Taylor, and Lucy Virginia ;
and grandchildren, Andrew K. and Margaret Jobe.

650

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I HE late Emile Witzmann, for half a century a resident of Mem
phis, Tennessee, and one of its most scholarly citizens, leader
in developing in the Mid-South a love for and taste in music,
pioneer dealer in all that pertained to music, and successful
business man, was born in Kranichfeld, Germany, August 7,
1841, the son of Frederick and Mary Witzmann. Of an artistic
temperament, he studied music and languages in Dresden until he was sixteen
years of age, making marked progress. At the end of that time he became
dissatisfied with the trend of thought and government in Germany, and left
for freer lands — lands offerings greater opportunity for the individual. He
went first to London, where he remained for two years as an advanced pupil
and at the same time a teacher of music and languages. In England he formed
a close friendship for Mr. William Keen King, which later had much to do
with Mr. Witzmann's career. From 1859 to 1866, Mr. Witzmann lived in Paris,
where he perfected himself in music, became an accomplished linguist and an
experienced teacher of both. In the meanwhile Mr. King had come to the
United States and for some years escorted parties of young men, largely from
the Mid-South, on trips abroad, spending much of their time in Paris. There
he and Mr. Witzmann became more intimate, and Mr. Witzmann, through him,
met many youths from the Memphis territory who later became the leaders
in this section. In 1866, Mr. Witzmann decided to come to America with
Mr. King and came directly to Memphis. His talent for music and his thorough
proficiency in seven languages were quickly appreciated by Memphis and he
soon had large classes in both studies. After a time he began buying such
pianos as were offered on the market and renting them. This became such a
profitable side line that in 1872 the foundation for the present firm of E. Witz
mann & Company was laid when Mr. Witzmann rented as a wareroom for his
pianos the building at No. 103 North Second Street, the first and finest iron
front building west of Pittsburgh. His reputation for honesty and integrity,
his wide knowledge of music and large acquaintance gave him an excellent
natural clientele and soon he began to add the sale of new musical instruments
to his rental business. This grew so rapidly that at the end of two or three
years, Mr. Witzmann decided to go permanently into the piano business. He
bought the building at No. 99 North Second Street, moved into it and later
bought the original home of his business together with the intervening building.
There the business grew to be a real institution of this section, containing
"Everything Musical." Mr. Witzmann was married December 30, 1885, to Miss
Susan Lang Wade, who still mourns his death, which occurred November 22,
1914. Their children are Miss Mary Louise, now Mrs. Frederick O. Gamble, and
Henry W. Witzmann.

655

Col. aa. Jf . mhav

HE death of Colonel Richard Felix Abbay of Commerce,
Mississippi, in Memphis last year, removed from the Upper
Yazoo Delta one of its oldest, most highly respected, most
influential, most progressive, most useful and wealthiest citizens.
Colonel Abbay was literally a pioneer of the Delta, having gone
there in 1838 with his parents, when a mere babe in arms. The
family was a distinguished one of Middle Tennessee, having come there from
Virginia at an early date in the history of Tennessee. Colonel Abbay 's father
had seen the possibilities of the Mississippi Delta in the early thirties and bought
at what is now Commerce from the Indians a tract of high sandy river bank land
in 1832. The family went back to Nashville, Tennessee, in 1838, where Colonel
Abbay was born on July 9 of that year. But the family returned to the Delta as
soon as possible, and there Colonel Abbay grew up until time to begin taking an
education. Then he went back to Middle Tennessee and received his early coach
ing from Mr. Crocker of White's Creek Springs in Davidson County. He finished
his literary education at Cumberland University, Lebanon, Tennessee, at the age
of nineteen years. It was the custom then among the cultured families of the
South for every young man to educated in some professionfi and hence Colonel
Abbay returned to Tunica County, Mississippi, read law under General James R.
Chalmers, and for a time pursued his profession, but gradually abandoned it for
planting, and, upon the death of his father, took over entirely his interests. The
business grew from the start and later under the firm name of Abbay & Leather-
man, it became one of the strongest in the Delta, cultivating some five thousand
acres. Colonel Abbay served his state with signal honors for nearly forty years
in one or the other houses of the state legislature. Real development of the upper
Delta counties and those of the lower back Delta was out of the question without
protection from the frequent floods. Colonel Abbay's ability in the legislative
halls were of inestimable value, not only to his Tunica-County constituency, but
to the Delta at large, especially in the matter of framing and enacting the levee
laws, as well as in general laws. Later he took a very active part in the further
development of the Delta lands through drainage and improvements in the road
systems. As an appreciation for his legislative speech which won the Chickasaw
School fund fight, he was presented with a gold-headed cane and called "the
Chickasaw Chief."
In fact, for more than half a century there was no movement originated for
the betterment of his community that he was not a leader in if not the head of.
He was president at the time of his death of the Irwin-Leatherman Cotton
Company of Memphis, owned largely by himself, his sister, Mrs. M. S. Leather-
man, and his nephew, S. R. Leatherman. His death occurred June 5, 1919, in
Memphis, and the remains were interred in the old family lot at Nashville.

656

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C. C iltCrahJ

I N THE death of Charles Thomas McCraw at his home in
Braden, Tennessee, on the morning of April 15, 1920, Fayette
County lost a most useful and respected citizen and Memphis
a most substantial and successful business man. Mr. McCraw
was born in Burnett County, Texas, some sixty miles from
Austin, in the year 1856, the son of Dr. Thomas Miller and
Mary Elizabeth (Ballon) McCraw. When Mr. McCraw was only three years
of age the family moved from Texas to Virginia, settling in Halifax County,
and it was there that he grew to manhood. He attended the public schools in
Halifax County, but at the age of fourteen years his strong bent for merchandis
ing had developed to the point that he went to work in a store there as a
clerk. He remained there until he was twenty-one years of age, and then he
moved to Tennessee, settling first on the farm of Colonel John Gallaway near
the station on the Louisville & Nashville Railroad named for him. Re remained
there for eight years, and in 1885, with his brother, Mr. J. W. McCraw, he
moved to Braden, the next station east, where they went into business under the
firm name of C. T. McCraw & Company, doing a general mercantile and gin
ning business. Mr. McCraw lost his left arm in the gin during the ginning
of the first bale of cotton, but his power was in his brain and not in his
brawn, and the loss of the arm did not deter him in his career. The firm of
C. T. McCraw & Company was not a large one at the beginning, but it had
in it integrity, capacity, sound judgment and a vision of the future for West
Tennessee which few possessed and fewer were able to take advantage of.
At a time when so many of the stores, both in the cities and smaller towns of
this section of the country went down in the general depression, Mr. McCraw's
firm continued to expand and to become more solid. Most of the land owners
in his section wanted to dispose of their holdings. Mr. McCraw realized their
ultimate value and as his profits increased he became a steady investor in the
nice rolling lands of the northwest section of Fayette County. He continued
this policy even after the others saw that the lands were a good investment
and prices began rising. At the time of his death he owned some six thousand
acres, all of it worth many times more than it cost him. In 1901, Mr. McCraw
with Mr. P. A. Perkins and Mr. E. F. Webber, formed the McCraw, Perkins,
Webber Company, which still exists as one of the strongest cotton factoring
firms in Memphis. Five years later the Currie-McCraw Company started its
successful wholesale grocery business in Memphis. He was also president of
the Bank of Mason. With the success of all of these institutions, Mr. McCraw
retained the same democratic, pleasant and unassuming manner. Mr. McCraw
and Miss Mary McCraw Wright were married in F'armville, Virginia, Decem
ber 11, 1881. She died in 1886, leaving one child, Miss Mary Elizabeth McCraw.

661

E. f. ©arnell

[HE late Rowland Jones Darnell, Memphis, Tennessee, was one
of the pioneers of the lumbermen of the North who realized
the value of the Southern hardwoods, one of the first to move
South and take advantage of the situation and for a number
of years one of the largest operators in that line and one
of the most successful manufacturers in the United States.
Mr. Darnell was born in Freedom, Indiana, December 9, 1854, the son of Isaac
Armour Mark Warner and Emmaline Jones (Rowland) Darnell. He went to
the public schools of Freedom and of Spencer, and at the age of sixteen years
he entered the University of Indiana at Bloomington. However, he remained
there but a short time and went to New York, where he went to work for
I. T. Williams, an extensive dealer in lumber in that city. He remained there
for some time and then returned to Indiana, settling first in Indianapolis.
This was about the time that the giant forests of forked leaf white oak which
the Indiana people of the previous generation had thought inexhaustible and
which had been generally classed as the best in the United States began to
become scarce, and the ones of them who had vision began to turn to the South
for the future supply of the United States in the hardwood line. Mr. Darnell
came South in 1881, settling first at Curve, Tennessee. The following year he
came to Memphis and erected a saw mill here under the name of I. M. Darnell &
Sons. In 1897 he went into the lumber and milling business for himself, later
incorporating his business as R. J. Darnell, Incorporated. Both while con
nected with the original firm and later in business for himself, Mr. Darnell
was one of the most daring, active and successful operators in the Mid-South.
He was quick to grasp the value of the primeval forests of the Mississippi
Delta, where up to that time the majority of the owners of timber land con
sidered the timber a liability rather than an asset, an expensive obstacle to be
removed to make way for planting cotton. One of the early large purchases
was a large tract of land in the upper portion of Quitman County, Mississippi,
about the time that the railroad was built directly from Lake Cormorant to
Tutwiler, the present station on that road being named Rowland, for Mr. Dar
nell. Later he acquired a large tract near Leiand, Mississippi, and still later,
a tract magnificently timbered near the confluence of Yocono and Tallahatchie
Rivers in Mississippi. For the manufacture of the timber off the latter tract,
Mr. Darnell built the Batesville & Southwestern Railroad and erected a large
mill at Batesville. During all of these large operations, Mr. Darnell lived
in Memphis and was active every moment for up-buiding the city. He and Miss
Mathilda Johanna Louisa Taenzer of Hancock, Michigan, were married Janu
ary 6, 1885. Mr. Darnell died June 10, 1916.

662

y-X

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E. €. ^bent

jHE late Thomas Edward Avent, Minter City, Mississippi, for
T.^jj- half a century one of the leading factors in the development
ilm of the upper portion of Leflore County and Sunflower County,
f^ Mississippi, was one of the early pioneers who brought system
and order out of chaos and converted the wilderness into the
garden of today. He was born in Halifax County, North
Carolina, April 20, 1836, the son of Benjamin Ward and Mary (Eley) Avent.
In 1851 the family migrated to Water Valley, Mississippi, and Mr. Avent grew
up there. He joined the Confederacy at the first call, becoming a member of the
115th Mississippi Infantry, attached to the brigade of General Walthall, the equal
of any under the Stars and Bars, as indicated by the fact that General Forrest
called for General Walthall to help him save the wreckage of Hood's army in
the retreat from Nashville to the Tennessee River. For a year and a half
Mr. Avent was a scout under General Walthall and it was during that time that
the general showed his appreciation of his daring. A blind woman has knitted
a pair of socks and sent them to the general to be given by him to the bravest
man in his command. Genera! Walthall presented them to Mr. Avent. He was
wounded at the battle of Fishing Creek, but after a short furlough returned to
the colors, spending the last two years of the war as a member of Forrest's
Cavalry. After the surrender at Gainesville, Alabama, he returned to Yalo
busha County. He was married January 24, 1865, to Miss Eliza Fisher, daugh
ter of Judge E. S. Fisher, a distinguished lawyer of Coffeeville. Judge Fisher
was attorney for Mrs. Evans and administrator of a tract of land which she
owned at Palo Alto on the Tallahatchie River, near the line of Leflore and Tal
lahatchie counties. Soon after their marriage Mr. Avent and his young bride
moved down to the Delta and took charge of that place. A few years later
Mr. Avent bought what now is known as the Rack Rent place, in Leflore
County, four miles from Minter City. There he began a vigorous fight against
the wildest of both animal and vegetable life for the reduction of that fertile
land to a state of cultivation. The timber was virgin and the dense canebrakes
abounded with bears, wolves, deer, panthers and catamounts which preyed on
his crops, garden and domestic animals. Mr. Avent's energy, courage, capacity
for organization and integrity showed from the first and he soon began adding
to his original plantation by purchases of adjoining lands, both in Leflore and
later in Sunflower County, which he cleared up until he became one of the
leading planters of that section of the Delta. In 1915 he bought a large planta
tion near Rayville, Louisiana, and went there to take charge of it. He died
there in January, 1918, after an illness of only a few days, thus ending a long,
useful and honorable career, and being survived by eight children.

667

(§. H. ^mitj)

"His God created him with a true perception of man's right to
man and he lived following this light with firm faith in the Savior's
reward in eternity for so doing."

J HIS inscription upon the tall marble shaft marking the spot
T.^jj_ where the mortal remains of the late George Kinnebrew Smith
MKi lie in the cemetery in Indianola, Mississippi, is a marvelous
n^ summary of the life of that truly great man, usually referred
to as "the father of Indianola." Mr. Smith was born in
Yazoo County, Mississippi, December 25, 1844, the son of
Edmund and Ann (Burris) Smith. When the lad was but six years
of age his father moved to Sunflower County, where there was then no
school, but close private study and wide reading made of Mr. Smith a man
of unusually broad information. He was the youngest of a large family whom
his father brought to the wilderness with his slaves, first getting out timber
and rafting it down Sunflower River and then clearing land and planting cotton,
He built the first house in that section of the country which was painted and
it was known all along the Sunflower River as the White House. When the
Civil War came on, young George Smith was about to join the army when he
had the misfortune to have his right hand shot off while hunting. In the
meanwhile his father had died and left to his widow, among other pieces of
property, the land upon which Indianola now is situated. This was heavily
encumbered and Mr. Smith went to work to save the estate for his mother.
He did so with signal success, gradually accumulating lands for himself and
clearing them. He became an extensive planter and for many years shipped all
his crop and brought in all of his supplies from New Orleans and Vicksburg
by boat, as the first railroad (what is now the Southern from Greenville to
Greenwood) was built in 1888 from Greenville to the Sunflower River at John
sonville. The latter point then was the county seat of Sunflower County and
Mr. Smith was one of the prime movers in the transfer of the county head
quarters to Indianola. Then he cut up his plantation there and sold the lots
mainly on long time, even lending money to those who bought in order that
they might improve the property. Mr. Smith was a member of the Methodist
Church and served one term as a county supervisor. He was married in Mem
phis December 3, 1873, to Miss Augusta A. Heathman, she also of pioneer Delta
stock and a woman of rare refinement and culture. He died, April 27, 1913, in
Oxford, Mississippi, leaving five children: Mrs. W. J. Holt, Indianola; Faison
H. Smith, Indianola; J. Martin Smith, Clarksdale, Mississippi, and Mrs. Herman
Glenn, Oxford; and Edmund B. Smith, who died October 18, 1918.

668

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^HE late Dr. James Franklin Davies and his father, Dr. James
T^j, Frazier Davies, were pioneers in the development of North-
^\ eastern Arkansas, both materially and in the lines of culture,
[^ education and refinement. Both were men of literary educa
tion, thoroughly schooled in the profession of medicine, of
gentle manners and such force of character as to make their
influence felt in their communities. The elder Dr. Davies was a graduate of
the Philadelphia Medical College, which in its day stood at the head of Amer
ican institutions in that line. The younger Dr. Davies was born in Fairmont,
West Virginia, May 19, 1825, his father having moved there from France and
his mother being Margaret Fleming, daughter of Benona Fleming, who came
from Scotland. The family was one of wealth in West Virginia. In 1850 both
the father and son moved from there to Northeast Arkansas, settling in Greene
County, where the senior doctor died in 1863. The son had taken his literary
education in West Virginia and after moving to Arkansas he took the course
and received his degree as doctor of medicine. Returning to Greene County,
he practiced his profession and acquired large tracts of land. He was elected
in 1854 to the State Senate when the trip had to be made by horseback to Little
Rock. He was one of the most distinguished and useful members of that body.
When the South seceded. Dr. Davies promptly enlisted as a surgeon, but later
organized a battalion of fighting men which he commended with daring bravery
until it was consolidated with Colonel Solomon G. Kitchen's regiment, in which
Dr. Davies served as major until the surrender. Then he moved to Mississippi
County, Arkansas, where he spent the rest of his useful life at Golden Lake
until he died there in April, 1880. He was one of the most conspicuous men
there, as he had been in Greene County, and in 1872 was elected from Missis
sippi County to the State Senate. While he was a member of that body the
Black Hawk War occurred and he was an active factor in that affair. At Golden
Lake he conducted the Davies Mercantile Company in addition to his practice as
a physician and surgeon. In both commercial and professioinal life he was
eminently successful. His ingenuity in the pioneer days was shown by saving
the life of a wounded lad by irrigating the wound through the use of a barrel
of water in the loft and a cane leading down from it. Dr. Davies was a Mason
of high rank, being a member of the Grand Lodge. He was also on the State
Medical Board in 1871. He and Miss Elizabeth Duckworth were married in
Greene County in 1853. She was the mother of two children, Cora and Ella,
afterwards Mrs. W. K. Harrison, both dead. This wife lived but a few years
and Dr. Davies was married in 1865 to Miss Victoria Wilson, daughter of
Joseph and Martha Wilson, and sister of Lee Wilson. Their children were :
Dora (Mrs. J. A. Merrell), James (deceased), Eva (Mrs. J. H. Elkin), and
Boaz.

673

. tE. Hane
I HE late William Thomas Lane of Jonesboro, Arkansas, was
T a worthy and successful representative of one of the oldest
ml families in Craighead County — in fact the family was far
^ older in that section than is the county. He was born Decem
ber 30, 1850, some ten miles north of where the City of
Jonesboro now stands, and died in Jonesboro August 4, 1916.
He was the only son of William Thomas and Mary (Hughes) Lane. The
elder Mr. Lane was of the most sturdy Illinois stock of the early times and
while a resident of that state was an officer in the militia and held his com
mission which was signed by General Andrew Jackson. The blood of the
pioneers was so strong in his veins that in 1840 he emigrated from his Illinois
home to what then was about as wild a country as could be found, near the
foot of Crowley's Ridge and near enough the St. Francis River to use that
stream. He was a contemporary of Rufus Snoddy, Daniel O'Guinn, Yancey
Broadaway, Joshua Grinder, John Hamilton, Asa Puckett, Eli Quarles, "Uncle"
Jack Pierce, John and Thomas Simmons, Perry Osborn, James Stotts, Harde
man Puryear, D. R. Tyler, the McCrackens, Elias Mackey, Henry Powell,
William Q. Lane, John Anderson, and Christopher and George Cook. The
elder Mr. Lane erected a store and during his residence in Arkansas was both
a merchant and one of the pioneers in the business of rafting logs down the
St. Francis River to what markets he could find below. That latter business
then was just the reverse of what it was later. Then the only trouble was to
find a market for the timber. Later it was to find the timber for the market.
Then there was no trouble in finding all of the timber that one was of a mind
to cut and there was no danger of getting over the line for there was no line.
The hazards were equally great for the rafter, both down with the timber and
up with the proceeds of its sale — the one from the perils of the elements,
and the other from the outlaws likely to be encountered. And no one this
side of the Great Divide knows whether the elder Mr. Lane succumbed to the
one or the other. All that the widow and little son ever knew was that he
left on a trip with a raft and that years later they identified what was left
of his mortal remains by a suspender buckle and a timber auger. The widow
died soon afterwards and the lad, who later became one of the strongest char
acters in the county, was reared by his grandmother. His early education was
limited, but he had industry, integrity, honesty and courage. He was success
ful in farming and stock raising until 1880, when he was elected sheriff. His
administration of that important office was so efficient that he served six con
secutive terms. In 1900 he was chosen cashier of the Bank of Jonesboro and
in 1913 became its president, holding that position until his death. He married
Miss Martha Thurman December 7, 1887. W. T. Lane, Jr., survives them.

674

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|N THE death of Allen Davis Neely at Clarksdale, Mississippi,
on Wednesday, March 24, 1920, the upper Mississippi Delta
lost one of its most active and most successful planters and
land dealers, popular in all circles where he was known, and
that included not only practically all of the upper Delta of
Mississippi, but also a large portion of Louisiana. Mr. Neely
was a native Mississippian, having been born in Tallahatchie County, not far
from Oakland, June 3, 1874, the son of Allen Gattis and Eliza Adeline Neely.
He received an early education in the common schools of his native county,
and at the age of twenty years went to work as a clerk in a general store in
Oakland, after having put in the intervening years on the farm. His experience,
both as farmer and storekeeper gained there, proved of great value to him in his
later years in the Delta. After two years in the Oakland store he sought in
the fertile lands of the Delta portion of Tallahatchie County, what he realized
was a broader field for his ambition than that afforded by the hill section,
which at that time was not enjoying the porsperity which later came to it.
His first work was at a small salary for Mr. Mike P. Sturdivant at Glendora,
in the combination role of bookkeeper and plantation rider. After six months,
a better paying position opened over in Washington County with the Richardson
interests, and he went there as manager of one of their plantations, continuing
in that position until 1901, when he returned to his native county as manager
for Mr. Jerry Robinson's plantation at Albin, on Cassidy's Bayou. In 1903
he went with Maxwell & Yerger as manager for their plantation at Mounds,
Louisiana, where he remained two years, only to go back to Tallahatchie County.
At the end of four years there, he and Mr. Ben. E. Townes formed a partner
ship to operate plantations in Sunflower County under the firm name of
Townes & Neely. The capital of the firm was $8,000, raised on Mr. Townes'
endorsement and the energy and ability of Mr. Neely. Such signal success was
attained in this venture that in eight years he was able to buy Mr. Townes'
interest for $100,000. Now firmly on his feet financially, he bought a plantation in
Washington County, whicb he improved so rapidly that he was able to sell it at
a nice profit at the end of the same year. Then he moved to Clarksdale, where
he bought the Prairie Plantation from W. D. Corley, which, in turn, he also
sold for a good profit. He had developed himself not only into one of the
most successful planters in the Delta, but also one of the best judges of what
to buy and when to sell — in other words, a man of broad vision. With ample
means for any enterprise, he was awaiting an opportunity for a good invest
ment when the end came. Mr. Neely and Miss Tyna Womble were married
November 8, 1899, and they were a most devoted and affectionate couple. The
union was blessed with five children : Edward Allen, who was educated at Castle
Heights School, Lebanon, Tennessee ; Mary Byrd, Ellie Maude, Virginia Alline
and Frances Elizabeth.

679

a&. I. f orban

; OBERT LEE JORDAN, president of the Central Cigar &
Tobacco Company, and secretary of the Memphis Motor Car
M3 K^^ Company, Memphis, Tennessee, was born in Milan, Gibson
A %. ^^ County, Tennessee, April 27, 1866; the son of Doctor Marcus
DeLafayette and Martha (Hillsman) Jordan. He attended
the public schools of Milan and, when the school was not in
session, spent his time working in a retail drug store. At the age of twenty
years he was a traveling salesman for drugs. Six years later he formed a con
nection with large New York manufacturers of tobacco in which line he has
been interested ever since and has become the leader in the Mid-South. He
traveled for six years selling tobacco to the jobbing trade and covering almost
the entire eastern half of the United States, and was rated as one of the best
salesmen in that territory. In 1905 he entered the tobacco jobbing line in Mem
phis under the firm name of Jordan, Gibson & Bauni. Two years later this
firm was consolidated with the Tom Morton Tobacco Company, and the fol
lowing year Mr. Jordan became the head of that concern. In January, 1909,
the company was reorganized as the Central Cigar & Tobacco Company, with
Mr. Jordan as the president. Under Mr. Jordan's direction the company has
developed into one of the leaders in that line in the United States. In 1913
Mr. Jordan organized the Memphis Motor Car Company, of which he is sec
retary. He has also from time to time made large and successful investments
in Delta timber lands. Few men in Memphis have given more time than he to
the public with no desire for personal reward. Not eligible for military service
in the World War, he entered heart and soul into the campaigns to back with
money the men in the field. For both the second and third Liberty loans, he
was chairman for Shelby County and district manager for Shelby, Tipton and
Fayette counties. Mr. Jordan put such a high degree of energy and capacity
for organization into the campaign that his territory went far over the top.
His success was so conspicuous in these two campaigns that he was induced to
become Tennessee State chairman in the campaigns for the fourth Liberty and
Victory loans and again sent his jurisdiction far over the top. In fact in the
last issue Memphis was conspicuous throughout the United States for both the
rapidity and the per cent of her subscription. Mr. Jordan served as president
of the Business Men's Club for the 1915-16 term, and it was during his incum
bency that the name was changed to the Business Men's Club— Chamber of
Commerce. His administration located at the North Memphis Driving Park
the first aviation field here and out of this grew the Park Field at Millington.
He was active in electing the citizens' city administration in 1919. Mr. Jordan
and Miss Louise H. Hardin of Savannah, Tennessee, were married December
20, 1892. Their children are Robert H. and Miss Elizabeth Irwin Jordan.

680

K. 1.. lOKOAN

681

f. J|. laubigill

JUNE HOWELL RUDISILL, Memphis, Tennessee, who has
done more than probably any other one man to systematize the
coal business of the city, was born in Brownsville, Tennessee,
February 10, 1876, the son of George Edwin and Emma
(Howell) Rudisill. He received his early education in the
public schools of Memphis, but at the age of eleven years
stopped school and went to work, his first position being with the Milburn Gin
& Machine Company. He remained there until 1890 and then went with the
Conaway Real Estate Agency, where he had charge of the rental department
in 1892, when he left that concern for the Cole Manufacturing Company, where
he had charge of that company's city books for three years. Then, in 1895, he
went into the coal business, in which in less than fifteen years he became the
most conspicuous figure in the city. His first venture in that line was the organi
zation as a new concern of the Rudisill Coal Company. He made such a success of
this that in 1906 he organized the Memphis Coal Company. Several years later he
and his associates bought the old-established business of Hunt Brothers and
organized the Hunt-Berlin Coal Company. He was active in the formation of
the Latura, Whitten Coal Company in 1912. Two years later he and his asso
ciates acquired the retail business in Memphis of the Galloway Coal Company
and organized the Galloway-Eberhart Coal Company. In 1918 they bought out
the Pittsburgh Coal & Coke Company. Mr. Rudisill is the president of the
Memphis Coal Company, secretary and treasurer of both the Galloway-Eber
hart Coal Company and the Hunt-Berlin Coal Company, and secretary of the
Pittsburgh Coal & Coke Company. During the tempestuous times of the coal
supply of the United States Mr. Rudisill was most efficient in seeing that the
people of Memphis did not suffer from cold, and when there was a question as
to the current prices charged a committee of the Chamber of Commerce named
at the suggestion of the Department of Justice, after careful research, justified
the rates. Mr. Rudisill has never sought or held public office, but for many years
served as a member of the city Democratic committee. He also has served for
years as a member of the executive committee of the Associated Charities, and
in the drives by the Chamber of Commerce and for the various war jjurposes, he
took a most active and efficient part. He is a member of the Knights of Pythias,
the Woodmen of the World, the Chamber of Commerce of which he was sec
ond vice-|)resi(lent for one year and a director for two terms, of the Colonial
Country Club, and is a charter member of the Evergreen Improvement Club,
one of the pioneer and most active neighborhood civic organizations in the city.
He and Miss Grace Weisiger were married January 24, 1899. They are the
parents of two delightful children, June Howell, Junior, and Grace Weisiger,
Junior.

682

INi: II. KIIDISIL

683

OT. $. iirmgtroug

ALTER PRESTON .ARMSTRONG, lawyer, Memphis, Tc-n-
nessee, is one of the best educated lawyers in the city, one (;[
the best grounded in the solid principles of the l.iw, ;in(l l'cii-
erally considered by the |)rofcssion as the eipial of any man oi
his age who has ever been at the Memphis bar. He was born
C)ctol)er 26, 1884, in I'ittsboro, Mississip|)i, the son of George
Wells and May (Cruthirds) /\rnistrong. lie was reared in Coffeeville, where
his father was a substantial merchant, lie attended the public schools at home,
Webb's .School at Hellbuckle, Tennessee, and llie University of Mississijipi. In
1906 he was graduated from Yale University with the degree ui bachelor of arln
and two jears later the law school of the same institution gave him his degree
of baelieloi of laws. lie was second in his el.'iss in seliolarsliip .-Mul won llie
prize in debates and essays. On the first of September, 1908, Mr. Annslrong-
came to Memphis and in the office of Judge Julian C. Wilson began the practice
of his profession. Under such able tutelage, Mr. .-Armstrong builded so ra[)idiy
upon the foundation that he had acquired at school and expanded so evenly that
at the end of five years he became a member of the firm of Wilson & Armstrong,
which firm has no superior in the Mid-South in the practice of civil law. Mr.
Armstrong is equally and highly efficient as a trial lawyer, a briefer, before
api)ellate courts and juries, and in consultation, in other words, an exceptional
all-around lawyer. \\ hen llie city adniini^lralion assumed ollice Jann.iry 1, 1''20,
Mr. Annstrong was not a candidate for an\' appointment under it, but when
offered the city attorneyship, he accepted it at a [lersonal sacrifice, because he
was in sympathy with the movement which put the administration in office and
felt that, in that capacity, he could be of service to his community. This he has
done in many ways, but especially in the matter of street car fares. When
seven-cent fare seemed inevitable, he continued to fight it with such ability and
tenacity that he prevented the raise. He has also been active in a sincere efloit
to improve the telephone service. He is a member of the Lawyers' Club and
has been its president; president of the Yale Club, of the board of governors of
the City Club, of the Central Council of the Tennessee Bar .\ssociation, of the
local council for Tennessee tor the Anierieaii l?ar ;\ssoei.ilion, Sigma
Chi fraternity, I'hi Delta l^hi (Corby Court Chapter, Yale), Memi)his CouiUrv
and Tennessee clubs. His valuable service as chairman of the law committee oi
the Chanibmer of Commerce in 1919 was rewarded by his selection as a director
of that body in 1920. He also is a director in the Layne & Bowler Company
and in the William A. Webster Company, both highly successful manufacluriiig
concerns of this city. Mr. Armstrong and Miss Irnia Waddell were married
November 12, 1912. They have one child, Walter I'restijii .\niistron<>. |iinior.

684

W ALTI'.R I'. ARMS'I'RONO

685

?|. m. f one£f

lOMER K. JONES, Memphis, Tennessee, head of the largest
public accounting business in the South, although born in
Mississippi, is a member of an old Memphis family. His
father, Millard Fihnore Jones, was a member of the promi
nent firm of Miller, Jones & Company in Memphis prior to the
Civil War. His mother was formerly Miss Martha Churchill.
It was during a temporary stay in Tunica County, Mississippi, that Mr. Jones
was born, November 28, 1881. The health of Memphis and the Mississi])pi
Delta country then was not so good as it is now and, when the lad was only
about one year old the family moved to the Ozark Mountains of Missouri, set
tling at West Plains, as an ideal point from the standpoint of health. It was
there that Mr. Jones was reared and lived until he was old enough to go out
into the world on his ovv'n account. He was educated in the public and hig'n
schools there and then took the course in the \Vest Plains College. He special
ized there in accounting, taking special courses along that line under Professor
Paul S. Freeman, one of the experts of the United States at that time, who had
been a member of the faculty of the University of Michigan, but during that
time was located in W^est Plains. He also look courses in expert accounting in
the business colleges of St. Louis, Missouri, and in Memphis. His first work
was for a small country newspaper, the West Plains Gazette, where he kept
the hooks. That did not consume all of his time and during his spare hours he
was a reporter for that publication. Then he went to Marked Tree, Arkansas,
where he worked for Fuller Brothers and Goodwillie, who had large timber
interests, saw mills and box factories there. At the end of the first year, be was
promoted from bookkeeper to confidential man and placed in charge of the
entire office affairs of the concerns. He remained there for two years, and then
came to Memphis, which has been his home ever since. Here he went directly
into the line of work in which he has risen to the top. He worked for two
years for a firm of expert accountants and then opened an office on his own
account under the firm name of Homer K. Jones & Company, under which
name he still operates. He grew rapidly in that line. \Vhen the national \var
tax acts were passed, he was one of the first to realize what jiroper accounting
meant to big business and specialized in the forms of accounting by which large
taxpayers would be able to get all of the exemjjtions to which they were entitled
by law. He has branch offices in a number of Southern cities and in Washing
ton. He is a member of the leading social and outing clubs of this section and
especially fond of shooting, and for five years has been chairman of the State
Board of Accountancy. Mr. Jones and Miss Martha Tiliis Edmonson were
married June 17, 1908. They have one child. Miss Martha Jac(|ueline Jones.

686

IIOMICR K. lONFS

687

3. ^, Parntuell

(^SAAC IIAYNl-: I'.ARNWliLL, one of the leading collon
buyers of Meni|)his, Tennessee, with branch linns in a luiiii-
ber of other cotton centers, was born in Columbia, South
Carolina, February 21, 1864, the son of Edward H. and
Harriet (Hayne) Barnwell, the Hayne family as well as the
X@^^^^^f@) Barnwell family being among the oldest and most distinguished
in that old State. One of his maternal ancestors, Colonel Isaac Hayne of Revo
lutionary fame, known as the "Martyr ll.ayne," w.as banged by the Fnglish in
retaliation for the e.\ecution of Major y\ndre. Mr. Barnwell was educated at
Porter /Academy in Charleston, but left school at fourteen years of age to learn
the cotton business in the office of Watson iS; Hill of Charleston, working during
the winter and attending school during the spring and summer for sexeral year.s.
He worked his way through every branch of the cotton business and at the age
of twenty-one accepted a position with \''incent & Hayne in Mississipiji and
the ne.xt year formed a partnership with H. DeL. A'incent and Frank B. Hayne
under the firm name of Barnwell & Com])any at Yazoo City, Mississi])])i. This
firm has been continuously in business since that time, although Messrs. N'incent
and Hayne retired years ago. For a (|uarter of a century during the i)almy days
of Yazoo City as a long staple cotton center he was one of the leading figures
in that big business, his firm standing second to none in the cotton belt. He was
also senior member of the Barnwell & Harbour hire insurance .Agency in
Vazoo City, which interest he still retains. Mr. Barnwell is a member of the
cotton buying firms of Barnwell Brothers of Greenwood, Mississippi, and of
George W . Pease & Company, Memphis. Mr. Barnwell removed his headcjuar-
ters to Memphis in 1909 when the boll weevil made such inroads into the cotton
crop of the Yazoo City section. The firm at once took its natural position in the
front ranks of the cotton firms of the city and has held it from that time.
Mr. Barnwell's standing among his co-members of the Cotton Exchange was
shown by his election to serve as ]3resi<lent of that body during 1919 aiul it was
(luring his administration that the (juarters were moved from the building on
Second .Street to a more central location on I'^roiit Street. He is a member of
the Tennessee Club and the Chamber of Commerce. Mr. I^arnwell and iMiss
.Antoinette Cocks were married July 14, 1887. Their children are: Misses Xei-
tie C, and Sarah Williams, Frank Hayne and 1. 11. Barnwell, Junior. Three of
the four members of the younger generation went to the front in the Workl
War, both sons volunteering immediately U])on declaration of war. i\liss liani-
well served in the Y. M. C. A. work in Brest, h" ranee, while the elder son, l'"r;n)k
Hayne, was a second lieutenant in the First Division, .A. E. \'., and received the
Distinguished Service Cross for his conspicuous gallanir)' at Soissons, where
he was wounded, and the younger, 1. II., Jr., served as a first lieutenant in the
r.ightieth l)ivisi(jn in France.

688

I. r.ARNWI'.LL

689

n. C. Hanse

I C. LANGE of Memi^his, Tennessee, vice-i)rgsident of the Chi
cago Mill & Lumber Company, was born at Bromberg, Ger
many, December 23, 1861. He came to this country in 1870,
locating with his parents, Louis and Paulina Lange, at Mus
kegon, Michigan. He received a common school education
and then was connected with lumbering operations in various
capacities from common laborer to general superintendent. In 1898 he becamt.
a salesman for William E. Hill & Company of Kalamazoo, Michigan, manuiao-
turers of saw mill machinery, being assigned to the Southern territory. In 1903
he became connected with the Reichman-Crosby Company of Memphis as
machinery salesman, and in June, 1904, became manager of the Marked Tree
Lumber Comiiany of Marked Tree, y\rkansas, (Jiie of the i'aepcke southern
plants. In 1905 he removed to Blytheville, Arkansas, to take charge of con
struction of the Chicago Mill & Lumber Company's new plant, consisting of
saw mill, veneer plant and box factory. After completion of this plant, Mr.
Lange continued in charge of its operation, and in addition supervised all of
the extensive land, timber and manufacturing interests of the Chicago Mill &
Lumber Company in Mississippi, Craighead and Poinsett counties, Arkansas.
In 1919 he was relieved of the active supervision of the Blytheville operations
and placed in charge of the company's office in Memphis, giving special atten
tion to the purchase of additional timber lands in the Southern territory and the
land interests of the company in the South. In 1893 Mr. Lange was married
at Ludington, Michigan, to Miss Nellie May Wheeler, who passed away in
October, 1917. 'Hieir only daughter, Margaret A. Lange, was married in 1916
to Mr. P. M. Carpenter of Blytheville, Arkansas, where the family now resides.
In addition to his home in Blytheville, Mr. Lange maintains a residence in
Memphis. Mr. Lange has taken an active interest in all the civic improvements
in Eastern Arkansas, having served as school director for ten years. He is now
serving as one of the commissioners of the Blytheville sewer district, and also
is director and secretary of Mississippi County Dainage District No 17, which
is actively engaged in the reclamation of 170,000 acres of rich, alluvial lands.
Mr. Lange in 1919 was elected jiresident of the Southern Alluvial f.and .Associa
tion, which is advertising to the world the agricultural advantages and oppor
tunities in the alluvial region of Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi since the
completion of the Mississi])i)i River levee system and siibse(|uent drainage
])rojects. Mr. Lange is recognized in the lumber industry as one of the leading
authorities on timber lands. He has strong faith in the future development of
the Mid-South, and believes the alluvial region especially is destined to become
the garden spot of the world.

690

A. C. LANGE

691

Br. M. E. Jf agin

I ILLIAM ROBERT FAGIN, doctor of medicine and doctor
of opthalmology, Memphis, Tennessee, was born on a planta
tion near Booneville, Mississi[)pi, July 7, 1882, the son of
William Martin and Pink (Hill) Fagin. His early training
was in the bagin Plantation schoolhouse. After having fin
ished at the l-iooneville High School, he spent seven years in
school at Nashville, the first two in the (je(jrge Peabody College for Teachers,
where he received the teachers' (le,i.;ree. Then he entered the literary de|)artnicnt
ol the Univei'sily of Nashvilk' .'ind in l''05 began bis medical training. In l'>07
he received the degree of bachelor of ails. brom Vanderbilt University be
received the degree of doctor of medicine in 1908. He was a member of the Pi
Alpha Epsilon literary fraternity and the Phi Beta Pi medical fraternity. I'or
many years he played football. He had been invited by his uncle, Doctor J. F.
Hill of Memiihis to be associated with him in the practice of the eye, ear, nose
and throat. So, upon graduation, he attended the post-graduate schools and e)e
clinics of New Y^ork City. .Since then he has been associated with his uncle in
the practice of his chosen sjiecialty, diseases of the eye. Doctor I'agin spent
several months in 1912 in study and travel abroad. He visited the cn'c clinics
of Najiles, R(jme, Vienna, Prague, Berlin, Paris and LoiuUni. In 1914, be studied
at the University of Colorado, earning there the degree of docttjr of ophthal
mology in 1915. Outside of his office hours and hospital work, Doctor bagin
can be found almost every day at his pure-bred stock fai'iii just outside the city
limits on the Pigeon Roost Road, giving personal attention to his Raleigh strain
of imported and American bred Jersey cattle, his Duroc-Jersey hogs, and his
white Leghorn and Buff Orpington thoroughbred chickens. He takes great
interest in the county and Tri-State fairs, where be has won many ribbons.
Peterson of New York built in Doctor I'agin's home on the South Parkway a
magnificent residence ])i])e organ. This adds greatly to the i)leasure of his
friends, for several organ recitals are given every season. Doctor I'agin is
chairman of one of the important committees of the Peabody School Civic Clul).
He is a member of the Temple Baptist Church. .As a member of its finance
committee, he was active in giving and soliciting fuiuls for the erection of the
new building. During one of the campaigns for money, Doctor Fagin gave on
the lawn of his home, a chicken and vegetable picnic dinner, all home grown, to
three hundred and fifty people, the entire |)roceeds going to the church-building
fund. He is a member of the Chamber of Commerce, Masonic fraternity, New
man's Athletic Club and a dozen leading medical societies. Doctor b^agin and
Miss Harriet E. McGee, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. J. fl. McGee of Baldwyn,
Mississippi, were married .April 2, 1916. They have two children, Margaret
McGee and Harriet Roberta.

692

i:>R. W. R. I-'.ACIX

69,3

5. C. Millinsfjam

jINCE coming to Memphis, twenty-five years ago, John T.
Willingham has taken an active part in every movement for
making Memphis a greater city and a better place in which
to live. He has done this with no desire or hope of reward,
save that great satisfaction which comes to any good man from
the knowledge that he has been of some service to bis fellow
man. And Memphis is greater and far prettier for his having been here. Mr.
Willingham was born in Georgia August 30, 1861, and graduated from Hilliard
Institute at Forsythe in his native state. He went to Chattanooga, where he
engaged for a few years in manufacturing, and in 1895 came to Memphis where
be established the Memphis Coffin Company, of which he has been the president
and general manager since that time. It is recognized as one of the best organ
ized and ably conducted manufacturing plants in the country, and has been
expanded by Mr. Willingham to where it is one of the largest in the land. It
has also been a big paying institution, and Mr. Willingham has invested some of
his surplus income from that in manufacturing enterprises in St. Louis, Mis
souri, and in Texarkana, Arkansas, all of which are conducted with the same
rare skill and judgment. The income from these has afforded him a nice estate,
but still be gives them the same careful attention. But Mr. Willingham is best
known and most highly appreciated for his long and efficient connection with
the park system. He and the late Robert Galloway, father of the park system,
were intimate friends, and in 1906 Mr. W^illingham was appointed a member
of the Board of Park Commissioners with Mr. Galloway. From that time he
has given the development of the system a great deal of his valuable time and
good taste, until now the two major parks, the magnificent double driveway
which connects them, and the minor squares throughout the city are unsurpassed
in the United States and the admiration of every visitor no matter whence he
comes. The taxpayers of Memphis wonder how all of this has been accom
plished with so small an expenditure of money, but if they will attend a meeting
of the commission, with Mr. Willingham ])residing, they will see that the park
system of Mem|jhis has no tinge of politics in it, but is conducted just as a big
private business. Mr. Willingham also served for a term as president of the
Chamber of Commerce, during which time that organization made great progress
and accomplished much for the growth of the city. For one year he served as
president of the Tennessee Manufacturers Association, and takes an active part
in all of the activities of that useful body. He is a member of the Tennessee
Club, the Chamber of Commerce, the City Club and the Mud Lake Club, where
he is one of the most accomplished shots on that unsurpassed duck marsh ami
one of the most successful of those who lure the wary bass to the i]\- at
Mill Seat.

694

i^Uy"''

HWf

i\ '^¦

* '' ""^ * " * * j-j- ¦'

wy 'y '

f#^'p^vt.

T. T. WILLINGHAM

695

»m. E. fterjitein

)ILL1AM ROBERT HFRSTEIN, bead of the Electric Supply
Company, Mem])his, Tennesee, one of the leading jobbers of
the United States in electric sujjplies, and one of the most
active factors in the city for its develo])ment and growth, is a
native Tennessean. He was born in Chattanooga, December 2,
1872, the son of Jacob and Ava (Evans) Herstein. The fam
ily moved to Nashville when he was but six weeks of age and it was there that
be received his education and spent his early manhood. When seventeen years
of age he went with the Capital Electric Company first in the capacity of office
boy. He did almost everything that was to be done for the company, working
up to the position of assistant to the manager, when the concern went into the
hands of a receiver. Mr. Flerstein then went into the office of a Nashville law
firm as stenographer, spent his spare time reading law and was admitted to the
bar, but the pursuit of that profession did not appeal to him. Instead when he
(|uit the law office, he went with the Western Union Telegraph Company, where
he spent two years as a clerk, and then resigned to come to Memphis as book
keeper for the Electric Supply Company. This was in 1904 when he was
thirty-two years of age. The business was not a large one at that time, but
the keen mind of Mr. Herstein saw in it great possibilities for developing a
magnificent jobbing and wholesale business in electric supplies, saw in Memphis
the ideal location for a business of that kind and realized that he possessed in
himself the ability to manage it. The head men in the General Electric Coni|iaiiy
soon saw that the new man in the Electric Supply Company was one who could
be trusted with long credits and Memphis bankers concluded that they could
safely lend him money with which to buy stock in the comjiany. The net result
was that in a short time he became the controlling stockholder ami ra])itlly devel
oped a business second to none in this section of the country in its line. In
1910 he organized the Memiihis Electrical League, of which he is vicc-])resident
and which has done so much to stabilize the electric business in this section of
the country. In 1919 be was chosen cbainnan of the central divisicjii of ibe
National Electrical Sup])ly Jobbers Association. He was a tlirector in the
Chamber of Commerce in 1913 and 1914 and was chairman of the coniniittees
which conducted such successful membership drives for the chamber from 1913 to
1916, inclusive. During the World War he was colonel of the Blue regiment in
the drive for the third Liberty loan and .active in all Ihe i)alriolie and linanci.il
c;nn])aigns. Mr. Ilerstein is a .Scottish Rite Mason, lie and Miss Irene Cart-
wright Brown of Newsoin .Station, Tennessee, were m.irried Oelcjber 15, \'K)2.
This union has been blessed by one child, Miss Miriam Evans Herstein.

696

\V ILLIAM R. Jlb:RSTElN

697

. f . CratDforb

[EST JAMES CRAWFORD, for more than sixty years a resi
dent of Memphis, Tennessee, during the major portion of
that time a leader for all that promised for improvement in
the material and moral welfare of the community, one of the
city's most successful business men and head since its organi
zation of the greatest newspaper in the South, was born in
Vicksburg, Mississippi, November 1, 1844. He was the son of Erasmus Strib-
ling Crawford, who had moved from Staunton, A'^irginia, to Mississippi, latei
moving to Memphis in 1859, where he died in 1865. Mr. Crawford's mother
was formerly Miss Elvira Ann W'est of Christian County, Kentucky. After
attending the schools in Vicksburg, Mr. Crawford went to the old Madison Col
lege near Canton, Mississippi, and then spent the term of 1859-'60 at the
Western Military Institute in Nashville, Tennessee. He was a student with
General Luke E. Wright at J. Wesley Armstrong's school in Memphis, when
Tennessee cast her lot with the Confederacy. He promptly joined the Shelby
fjrays which became Company A, b'ourth Tennessee Infantry, .Strahl's Brigade,
Cheatham's Division, Hardee's Corjjs, Army of the Tennessee — a conii)any
unsurpassed in Conderate annals for its casualties on the field of battle, for
the promotions from its ranks, for its devotion to the cause, for its valor in
making and its steadiness in sustaining a charge. Mr. Crawford returned to
Memphis May 28, 1865, with little but an honorable discharge from a lost
cause and the personal satisfaction of having performed faithfully a patriotic,
arduous and dangerous duty. His first work was in a brokerage office. Then
he became a classer and shipper of cotton, earning the reputation of being one
of the best judges of cotton in the Memphis market. He rented and 0]ierated
for a time old Gill cotton compress on the river front. In 1874 be, Mr. William
B. Galbreath and Mr. Jephtha M. b^owikes coin|)osed the cotton factoring firm
of W. B. Galbreath & Company. In 1879 he withdrew from that firm and
became the junior member of Mallory, Crawford & Company, which during the
twenty years that he was connected with it was one of the strongest wholesale
grocery and cotton factoring firms in the South. In 1889, Mr. Crawford and
several associates, as the outcome of a local political condition, began the ])ubh-
cation of The Memphis I'oinmercial, making the sixth newspaper in the city.
Mr. Crawford has been president of the company ever since. Under his direc
tion it absorbed the other two morning papers and as The Commercial .Appeal
has become one of the leading journals of the United States. He is a member
of the Tennessee and Memphis Country Clubs and served two terms, following
1885 as president of the Cotton Exchange. Mr. Crawford and Miss Annie
Thompson were married, November 11, 1874. Their children are: Erasmus S. ;
Miss Kate, now Mrs. Lovick P. Miles, and Miss Marianne.

698

W. I. CRA\VT'-()RD

699

J. M. ^av^

j^-c^.AMES W.ALKER M.AYS, for the jiast thirty years business
manager of The t'ominercial /Xppeal, Memphis, Tennessee, who
has added so much toward making that newspaper the greatest
in the South and one of the strongest in the United States, is
a native of Memphis. He was born December 7, 1857, on the
corner of LaRose Street and Walker Avenue, the son of
Andrew Jackson and Elizabeth McLemore (W^alker) Hays. His ancestors
were conspicuous in the early days of the .State, standing always bodly for its
l)rogress and growth. One of them was owner of one-third interest in the
original city of Memphis, and both Walker and McLemore Avenues are named
for them. His grandfather, Samuel J. Hays, was a ward of .Andrew Jackson;
was a graduate of the United .Slates Milit.ary .Academy at West I'oinI, NU'w
York; had a distinguished career as a general in the Mexican War ami was one
of the pioneer settlers of Madison County, Tennessee, where he was a large
planter and slave-owner. Naturally he named bis son for his guardian, .Andrew
Jackson, and gave him every [jossible advantage in the way of an education.
A. J. Hays and Howell E. Jackson, later a justice of the Supreme Court of the
United States, were graduated together in the law and intended being partners
in the practice of that profession, but General Hays wanted his son to take up
the affairs of the family. He married the daughter of Doctor James Monn>e
Walker, a \'irginia gentleman who settled first at Latirange, Tennessee, and
then came to Meini)his al an early dale, where he was a leading physician until
his death during the Civil W'ar. Mr. Hays' mother attended the Magevney
School in Court Square and finished her education in Nashville. Her mother
was Mary McLemore, daughter of John C. McLemore, who came to Tennessee
from North Carolina when Tennessee was Franklin County of that State, \\as
the official surveyor of the boundaries for the new slate, an intimate friend of
Andrew Jackson and purchaser of General Jackson's one-third interest in the
city of Memphis. Mr. McLemore was one of the largest property owners in
the United States. He went to California on horseback and acquired large
domains there. In addition to his interest in the original city of Memphis be
owned hundreds of acres in what uow is the city. Mr. Hays was educated in
the private schools of Memphis and in 1879 entered the employ of Thomas H.
Allen &. Comi)any, cottor. fa.ctors, as l)()okkee|)er. In 1881 be went to vNork for
The Commercial Appeal in the same capacity, in 1900 becoming business manager
and secretary of the company. Mis tireless energy, absolute honesty and business
capacity are refiected in the growth of the paper since that time. Mr. Hays ;inil
Miss Mary Veronica Bolster were married November K), 1887. Tbeii- children
are. J. W., Jr.; Miss Mary; Dennis Smith; Frank Middleton; Miss Mildred,
now Mrs. Bethel Edrington; Andrew Jackson, and George Bolster.

700

f. \V. HAYS

roi

p. %. Cofjn

JERN.ARD L. COHN, president and publisher of the News
Scimitar, was born in Memphis, Tennessee, July 6, 1887, the
son of Harry and Sarah Colin. He received his education in
the public schools of Menqibis, Belts Academy, Stamford,
Connecticut, and Columbia University, New York City, where
he was graduated in 1909. As a boy the newspaper business
apjjealed to him and during the Spanish-American War his parents allowed him
to sell newspajiers. Though only eleven years old he felt a thrill in giving the
people the news of the day, a thrill that later developed so strongly thai he
decided to make the news|)aper business his life work. During vacations at
Columbia University be worked as a reporter on the New York Times and the .New
York Journal, getting an e.x])erience that made bis later |)rogress very rapid. ( )n
bis return to Memphis he joined the reperlorial staff of the News .Scimitar where
his industry and ability to make and keep friends soon attracted the attention
of the editors with the result that he was made Sunday editor. He made
good, but his career in the editorial de])arlment was to be short lived. During
one of the stormy periods which newspapers encounter there came a day when
the men financially interested were worried. An Eastern capitalist was sum
moned to give advice. He looked over the property and talked \yilh the men
in charge and the men in their employ. His verdict surprised no one more than
it did I'ernard Cobn. "I want you to put that yonng man in Ibe business office.
If I am not inislaken he can solve your troubles," he declared. Mr. Cobn
objected on the ground that he wanted to remain in the editorial deparlnienl.
Finally, however, be did agree to go into the business office for a period of
six months. He began in the advertising department and in six months became
advertising manager. Again he made good and within a year he was made busi
ness manager. He at once went about his new duties in a manner that showed
he had very clear and determined ideas about the business managenienl of a
newspaper. He was one of the first in the South to advocate putting the circula
tion of newspapers on a strictly cash basis. When be issued orders that auto
matically cut off several thousand subscribers, some of the old school proi)hesied
disaster but the balance sheets at the end of the year showed a saving of more
than $50,000. The crisis was over. In 1920 be was elected general manager.
In February, 1921, Mr. Cobn increased his holdings and was elected president
and publisher. Mr. Cobn is a member of the Re.x Club, the Young Men's
Heljrew Association, the Chamber of Coinnierce, the Kiwanis Club, the Ridge-
way Country Club, tlie University Club and the Newman Athletic Club. He
married Miss Louise Halle, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Henry llalle, October 28,
1914. They have one child, Harry Cobn 11. They live al 24*' .Avalon Place.

702

B. L. COHN

703

(ieorge Motvi^

EORGE MORRIS, editor of the News-Scimitar, Memphis,
Tennessee, one of the leading newspaper men of the South,
was born in Fayette County, Tennessee, January 30, 1883, the
son of Waller and Mary Etta (Parker) Morris, lie grew
up on the farm at Laconia of his father, who for many years
has been and still is one of the county's most substantial citi
zens, a leader in his section in all public movements. Mr. Morris was educated
in the common schools of Fayette County and then went to Union University
at Jackson, Tennessee, where he was a member of the class of 1906. During
his youth he worked for a time for the Southern Express Company al Carrollion
and Greenwood, Mississippi, and was probably the youngest agent that that
company had during ihfe lime that he was in the former city. However, he b:id
an ambition to enter the newspaper field and in 1908 secured a position with
the Jackson (Tennessee) Whig. He remained with that publication for two
years and then came to Memphis as a reporter on the Commercial Aijpeal. For
the ne.xt four years he was one of the best street men that that paper ever bad,
developing rapidly until in a short time he was the leading staff man on the
paper. He not only proved himself a good getter of news and able to portray
the exact facts, but developed a style of writing which was most agreeable.
He had a vein of humor which sparkled brilliantly wherever there was a chance
for it and always free from any sting. He was yet ecpially capable in handling
a serious story. In 1914 Mr. Morris went from Memphis to Nashville to
become associate editor of the Nashville Banner, where he added much to the
standing of that old publication. Two >ears later the Banner sent him to Wash
ington as its special correspondent al the national capital. During the same
time he was secretary to Senator John K. Shields. In 1917 be returned to Meiii-
]ihis on the editorial staff' of the News Scimitar, and the following year be
became the managing editor; in January, 1921, he was made editor. To that
liosition he brought with him a thorough training in all br.ancbes of editorial
work, a wide general ac(|uainlance in Mem]jhis gained as a re])orler, and in
Mississijjpi during his residence there, and intimate knowledge of the politics
and public men of the .Stale and the nation. To these were atlded his delightful
personality and his happy faculty of making and hokling friends. The eti'ect of
his being placed in charge of the editorial department of the News Scimitar was
apparent from the day that he look charge. He ]nit the i)a])er in close touch with
the life and aspirations of the community and from that date it has been a strong
factor in every movement for better conditions. He is a member of .St. lohn's
Methodist Church and the Rotary Club. Mr. Morris and Miss Karen McCiehee
of Jackson were married in July, 1917. They have one child, George Morris,
Junior.

704

GEORGE MORRIS

7().S

^. C. ilajor

j AMUEL CHESTER MAJOR, Memphis, Tennessee, for the
past fifteen years one of the leading dealers in lumber in this
section of the country and recognized as one of the most sub
stantial men in that line in the United States, is a native
of Indiana, having been born February 10, 1865, on a
farm in Clinton County in that State, the son of William Car-
rick and Margaret (Barr) Major. He received his early education in the coun
try schools of his county, and until be became of age, he worked on the farm
of his father. Preferring a business career to life on the farm, Mr. Major made
bis first venture in the commercial world as a ijartner in the furniture business in
Kirklin, Indiana. This partnership did not prove a success financially, but from
it, Mr. Major gained much in the way of experience and a knowledge of the
shoals which were to be avoided in navigating the commercial seas which proved
in his future life of more worth to him than the amount of money that he had
lost in the first business. Then Mr. Major found the line in which he has proven
such a signal success, for in 1887 he went into the lumber business, to which
his main industry and investments have been confined ever since. His first con
nection with that line of enterprise was with W. H. Guirl & Brother in Girklin.
He remained with that firm for three years, and then went to Indianapolis,
Indiana, where he worked for five years with H. C. Long, and then for the same
length of time with Hall & Frisbee of Jamestown, New York, still in the lum
ber business. In 1900, Mr. Major became interested with the Steele &. Hilliard
Lumber Company of St. Louis, Missouri, where he remained for four years.
At the eml of that lime, he came to Memphis and went into the lumber busi
ness alone under the firm name of S. C. Major & Company, dealing in the hard
woods of this section of the country. From the time that he formed the firm,
it took high rank for integrity and efficiency, and it has grown steadily until for
a number of years past it has had a deserved reputation second to none in the
country both for the volume and the reliability of its business. In addition to
being sole owner of the firm of S. C. Major & Company, Mr. Major is presi
dent of the Major, Cromwell Lumber Company; secretary and treasurer of the
McGraw, Curran Lumber Company; a director in the DeSoto Hardwood Floor
ing Company and the L. D. Murrelle Lumber Company. He is a past president
of the Memphis Lumbermen's Club, and is a member of the board of trustees
for the National Wholesale Lumber Dealers Association. He is a member of
the Chamber of Commerce and Memphis Country Club and was the first presi
dent of the Colonial Country Club. Mr. Major and Miss Georgie Bell Tidwell
were married October 27, 1916. They live at the Hotel Chisca and spend their
time during the summer months at eastern resorts.

706

S, C. MAIOI

707

€. Jf . igoel

I HE Honorable Edmond Favor Noel, Lexington, Mississippi,
who has served bis .State so ably in many public ijcjsitions, was
born in Holmes County, seven miles south of Lexington,
March 4, 1856, the son of Leiand and Margaret (Sanders)
Noel. After having finished the common schools of Holmes
County, he went to Louisville, Kentucky, where he finished the
course and the high school course and then took up the study of law in the office
of his uncle. Major D. W. Sanders, a distinguished Confederate veteran. At
the age (d twenty-one years, he returned to Lexington and was admitted to the
bar, taking high rank from the start, both in his profession and in the hearts of
his people. Ibis latter was shown by the fact that when but twenty-four years
of age they sent him to the State I^egislature, where he was the youngest mem
ber of that body in 1882 and 1883. In 1887 be was elected state's attorney for
the district composed of llohnes, Carroll, Montgomery, Webster, Choctaw,
Attala and LeI'lore counties, fiy reason of having two courts in Carroll County,
there were si.xteen terms each year for the district attorney, anfl he missed but
one in the four years of his administration. He w^as elected State senator in
1895, 1899 and in Vn9. In 1808 be served as captain of Company K. Second
Mississippi Infantry in the Spanish-American W'ar. In 1907 he was elected
governor of the .State and served for four years, devoting most of his energies
to giving the State a business administration by which the expenditures should
come within the income of the State. In this he succeeded for three years and
would have done so for the last year, but for the fact that $600,000 was
expended for educational buildings. He drafted the original constitutional
amendments for the elective judiciary and for electing all county officers every
fourth year; wrote the primary election law; drafted many reforms in the
criminal statutes of the State; urged consolidation of the chancery and circuit
courts, and the depository act by which State and county funds are kept at
interest in banks. During his incunibeiicy be entertained Roosevelt, Taft and
Bryan at different times; and, at one time, by special invitation the governors
of Washington, .South Dakota and New Hampshire were his guests. In turn
he was entertained at the White House by Presidents Roosevelt and Taft, and
by Woodrow Wilson while governor of New Jersey. Governor Noel is a mem
ber of the Baptist Church, the Mystic Shrine, the Woodmen of the World, and
the Knights of Pythias. He was married first to Miss Loula Hoskins. June 4,
1890, and after ber death, he and Mrs. Alice Tye Neilson were married Se[)-
tember 12, 1905. lie has no child, but lakes just pride in Mrs. Noel's two soik.
Captain Halbert Neilson, serving with the .American .\rmy of Occupation at
Coblenz, Germany, and Edwin T. Neilson, now law student at the L^niversity of
MississipiM.

708

"^"^-

F. N()i':i.

70' I

M. J. ^regcott

IlLLlAM JUNIUS PRESCOTT, Memphis, Tennessee, entered
W^j^ the coal business when he was thirteen years of age, and, solely
JaM as the result of his own industry, capacity and integrity, has
Wfj worked up to where he is heavily interested in two of the larg
est coal companies, one wholesale and one retail, in the Mid-
South, and recognized as one of the best posted men in the
country on all questions entering into the coal business. Mr. Prescott was born
in Memphis, September 25, 1875, the son of John Martin and Annie (Ouinlan)
Prescott. He attended the public schools of the city until he was thirteen years
of age and then entered the business world as office boy for the Pittsburgh Coal
Company, and he has spent his entire life in that line of industry. .After three
years with the Pittsburgh Coal Company, Mr. Prescott went with the J. D. Bark-
dull Coal Company, where he spent two years as yard clerk. Then he went with
the fine old linn of Hunt t^ P)rotber, in charge first of the books for their retail
coal business. He put in si.xteen years with that firm, gradually becoming a
stockholder and during the latter part of that time secretary and treasurer of
the business. At the end of that time, Mr. Prescott and associates bought out
the firm of Hunt & Brother and formed the Hunt-Berlin Coal Company, which
did both a wholesale and retail coal business until 1919, when they consolidated
the wholesale branch of the business with the Memphis Coal Company, retain
ing only the retail portion of it for the Hunt-Berlin Coal Company. Mr. Pres
cott is vice-president of both companies, devoting most of his energies to the
wholesale end of the business. His ability in the general coal line is attested l)y
the fact that since 1917 be has been a director in the American Wholesale Coal
Association. He is a member of the Colonial Country Club, of which he was
vice-president from 1918 to 1920. He has been first vice-president and twice
a director of the Chamber of Commerce, and for many years one of the most
active members of that organization in promoting every movement that would
be of benefit to the community. He was the first president of the .Advertising
Club, in 1918; is a member of the Rotary Club, in which he has sei\ed as a
director; of the Memphis Country Club; an Odd b'ellow ; a Woodman of the
World ; a member of the Young Men's Christian Association ; both a Scottish
Rite and a Knight Templar Mason, and a member of the executive committee of
Al Chymia .Shrine, which is to erect a memorial to the late O. K. I louck. lie
was caj)tain of a team in several of the Liberty loan drives, and active in all of
them, as well as in the cani])aigns for funds f(3r the Red Cross and iS.'iptist
Memorial Hospital. He is a director in the (Guaranty Bank & Trust Coin])any ;
J. T. Hinton & Son, Incorporated; the Tri-.State Fair and the Memphis b^eight
Bureau. Mr. Prescott and Miss Ida LaCroix were married ( )ctober 12, 1004.

710

W. J. PRESCOTT

711

polling ^iblep

)/eOLLlNG SlBf.EY, for many years active in all movements for
B^j^ the advancement of Memphis along civic and religious lines,
/ay is also a most successful business man. He was born in
[^ Augusta, Georgia, August 20, 1873, the son of Robert P. and
Susie W. (Boiling) Sibley. On his paternal side he is a
lineal descendant of John Sibley of St. Albans, England, who
came over with the Winthrop Fleet and settled in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1629.
Mr. Sibley's paternal grandfather, Josiah Sibley, moved from Massachusetts to
.Augusta in 1821 and died there in 1888. Mr. Sibley's grandfather on his moth
er's side, the late Robert P. Boiling, of the old Petersburg, Virginia, family by
that name, came to Memphis in 1859, and lived here until his death in 1882.
Upon the completion of his education at Richmond .Academy, in .Augusta, Mr.
.Sibley came to Memphis. He worked first for the Peters Cracker Conipan)-,
beginning June 28, 1889, just three days after having received his diploma. Two
years later he went with the Continental National Bank, where he spent seven
years. He was with the Bank of Commerce for a year and then with the State
National Bank for five years. Although he was occupying a responsible position
with a bright future in the banking line, Mr. Sibley became attracted to the life
insurance business, and, in May, 1904, he became district agent for the National
Life Insurance Company of Vermont. His success was so marked that he
attracted the attention of other companies, and, in January, 1908, he accepted the
general agency for the Penn Mutual Life Insurance Coin])any, which ])(jsiti(jn
he has filled to date with great credit to himself, service to bis ptjiicy holders and
fidelity to his coin])any. He has served since 1912 as a member of the executive
committee of the Penn Mutual Agency .Association. .At the convention in
Chicago in 1911 he was elected vice-president of the National .Association of
Life Underwriters. Later he served as secretary of that association for a term
and as a nieniber of the executive council. He organized the Meni|)his Life
Underwriters Association and was its president in 1910 and 1911. Mr. Sibley
was a director in the Mercantile National Bank during its entire existence, and at
])resent is a director in the Liberty Savings Bank & Trust Coni|)any, in the
Industrial Bank &. Trust Company and the Tri-State Fair Association. He has
been a director in the Y^. M. C. A. since 1907, and was its president in 1915. He
united with the church early in life and is a steward in St. John's Methodist
Churrb. lie was aclivt- during the World War in all of llu' govirnineni
drives, lie is a thirty-second degree Mason, Knight Tenqilar, Shriner, Rotarian,
and member of the Memphis Country, Tennessee and City Clnb^, lln' t'b.tinbei-
of Commerce and the Red Cross. Mr. Sibley married Miss Erie Beasles' of
LaGrange, Tennessee, September 17, 1903. They have only one child. Miss
Dorothy L. Sibley.

712

ROLLING SII'.LI'A'

71.^

O^tto Hatn

jTTO Z.AHN, president of .S. C. 'Loof & Company, Memphis,
Tennessee, of international reputation as a binder of books
and one of the most artistic master printers of the United
States, was born March 27, 1856, in Berka, Tburingia, the
son of Christian and Sidonie (Rbodeman) Zahn. He attended
the public schools from 1861 to 1864, had private tutors for
the next two years and spent the two years following that in the high school.
At the age of fourteen years, his father apprenticed him, after the custom of that
lime and country, to a bookbinder, T. ,A. Francke, of Arnstadt. He was made a
jcjurneyman bookbinder in 1873, and the following year started a career of
rambling wdiich took him over a large portion of the world. He went first to
Brazil, where he stopped for a time in I'ara anil then went to Rio de Janeiro.
Thence he worked through the Antilles, visiting St. Thomas, Llaiti and Cuba,
])assing ihence over to Mexico. There he was stricken with one of the coinnion
tropical levers, and left ior Liverpool on a sailing vessel, b'roni Liverpool, be
returned home for e.xamination, at nineteen years of age, for military service
under the universal training law. Never of physique comparable to his men
tality, he was pronounced unfit for service and hence free to go and come as
he pleased. Basil, Switzerland, in 1876 found him among her many bighl)
skilled workmen. However, the wanderlust still had possession of him and he
divided the year 1877 between 'Lurin and Rome. With the beginning of the
following winter be turned his face to the frozen north and crossing the St. Gott-
hardt on foot in the heavy snows, worked for a time in I^ucerne, .Switzerland, and
spent the latter half of 1878 in Paris, France. Pursuing his vocation all the
while, he returned home, worked for a time in Weimar and then in llainburg.
Then he took a flying trip to Egypt, visited Cairo and shed a tear at Alexandria
for the greatest loss there of the world's accumulated knowledge. Thence he
went to London, where he was employed in the famous Zaehnsdorlf" Bindery,
then conducted by the elder Zaehnsdorff. After a year in that establishment, he
had acquired first-hand the art of binding which the main binileries of three
continents possessed and in 1882 won first prize in a big London binding exhibit.
It was in cash and he used it to come to America. He worked for a time in
New York, Philadelphia and Newark, and in 1884 came to Memphis, where he
went to work for S. C. Toof & Company, in whicb linn he rose tbrcnigb all posi
tions until 1918, when he succeeded Mr. Bates as president. He took grand
prize for binding at the St. Louis World's l'"air. Books came to Meniijhis from
the jirincipal cities of the world for Mr. Zahn lo bind. He attributes bis good
health to strict dietary regulations, physiological exercises and horseback riding,
being one of two gentlemen remaining in Memphis who enjoy that diversion.

714

OTTO ZAHN

15

tn:. J|. Carabjap

111'^. Honorable riiaddeus II. Carawaw |onesboid, Arkansas,
T,^„l one of the leading lawyers of Norlheaslern Arkansas, loriner
M^ member of the congress from the I'irst dislriel, ineinber ol the
!w United .States .Senate and |)lanter, has been a very proniineni
figure in the public affairs of that section of the State since
very soon after he moved there from 'Leiinessee. Mr. Cara
way was born at Spring Hill, Stoddard County, Missouri, October 17, 1871, the
son of Tolbert F. and Mary b^llen Caraway. Mr. Caraway moved from Mis
souri to Clay Count)', Arkansas, at twelve years (jf age and thence to Tennessee
and received bis education at Dickson College, where he was graduated with
the degree of bacbebjr of arts. He was adinitled lo Ibe bar in ( )sceol,-i. Arkan
sas, in 1890, having n-tnnied to .Ark.msas in 180,^ and loc.ali'd .at Laki' C ily.
'Lbere be practiced law and then moved lo Jonesboro, the ccjunty seal. 'I'bere
liis rise in his ])rofession and in the esteem of the peo]ile was ra])id. In 1908
ibey elected biiii prosecuting attorney for the second judicial district and his
conduct of the office was such that he was re-elected in 1910 for another term of
two years. He was especially vigorous in his j^rosecution of homicides and the
net result to the county of his administration of the office of ])roseculing attor
ney was that there was a far less tendenc)' to coininil crime, ispeci.ally ninrdei-.
However, his development in bis chosen [irolession was by no means conniud
to the |)raclice of criminal law. His mind went iialurall\' to the conlrolling ])oint
in any case, and it was but a short time after be moved lo Jonesboro before he
was classed with the best at the liar and was connected with practically all of
the important cases there for years. A ready debater, a delightful and etfective
speaker and a close student, be was equally at home and e((ually efficient in all
branches of the law, a wise counselor and a brilliant trial lawyer. Honest and
fearless, neither shielding friend nor persecuting enemy, he left the office of
I)roseculing attorney respected by all in the large district. He aspired lo go to
the national congress and at the election in the fall of 1912 was elected to rep
resent the first district of Arkansas to succeed the Honorable R. B. Macon, as
a member of the Sixty-third Congress. Ffe was re-elected lo the Si.xly-fourth.
Si.xty-fiflh and Sixty-sixth congresses, the last term expiring March 4. 1021.
As a member of the lower house of the congress, Mr. Carway took and active
j)art in the broad affairs of the nation as well as looking attentively after the
interests of his constituents. During the World War, he was a staunch sup
porter of I 'resident Wilson and it was largely upon ibat recoid lh;it ibe |)eople
of Arkansas elected biin to the senate in 1020, He and Miss Ilattie W'yatt of
Tennessee were married l'"el)ruary 5, 1002. The\- have three sons.

71(1

r. II. ( AR.\\\¦A^'

Jf . ». Probe

RFDERICK W ILLIAM BRODE, for more than half a cen-
Fy... tury a leader in business and social circles in Memphis, Ten-
(^\ nessee, was born in Delitzsh, S;ixony, August 14, 1843, the
(S/ son of John Frederick and b'rederika (Riller) Brode. As a
youth he was highly educated both in private and public
schools. When but ten years of age he came with his father's
family to New Orleans and in 1859 moved to Memphis. His first work here
was as a bookkeeper and in 1868 he became one of the pioneer brokers of the
city. Later he was the senior member of the firms of Brode & Cooper, and
Brode, Mclntyre & Company, the latter specializing in handling large consign
ments of sugar and molasses. After a short time he organized the finvi of
F. W . Brode & Com])aiiy, dealers and exporters in cotton seed jiroducts of
which he has been the active head ever since and which has an international
reputation for integrity and efficiency. He has specialized since 1875 in cotton
seed products. He is one of the three men who were instrumental in forming in
1897 the Interstate Cotton Seed Crushers Association, which has such an
influence on that industry and which now has an international reputation.
Mr. E. M. Durham of Vicksburg, Mississippi, first president of the association,
and Mr. Louis K. Bell of New Y^ork City, were the other two. In connection
with his export business and also for pleasure, Mr. Brode has made many
trips abroad, visiting England, Scotland, Ireland, Holland, .Austria and France.
He is a veteran Mason, a member of Memphis Lodge No. 118 and since 187'',
a trustee of the lodge. He is a charter member of the Tennessee Club, and
member of the Memphis Country Club, the City Club, the Chamber of Com
merce and the Memphis Merchants Exchange. After having been a director
and vice-president of the latter body, he was elected president in 1898. .As an
appreciation for his interest in the exchange, his friends had Carl Gutherz
]:)aint Mr. Brode in oil and paid him the coniplinient of having bis as the only
likeness of a living member hung in its hall. He is also a member of the
New A^ork Produce Exchange, and the Seed Oil and Cake Trade Association
of Liverpool. Mr. Brode and Miss Dora Basconi Simmons were married July
8, 1875, in the Central Baptist Church, They had six children : Misses Marie
Louise, Frederika May and Dorothy Denietria, and Julian Lafayette, Fred
erick W''., Jr., and Ben Dee. Mr. Frederick W., Jr., died in 1904, and they also
lost a baby daughter. While Mr. Brode was born in a land to which bis adopted
country was an enemy during the World AVar, there was never a suggestion of
doubt as to his loyalty and patriotism during that time. He was active with bis
time and liberal with his means in all the campaigns that were made during that
time for the various war causes. In fact, ever since he has been a resident
of Memphis, Mr. Brode has been one of its most liberal citizens for all worthy
causes.

718

I'\ W. I'.Ri 'Db:

"1"

Cfiag. J|. ProugJ)

IHARLES HILLMAN BROUGll, educator, student of eco
nomics and sociology, historian, orator and former governor of
Arkansas, was born in Clinton, Mississippi, July 9, 1876, the
son of Charles Milton and blora M. (Thompson) Brough.
He was given a thorough education, for, after having received
his degree of bachelor of arts from the Mississippi College at
Clinton, he entered Johns Hopkins University, where he spent three years,
receiving the degree of bachelor of iihilosopby in 1898. During the scholastic
_\ear 18'J7-08, he was a fellow in economics at Johns Hopkins. IjoIIi lia^bjr
University and the University of Arkansas conferred upon him in 1917, the
honorary degree of doctor of laws. L^pon the recei])t of his degree from Johns
Hopkins, be was chosen ])rofessor of philosophy, economics and history in
Mississippi College and spent three years there, resigning in 1902 to enter the
law department of the University of Mississippi from which be received the
degree of bi'chelor of laws in 1003. During 1903 and 1904, he was ]5rofessor
of history and i)hilosophy in llillman COIIege at Clinton, Mississippi, and in the
fall of the latter year he went to Arkansas to fill the chair of economics and
sociology in the University of .Arkansas at bayetteville. His mind was too
active to be confined to teaching, and he began a study of the needs of the
State, especially from an economic standpoint. When the caiii])aign fen" gov
ernor openetl in 1016 he cast his hat into the ring, much to the amusement of
the old-time politicians. But when the results of his close study of the needs
of the State went to the ])eople through his matchless oratory and charming
personality, the ])eople saw that a new era was dawning and he was an easy
victor. There was no trouble about his re-election in 1918. Upon assuming
the chair, he moved his residence from Fayetteville to Little Rock, the capital.
He also served a term as national j^resident of the Tau Kap])a .Alj-jha honorary
debating society, with offices in Indianapolis, Indiana, and from 1916 to 1018
was the president of the Southern .So'jiological Congress. He is a member of
the Beta '1 beta Pi of Johns Hojjkins; a Knight Templar; a Shriner; a Knight
of Pythias; a ^Voodman ; a \\'oodnian of the World; a Modern Woodman;
an Eagle; an Elk; a Pretorian ; a member of the Tribe of Ben Hur; and a
member of the Knights & Ladies of Se:urity. He is president of the United
.States Good Roads .Association for 1920-21. A'olunies ill, \ , \T1 and ATll
of the Mississippi Historical Association, and X'olume 1 of the .Arkansas
Historical .Association contain many of his historical writings. Since 1808
he has been one of the most entertaining ami instructi\'e Chautauqua lecturers.
He and Miss Annie W'ade Roark of Franklin, Kentucky, were married June
17, 1908. LTi)on comijleting bis service as governor, he took u]) a four-year
contract with the .Arkansas State Chamber of Commerce.

720

CILARI.b:S Ii. I'.R( iLGII

W. ^. Cobington

IlLLIAM THOMAS COVINGTON, planter, Belen, Missis
sippi, and one of the most useful men in Quitman County,
was born in Como, Mississippi, b'ebruary 12, 1861, the son of
William Jack and Lucinda (Daniel) Covington. His father
had moved from North Carolina to Mississippi and his mother
had come from A'^irginia, where she was a member of the
family to which the Honorable (ohii W . Daniel, U. S. .S., belonged. His father
rode with (ieiieral I'ln'resl, even to the l;isl stand al .Selma, Alabama, and
returning home from ( i.ainesville \yith his parole, moved in 1867 from Como l(j
Tallahatchie County, Mississipjii, hopelessly broken in health from the eft'ects
of the campaigns. The family grew up some four miles west of Enid, far
from prosperous. Mr. W. T. Covington worked in the field and, when the
crops did not recpiire his attention, in the forests as a tie maker. The broad-
axe and the sledge develojjed in him a breadth of shoulders, a depth of chest
and a powerful physi(|ue which have been able to withstand the hard work-
that he has put u|)on his constitution since that time .At the age of twenty-
three years, he went to work for the firm of Thompson & McLeod, general
merchants at f'2iiid. Mr. McLeod appreciated his abilily, crude although it was
at that time, and advanced the money that it could be made more efficient by
an education, which Mr. Covington took in Leddin's Business College in
Memphis the following year. Returning to Enid, he kejit the firm's books at
$12.50 per month, and at the end of the first year had to bis account $150
which he credited to the old account which his father owed the firm. In 1886
Mr. McLeod sent him to the Delta to manage a plantation which he owned
on Coldwater River, five miles below where Marks now is located. Within
three years he was chosen one of the five supervisors of Quitman County
and so sound was his judgment, so sterling his honesty and so capable his
administration of the affairs of the county that in 1891 he was chosen to fill
the consolidated office of clerk for both the Circuit and Chancery courts of
Quitman County. He held those offices for sixteen years, and Quitman Couiitv
considers herself fortunate to this day on account of the accuracy with whicb
ber records were kept for that long period. He served in the Legislature from
1911 to 1915, aiding in passing the Torreyson land-title act, the bank-guar
antee act and in repealing the old Tallahatchie drainage act. He was elected
to the State Senate in 1918, where he supported woman's suffrage, and secured
the passage of many local <lraiiiage, road and school laws. He owns a beautiful
l)lantation near Belen and is interested in many local enterprises. He is a
Mason, a Woodman of the World and an Elk. Mr. Covington and Miss lessie
Hayward of Coldwater. Mississippi, were married November 27, 1806. They
have lost one child and have four living: John N. ; William T., |r. ; ILnwanl,
and Jessie Stark Covington.

722

W. T. COXINGTON

72.^

Wl iW. Canale

)H1L1P M. CAN.M.E, lawyer, Memphis, 'Lennessee, was born
in that city, April 25, 1888, the son of Michael and Theresa
Canale He attended the public schools of Memphis, the
Christian Brothers' College, where he took a number of medals
for oratory and impronqjtu speaking, the Catholic University
of America, and A'anderbill University, ranking high in both
his studies and athletics in each university. .As a child he spent several months
in Italy with his i^arcnts. Mr. Canale wcnked three \ears for the .Standard
( )il Company, ihen studied law and began ihe ])r;icli('e of bis pidlession in
1010 in the office of Lehinaii, (iates iS: Lehman, itself one of the best of law-
schools. Later he practiced alone for a time and in 1918 he and Mr. J. E. Ihjiines
formed the firm of Holmes (& Canale, which from that date has ranked as one
of the strongest law firms in the Mid-.South. Mr. Canale was elected a mem
ber of the City Board of Education in 1912, being probably the youngest man
ever to have held that office. It was upon bis initiative that the ca]) and gown
was introducetl as the graduating costume in the city high school, ])utting rich
and poor on the same basis. It remained for biiu in later years to relieve a
very strained situation in the matter of salaries for teachers in the cit}' schools.
Every one agreed that the teachers should have more money. No one knew
how to secure it. The Memphis bar bail held for years that the school tax levy
authorized by the .State general assembly was a inaximuin. Mr. Canale, as
attorney for the committee on education of the Chamber of Commerce, secured
a ruling from the Supreme Court that the levies stated in the act are minima
provided that the aggregate of them does not exceed the niaxiniuni rate fixed
in the act and that one department is not robbed for another. This i)reyented
the recent impending strike of the teachers. Another of his important public
cases was when, as counsel for the ollice-bolders, he was instrumental in
having the Suijreme Court declare unconstitutional the fee act of 1917. He is
attorney for the rennessee Manufacturers' Association and for the Mein|)his
Retail Merchants Association. In the latter capacity be was |)rominent in
the settlement of the retail clerks strike, and his success in that affair was
so signal that when twenty-four hundred clerks struck in St. Louis he was
summoned there, and after three weeks effected a settlement between the
clerks and the merchants. He was active in the organization of the Liberty
Savings Bank and is its attorney. In the organization of the IMeinpbis Packing
Corjioration his firm introduced into the .South the plan of issuing stock of
non-par value. During the war he was a four-minute man on all the loan
campaign committees and secretary of the local council of National Defense.
Mr. Canale and Miss Martha Doyle were married September IS, 1912. Their
children are: Louise Therese, Ellen Elizabeth and I'hil M., |r.

724

i'. M. (ANA LI'.

.>^

f , ft, Jflippin

I AMES HARRISON FLIPPIN, merchant, banker, and busi
ness man, Covington, Tennessee, was born October 2, 1865,
in Fayette County, Tennessee, the oldest child of James
Armistead and Bettie Eloise (Dupree) bli])pin, who had been
married Ajiril 14, 1864. They were members of two of the
oldest and most respected families in Fayette County, the
father having been born in Williamson County, but a resident of Fayette
County for nearly seventy years since he was a small child, save for the four
years that he rode with Forrest ; and the mother having been born in that county.
Mr. b'lippin was educated in the jjublic school of his native county and later
took a commercial course. Being the oldest of five children, the responsibilities
of the family fell largely upon his shoulders upon the death of bis father.
.At twenty years of age be began his business career as a clerk in a store at
Somerville, Tennessee, and in three years had accumulated enough to go into
the mercantile business for himself at ( 'akiand. He ])rospere(l from the start
and in 1895 moved to COvington, Tennessee, where be opened a general store
and did a business which grew steadily from the start until 1912, when
on account of ill health, he retired for a time from active business. However,
two years of rest and travel throughout the United States restored his health
completely, and that being the case his energy required an outlet in the form
of active business again. In March, 1014, he organized the b'irst State Bank
of Covington, and has been the head of it from that time to this, now being
the chairman of the board of directors. .Aside from bis interest in the bank,
he has acquired large holdings of land which he farms on a large scale He is
also a large operat(jr in the matter of making loans, especially on farm laiuls.
Mr. Flippin \\'as married June 28, 1905, to Miss Elizabeth Bryant of A'irginia,
a most charming and cultured woman, and their home, under her guidance,
is both one of the most hospitable in Ti])ton County and the scene of fre(|nent
delightful social affairs. Mr. k'Uppin is a neiihew of two of the most dis
tinguished jurists in West Tennessee, as well as two of its most useful citizens;
Judge Thomas J. I*"li])])in and Judge John R. blijjijin, the former late of
.Somerville and the latter late of Memijbis. They were elected judges of the
Circuit courts of their respective districts on the same day. The Mem])hian
also served as mayor of his city, and then retired to private ])ractice and lived
lu a ripe old age respected by the entire coninuinity and loved by all who
knew him. The other brother remained on the bench of the district surround
ing Memphis for thirty-two years and by a wise administration of the law
tempered with mercy was able to instill into his constituents a respect for,
rather than fear of, the law in a section which knew no fear and during the
Civil War knew no civil law.

726

I. II. I''LII'I'IN

5. €. ftolmes;

(^OHN ELMORE HOLMES, lawyer, Memphis, Tennessee, like
W< so many other of the leading citizens of Memphis, is a native
J^AftD of Mississippi, but he was born so close to the line between
m/n Mississippi and Tennessee that be is almost a 'Lennessean.
His gr;mdfather, Mnley Holmes, was one of the early settlers
of this section, having bought a big tract of land on both
sides of the State line just Southwest of Cai>leville, Tennessee, in 1836.
Mr. J. E. Holmes was born on the family estate in DeSoto County, Mississippi,
-Ajjril 18, 1875, the son of Francis and Lizzie (Clarke) Holmes, bis father
having been born there and having spent a long, useful and boiKjrable lile
in the community. .After having attended the conniion schools at home,
Mr. Holmes went to the luka Normal School at luka, Mississippi, and then
to the University of Mississipi)i at O.xford, where in 1899 he took his degree
of b.achelor (jf law. He began the practice of law in Hernando, the county
seat of his native count)', in partnership with his brother, F. C. Holmes. The
linn enjoyed a large and lucrative practice until 1906, when Mr| Holmes was
chosen professor of law at the University of Alississippi. He loved his alma
mater and had a laudable ambition to be classed later in life with the truly
great men who ba<l filled chairs both in law and classics in that institution.
'Lo perfect himself in that line, he spent the two summers between his three
terms by taking post-graduate courses in the law school of the L-niversity of
Chicago. However, in 1910 he resigned and moved to Memphis where be
resumed the ])ractice of his jirofession, alone until November, 1918, when he
and Phil. M. Canale formed the firm of Holmes & Canale. i-'roni his advent
to the Memphis bar, Mr. Holmes has been recognized as one of its best
e(|uipped members in talent, teiii])erainent, education and integrity, and his
firm is one of the leading ones in the Mid-South. He has never sought political
olfice, although an active factor both in Mississij)|)i and 'l\-nnessee for the
best men and the best measures, ui course, along Democratic lines. In 1''16
he was induced to acce])t ap])ointnient as chairman of the t ounty Coinniission
\vhicli position he filled for two years. He secured the passage of an act by
which the county collects interest to the amount of some $LS,000 searL' on
its dejjosits and was instrumental in starting the first anti-nios(|uito campaign
in the county, lie is a director in the Chamber of Coinnierce, llie Y. M. C. .\.
and the Guaranty Bank & Trust Com])any ; a nieinlier of the Methodist tburch,
and b^la Chapter of the Sigma Chi l-'raternity. Jle is now serving as cbainnan
of the Education Committee of the Chamber of Coinnierce and has serveil on
])ractically all of the C'haniber of Coinnierce committees. Mr. Holmes and
Miss Eula (Jwens, a daughter of Captain .\. 'L. Owens of Oxford, Mississippi,
married June 28, 1899. They have two sons, Elmore and .Andrew Holmes.

728

HOLMliS

720

0, je. millougf)

jLlVER NEWTON KlLLOUCill, Wynne, Arkansas, lawyer,
planter, long active in the ijublic affairs of the entire State
and one of the most effective forces in the development of
the St. l-'rancis Levee System, was born al \Vbile Hall, in
Poinsett County, .Arkansas, b'ebruary 18, 1865, the son of
John W. and Mary I'Tiza (Rooks) Killough. He went to
the University of Mississippi at Oxford, from 1881 to 1885, taking the full
literary course. He took his law course at the University of Virginia from
1888 to 1890, being admitted to the practice of the profession of law in the
circuit courts of Arkansas, December 19, 1888. Upon the completion of
bis course in Virginia, he returned to Arkansas and began actively the practice
of his profession. Fie soon became recognized as one of the leading lawyers
of the eastern portion of the Slate, fn 1896 he was elected prosecuting attorney
for the Second Judicial district, which position be filled with distinction for
four years, going from Ibtit lo the ca])ital as representative of his district in
the lower house of the Legislature, b'rom 1903 to 1907 he was a member of
the Stale Senate His colleagues elected him president of that body whicb
carries with it in Arkansas the lieutenant governorship. .Again from 1907 to
1909, he represented his district in the lower house. He was a valuable member
of the legislature in both houses, but probably the most consijicuous service
rendered by him to his people and the State at large was in his connection with
the St. Francis Levee Board. He was president of that body from 1901 to 1905
and again from 1910 to 1914. During his first administration great progress
was made in the extension of the levee line and in strengthening it. It was
during his last term at the head of the organization that the terrible floods
of 1912 and 1913 came down. The levee then was far from being up to
standard height and strength and when the rainfall was recorded on the Ohio
River gauges all who were familiar with what those readings indicated with
reference to the St. Francis levee knew that the line could not hold the water
'which would come down. But Mr. Killough made a gallant fight and saved
the great bulk of the basin from overflow. Then came his great work —
re-ins|)iring the people with confidence in the levee system and a determina
tion to make them of the required size. Fie was president of the Mississippi
River Levee Association from 1912 to 1914, and has been vice-president of
the Rivers & Harbors Congress since 1910. His faith in the alluvial lands
and success in financitil affairs are shown by his owning ten thous.ind acres
of land in Cross and I'oinsett Counties. He and Miss likmche Malone were
married February 8, 1891. They and their two sons, Walter Newton and Oliver
Niel, live delightfully in his magnificent home, "Killone" on the [)oint of
Crowley's I'iidge al Wynne.

730

( ). K. KILL! )L(;il

¦,^I

fofjn B. ilartin

lOllN DONbLL.SON MARTIN, Memphis, Tennessee, recog
nized as one oi the ablest lawyers in the Mid-.Soiilb, is also
ecpially a leader in the business, political, athletic and club
life of the coninuinity. Mr. Martin was born here, May 4,
1883, the son of John Donelson and Mary Walker (Hull)
Martin. Mr. Martin's niother was a granddaughter of Justice
Alexander M. Clayton of the Mississip|)i .Supreme C(jurt. The Donelson and
]\lartin families are two of the oldest in Tennessee, ever conspicuous for their
leadersbi]), high attainments, virtues and gentility. The first John D. Martin,
a Memphis physician, a brigadier-general in the Confederate .\rniy, was killed
in action. The second of the name was long a leading lawyer and bighl)-
respected citizen of Memphis. The third, or present, John D. Martin, received
his early education in Mein])his, and going lo the University of N'irginia at
the age of seventeen years, was graduated in both the academic and law
courses in 1905. Returning al once to Memphis he had the good fortune and
good judgment to become associated with the Honorable Thomas B. 'Lurle\-,
then one of the leading lawyers of the United Stales and at the zenith of his
career — a rare op|K)rtunily of which Mr. Martin took full advantage for four
years. Then be became junior member of the law firm oi Lehman, (Jales &
Martin, and of the succeeding firm of (iales & Martin, which partnership
endured until January 1, 102(X when Mr. Martin engaged independently in
Ihe general |)ractice of law, with several assistants. He received ibe indmse-
inenl of the entire Slate superior judiciary, leading .Slate officials, .Stale Demo
cratic organization and the two senators for the vacancy on the local federal
bench in 1920, but the overwhelming Re])ublican landslide in the November
jiresidential election negatived what seemed his certainly of appoinlnienl.
]\fr. Martin is a member of the Tennessee Club, the Memphis Country Club
and the City Club. He was a member of the .Sigma .Al])ba b^ijsilon college
fraternity at the University of A''irginia, and formerly was a president of the
Chickasaw Guards Club. During the W\)rld W'ar he Avas a member of the dis
trict exemption board for the Western Division of 'Lennessee He is a member
of the board of directors of the Union & Planters Bank & Trust Company and
of ten other large Memphis comi)anies. He has been a member of the Demo
cratic Stale Executive Committee since 1916. Mr. Martin has always been a
keen lover of clem sports and for a niiinber of years w;is president of the
Memphis baseb.'ill club. At the beginning of the 1010 season be was unaiiiniou^l\'
chosen jiiesidi'iil of Ibe .Soulbern League and has been twice re-eleeled. Ib
is also vice-president of tile National liaseball /Xssociation. Mr. Martin and
Miss .Savilla Driver were married December 15, 1909. They have two children;
John Donelson Martin, Jr., and .Savilla Driver Martin.

732

|( )11\ D. M.XRTIN

M?

®r. J. p. iUcClrop

!AMb:S BASSETT McELROY, Memphis, Tennessee, recog
nized by the medical profession as being unsurjiasscd by any
physician south of the Ohio River in the scientific practice of
medicine, and as the ecjiial of any man in the United States
in that line, was born in Columbus, Mississippi, December 30,
1866, the son of James Willerford and Clemenza Tennessee
McElroy. He attended b'ranklin Academy al Columbus and went to the Uni
versity of Mississippi at Oxford, where be earned the degree of bachelor of
sciences in 1888. He returned home with a burning ambition {o be a doctor
but without the means to ])ursue that course, b'ranklin .Academy afforded him
an opportunity and he taught there for three terms, saving enough money to
go lo the College of Physicians & Surgeons in Baltimore, Maryland. He fin
ished the course there in 1893 and the following year moved lo Stovall, Missis
sippi, where he engaged in the practice of his profession. His possible clientele
in that little Delta town consisted of a very few people of the highest class and
many plantation negroes. His analytical mind soon deterniined that one of the
greatest losses of efficiency in the Delta was due to malaria. He began a
scientific study of that disease and finally in his little country office at Stovall
assembled a laboratory worthy of a large city. In the meanwhile he had taken
a post-graduate course at Johns Ho])kins, and in 1898 returned to Stovall,
pursuing his laboratory investigations, a])])lying science lo every case that be
had, studying constantly and siiecializing in malaria. He was the first man in
the profession to write on "Malarial (jangreiie." .At the end of three years in
Stovall, Doctor McElroy determined to enter the cosmopolitan field at Meni])liis,
look another post-graduate course at Johns Hopkins and moved here in 1904.
b'roni the day that he 0])ened his office here, Doctor McElroy was recognizetl
by the ])rofession as probably the best etjuipped and most scientific adililion
ever made to its ranks in the ])ractice of general medicine, and the ]iublic
quickly arrived at the same conclusion. For years he enjoyed a large and
successful general practice, but of recent years be has confined his attention
largely lo diagnosis and consultation, in which he covers the entire Mid-South.
The W. P. Pryor Publishing Company induced Doctor McElroy to write the
chapter on "Diseases of the Kidney" for Tice's "Practice of Medicine" Doctor
I\'IcElroy was the first occupant of the chair of jiatbology at the Memphis
Hospital Medical College, and later became professor of Medicine in ihe
Ihiiversity of Tennessee College of Medicine He is a member of the Metho
dist Church; Tennesse Club; Beta Theta Pi bralernity ; local and .American
Medical associations and. bellow of American College of Physicians. He and
Miss Halle Mai Kilpalrick were married November 2, 1896. 'Lheir only chiKl
is James Warric McElroy.

734

DR'. L I'.. lMel':LR()^¦

735

E. Jf . ila Croix

[OBb:RT I'LAUTT LA CROl.X, Memphis, Tennessee, one of the
most active men in the city and one of the most ])roniinent and
R(^\ successful coal operators in the .South, was born here Jan-
(Sv nary 15, 1875, the son of Jacob and Josephine (Wetter)
La Croix. He attended the iniblic schools of the city and
the Christian Brothers' College here. Then lo fit himself
more completely for a business career, he went to Nelson's Business College.
When he became twenty-one years of age, Mr. LaCroix began active life with
the Southern .Snuff Company. The latter part of the same year he was con
nected with J. I^. Fazzi & Company. In 1897 he worked for a time for
W''. C. Early & Conijjany jn the wholesale grocery business and then went with
the Benhaiu Furniture Company, where he remained until 1900. Then he
joined the forces of Bryan & Eberharl in the coal business, finding there the
line which was especially suited for his talents, and in which during the past
twenty years he has made such a signal success. During the si.x years that
he s])enl with that ])ioneer c<jal firm of this section of the country he became
known as one of the best men in that line in the community. Hence il was
but natural that when the Brown Coal Company, under the direction of
Mr. Robert L. Brown, was exi)aiiding its business, he should go with that
company. This was in 1906, very soon after the company began to buy and
o]ierale coal mines in Kentucky. l\1r. L.aCroix has remained wilb that coni-
])any ever since that time and now is its secretary and treasurer. .Since he has
been with the com])any be has been an active factor in its raj^id develo])ment
to the point where now it is one of the leading coal producing and distributing
concerns in the Mid-South. A few years after he joined the forces of the
company, it discontinued the retail coal business in Memphis to de\'ote its
activity to the production of coal from its mines in Kentucky. Now the com
pany owns four mines in the western field of the State, three locatetl on the lines
of the Illinois Central Rtiilroad and one on the Louisville & Nashville and il
is the fourth largest producer of coal in that ini])ortant field. Mr. LaCroi.x
is also secretary and treasurer of the Gibraltar Coal Mining Company and of
the Mercer Coal Company, both concerns allied with the jjarent Brown Coal
Coiii]iany. In addition to bis coal interests, Mr. LaCroix has a nuinber of
outside investments. He is vice-])resident of the firm of J. T. Hinton & Son,
]ncor])orated, leading undertakers of this section of the country, ;nid a director
in Ibe Liberty Savings l-iaiik & Trust Company. He is also a director in the
Rotary Club, and a niLiiiber of the Cob^iiial Country Club, .Xewin.an's .\lliletic
Club and the various Masonic bodies, being a .Shriner .-ind |)residein of .\l
Chymia chanters. Mr. LaCroi.x and Miss b.va A erka were married l'\'brnar\'
28, 1909, at Sardis, .Mississippi.

736

R. I'". L\ CR( U.N

ftugf) JB, ^^omlinsion

UGH DOUCil.ASS TOMl.lN.SON, Butler, ,\rkansas, mer
chant, planter, and bjng the able head of the .St. brancis
Levee System, was born in Dover, Stewart County, rennessee,
April 19, 1859, the son of Uriah Douglass and Mattie Tom-
linson. After having attended the common and high schools
of Tennessee and Kentucky, he came to Memphis, November
6, 1879, and entered the employ of the Lee Line Steamers as a clerk on steam
boats plying the Mississippi River. From the deck of the steamers he saw the
two great floods in the Mississippi River of 1882 and 1883 and from the refugees
on the steamers, heard of all of the destruction, but this did not deter him
from a realization of the ultimate value of the rich alluvial lands and in
Oct(jber, 1883, he quit the river and moved to ( )sceola, .\rkansas, to reside.
CJn May 31, 1883, he had married Miss Mollie Matthews, daughter of Captain
Dan Matthews, one of the first and most sturdy settlers of Mississippi County.
She owned some pro|)erty near Osceola, and on that Mr. Tonilinson began
planting and merchandising. They sold this a few years later and bought a
place ;it Bullor, to which Mr. Tomlinson has added greatly by Later purchases.
He has developed this until now it is one of the finest plantations in the
Mississippi basin with a colonial home containing every city convenience situated
just back of the levee. Mr. Tomlinson served six years as clerk of the Circuit
Court for Mississii)]5i County and was one of the most efficient officials that
the county ever had. When the late Captain Henry N. Pharr began the
organization of the St. Francis Levee System in 1892, be found in Mr. Tom
linson one of the strongest advocates of that system and a most valuable aid
in overcoming the o|)position in his section of the country to the scheme with
its conse(|uent expense He was appointed a nieinher of the board of directors
of the levee commission in 1905, ami two years later was chosen its secretary
in which capacity he served for four years. In 1915 he was elected president
of the board and has filled that position with signal benefit to the district ever
since that time, having been re-elected in 1920 by acclamation for a two-year
lerin. .Since 1905, except when be was serving as secretary or |)resident of
the board, he has been a member of the advisory board. Hence be has been
the leading factor not only in recouping from the disasters of 1912 and 1913,
but also in building the one hundred and sixty-one miles of levee to where
seventy-five per cent of the levee is up to the governnieiit specification and
li.ilf of the ban(|uclle work is complete. In the niallers of drainage and bani-
sui faced roads, especially the Scenic Highway, be has been alinosl e(|iiall\ .is
active as in levee work, while be showed the same spirit with the first railroad
in the county. Mr. and Mrs. 'Lomlinson have three children; Mrs. Beulali .\,
Ross, John B. and Hugh D., Jr.

738

h^v

N( )S\ril\iO,L "(I IIDilH

3. m, Malfeer

'.AMES M. \\'.ALKF.R, Memphis, Tennessee, owner of one of
the largest warehouses (jf its kind in the United States, being
fireproof throughout, has achieved at less than forty years of
age a degree of success whicb few men have reached in an
ordinary lifetime, and yet has found time to be of great
service to bis coinnninity and to the nation. He was born
111 Ijrownsville, Tennessee, ('ctober 8, 1881, the son of John K. and Myra 1'^
(M;inn) Walker. He attended ibe public srhools of ll.aywood County, but al
the age of fourleen years began as oHice boy and later a salesnuui for the
Hotchkiss & Lyle Company in Brownsville. He remained with that firm for
two years and then went to Pine Bluff, Arkansas, completing his education
under Professor Junius Jordan. Later he moved to Memi^bis, and in 1906
be devoted his energies to activities here and in Pine Bluff. Then be went to
Mangum, Oklahoma, where he si)ent si.x jears in the wholesale and retail
furniture business, returning to Memphis in the latter part of 1912. Lie organ
ized the O. K. Storage & Transfer Company with the slogan, "The world
moves and so do we." He jjut into the business a degree of energy and efii
ciency which made it live up to this motto. In January, 1916, he incorjjorated
the firm under the original name, and from that date until now he has been its
president, treasurer tind general manager. Lnit the tremendous energy tb;U
be has |)Ut into this business has not eonsuined nearly all of tb;il wiiicb be
jiossessed, ;ind for years be has been active in all of the movcnienls for the
u])-building of the coinmiinity. He is one of ibe most tictive stewards in
.St. lohn's Melbodisi Church; one ol ihe most vigorous nicinbi-is ol the ( b.iiii-
ber of Commerce, having been electetl to the highest elective ollice in that body,
that of president; is a Scottish liite Mason of the thirty-second degree;
has also taken the Shrine degrees, being a member of Al Chymia Temple;
has joined the Knights of Pythias; is a member of the Elks Club, the Colonial
Country Club and the Rotary Club, and is one of the most useful members
of the Tri-.State bair Directory. He is also president of the Universal i\loioi
Car Company, the Citizens' Loan & 'Lrust Company, and of the Mablezone
Chemical Manufacturing Coiii|)any ; vice-president of the Liberty .Savings Bank
iv Trust ('(inipaii)', and Ibe Industrial li.aiik \' Trnsl Company; and diireloi" in
the Standard Rug & .Shade Company, and the Lee b'urniture iMannfacturing
Company, all of Memphis; and ])resident of the O. K. Storage & 'Lranster
Company of New C'rieans. He was a heavy investor tiiid active worker in
the Liberty L(jan ;uid War .Savings .Staiii]) drives, and one of the organizers
and first officers in the Mem|)his and Shelby County .Anti-Tuberculo.sis Society,
and is active in that work. ]\lr. Walker and Miss Mittie \\ Knox were married
in Pine Bluff, November 10, 1904. Their children are ]oUu K. and |ap.ies
Richard Walker.

740

I. M. walki':r

741

(George ^. OTebb

: EORGE TILMAN WEBB, cotton factor, banker and capital
ist, Memphis, Tennessee, was born in a section of the country
that was not wealthy and at a period when his locality was far
from prosperous, but be had a vision of greater things than
his then surroundings and an ambition coupled with boundless
energy and good hard sense. The son of John C. and Edna C.
Webb, he was born near Middleton in Hardeman County, Tennessee, April 6,
1860. He attended school near his home for the two or three luonths of each
year that the school was open and that he could get the time from work on
the farm, and after he was twenty years old, attended the school at Rock Hill,
near Middleton, for a year and a half. Lie then traveled for six years for a
medicine concern, and by the end of that time had saved up enough money to
open a store at Rogers Springs, a few miles west of his home He jirospered
there, but at the end of three years realized that he needed a broader field
for his activities. Hence, in 1892, he moved diagonally across the county to the
little town of Whiteville. The soil was far better and the newly constructed
railroad afforded an outlet. He was one of the main factors in the rapid
development of that city and the surrounding country, until now Whiteville is
one of the best and most attractive cities in West 'Lennessee In 1000 he sold
bis mercantile business there and organized and managed the Whiteville .Savings
l-iank & Trust Com])any. In 1905 he moved to Memphis as cashier oi the then
forming Bankers Lrust Company. Ihe f<jllowing year he resigned that ])osi-
tion and organized the cotton factoring firm of Geo. T. \\'ebb & Company,
which is still his princi[)al business and which ranks as one of the leading
factoring firms of Memphis. He is also president of the Whiteville Savings
Bank, the Bank of Middleton, the Cordova Bank & Trust Company at Cordova,
Tennessee, a member of the mercantile firm of Webb & Ellis at Eads, len
nessee, and the mercantile firm of Webb & Deen at Reverie, Tennessee. He is
also interested in the Webb & Anderson Ciin at Eads, the b'armers Gin at
Moscow, Tennessee, and the Rossville Gin at Rossville, Tennessee. Mr. Webb
also operates and owns a farm of 1,200 acres of land in Crittenden C'ounty,
-Arkansas, and 2,000 acres on Island No. 35, in Tipton County, Tennessee, as
well as owning smaller tracts in Tennessee, Mississippi and .Alabama. Mr. Webb
has never sought office, but while he was in Whiteville, he served as chair
man of the board of trustees for the Western Hospital for the Insane at
Bolivar. Mr. Webb has been married three times; first to Miss l"~l(n-a Babcock
in 1889, later to Miss Jennie Lou Rhea in 1001, and last lo Miss Leiina V. Gee,
superintendent of schools, Hardeman County. His children are; Guv, Karl,
Gerald, Iris and CJeorge B., the issue of bis marriage lo Miss Babcock, and
.Abe Rhea and A^irginia, the issue of his marriage lo IMiss Rhea.

742

(,\:< iK'Gi'; I', w i':i;i',

743

iH. I. Poulbin

;ARSILALL J. BOULDIN, leader in llie commercial, linanci.al,
Myy; banking, planting, ])olitical, social and club life of Clarksdale,
^i) Mississippi, had no opportunities thrust upon him, but showed
{^/ that he possessed within himself the elusive element of success
by grasping every one that came within reach. Born Decem
ber 21, 1862, in DeSoto County, iMississippi, the son of
Ephraim and Mrs. Katie Jones Bouldin, his scholastic education was confined
lo the free schools of his native county. .'\t seventeen years of age be was
agent and telegraph operator for the old Mississippi & Tennessee Railroad,
now the main line of the Illinois Central Railroad south from Memphis. Fle
was the first agent for the railroad at Tunica, Mississippi, and in 1886 became
agent for the road at Clarksdale, Mississippi. LI is ability was not lo l)C con
fined to any such narrow limit, and soon he went into the general insurance
business. In 1896 he was elected to the most important county office in
Coahoma County, clerk and master of the Chancery Court, in which capacity
he served for two terms, passing in 1904 to the almost e<|ually important
office of sheriff and ta.x collector, which [losition be occu])ied for four )'ears,
making a most efficient public servant in both offices. .At the end of bis
shrievalty, he found the small wholesale grocery firm of Broaddus & Ferris
at a standstill from lack of funds, its original capital of $10,000 having been
consumed. He ]hiI his abilily and mone) into this business, and it began lo
develop from that day. Having enjoyed two of the most lucrative offices in
the county, he was willing lo serve his jjeople, where there was work to be
done but comparatively no pay. Lie put in two terms as nieniber of the
city council and mayor. At all times exce]3l during the dry seasons, the streets
of Clarksdale were legal highways, but not streets, on a'.:couiu of the nuul.
He put down the first pavement. Insurance rales were almost prohibitive and
fire loss tremendous from lack of a fire department. He organized and installed
ibe first one Meanwhile the groL'ery firm continued to grow. He had taught
the neighboring planters that they C(nild get their supplies there cheaiier and
(juicker than they could from Mem])bis commission nierclianls. Many look
stock with biin, and in 1909 the name was changed from F>ri)ad(lus & berris
Company lo the Delta Grocery & Cotton Company, now with ti capital stock
of $500,000, and a yearly business of a million and a half dollars, handling
25,000 bales of cotton. Mr. Bouldin is a nieniber of the Preslnleri.an Church,
a Mason, a rein|)lar, a Shriner, an l'-ll<, ;i Rotarian, and a member of the
C b.ainber of Coiiiineice, having sei vi'il as gi.md eb.incellor of llu' Knights of
Pythias for one year. On July 15, 1890, Mr. ISouldiii and Miss Helen .Alcom
Avere married. They have four children, Mrs. L. .A. Gilliam, Mrs. F. C. Marley,
\\'. M. Bolls and Marshall J. liouldin, Jr.

744

M. I. I'.' ILI.DLN

745

Br. OT. C $ribe

ILLI.VM THOMAS PRIDE, Memphis, Tennessee, doctor of
medicine and one of the leading sjiccialists in the Mid-South
in gynecology ;iiid obslelrics, is a iialive of Norllierii Alabama.
He comes from that hardy jjioneer stock which settled in
io^K^T^YTjr^rT^vXMi'.iC ^^^ valley of the Tennessee River in the early days and
\^W\2Sl^)'^») became such conspicuous factors in the development of the
high civilization there and were etpially i)roininent in the growth of the country
to the west and south of them. Doctor Pride was born in Huntsville, Octo
ber 28, 1881, the son of J. W'illsey and Katherine (Mason) Pride. After having
attended the i)ublic schools at home, including the Madison County High School,
from which he was graduated al the age of sixteen years, he entered the .South
Kentucky College al Ho])kinsville, Kentucky, a military institution, from which
he received in 1901 the degrees of bachelor and master of arts. He then
decided upon the practice of medicine for his life work and went to Phila
delphia, Pennsylvania, for his education. In 1902 he entered the University
of Pennsylvania, where he earned his degree of doctor of medicine with such
class honors in 1906, based upon bis class standing for the first three years
that he became a member of the honorary Greek letter fraternity — .Alpha
Omega Alj)ha. His standing in bis classes stood him in good stead again, for,
upon receiving his degree, he was ajipointed an interne in the University llos]iital,
,iiid became its chief resident surgeon. He remained llu'ie Iwo yi:iis, .ind on
October 6, 1908, selected Memijhis as the scene for bis future success. In
Memphis he has specialized in gynecology and obstetrics, that important branch
of the science of medicine which for so long failed to keep pace with the
change in conditions under which women lived, but which in recent years has
done so much to make the next generation of mankind healthier and stronger
and so much toward reducing mortality among babies. Doctor Pride forged
rapidly lo the front and is justly regarded as one of the leading men in that
line in the Mid-South. Doctor Pride's broad humanity reaches far beyond
the practice of his specialty. '1 be ravages of the white |ilague were apparent
to all. He was willing to put his time and money in the eradication of the
disease. He has long been a member of the Shelby County .Anti-Tuberculosis
.Society, and since 1917 he has been its vice-president. He is a member of the
Anieri"an Medical Society; Southern Medical Association; 'Lennessee Slate
Medical Association; Memphis and .Shelby County Medical Society; Clinical
Congress of .Surgeons, and 'Lri-Stale Medical Association. He is on the staff's
of the (ieiieral, IkqUist, .St. Jose|)b and Luc)' Brinkley lios|)ilals, and .associate
professor of obstetrics at the Lhiiversity of 'Lennessee Lie and Miss Marguerite
Warner were married October 29, 1915.

746

DR. \Y. T. PRIDE

Br. ft. p. Cberett

)(JCTOR HIRAM BAILEY EVERETT, leading physician and
surgeon and for a number of years the most progressive
citizen of Binghainlon when il was a sejiarate municipality
and also since it has become a portion of the City of Mem
phis, Tennessee, was born in Newton County, Mississippi,
October 15, 1883, the son of b-lansum (jreen and L'rances
(Tatuni) b^verelt. He attended the public schools of Hickory, Mississippi, and
the (ieor,t^ia Robinson Christian .School in Henderson, Tennessee, under Profes
sors b'reed and McDougall. Youn^- I'Aeretl then decided that be would make
the profession of medicine his life work and be came to Memphis and entered
the old Memphis Hospital Medical College, which for years had a faculty
surpassed by few institnlions in that line in the Uiiiled .Slates and wliieli is ibe
alma mater of so many of the great iloctors and surgeons of the entire .South
today. Lie received bis degree of doctor of medicine from that institution
in 1906 and was graduated at so high a rank in his class that he was given an
inlerneship in St. Joseph's Hospital. In the year that be spent in that noble
institution be gained such valuable experience that when the following year
he went to Binghanitoii and began the practice of his profession, bis ei|uii)-
inent was iiuniediately recognized and il was but a short lime until he bad
drawn lo himself a wonderful clientele His development both from a profes
sional and iilso from a financial point of view has been steady, and even rapid
from the time that he became known to the peojile among whom be bad
located. Binghainlon was ncjt then so attractive as il is now. There was not
a concrete sidewalk nor was there a brick building in the community. .Sanitar)'
conditions were at as low an ebb in the tide as were civic affairs. Lrue to the
high ideals of his profession be went to work to eliminate the cause of the
condition from which came his income. Soon he was made health officer of
the town. Typhoid fever aiul other minor jireveiitable diseases were current
every favorable season. His vigor and efficiency led the inoveiiuMit for their
reduction to' a minimum. .So also was he a leader in civic develo|)nients.
'Lwice was he named on commissions to spend money raised from bond issues
for ])ublic improvements. Concrete walks followed. He erected in 1''13 bis
first brick business bouse in the town, added two others in 1917, and another
in 1920, and indications are that soon he will move his residence off Main
Street and build a third. In the World War he was chairman of the exemption
board which had accepted one thousand and one men to the army with the
lowest per capita expense of any board in Shelby County. He is a member
of the Colonial Country Club, and the .American and practically all of the
lesser medical societies. Doctor Everett and Miss Evelyn Thompson of Neshoba,
Tennessee, were married January 28, 1912.

748

DR. II. r.. I'A'ERFTT

"4''

M. H. Peare

I OBERT LEE BEy\RE, manufacturer, ca])ilalist and leading
business man, Jackson, 'Lennessee, is a native of Mississippi,
R(^\ having been born December 2, 1864, at Aberdeen, the son of
(Sv David Seig and Sarah ('Laylor) Beare. He received his
education in the public schools, but al the age of fifteen \ears
began bis career as messenger boy in the telegraph office at
iXberdeen. By the following year he had mastered the code and had been given
a key in the telegraph office. He followed telegraphy for some years, spending
a year at b'ort Morgan, Alabama, as displaynian in the United States .Army
Signal Service and telegraph operator. Then he went to West Point, Mississippi,
becoming manager of the telegraph office there, where he spent three years
until he was jn-omoted to manager of the office in Aberdeen. During that
time he invested in the ice manufacturing business at Humboldt, Tennessee,
and five years later resigned his position with the telegraph company at .Aber
deen and moved lo Llumboldt, devoting all of his time to the ice business.
He spent ten years in that line at Humboldt, during which time he expanded
the business and enlarged the plant until it was one of the best in West Ten
nessee. Mr. Beare had prospered with the business until he sought a wider
field. In 1905 he sold his entire holdings al Humboldt and moved to Jackson,
since which time he has taken a very active part in every niovenienl for the
upbuilding of that city and Madison County. Under the firm name of the
Beare Brothers Ice & Coal Company, he established a large plant there II was
a success from the start, although the brothers who had been associated with
him in the enterprise died soon after it was begun. In 1912 be built an addi
tional plant and took the contract for icing the refrigerator cars of the Mobile li-
Ohio Railroad. Three years later he purchased the large plant and business of
the Consumers Ice Company and with the consequent economy in operation
and delivery, he reduced the price of ice in Jackson and since that lime has
steadily kept the price down. Mr. Beare was a heavy stockholder in and ]n-esi-
deiit of the ( )'M;illey-Beare Valve Coin])any of C'bicago, but in LJIO, sold his
interest in the company and resigned the presidency. Ha served for a lime
as president of the Jackson Association of Commerce; is vice-president of the
Southern Interior Traffic Association ; member of the board of governors of
the 'Lennessee Manufacturers' Association; charter member of the Jackson
Country Club and Rotary Club; director in the Birmingham Northwestern
Railway; Mercantile Union Trust Company and Second National Bank, and
president of the Beare Ice & Coal Company; was active for years in the militia
and belongs to the principal clubs in Jackson. He and Miss Mary Reiiiey were
married October 4, 1905. Their children are Mary 1 lorlense and Robert Lee
Beare, Jr.

750

1^7

'.¦IMX'-'I'.I "I 'M

OT. C. Cftanbler

ILLIAM CULLEN CHANDLER, who probably has built more
Wy^ houses in Memphis, Tenessee, on his own land than any other
JaM man, and who is distincti)' a man of action rather than words,
\^ is a native of Tennessee, having been born in Madison County,
September 20, 1884, the son of William (ireen and Ella (Ruff)
Chandler. He was number six in a faniil}' of nine children.
He attended the public schools at Jackson, Tennessee, through the fifth grade,
then ]Hit in three years in night schools al Jackson, working by day, and later
was graduated from the commercial de])artmenl of the Southwestern Bajdist
Lhiiversity at Jackson. He and a brother were engaged in the decorating
business in Bessemer, .Alabama, for six years until 1910, when be sold out
and went to 'Lexas. He was in business there for a short lime and then became
a salesman throughout the central and southwest for several eastern firms
dealing in art goods. During the latter i)arl of the lime that he was in the
West, his headquarters were in Denver, Colorado, and it was from there that
he removed lo Memphis in 1912. He attended the Meiiii)bis Law School fin-
two years and after having received his diploma, he successfully look the exain-
ination of the Tennessee Board of Law l'lx;unineis .and in 1015 was adiintletl
to the practice of that profession. Llowever, instead of pursuing the law
for a livelihood, Mr. Chandler look up the line of dealing in real estate
and building and selling houses. There were a few homes in the city then
of the bungalow type, but to him probably more than to anyone else is due
the credit for the |)resent po])ularity of that form of construction. He adopted
"Bilt Rile" as his slogan, and the houses which he constructed were not
only built right, but they contained such a touch of the artistic that they were
very attractive to Ibe inlendeil |inrcbasers. Mr. C handler erected bis lirsl
"Bill Rite" bungalow at No. 1125 Central Avenue in 1913, and soon e.xpanded
his line until he would acquire a large tract of land, deveh^p it, erect "Hilt
Rite" bungalows on il and sell tbein. lie Ijiiilt twent)'-lwo of these on bOriest
.Avenue, east of Bellevue Boulevard. He ac<]uired the Cuniniings property
north of McLemore .Avenue, developed the Azalia Subdivision, built tbirty-two
"ISill Rite" bungalows on it and sold them all. in all he has erected on his own
land some one hundred and fifty houses in Meni])liis and thus added half a
inillion or more dollars lo the taxable value of the city. Mr. Chandler now is
ihe bead of the real estate linn of Chandler & Walden, which be says is " ) list
'I loine-I'dlks' wilb offices in the (ioodwyn Institute Building." He is a member
of the Chamber of Commerce, the City Club and the Lhiitarian Church.
Mr. Chandler was married .September 20, 1005, lo Miss .Aetna Kastner, daugh
ter of Charles Kastner of Milan, 'Lennessee Their children are; Cb.arles,
Howard, 'Loin Ruff, and Juanita.

'52

w. c. chani)LI':r

753

(§. OT. Culberfjousie

;E0RGE WASHINGTON CULBERHOUSE, merchant,
planter, cattle raiser and leading citizen of Jonesboro, Arkansas,
is a native of Tennessee, like so many other of the earlier
citizens of the eastern section of the Stale. He was born in
Bedford County, Tennessee, January 5, 1852, the son of Moses
and Parthina (Roberts) Culberhouse. His father was an exten
sive planter and stock raiser in Middle Tennessee, where be moved in 1834 from
North Carolina. Thomas Culberhouse, father of Moses Culberhouse, was a
native of Berkshire, bjigland. The Culberbotises remained in Tennessee (jnly
eighteen years, when they moved to Arkansas, settling in what then was Greene
County in October, 1852, seven years before the Legislature of the State created
his section into Craighead County, and there the father and mother reared a large
and useful family. Moses Culberhouse died there in 1872, but his widow lived
with her son, George XV., lo a rij)e old age and lo enjoy the distinction which ber
children had received. Times were not i)rosperous in that part of (ireeiie County
in the early fifties and Mr. Culberhouse spent most of bis young years in the field
with bis father and elder brother. 'Lhomas D. Culberhouse. Mr. Culberhouse,
between the crops, managed to get in an aggregate of fifteen nionlhs at schools in
the neighborhood, until be was twenty years of age when he moved to Jonesboro
and began clerking in a drygoods store He remained there for four years and
then be became interested with his brother, Thomas D. in the merchandise
business. This association continued for ten years and al the exi)iration of that
time Mr. George XX'. Culberhouse became the sole owner of il. In 1918 he
organized the Jonesboro Supply Company of whicb he is the president. In 1919
he organized the Jonesboro Grocery Company, in which he is a director and of
the $100,000 capital slock of which he is a large holder. In 1920 he organized
the .Arkansas Brick & Lumber Company, wilb a capital of $100,000 of which he
is a large owner and in which he also is a director. He is also a director and
slockholder in the Jonesboro Insurance .Agency, organized in 1919; an<l also in
the O. K. Motor Sales Coin])any, organized in 1920 with a c;i])ital slock of
$50,000. In addition lo these business holdings, Mr. Culberhouse owns a planta
tion of one thousand acres in Craighead County where he raises cotton for the
main crop, and also of a farm of half a section where he specializes in Llereford
cattle. In his early mercantile career, Mr. Culberhouse freighted his merchandise
from Mem]jhis, and he helped cut the right of way for the first railroad in the
county, and aided greatly in the Ihiilding oi what now is the Lrisco through
Craighead County. He and Miss Ola Dondinau were married November 24, 1874.
'Lhey have no child of their own, but have adopted three or|)hans ; Flossie Belle
Llughes, Nannie Pounds and Mattie Campbell.

754

G. W, CULR.FRIIOUSF

'55

OT. 1. Cox

I ILLIAM ARTHUR C(L\, banker, lawyer and planter, Marks,
W^^ Mississijjpi, one of the i)ioiieer business men and develoi)ers of
ml Quitman County, conies of ])ioneer stock. He is the son of
^^ Cjeorge M. and .Amanda C. C'o.x. His father, (Jeorge M. Co-x,
migrated when only a small boy from his ancestral home in
South Carolina into Georgia, and after a few years there, moved
on further west into what now is 'Lallabatchie County, Alississii)pi, then so sjiarsely
settled that his home in the northern part of the county was several miles from
the nearest neighlior. Mr. C'o.x was born near b'liid, Tallahatchie County, Jan
uary 10, 1877, and atlemU'd the coninion and high school Ibeie. l'"ioni Iweiily
to lwent3--two years of age he attended the University of Mississip])i, and was
given the degree of bachelor of laws in 180'). The same year he sought the wider
opportunities v\liicli the Delta offered t(j an ambitious young lawyer than those
afforded in the hills and settled in Belen, llien ib.e county seal of Quilinan C'oiinly.
He succeeded in llu' practice of his profession Iroiii llie beginning, bnl, .alter six
ve'ii's ol that, be deciileil lo (k vole ibe most ol bis t'liergy lo llie liiKincial world .and
lo business rather ihan the law. Hence, in 1005, he moved from Belen to River
side where Marks now is, accepting the position of cashier of the Riverside l:>ank.
I be lollowing year the T(jwn of Marks was ollieially established, and on account
of its superior transportation facilities was made the county seat. He served
during 1906 as the first mayor of the 'Lown of Marks, and from that date to
this, he has been one of the active figures in the rapid development along all good
lines not only of Marks, but also of all Quitman County. He remained as
cashier of the Riverside Bank until 1911, when its success under his direction bad
become so apparent and its efficiency as a factor in the growth of the coininunity
bad become so conspicuous that he was elected its president. He has been
re-elected every year since that time and now his bank is considered one of the
most substantial of any in the Delta in a similar comnuinity. Mr. C'o.x has added
,1 general insurance agency to his business and also has hastened the ilevelo|)inent
of the cut-over lands by making a connection tbr<nigh which farm lands are used
as a security for loans. .As Mr. Cox prospered financially, he began lo invest
his surplus in Delta lands, first in Quitman County, and then in Poinsett County,
.'Xrkansas. His holdings aggregate some two thousand acres of which twelve
hninlred acres now are in cultivation. Mr. C'o.x is a member of the Baptist
Church, of the Clarksdale Lodge of Elks and of the Knights of Pythias. Mr. C'o.x
and Miss Myrtle Ellison, daughter of Mr. L. II. Ellison of Memi)his, were
married here in 1906. Their children are William .Arthur, Jr., |anie C, |. Elli
son, b'ern D., Lelia May, Leon II. , and Zula D.

756

W. A. COX

7y

#. OT. Jf aigon

;F.0RGE XVASHINGTON b'AISON, inerchani, j.lanter, b;inker
and pioneer in the manufticture of colhjii seed oil in the Missis-
sipiii Delta, has been a leading ligure in the transformation of
that wonderful country into the high state of production of
today. Mr. Faison is a native of the Delta, an old inhabitant,
although young in years, and for nearly half a century has
had his shoulder to the wheel, scotching in the lean years and boosting whenever
there was a chance for even a slight upward motion. Mr. Laison was born in
Issacjuena County, b'ebruary 23, 1861, the son of George XVashington and Ellen
Rebecca (Fields) F"aison. He attended private school near Benton, Mississijjpi,
went to school at AX^inona, and completed his education at XX'asbington and Lee
University, Lexington, Virginia. At the age of nineteen years, he returned to
Faisonia, his father's home. His father was in business there and Mr. b'aison
worked for him for five years. In 1885 be opened a store for himself at .Shaw.
Three years later he formed a partnership with his father under the name of
G. XV. f'aison & Son. The firm conducted four stores, one each al Shaw,
Indianola, Faisonia and Steiner. Although the country then was very wild and
most of it covered with limber, the firm did a business of more than half a inillioii
dollars a year, Mr. Liaison having active and jjersonal charge of the stores al
Shaw and Steiner. He was a charter member of the Bank of .Shaw and built
the Shaw Cotton Oil VX'orks. He was one of the active originators of the Indianola
Cotton Oil Mill, and for a lime was interested in the Hollandale Cotton Oil Mill.
He was also interested in the Planters Bank at Clarksdale and was a director in
that institution. Soon after he and his father went into business together in the
chain of stores, Mr. Faison began buying the rich Delta lands, then cheap, and
cultivating them in cotton. He has been a life-long member of the city council
of Shaw — not during his entire life, but during the life of Shaw — except for one
term when the city was deprived of his services on account of bis absence. Lie
still is a member of that body. In the city government he has always been active
for the improvement of the community. He was a leader in the plan for giving
the city waterworks and probably no one factor, except the levees, has done
more for the growth of the Delta than the substitution of artesian for the
shallow pump water. He also pushed forward the electric light plant for the
city. Mr. Liaison was a representative from Sunflower County in 1882 at the
New C'ricans W.ilerw;iys Convention. He and Miss Willie Cbanibeil.ain Dejar-
nette were married bY-bruary 28, 1893. Their children are (Jeorge Wasbigton, [r.,
and John Dejarnette b'aison ; both of them second lieutenants in the A. E. b". —
George XV. in the Fourth Division with the Army of Occupation of (jermany, and
John D. in the Seventh Division.

7.58

ii. X\'. b'AISON

7,S0

il. C. (^toinn

;,\1X1BI':RT l':STi':S (,\\'INN, Covington, Tennessee, lawyer,
one of the leading figures in the Democratic ]Kilitics of the
Stale, former educator and newspaper editor, is a native of
Tij)lon County, where he has spent his entire life. He was
born in the interior lown of Burlison, February 13, 1884, the
son of J. L. J. and Kiser D. Gwinn, and recei\'ed his early
education at the grade and high schools of his native county. At the age of
si.xteen years he began his career as a school teacher and during the next seven
years made an enviable reputation for himself as one of the leading if the
youngest educator in the county. During his next two years he was associate
editor of one of the county newspapers. In that capacity he was as successful
as be had been in the school room. Mr. Gwinn had from his childhood days
taken an active interest in all public aff"airs and bis natural bent in that direction
was strengthened during the time that he was a journalist. XX'hile he was
leaching school and also while he was editing the i)aper, Mr. Gwinn employed
bis spare time in the study of the law, and having been admitted lo the practice
at the Covington bar, he severed bis connection with the paper in 1909, since
which time he has devoted bis main energies to the practice of that profession.
He has steadily risen to wdiere he has for a nuinber of years been one of the
leading members of that bar. Few cases of importance appear in the courts there
in which he is not engaged on one side or the other. .Among his clients is the
Illinois Central Railroad, of which be is local attorney, b'or six )'ears follow
ing 1911 he again served the cause of education in his county as suijerintendent
of public instruction, where he did much to place the grade and high schools
on a higher basis. Lie was elected by an overwhelniiiig majority by tbe democ
racy of .Shelby and 'Lipton counties in 1918 as the joint senator from that dis
trict in tbe (ieneral .'Xsseinbly oi the State, where he served two years, fathering
much good legislation for the .State at large and for his district, which was the
most important in the .Stale. In the meanlinie he also was a member of the
Slate Democratic ILxecutive Comniiltec from 1890 to 1900. He was sii])ervisor
of the census for the Tenth Congressional District in 1920, and also was an
elector for tbe State at large in the national presidential cani]iaign of that year.
Mr. Gwinn has been as successful in financial circles as he has been in tbe law
and ill ]iolitics. He is president of the Planters Bank of .'Xtoka, 'Lennessee, and
a member of the board of directors of tbe Union Savings Bank of Covington.
He is also a director in the Covington l>iisiness League, and a member of the
Christian Church. Mr. Ciwinn and Miss XX'illie Agnes Ciwinn were married
.Ajjril 18, 1911. Their children are; Margaret D. ; L. E., Jr., and XX'illie .Agnes
Gwinn.

760

L. F. CAVINN

/(i

H. iW. JIall

|OUIS MAURICE HALL, Memphis, Tennessee, one of the
largest and most extensive merchandise brokers in the Mid-
South, owner of valuable real estate and active in all move
ments for the upbuilding of the community in which he lives,
is a native of Vicksburg, Mississippi, where he was born
September 6, 1866, the son of Ej)hraim Louis and Catherine
(McCabe) Hall. Lie received his education in the college of the Sacred Heart
Brothers in Vicksburg and at the age of fifteen years went to St. Louis, Mis
souri, where for four yetiis be was bookkeeper and cashier for tbe Blackmer tV
Post Sewer Pipe Company. 'Llien he spent two years in the service of the
United States Government in connection with the lighthouse service and at the
end of that time came to Memphis. His first connection here was with Seessel
&' .Ashner, where he was bookkeejier and cashier for eight years. Then he went
with M. E. Carter & Companv in tbe same line of work, where he remained
for three years. 'Lben he and Mr. Daniel (Jrtice formed a partnership in the
produce business, with which he had become thoroughly familiar through his
previous connections. At the end of a year Mr. Hall became the sole owner of
the business and conducted it for three years, when his health failed and be
left Memphis for a year in which he thoroughly recuperated. Returning, he
was connected with the Patterson Transfer Company and the allied Galloway
Co.al Company for a year in charge of the books of the companies. Then with
a ca|)ital of $93 on the debil instead of ibc credit side of tbe ledger, be went
into the line in which he has achieved such marketl success, nierchandise bro
kerage. Tbe business grew steadily from the start and has continued lo do so
until now it is second lo none in the Mid-South. In 1902 Mr. Hall added real
estate and investments to his line of business and in that also has succeeded to
where he owns more than one hundred pieces of valuable property in Memphis.
He is a stockholder in the Central-State National Bank, the Security Bank &
Trust Company, Union & Planters Bank & Trust Company, tbe Liberty Bank &
Trust Company and the Peoples Savings Bank & Trust Company. He is a
member of the Sacred Heart parish, was secretary of its board of wardens for
the years 1907, 1908 and 1909 ; was grand knight of the Knights of Columbus
for 1918 and 1919, now is district deputy for the State of Tennessee, and is
secretary of the welfare board. He was active in the organization of the Sub-
Mu-Loc Club and has been its president from the beginning. During the XX'orld
War, Mr. Hall was general chairman of the Knights of Columbus committee
which sold Liberty bonds to the amount of $801,000 in one day. He also was
active in all of the campaigns for war loans. Red Cross aiul Jewish Relief.
Mr. Hall and Miss Florence E. Miller were married October 21, 1891.

762

M. HALL

76.?

H. $. fanes;

ipONARD PALMER JANES, Memphis, Tennessee, as bead of
the Memphis Furniture Manufacturing Company, is one of
leading manufacturers and business men of the entire .South.
In the short space of thirteen years he has risen, by sheer merit
on his own part, from the position of city salesman for the
company to its executive head. Mr. Janes' family was one of
the earliest to settle in Henry County, lennessee Ite was horn in Paris, .April
23, 1873, the son of Mrs. Mary Ellen (Palmer) Janes and the late XVilliam Mar
shall Janes. Mr. XV. M. Janes had also been born in the same county, at Osage;
had received his literary ;uid legal education at Yale University; had been one
of the leading lawyers in Henry County al the time that its bar ranked second
to none in the Stale; had been a leader in the political life of his county when
Henry had more influence per capita than probably any other county in Tennes
see, and had represented his county in both houses of the Tennessee General
Assembly, when the loss of his hearing necessitated his abandonment of the law-
after only twenty years of practice of that profession. Mr. L. P. Janes was
educated in the grade and high schools of his native city, having finished the
course in the latter at fourteen years of age. From the Paris High School
Mr. Janes went to the University of Tennessee at Kno.xville, where he finished
in 1889 at only sixteen years of age. In 1892 the family moved to Paducah,
Kentucky, where Mr. Janes went into the furniture business. He remained in
that line in Paducah for fifteen years, and then in 1907 came to Memphis and
joined the forces of the Memphis Furniture Manufacturing Company in August
as city salesman. Mr. R. G. Morrow had established that business fifteen years
previously and in Mr. Janes he quickly recognized a valuable addition to tbe com
pany's personnel. Mr. Janes brought to the furniture company's organization
a thorough knowledge of furniture, indomitable energy, sterling integrity, abso
lute honesty, rare business acumen and a delightful personality. A natural
salesman, it was but a detail for him to master the manufacturer's end of that
|)rofession. He soon mastered the other lines of the business and his promo
tion was rai)id. He rose step by step until be became the vice-president and gen
eral manager of the company. For the past several years he has been a tremen
dous factor in the rapid growth of the Memphis bAirnilure Manufacturing Com
pany, recognized as one of the largest and most successful concerns of its class in
the country. Hence it was but natural that when Mr. Morrow died, Mr. Janes,
in July, 1920, should be elected to succeed him as president of the company.
Mr. Janes and Miss Edna Katie Grace were married October 5, 1895. They
have one child, f.eonard Palmer Janes, Junior, now a student at the L'niversiiy of
Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee.

764

L. P. |ANI':S

765

OTalb C. foneg

)ALK CLARIDGE JONES, architect, Memphis, Tennessee, is
native of Memphis, where he was born October 21, 1874, the
son of Jasper Newton and Mary Jane Jones. He attended
the city schools and upon the completion of his course in them
he entered the office of M. H. Baldwin as a draftsman.
Later he worked in the same capacity for Major C. C. Burke
and still later for H. J. Hain. Having had eight years practical experience
and study along the line that he had chosen for his life work, Mr. Jones began
the practice of his profession and from tbe start has succeeded, until now he is
recognized as one of the leaders in that in the Mid-South. He is the senior
member of the firm of Jones & Furbringer. For many years he has been the
architect for the City Board of Education, and in that capacity be has designed
the recent buildings of the board, not only so as to be economical of construc
tion, but also to be beautiful to behold, containing the best safeguards for the
protection of the lives and health of the pupils and the most approved arrange
ment for the modern systems of teaching, in fact, the published report of the
recent survey of the Memphis school system by Dr. Bunker of the United
States Bureau of Education contains the highest tribute to the Rozell School as
a model of arrangement no matter what might be the system to be used in the
building. Mr. Jones designed and had charge of the construction of the North
Memphis Savings Bank building on Main Street and Adams Avenue, one of
the most artistic of the smaller skyscrapers in the city. He also had charge of
the erection of the Rex Club building on Dunlap Street and Madison Avenue
and the massive Masonic Temple. 'Lhe Christian Science Church, fronting on
Forrest Park, is also his design. Llowever, the most beautiful building that he
has erected and the most classic in the city is the Jewish Synagogue, on Poplar
Avenue and Montgomery Street, which follows closely the lines of the St.
Sophia Mosque in Constantinople. Lie now has charge of the plans for the new
Colonial Country Club and the Ridgeway Club; the Stratton Station, the big
warehouse to take care of the Stratton grocery, hardware and Piggly-Wiggly
interests here. He also has charge of the building which the Siiiiiiions Hardware
Company of St. I^ouis plans to erect on Tennessee Street in which to house its
Memphis branch. But his biggest present design is for the system of buildings
to compose the Oakville Sanitorium for tubercular patients which he has designed
to be the most complete of any in the country for that esjiecial purpose Mr.
Jones is a member of the American fnsliUite of Architects, of the Colonial
Country Club, of the Rotary Club, of the Chamber of Commerce and of the
Memphis City Planning Commission. He and Miss Sojihy XVinkelman were
married March 7, 1900. Their children are Henry XVinkelman and Walk G.
Jones, Junior.

766

W.XI.K C. J0NI':S

7(u

OT. OT. Johnson

I ILLIAM XVOODY JOHNSON, Memphis, Tennessee, one of
the leading manufacturers of ice in the Mid-South, is strictly
a self-made man, in that he has made his own way in the
world from the time that he was fourteen years of age and that
he has forged his way to the bead of a chain of useful, success
ful and growing enterprises. He was born in Burleson County,
Texas, November 20, 1866, the son of Isaiah XX'oody and Sarah (Phears) John
son. Flis paternal grandfather was the Reverend Thomas E. Johnson, who moved
from southern (ieorgia to Brenhain, Texas, in 1845, the year when the Lone .Star
of the Republic of Texas joined the constellation of the United Slates. Mr. John
son's mother was a sister of Thomas Phears, official surveyor of XX'ashinglon
County, Texas. Mr. Johnson received lillie education except in the wide school of
experience. Fle went lo school for a short time in Austin and in Kansas, where his
father lived for a time, and learned some grammar and matheinatics under I'ro-
fessor XX'allace at Austin. .At the age of fourteen be was a farm hand and at
sixteen a sheep rancher, and at eighteen he was an employe of the .Austin .Street
Railway Company, working an average of seventeen hours per day at $1.35. But
out of this small wage he saved money. .A year later be began his career as an ice
man in the capacity of driver of an ice wagon for the Lone Star Ice Coinpaii)
of .Austin, Texas. Lie followed this vocation for ten years in Austin, .San
.Antonio and Cor])us Christi. By that time he had become inoculated with the
political germ and was elected alderman in San .Antonio. Later he was city
clerk, chief clerk to the district clerk and city tax collector. This political lite
looked at the beginning like a good job. It was easier than tbe work on the ice
wagon and the pay was more, but al the end of si.x years in public office he had
lo borrow enough money to get out of San .Antonio. In the meanwhile Mr. Jobn-
son had studied law and been admitted to the bar, but had never practiced. He
came to Memphis in 1903 and su])erinten(led the erection of the Tennessee Ice
Company's plant on Linden Avenue and look the nianagenienl al $100 jier month
and a share of the profits. The daily capacity at the beginning was ninety tons
of ice. Now it is one hundred and seventy-five tons. Ten years later be built
the Valley Ice plant on Alston Avenue. In 1911 the Linden Nalalorium was
added lo the Tennessee plant, and in the same year be built the Delta Ice
Company's ])lant ;il X'icksburg, Mississippi, now one of the best e(|uip])ed plants
in the .State In 1917, he organized the Ouachita Ice & bAiel Company of Mon
roe, Louisiana. He is vice-iiresideiit of the Mem])liis concerns, |)resident of
the others, and general manager of all of them. He and Miss Carrie X'oss of
Austin were married in 1890. They have five children and live al Macon Road
and Highland Avenue in one of the nicest country homes around Memphis.

768

X\'. w. loiixsox

7(f)

f . ^. f enfeing

AMES TALMAGb: J1':NK1NS, Clarksdale, Mississippi, who
claims the distinction of having the most remarkable record
ever made by any man in the South in the line of writing life
insurance, is one of tbe livest wires in the live city of Clarks
dale. He is a native of tbe Mississippi Delta and has spent
his entire life within a short distance of the place of his birth.
Mr. Jenkins was born in Lyon, Mississii)pi, July 18, 1883, tbe son of Napoleon
Bonaparte and Nance Joe Anna Jenkins. His home was on the edge of what
is now the splendid city of Clarksdale and it was there thai he received his
early education in the grammar and high schools, b'rom there he went to Mis-
sissipjii College where he finished his education. Returning to the Delta, be
went into business in the mercantile line in 1905 in Clarksdale. However, in
1908, he closed that business out and went lo work in a store in the same city.
He continued there until January 1, 1914, when be found the line in whicb he
has made such a signal success. 1 1 was on that dale that he secured the agency
in Clarksdale for the b^anklin Life Insurance Company of .Springfield, Illinois.
Both he and tbe company realized in a short time ib.al each oi ihein bad made
a valuable find — be, a line which offered full opportunity for his talents, and
the company, a man who could and would do things on a big scale. XX'itbin less
than a year after his first connection with the company, he was made agent for
the entire State of Mississippi. His personal popularity was such that in 1916
Coahoma County elected him as her tax assessors and he filled that trying posi
tion for the full term of four years with credit to himself and impartiality to
the taxpayers. Mr. Jenkins is the proud possessor of five silver cups, trophies
won by his success in writing life insurance. During the three consecutive years
of 1916, 1917 and 1918, be won the .Stale challenge cup, open to competition
from every State in tbe Union, and with the third consecutive winning, the cup
became bis private property. CJ)ii a thirty-days' challenge contest he won the
cup over the Stale of Alabama in 1919. During the years 1918 and 1919 be
held the record over all agents of the company in the United States for the
largest amount of business written. His fifth trophy is the great President's
Cup, and that Mr. Jenkins brought to the Delta of Mississippi by writing for
the company $100,000 of business during five specified days in the year 1919.
He is a member of the Rotary Club of Clarksdale; is a Shriner of XX'ababi Tein-
|)le of Jackson, Mississippi; of Ibc Clarksdale Country Club, and of tbe Baptist
Church, and has ever been one of the most active figures in the [)roniolion of all
inovcmenls for the u|)buil(ling of C kirksdale and Coahoma Count) . Mr. Jenkins
and Miss Effie Turney were married November 15, 1904. Their children and
J. T. Jenkins, Junior, and Anona X^aught Jenkins.

770

J. T. JENKINS

iWorris; Hebiis;

Lg ORRIS LliXX'lS, Lexington, Mississippi, merchant and banker,
MJSJ the most active, progressive and successful man in that por-
/§|6) tion of the State, was born July 29, 1873, in Poland. He is
^) the son of Jacob and Emma t^ewis. He came to New York
at thirteen years of age and worked for four years as oltice boy
for a wholesale eslablishnient there, receiving his education
in night school during that time. At the age of seventeen years, he went to
Sidon, Mississippi, as clerk at $25.00 i^er month. In 1895, when tbe people of
Lexington had hardly recovered from the ])anic of 1893, he ])icked that city
out as the best business site in which to locate and went there with $500.00
which he bad saved, and with his friend, Mr. Sam Hernnan, bought a small
slock of goods and began merchandising for himself. 'Lben began tbe develop
ment of a genius for business probably not excelled in the Stale. Mr. Lewis'
vision went beyond the mere selling of goods lo those who hajipened to come to
Lexington to sell collon. He went after more cotton and hence more customers.
The city then was getting only five thousand bales of cotton yearly. He made
connections with leading collon firms of this country and Euro])e by which he
was able to pay tbe ma.xinuiin price for cotton and it was not long before Lex
ington was recognized as one of the best markets in the .Slate, and cotton
receipts grew to over 20,000 bales. In t|uick succession be organized a coin-
]iress, a cotton-oil mill and an ice factory, which ]nit new life into the city. In
1900 his original business had grown to where he incorporated it as the Lewis-
Herrnian Company. Lie led in the organization of the electric light plant and
the building of the waterworks and sewer systems for the city, negotiated for
the sale of the bonds and taking himself what investors were not eager to get.
In 1905 he organized the Merchants & Farmers Bank & Trust Company with a
capital of $100,000 whicb under bis presidency has grown to an institution with
$200,000 capital and surplus and $2,000,000 deposits. In 1912 he established
the Llerrman Grocery Com))any, in 1914 merged with the Barrett (jrocery Com
pany into the Ciwin-l.ewis (jrocery Company. In 1915 he organized tbe LeI'lore
(irocery Company of Greenwood, Mississippi, doing an annual business of
$4,000,000. He is one of the organizers and directors of the Guaranty Bank &
'Lrust Company of Memphis, 'Lennessee, and president of the Bank of XW'st
Mississip])i. Mr. f.ewis took a very active ])arl for tbe government in all work
during the XX'orld War. Mr. Lewis was married Jann.ary 18, 1809, to Miss
Julia Hernnan, grand-daughter of the late Jacob Sontbeiiner, ])ioneer planter
and merchant of Holmes County. They have three children: a daughter. Miss
b'ay Emily, and two sons, Morris, Jr., and Celian llerrman. His beautiful home,
Fayinorcele, named for his three children, is one of the show places of Mississippi.

772

MORRIS LbAX'IS

//.J

Br. 5. H. JHci^eftee, f r.
[OHN LUCIUS McGEHEE, JUNIOR, Memphis, Tennessee,
one of the leading surgeons of the Mid-.South, was born in
Panola County, Mississippi, J;mtiary 2, 1879, the son of John
Lucius McCJehee, .Senior, and Ada Knight (Ihirtridge) Mctje-
hee. After having finished the schools of Panola County, he
attended the Memphis Military Institute from 1893 lo 1895.
Then he went to Millsaps College, Jackson, Mississipi)i, wdiere he was given the
degree of bachelor of arts in 1898. Lieturning to Memphis he entered the College
of Medicine of the University of Tennessee and in 1901 was graduated with the
degree of doctor of medicine, his rating in his class earning for him an internship
in St. Joseph's Hospital. He was there in 1901 and 1902, when he went to Chicago
and during the latter part of 1902 and in 1903 took laboratory work under Doc
tor XX^ A. Evans, formerly of Mississippi and for years one of the leading
pathologists of the world. In January, 1904, he returned to Memphis and began
tbe practice of his profession. The old Memphis Hospital Medical College
recognized at once his ability in his profession and during the years 1904 to 1906
he was assistant demonstrator of histology. For the next two years, he was
assistant in materia medica in the same institution, and for the ne.xt three years
he was assistant in gynecology. In 1913 the heads of the College of Medicine
of the University of Tennessee chose Dr. McGehee to fill their chair of 0|)erative
surgery and he remained there until 1917, when on the first of September he
joined the medical corps of the United Slates Army, entering the Medical Offi
cers' Training Corps at Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia. He remained there until
November 8, when he went to Fort McPherson, near Atlanta, where he remained
until the following Christmas, when he received his sailing orders and upon his
arrival in France was assigned to French Hospital Number Forty-five, at X'^ichi,
where his success in maxillo-facial surgery was so conspicuous that he was
placed in charge of that important work in American Base Hospital No. 15, at
Chaumont, General Pershing's headquarters, known as Roosevelt Hospital, in
which service he remained as long as was necessary after the signing of the
armistice. He gave his country one month less than two years of bis time,
having been in France seventeen months. Returning to Memphis he resumed
his position with the college as associate professor of surgery. He is visiting
surgeon to St. Joseph's, the Baptist Memorial and the Memphis General hospitals
and chairman of the medical board of the latter. Flis fellows in 1920 elected
him president of the Memphis & Shelby County Medical Society. Dr. McCJehee
and Miss Louise Berry of Henderson, Kentucky, were married October 7, 1908.
Their children are: Lila Hodge and Louise Berry. He was elected a fellow of
tbe American College of Surgeons (F. A. C. S.) in 1914.

774

ezz

'Ml' ".'IjIIL.'IDMV

'Md

Jlerbert itloore

lERBERT MOORE, Memphis, Tennessee, real pioneer of the
cold storage business in tbe Mid-South, was born in Newcas
tle, Indiana, April 16, 1871, the son of Cornelius .M. and
Elizabeth (Shook) Moore. He got bis education in the
grammar and high schools of Newcastle and at the age of
seventeen went to work. After following various mercantile
pursuits he decided in 1897 to go into business. He chose the grocery line and
was so successful that he soon became ambitious to get into a wider field. He
bad heard glowing accounts of the section of which Memijhis is the center and in
1898 moved here, associating himself with tbe great grocery firm of Oliver-
b^innie Company. Llere he found an abundant outlet for his energy and ambi
tion while his associates soon recognized his industry, integrity and natural
adaptability. The result was that he soon became a slockholder in the company,
going into the buying department wdiere his ability and almost insatiable desire
for work soon made him one of the real powers of tbe concern. In fact it was
not long before be became known as Mr. Oliver's right hand man. That was
a high compliment, for Mr. Oliver was known not only as a great business man
but one who had unusual ability in choosing men. During their )'ears of close
association in business Mr. Oliver and Mr. Moore agreed that one of the serious
needs of Memphis and the wonderful country surrounding it was an adequate
cold storage warehouse. For year after year they had seen butter, eggs, meat
and other farm protlucts sliipjied to St. Louis and Louisville and put into cold
stor.age only to be sbi])ped back lo Meni])bis for final distribution throughout
ibis territory. As keen business men they considered this waste ol money a.iid
labor deplorable and they were not men to complain of conditions without offer
ing a remedy. The result was tbe erection of the present ])lant of the Meiii|ibis
Cold Storage XX'arebouse Company with a capacity of one million cubic feet,
making il ])ossible to store at one time 700 carloads of ])roduce Mr. t 'liver
was president of this conii)any while Mr. Moore was secretary and general man
ager. From the start the success of the company fully verified the faith its
founders had in it. XX'hile Mr. Moore has bad absolute charge of this great and
growing business he has found time for other business ventures in which he
has invariably been successful. Al one time be owned a large farm in Missis-
si])pi and ];racliced some of his theories for diversified farming. He is a great
lover of animals and bis office is adorned with pictures of horses and dogs anti
re])roductions of great animal paintings. Mr. Moore tilways has taken a keen
interest in the work of the Memphis Chamber of Commerce ami has given bis
time liberally in many of the campaigns of this organization.

776

hI':ri'.I''.r r xk >• )RI'".

///

Jfranfe il. jHonteberbe

RANK LAXVRENCE MONTEVERDE, successful business
man, former mayor of Memiibis, Tennessee, and poet, was
born in Memi)his, January 4, 1868, the son of Antonio and
Mary Latura Monleverde He received his education at tbe
Christian Brothers College in this city and at the age of fifteen
years went to work for H. XVetter Manufacturing Company,
where he spent the early years of his life, as a bookkeeper from 1883 to 1890,
then being ijromoted lo credit man, in which ])osition he remained until 1898.
In 1894 he was elected one of the niembers of the lower bouse of tbe State
General Assembly and served with distinction during the 1895-97 term. In
fact he achieved his first great local distinction during that lime because of his
refusal lo be bound to the wheels of the local political machine which was trying
to pass some measures obnoxious to the mass of the people. He opposed them
with much vigor. Upon the completion of his legislative term he resigned his
connection with the XX^etter Manufacturing Company and was chosen chief
deputy sheriff for Shelby County. He held this position from 1898 to 1906,
when he was elected sheriff and so satisfactory was his administration of that
office that be was twice re-elected, serving until I9I2. During the three terms
that he was sheriff, he was efficient for the maintenance of law and order in the
community. Soon after his first election as sheriff, Mr. Monleverde and Mr.
XX'illiam .A. McDowell formed tbe firm of McDowell & Monleverde, funeral
directors, which from that day to this has been one of the most efficient and
reliable firms in its line in tbe city. In 1918 Mr. Monleverde consented lo
re-enter politics when be accepted the election as finance commissioner of the
city of Memphis in April. He served creditably in that position until August
of the same year, wdien, a vacancy having occurred in the mayoralty, he was
elected by the people lo fill it. Thus be had the distinction of being the first
native born Memphian to become its mayor. Two of tbe most conspicuous acts
of his administration were the vigorous co-operation of the city in the cam
paign for the eradication of malaria from the Memphis territory, and the defeat
before the General Assembly of tbe State under his leadership of the City Man
ager charter bill, even though it was backed by the great majority of the local
delegation. Mr. Monleverde is a member and past i)resideiit of the local lodges
of the Elks, Italian Society, Beavers, Owls, Moose and Knights of Columbus,
and is State president of the last named order. fJuring his entire life Mv. Monle
verde has been a voracious reader of good literature, especially verse, and his
scholarly attainments are shown in his many ]joems which are published from
time to time in the press and magazines, as well as in bis public addresses. He
and Miss Madaline Ciusniani were married .Xpril 23, 1891. E. XX'esley Monle
verde is their only child.

778

F K .A N K L. M O N 'L EX' L R I ) E

770

C. H. ilprick

S(^DW1N KICLLY MYRICK, (ireenwood, Mississippi, largest
Ewj automobile dealer in the State and interested in many enter-
m/Q prises there, has made bis own way from a very inauspicious
W/) beginning to a commanding position in a few years. He was
born in Bolton, Mississippi, March 6, 1878, the son of Edwin
Kelly and Daisy (Knapp) Myrick. The family moved t(j
Greenville, Mississippi, when he was quite young. He attended Tillollson's
school there, later taking a business college course in Memphis. .At sixte<'n
)ears ot age, be began his career as clerk in a hardware store in (ireenville
.After fifteen months there, he went to Parkin, .Arkansas, where be soon went
into business on bis own account, buying a commissary. .After a lime he sold
this and returned to Meniiibis where be opened a foundr)'. 'Lben be moved to
XX'ilson, .Arkansas, serving there as cashier and bookkeei)er for Lee Wilson &
Com])any. .Again he returned lo Memphis and on this occasion was office man
in the old Business Men's Club, now the Chamber of Commerce. Going back
to the Mississippi Delta, he re-entered business for himself at P)erclair, first
running a general store and to this adding contracts with the .Southern Railway
for supplying it with cross ties. He ex]:)ande(l lo tbe cotton business and bought
cplton both at Berclair .and Itta Rjena. /\l Ihe end of five years with IJercl.air a^
his base of operations, he had saved up a little money and in 1910 fcjresaw in tiie
Lord automobile a wonderful business opportunity. He secured the ageiic)- for
Montgomery County and opened business in XX inoiia, Mississippi, with three
cars and $300 cash cai)ilal left after having paid for the cars, llowever, inone\-
was but a small part of the real capital which he put into the business. It was a
mere supplement lo bis industry, energy, integrity and faith in himself and ills
business. In ten years he has pushed it to where it is the largest bord business
in the State, with bead(|uarters in Greenwood since 1913, and branches al Itta
Bena, Indianola, Ruleville, Winona and liolling b'ork. He has a contract with
the b'ord Motor Company for between seven and I'igbl hundred cars |ier ;iiinuin.
and the garage which he has for his headquarters in (ireenwood, built in 102ri,
IS one of the finest in the State for any car. It is of brick, hollow tile and
reinforced concrete construction. In addition lo his b'ord business, ]\Ir. M)rick
is a director in the Cjreenwood Bank & 'Lrust Company, Lawrence Printing
Company, Pellz Packing Company, Chamber of Commerce and I\otar\- Club,
;ill of (jreenwood; a director in the Louisiana-Mississippi .Xutomotix'e Trade
.Association, and a stockholder in the CrulLW billington Dry (iooils Compam'. Ik-
is a member of tbe Episcopal Church and the I'2lks. Mr. Myrick and iXIiss .Annie
Lewis Gentry of I'rankfort, Kentucky were ni.arried Noxeniber 20, l'ii7. The\
have one child, Annie Lewis Myrick.

780

b:. K. MX'RKK

Br. OTilliam P. J5a£ii)

ilLLIAM BREHON NASH, Stanton, Tennessee, physician, sur-
Wy^ geon and land owner, is descended from two of the oldest and
Jajij most refined families in XX^est 'Lennessee. He was born in
[5^ Stanton, July 6, 1891, the son of XVilliam Benjamin and Nan
nie B. (Somervell) Nash. His grandfather, Llenry Morton
Nash, moved to tbe Stanton neighborhood many years ago
from .Arkansas and was one of the active and influential men in the tlevelop-
iiieiit of that vicinity. His f;ilher was a splendid type of m;nilioo(l mentally,
inin'ally ;uid jiliysically. The inlluence of bis life was for those tilings which
were highest as a Christian and a citizen. His mother's father, Jo B. Somervell,
was of the family by that name whicb was prominent in Scotland and England ;
stood out conspicuously in the colonial and early statehood days of A'irginia for
its refinement, culture and vigor, and wdiose members were pioneers in Haywood
and bayette counties, 'Lennessee, where all of them have lived up lo the tradi
tions of the family. /Xfter having rinished the courses al the Stanton j)ublic
sclujols. Doctor Nash went lo the Webb .School al Ijcllbuckle, Tennessee, and
then to Vanderbilt University in Nashville with a view of taking both the literary
and medical courses, but al the end of the first term his father died and the kul
was compelled to return home to look after the estate. After a year he returned
lo Vanderbilt, but again at the end of the term he was compelled to return to
Stanton for tbe same reason as ])reviously. However, by 1911, he was able to
return lo A^anderbill and remain there until 1915 when he was graduated. Ke
entered tbe practice of his profession of medicine at once in Stanton and success
attended his efforts from the beginning. LI is practice grew steadil)- until the
spring of 1918. His country then called for his profession in the XX'orld XX'ar.
He enlisted, spent two weeks at Camp Greenlief and then was rushed to the
other side, although other doctors had been there for months hoping for a
chance lo go lo tbe scene of action. He was attached as a first lieutenant
to the Sixteenth Ro)'al Horse Artillery of the British Army, a cavalry coniniand
converted lo light artillery and having the dangerous assignment of alwa)s being
in the front of every advance breaking up nests of machine guns. He served
with the Australians in the horrible days about .St. Quentin, and was with the
English until the armistice, twice having his horse shot from under biin and
once gassed, but although remaining constantly with tbe front line fighting men
be was never wounded. Lie was promoted to captain for bravery on the field
of battle y\t the conclusion of the war he returned to ,Slant(jii and resumed his
])ractice Now he lives on the old home place, where bis grandfather li\ed.
Doctor Nash and Miss Mary Nolen XX'illianis of Stanton were marrieil May 15,
1918. He is a member of the Kappa Alpha and Phi Chi college fraternities.

782

DR. WILLLXM P.. NASH

783

!lnbreb) 0ut}tn

INDRIAV OUTZbIN, retired, b'.arl, .Arkansas, was bom J.innary
6, 1860, the son of Jorgen Chrislien and Louise (hersen)
Oulzen, in North Schleswig, a Cierman ])rovince from 1864
until the ratification of the treaty of X''ersailles, but pre\iouslv
Danish and in heart always Danish, as shown b)- the leceiil
referendum in which it overwhelmingly voted to return lo its
original nationality. Mr. Outzen's ancestors were all Danish. Mr. ( iutzeii
received his early education in the public schools al home, but at the age of
sixteen years decided to seek a wider field for his o])erations than be could see
in Denmark. He arrived alone in the United States in June 1876, and went
first to St. Charles, Missouri, where he had a relative, but the following year
he went lo 'Lexas, and there entered the fine wdiich became his life work and in
which he achieved such signal success. Tjie .Atchison, Topeka &: .Santa Fe Rail-
ro.ad was building to tbe Southwest and he engaged in constructing it. He si>ent
three years in that line of work in 'Lexas and then moved lo iXrkansas, where
in 1882 ;nul 1883 he was engaged in the construction of the St. Louis-South
western Railroad between Pine Bluff and Camden, .Arkansas. On the comple
tion of that contract, he moved to Memphis, which was his home for more than
a quarter of a century, although most of his time was s])e!it in the big camps
where he was working. He came here just as the Louisville, New Orleans &
lexas Railroad (now the Yazoo & Mississippi X'alley Railroad) was being con
structed through the Mississippi Delta, and as Major Dabney was doing Ins
heavy earth work in erecting the U])per Y^azoo levees. For years be was one of
tbe largest, most efficient and honest contractors on those big works. He
remained in that line of work out of Memphis until 1910, when be bought tbe
plantation of ludge .Andy Martin on Black Oak Ridge, some eight miles north
of Earl, unsurpassed in any of the Mississip])i River deltas for the (|uality and
lay of the land. Lhe only objection to il was the one that lay against all delta
lands at that time unless lhey weri' siliialed with .'i de])ol al lhe gin. Il w,is tbe
boiiible slate of Ibe roads that caused Mr. ( Inlzeii lo move lo I'l.arl, bis sons
and their associates now owning the plantalion. He thought that be had retired,
but his wide experience as a contractor and his sterling honesty made him the
kjgical man for the big system of roads mapped out for that section of Critten
den County and be accepted the ])residency of Road District No. 6 and under
bis able direclion more and bi'ller gr.avi'l roads have been conslrnded dining
L'L' and 1020 about I'^arl than |)rob,ably anywberi' elst' in tbe lowlands. He
also is president of the I'^arl Water & Light Company. Mr. Oulzen ,iiid Miss
.Annie Sophie Johnson were married in Mein]ibis .April 8, 1885. Tbex ba\e two
sons, Robert ('. ( 'utzen and George L. ('iitzen.

784

.XXDRI'-.W 0UTZI':N

785

^. il. pepper

IRCHIBALD MclXJXVELL PEPPER, lawyer, planter and
banker, Lexington, Mississiiipi, \yas born in that city April 23,
1870, son of Captain Daniel Gilbert and Mary Emily ( .Stans-
bury) Pepper. His education was in keei)ing wilb the tradi
tions of his family. After the public schools he was prejjared
for college at XX'ebb School, Bellbuckle, Tennessee, thence to
Princeton University and thence lo the summer law school of the University of
A^irginia, entered University of Mississippi, where he received his degree of
bachelor of laws in June, 1895. During the four years, 1890 to 1894, that
Mr. Pepper was earning bis degree of bachelor of arts at Princeton, he had the
privilege of personal class instruction in political science and jurisprudence
under President XVoodrow XX'ilson, who was then professor of political science
in that institution. During his senior year, Mr. Pepper was president of the
Southern Society at Princeton, and in that connection as well as in class work
he and Professor XX''ilson formed a friendship which still exists between them.
At Princeton Mr. Pepper was a member of the University Collage Club, a social
organization, and of the American XX''hig Society, a literary society. Lie also
took an active part in the athletics of the university. XX'hile at the University of
Mississippi, he was a nieniber of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity. In the
fall of 1895 Mr. Pepper and E. F. Noel formed at Lexington the law firm of
Noel & Pepper. Mr. Pepper managed his partner's campaign for governor in
1907, and when Governor Noel assumed the chair of office in January, 1908, the
firm was dissolved and Mr. Pepper and bis father-in-law, Judge J. B. Boolhe
of Sardis, Mississippi, formed the firm of Boolhe & Pepper at Lexington. XX'hen
Cjovernor Noel's four-year term expired, he returned lo Lexington and tbe firm
became Noel, Boolhe & Pepper, which il remained until 1915, when Cjovernor
Noel again retired and the firm again became Boolhe di Pep])er. It is local
counsel for Illinois Central and Yazoo & Mississippi Valley railroads and for a
number of banks in Holmes County, and also enjoys a large general practice.
He is a member of the Episcopal Church, and is chancellor for the Episcopal
Diocese of Mississippi. He is a member of the Society of the Sons of the
American Revolution. During the World XX^ar he was government appeal agent
for his local draft board and active in all patriotic work. He is the father of
the Holmes County good roads inovemenl and .system. Mr. Pepper has never
sought nor held office, though often urged to do so. He has been tendered ;ind
refused Ibe a|)poinliiienls of both the Cintiil ,iiid ( b.iiKery Coiiil judgeships of
his district. Mr. Pepper and Lillian Bocjthe of Sardis were married .April 14,
1897. Mrs. Pepper is a graduate from the University of Mississippi, a member
of the Societies of Colonial Dames and Daughters of .American Revolution.
Their only children, two sons, are both dead.

786

iS'i

>l'.'bl, L-'bl iV '\

C. C. ^igforb

LARENCE E. ITGFORD, lawyer, banker and publisher, Jack
son, 'Lennessee, was born in Lauderdale County, Mississippi, of
Scotch-Irish ancestry, November 11, 1873, Lie is the son of
James Farrar and IVIarlha ( Delk ) Pigford, both of his grand
fathers having been planters in Mississippi. He attended the
public schools at home until be was fifteen years of age and
then moved with his father's family to Jackson. There he attended Union L'ni
versiiy from 1888 lo 1893, when be was graduated wilb tbe first honors of his
class, cai)turing the Strickland medal for (u-ator) . b'rom early life be was ambi
tious lo be a lawyer, but the size of the famil)- and the stale of its lintinces were
such that he declined to accept any assistance from his father in getting his legal
education. Instead be went lo work keeping books for a lumber company and
by September, 1895, had saved enough with which lo enter the law departnient
of Cumberland University al Lebanon, 'Lennessee, where under the late Nathan
Green and Doctor .A. B. Martin, be completed the course with the degree of
bachelor of laws in 1896. He returned at once to Jackson and began prticticing
law, in whicb profession he has risen steadily until he nov\' is recognized as one of
tbe leading lawyers of the Stale. Soon after leaving law school he served several
terms as city attorney and as such compiled its code of laws, the first codification
for fifteen years. His work has been an authority ever since its publication.
.Save for a partnership from 1903 to 1907 with Mr. lolin P. Malloi')-. surviving
nieniber of the firm of Carutbers & Mallory, Mr. Pigford has jiracticed tilone.
XX'hile sitting as special judge on the Court of Ci\'il .Appeals, he handed down a
very iin|)orlanl decision in the case of Cjeorge R. James vs. Railroad holding
that equipment of a non-resident railroad passing thrfuigh the State in inter-
stale commerce is not subject to atlachnienl. One of his most notable recent
cases was as counsel for J. X\'. XX'rigbl of .Alabama against lhe Biriningbani ^:
Northwestern Railroad, which Mr. XX'rigbl, as contractor, had built from Jack
son to Dyersburg. The Tennessee Chancery and Supreme Courts held thai
Wright could not maintain bis suit because he bad not paid the non-resident con
tractor's ])rivilege tax, but the Lhiiled Slates Supreme Court on appeal held tbe
ta.x discriniinalory and XX'righl obtained a large judgment. Mr. Pigford is
yice-])resident of the Peoples Savings Bank; president and principal owner of
the Jackson Sun and president of the Central Oil Mills. He is attorney iov
many of the larger financial interests of Jackson. He and Miss .Sarah Person
were married in L'07. They live ;il his coiinlr) place, C bevy Chase, in .a eoloni.il
home, the mural decorations of which, b)- a Belgian artist, have attracted wide
attention. On the near two hundred acres of land surrounding his residence
Mr. Pigford finds relaxation in growing alfalfa and cbn'er ;ind in raisin"
blooded cattle and other stock.

788

C. b:. I'IGI'ORI)

780

Jf . il. pttman

I ELDING LUNSFORD PITTMAN, business man. Union
Fy... City, 'Lennessee, with no opportunity in life save what his
{^S own industry carved out for him, has attained a success while
Vyy' young in years, which any man might well be proud of having
attained at the end of a long career with an auspicious begin
ning. He was born September 18, 1886, on a farm in Gibson
County, 'Lennessee, the son of George and Lellia (Goodman) Pitlnian. He
attended school for three or four years, worked as a farm hand until he was
twelve years of age, tind tlieii turned his face to the West. He landed in
Greenville, Texas, and the first position that be saw open was as dishwasher in
a cafe. Being young and without funds, he look that job lo tide him over until
something better could be found. He remained there for si.x months and then
moved on to Cresson, where be connected with a ranch as a cow-puncher. For
two years he was a rough rider on the range, herding the longborns and enjoy
ing the Sjiring roundui)s and the branding of the yearlings. 'Lhe pay was not
enough lo make him walk lopsided in carrying a month's wtiges in one pocket,
but he learned lo be a quick judge of livestock, which, in later years, became a
valuable asset to him. 'Lwo years on the range was enough and he proceeded lo
Cleburne, where he spent a year as fireman in a cottonseed oil mill and gin
combined. '1 here also he acquired information which later he was able to cap
italize 'Lhe.i he went to (iodley where he was associated with the Ciodley Mill
iS; Elevator (.Joni])any until 1910, when he reached the conclusion that 'Lennessee
was a better Slate than 'Lexas. He returned to Milan where he became con
nected with the Fuqua Cotton Company of which be was manager until 1913.
'Lben he moved to Union City, forming a connection with the Lake County
Manufacturing Company. Ever since that lime he has been the manager of
that company's cotton business. 'Lwo years later he went into business for
himself as a broker in the products of cottonseed and in fertilizers and be has
devcloiied that line until now he has one of the best businesses of its class in
XX'est 'Lennessee. 'Lo these be has added dealing in livestock on an extensive
scale, and he is etpially as good and (piick a judge in that line as he is in cotton
and its products. During the war he served by appointment of Governor R)'e
as first lieutenant in the Slate Cjuards, and later was a colonel on the staff:" of
Ciovernor Roberts. He was elected mayor of Union City January 5, 1918, and
so efficient and poinilar was his administration that be was re-elected in 1920.
He is a Shriner; thirty-second degree Mason; |)ast exalted ruler of the bLIks;
past noble grand, past council coininander and past manager of Jurisdiction "C"
of the XX'oodnien of the XX'orld. IMr. Pitlnian and Miss Liiinie Tbrelkeld were
married June 25, 1913. 'Lhe union has not been blessed by a child.

790

I''. L. I'llTMAX

791

iilrg. isiaac d^n^t

jR.S. LS.AAC RblESb^, Memphis, 'Lennessee, for many years one
of tbe most conspicuous leaders among the women of the .Stale
for all that is charming in society, useful in clubs and jirogres-
sive in ])olilics, conies honestly by her ease and grace of man
ner and her keenness of intellect. She was born as Miss Lulu
^^l/CcS^iS^'iflSiSCi^ Colyar in Franklin County, Tennessee, February 25, 18r>0, the
daughter of Colonel Arthur St. Claire Colyar, a grandson of Cieneral .Xrthur
.St. Claire of the American Revolution and himself for more than half a century
one of the most vigorous and attractive public men of the State; a member of
the Confederate Congress and Andrew Jackson's most accurate biographer.
His niother was Miss Agnes Erskine (Eslille) Colyar, a daughter of Doctor
Wallace Eslille, for years one of the leading ]5liysicians of the Stale. Colonel
Colyar gave his daughter a liberal education, first by private tutors at home and
then in XX'ard School in Nashville, where he had moved his residence upon the
dissolution of the Confederate Congress. .Xt tbe age of seventeen years Miss
Lulu Colyar look ber first ))roinineni p.arl in public alT.iirs. The I leniiilage,
(ieneral Jackson's home near Nashville, was in tbe scales and she with oilier
women went lo the General Assembly of the State and finally secured an ajjpro-
prialion lo acquire that sacred jiroperty for the Slate and preserve it for pos
terity. Miss Colyar and Mr. Isaac Reese were married b^ebniary 13, 1878.
Their home in Nashville soon became the soci.d and educational center of the
city. X'anderbilt University ])rofessors, society leaders and thinkers of the city
to the number of even three hundred made her Friday evenings "at home"
resemble the Parisian salons of the "ancient regime" During a large portion of
lhe vear 1800, Mr. Rfese was in business in I'adiicah, Kentuek\. .and ibere
.XIrs. Reese continued the same lorni ol enlerlaininenl th;il slu' had eoiulucled
so successfully in Nashville. .She also organized the Delphi Club which has
ever since that lime been the most jjrogressive woman's club of that cit)'. In
1900 they moved to Memi;)his and Mrs. Reese at once became one of the leaders
in the literary and civic life of tbe comiiiuiiily. She was active in the bederation
of Women's Clubs and served four years as the head of the Nineteenth Century
Club. She was a pioneer for equal suffrage, and has had the satisfaction of see
ing the .Stale b'ederalion reverse a suffrage vote of ninety-three na)s .and seven
ayes into an overwhelniing ni.ajorily of ;iyes and the ,St,ate General .\ssenibly
give women Ibe ballot. She led the light lor women on the C ily Board of
I'^ducatioii and w;is one of the first two elected to ineinbersbi|) on it. She has
fought actively for free textbooks and anti-child-labor laws. Mr. anil Mrs.
Reese had four sons: XX'illiam Isaac, who lives in New iMexico; birskine .St.
Claire, deceased; Colyar of Meni|)liis, and Cajitain Isaac, who was killed in
L'rance

792

i'6

•IS'.'L-IM .)V\ SI SMINi

Colpar ^eege

Ol.X'.AR RFb2SE, Memphis, Tennessee, one of the most suc
cessful ami widely known of tbe younger business men of the
city, was born in Nashville, 'Lennessee, March 21, 1887. His
father, Mr. Isaac Reese, and bis mother, the former Miss Lulu
Colyar, are of two of the most distinguished and talented fami
lies of Kentucky and 'Lennessee. Mr. Isaac Reese was a native
of Bowling Green, Kentucky, and for a number of years in that State as well as
since he has moved to Memphis, was a large factor in the coal business. Mrs.
Reese is a daughter of the late Colonel .Arthur St. Claire Colyar of Nashville,
for many years one of tbe conspicuous figures in the ])ublic, social and literary
aff'airs of the State. Her grandfather was General .\rlbur St. Claire of the
b'rench revolution. Her mother was a daughter of Doctor XX'tillace Eslille, one
of 'Lennessee's most talented physicians. Mrs. Reese inherited the brilliance of
her ancestors and their taste for public affairs and literature, as well as their
efficiency in those lines, and their rare culture. Mr. Coylar Reese lived for a
time with his parents in Paducah, Kentucky, but they moved lo Memphis when
he was a mere child and he grew lo manhood here I le tittended the public schools,
in Memphis and the University School, and then went lo Castle LI eights, Leba
non, 'Lennessee, but good as were the educational advantages of those institu
tions, they were surpassed by his association with his parents. Mr. Reese went
into the business world when he was but a lad, his first venture being counting
transfers for the Memphis Street Railway Company at night. Lie was connected
for a time with the jewelry firm of Geo. 'L. Brodnax, Incorporated, where he
rose lo the position of stock clerk ; traveled on the road for a lime as a sales
man ; represented as manufacturers' agent a specialty concern and spent a while
with his father in the operation of tbe Meni|)his Stoneware COinpaii) . I lowever,
none of these lines opened the road for the full exercise of Mr Reese's activit)-
and energy. He saw that opening years ago in the automobile accessories line
and organized tbe Four-Sixteen 'Lire & ATilcanizing Company, for wdiich be
secured the agency for the most popular tire and through which he gave a serv
ice which made the firm a success from the first day, XX'heii one of the big
refining companies of the Mid-Continent oil field sought an outlet in Memphis
for its product, Mr. Reese was given the agency because of his rare combina
tion of business ability, wide range of accpiaintance and universal popularil\ .
He handles this business under the name of Colyar Reese & Company and ils
gi'owlb has been plK'noineii;il. He is .also director in lhe .Speers ( )il iK' Drilling
Coiiii)aiiy. .Although often active in polities, be has never sought or held ollice
Mr. Reese and Miss Aileen Green were married January 12, 1915. They have
two children ; Mary Aileen and Colyar Reese, Junior.

794

COLY.XR REb:SE

795

i|. H. aaemmel

ARMON L. RblMMI'lL, Little Rock, Arkansas, banker, capi
talist, leader in church and \'. M. C. A. work as well as in
good roads, drainage and all other material progressive ino\e-
ments, official head of the Republican party in bis State for
many years and yet often named by Democrats for ini[)ortanl
positions, was born in Stratford, Fulton County, New York,
January 15, 1852, tbe son of Cioodlove and Henrietta (Bever) Remniel. Both of
his parents were natives of (iermany, but of those stiird)' Teutons who sought
tbe freedom of the United Slates at the colla])se of the revolution of 1848 and
appreciated it after coming to this side 'Lbal there is no hyphen in Mr. Rem-
mel's patriotism is shown by the fact that during tbe XX'orld XX'ar Governor
Brough appointed him a member of the State Council of Defense and he was
chosen by it as chtiirman of the coniniillee of 4-ininule men. He organized a
corps of 175 orators for that purpose and campaigned the .State three times for
Liberty bond sales, being himself the largest individual buyer in tbe State.
Mr. Remniel was educated in tbe common schools of his home county, finishing
his course at Fairfield Seminary at b^airfield, New York. He taught school for
a time, lived for three years in Fort XX'ayne, Indiana, and returned to New-
York City where he engaged in the lumber business. In 1876 be and his brother
moved to Newjiort, Arkansas, where they engaged in milling lumber with great
success. Lie remained in Newjjort for twenty years and was one of the most
active factors in the upbuilding of that coininunity into the fine city that it now
is. .Although a Republican, the citizens made him a nieniber and president of
their first board of education and kept him there for eight years, and elected
him twice lo the village council, just because they appreciated bis abilily, integ
rity and devotion lo the public welfare. 'Lhe same appreciation was shown b)-
Ciovernor Clarke in making Mr. Remniel a member of the State Board of Char
ities ; by Ciovernor Jones in naming him aide-de-camp with rank of colonel in
the State CJuard, and by Governor Donaghey in making him a member of tbe
.State Capitol Commission. His fellow Republicans have sent him si.x limes to
their national conventions, thrice made him their national committeeman, once
elected him to tbe Legislature, and often made him their nominee for governoi
and both bouses of the congress. For twenty-live years be has been .State man
ager of tbe Mutu.'il Life Insurance Company of New York'. He founded the
Mercantile Trust Company and was ils president for twelve years. He assisted
in organizing Ihe Iknikers Trust Company in 1914 .and has been its president
ever since. Mr. Remniel was married first March 13, 1878, to Miss Laura Lee
Stafford of Staunton, Virginia. She died in 1913, and on October 6, 1915, be
was married to Miss Elizabeth Cameron of b'ort Covington, New Ytirk. 'Lhey
have one son, ILannon 1.., junior.

796

L. rI':mmI':l

797

0, 5. Earner

SBORN JONb.S TURNb:R, sheriff of Humphreys Counly, and
leading business man of Belzoni, M ississi|)pi, uas born Decem
ber 15, 1882, the son of John T. and Liicreli.a ( Newell) Turner,
in Carroll County, Mississippi, where his ancestors on both
sides had been pioneers ;ind prominent factors in the early
develoiMiient of that county. His mother's father was a colonel
in the Mexican XVar and was the first mayor of tbe city of Carrollion. His
father's father was a planter. Mr. 'burner's father was a soldier in the Confed
erate army and died in 1888. 'Lhe lad grew up on the farm in Carroll County
and received his early education there until his mother moved to XX'iiiona, Missis
sippi, in 1900. 'Lhe following year be took a course in l)Ookkee])ing in the Macon
& Andrews Business College at XX'^est Point, Mississippi, and in the fall of that
year moved to Belzoni, where be went to work in a general store at $35.00 per
month. Lie remained there until the first of 1908, when he went into the drug
business on his own account and in that line he has remained ever since, having
built 11]) a magnificent business. Lie is president of the Citizens Building and
Loan Association, president of the Mississippi Association of Rexall Clubs and
a director in the Citizens Bank & Trust Company. 'Lhe country around Belzoni
bad struggled for many years to be made into a separate county with that city as
its county seat, but it remained for the consuinmalion of their Iioihs to come in
1918, when Mr. 'Lurner was in active charge of the campaign for the creation of
Humphreys County. 'Lhe county came ollieially into existence May 31, 1918,
when Governor Bilbo issued his proclamation lo that effect. The governor, in
connection with the creation of the county, told Mr. Turner that he could name
all of the officers of the new county except the man for sheriff, at the same time
handing him the commission to that office Mr. Turner named all of the others.
He served out the term as sheriff and tax collector until the next regular election
in 1919, when be was chosen without opposition for the full term which began
fanuary I, 1920, to run for four years. Governor Russell named Mr. 'burner
one of the delegates from Mississippi to the National Cjood Roads Convention
in Hot Springs, Arkansas, in .April, 1920. In that body be bad the distinction
of being elected a life member, which entitles him to membership in the Missis
sippi State Council, and also to membership in the General Council. It is lhe fixed
custom of that association to elect but few men lo the high honor of life mem
bership, and this is done only in ap])reciation of efficiency in that line by tbe
nieniber so honored. Mr. Turner is a member of Elks Lodge No. 473 of Yazoo
City, Mississippi. He and Miss Annie Spencer were married October 25, 1904.
'Lhey have three sons: Osborn Jones, Junior; Irby, and 'Lhomas Newell.

798

O. I. TURNI'-.R

799

^, %. OTinfeelman

|ENRY TANNER XVINKELMAN, president of the Winkebnan
Baking Company, Memphis, 'Lennessee, has developed in his
I  I (y-i native city from the smallest beginning one of tbe most sub-
\_ \_ \m\ slanlial businesses of its kind in the Mid-South. Mr. Win-
kelinaii was born in Memphis, on V.ance /Xvenue, near the cor
ner of Orleans Street, October 25, 1870, the son of Henry and
iXlary (Schlatter) XVinkelman. The state of tbe finances of his father at that
time was such that he was able to .attend school but :i short time. Al the age of
nine years, be began selling Tbe Appeal on the sirei'ls and soon lhere;ifler went
lo work in the bakery of his uncle, Mr. J. J. 'banner, in a bakery on North Main
Street, and for whom he was named, and with whom he spent most of bis time
until he became of age. By that lime be had learned tbe art of baking thor
oughly and also had developed a confidence in his own abilily to manage a busi
ness of his own successfully — a confidence which his career since that lime b.as
amply justified. In 1894 he began business for himself on North Second .Street
at what now is Number 86, operating then as now under the name of the Colum
bian Bakery. His close attention to the details of the business cou[)led wilb
bis innate honesty made the business a success from tbe start. It grew steadily
in that location for six years and then Mr. XX'inkelman in connection with his
brother, Mr. James A. XVinkehnan, who had joined him in tbe business, (jrgan-
ized the XVinkehnan Ikiking Company of whicb Mr. llenry T. Winkebnan is
president and Mr. James .A. Winkebnan vice-president and treasurer. Ibe coin-
p.any does ;i tremendous wholesale and retail business not only in tbe cil\' of
Memphis but also in all of the surrounding country, where the reputation of its
product is a counterpart of the character of the men — second to none in the
land. Mr. XX'inkelman has always stood for what was best in ])olilics and has
always been a staunch Democrat. In 1905 he was a member of the Reform
ticket headed by the Llonorable James H. Malone and was elected a member of
the City Board of Public XVorks. He was chairman of the conimittee of that
body which put the city market house on a paying basis, and a member of tbe
hospital committee which did so much to make that institution useful to the
coinnninilv. He was a member of lhe commillee on streets, bridges and sewers
when the administration secured the application of the front-foot assessment
])lan to Meni])his, paved Madison and Union Avenues lo Cooper Street and
made the subsequent paving of the city possible. He is a deacon in the Idelewild
Presbyterian Church, a member of the leading social and business clubs of tbe
city, a director in the Union & Planters Ikink &' Trust C'oinp;my and chairman of
the finance committee of the 'Lri-Stale Hotel Company. iMr. Winkebnan and
Miss .Arra PjcII Cowgill were married October 16, 1006. Their children are;
Virginia; Arabelle; llenry 'L. Junior, and James .A. II.

800

108

N\ IV'I'.'INNLW '.I. .^MN'.'IH

f . 1. OTinlielman

.AMES A. XVINKELM.AN, vice-president, secretary and treas
urer of the XVinkelman Baking Company, Memphis, 'Lennessee,
is a native of Kentucky, having been born at Bowling Green,
May 22, 1866, the son of Heni-y and Marie (Schlatter) XVin
kelman. At the age of eleven years be left the school lo which
bis parents bad sent him and entered a school of experience
which is one of the most exacting tutors of tiiorotigbness and accuracy. In
18/8 he enlered the shop of a printer in I'xiwiing (jreen with a view of inaster-
ing the trade of setting lyi)e, then till done by band instead of largely now by
the more modern machines. He learned the trade there and in 1884 he came
lo Memphis and was a compositor on the old Apjjeal, the pioneer paj^er of Mem
phis, then under the able direction of tbe late Colonel Matt Gallaway. In the
days of the journeyman printer of the old type, that trade was used i)robabiy
more than any other one by its masters as a means of seeing tbe world. .A com
petent compositor could get a job in any city at any time and in the event that
he did not want to remain there until the next pay day, he could sell his "string"
and move on. 'Lhese frequent, almost constant, migrations made them the most
cosmopolitan men of their limes. Il was in this way that Mr. XX-'inkelnian drifted
to the Pacific Coast in 1892 and while in San Francisco, he went to work for
the .American 'Lype b^ounders Company. Lie remained there with that company
for three years and then was transferred to St. Louis, Missouri, b'roni there
he came back to Memphis and here joined bis brother, Mr. Henry T. XX'inkel-
niaii, in organizing the XX'inkelnian Baking Company. Mr. Henry T. XX'inkel-
iiian is ])resideiil of the coini)aiiy and Mr. James A. XX'inkelman holds the other
offices necessary to ils organization. 'Lhey have made of it one of tbe leading
institutions of the kind in the South and its ])roduct has been a synonym for
cleanliness and wholesomeness in the households of Memphis for iiiaiiy years.
'I he company does a tremendous wholesale and retail business and has been so
ably managed by the two brothers that they have not only been of iinniense ser\ice
to their coninuinity but at the same time have amassed fortunes for themselves.
During the XX'orld XX'ar, Mr. XX'inkelman devoted a great deal of bis lime and
was of great value to the government in working out the food problems. He
rejiresented tbe bakeries on the Shelby Counly bAiod .Atbninistration, and was
district cbainnan of the X'X''ar Emergency Council of the Baking Industry. Lie
was president for two terms of the Southeastern Association of the Baking
industry. Mr. XX'inkebnan and Miss Guida Matilda Eliel of Bloomington, Illi
nois, were married June 1, 1899. 'Lhey were a devoted cou|)le until death claimed
her December 22, 1919. She had been a consistent Reil Cross worker ami also
drove her machine in the XVar Motor Corps service.

802

7'

ym

*^'i^

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t

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L A. XVINKELMAN
803
OT. ^. OTetoer

HLLIAM ARTHUR W'b:iLSTFR, Memphis, Tennessee, bead
of the XX'illiam .A. XX'ebster Company of this city and a num-
W^li ber of other large manufacturing concerns in various por-
hTl tions of the LTniled States, all making medicines, was a [jioneer
in the South in the opening of that line of industry. 'Lhe
plant wdiich he installed in Memphis was the first in the entire
South to be devoted to that line. Mr. XX'ebster is a native of the .State of Mis
souri, having been born on a farm near XX'ealherby, the son of Hiram Fletcher
;nid Nancy Jane (llargis) Webster. He received bis early education in tbe
common schools ;it home and then look the academic course at the Missouri
XVesleyan College at Cameron. He then selected for his life work tbe line in
which he has proven such a success, and with tbe view of perfecting himself
in that line, he went to St. I^ouis, Missouri, where be completed the course in
tbe St. Louis College of Pharmacy in 1896 with the degree of Ph. C. Not sat
isfied with that |ireparation, he spent tbe following three years in Barnes Medi-
c:il College in the same city. In 1000, with this foiind;ition for tbe lbeoretiL-;il
phase of the business, he began the practical end by forming a connection with
tbe XX'illiam S. Merrell Chemical Company as a traveling salesman, recei\ing
'lennessee, Mississi])pi and Louisiana as the territory which he was lo cover.
Mr. XX'ebster was (juick to see the jjossibilities in this territory for that line of
articles, and also realized that Memphis was the point from which to su|)pl)- il.
in 1902 be severed his connection with the Merrell company and came to Meni-
jjliis where he i^roiiioled and organized the Memphis Drug Company, wholesale
druggists. 'Lhis firm later became the Lillybeck Drug Company, and at present
is known as the Ellis-Jones Drug Company, a half-niillion dollar corjioration,
doing a tremendous business throughout the Mid-South. In 1904 Mr. W ebsler
and the late Doctor B. G. Ilenning jjronioted and organized '1 be XX'ebster-X\ ar-
nock Cheniical Company, now with a capital stock of a quarter of a million dol
lars. 'Lhis v\as tbe first plant established in the Soiilb for the manufactnre of
pbannaceuticals. In 1909 Mr. Webster promoted and organized Tbe William X.
XVebsler Company, now having a ca])ital stock of $250,000 and one of the larg
est pharmaceutical nianufacluring concerns in the South. Mr. XX'ebster's success
in both of these manufacturing companies was so marked that in 1914 he pro
moted and organized 'Lhe Direct Pharmaceutical Company of .St. Ltiuis, Mis
souri, with a present capital of $100,000, and in 1919 he promoted and organ
ized The Midwest Pharmaceutical Conii)any of Denver, Colorado, now with a
capital of $50,000. He is al present president of the XX'ebster, Direct and Mid
west companies. Lie is a member of the Country, Horse Shoe Lake, Tennessee
and Shrine (jolf clubs. Mr. XVebsler and Miss l.uc)- Marion Draugbon were
married December 23, 1918.

804

w. A. \\I':bstfr

805

^. Weiler
ILBER'L XX'EILER, who has developed in Greenwood, Missis
sippi, a larger and more creditable jewelry business than any
other city of 12,000 i)opulation can boast of, was born in
Cincinnati, Ohio, July 22, 1855 — the son of Michael and Bar-
becca (Moss) XX'eiler. XX'ith a public school education he began
bis Inisiness career as ;i messenger boy al the age of sixteen
years. At twenty years of age he opened a restaurant in Cincinnati and con
ducted it four years. Pint this occui);ilion was too ])rosaic for one of his tastes,
and with a prophetic vision, an artistic temperament, plenty of grit and a legacy
of twenty thousand dollars indebtedness as business capital, he picked the State
of Mississippi as a winner, with "odds" on the Delta, and Greenwood the "best
single bet," and today he is one of the world's winners in a race that has been
strictly "to the swift," and has made the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta the "garden
spot of the world." Mr. XVeiler traveled Mississippi from Coldwater lo Jackson,
including the Delta, from the '70s to '96. It is just forty years since be landed
in Greenwood, at the hour wdieii the shadows begin to lengthen and grow dim,
and the ubiquitous toad sings croaking hymns of praise to the rain gods. The
streets were paved knee-deep with Delta mud — tbe richest, most sociable and
soluble soil in the world. 'Lbere were one church, three stores and eighteen bars
in Greenwood al that time, for Delta peojile did not drink water in those days,
and did not until another Greenwood pioneer, the late and universally lamented
Charles E. XX'right, with true prophetic vision brought in the first artesian well
of the Delta and added immeasurably lo ils health and comfort. In '96 Mr.
Weiler located ])erinaiicnlly in (ireenwood. From a modest beginning he has
an establishment and patronage equalled in few cities of less than a hundred
thousand. It embraces eight department, one specializing in manufacture —
replete with the latest possibilities in equipment, material and skill, being in
charge of a former Tiffany expert. Il is the only jewelry manufacturing estab
lishment in Mississippi, one of the few in the South, and tbe only one in tbe
world in a city tbe size of Greenwood. It caters almost entirely to tbe individual
tastes and demands of some of the most exclusive and exacting patronage in
the world — the elite of the Mississippi Delta. .Another innovation is a mail
order department. Apart from the fact that he is the pioneer jewelry manu
facturer of Mississippi, Mr. XX'eiler has buikled one of the largest retail jewelry
establishnients in the South — a Itusiness of .abnormal size for any city tbe size
of (ireenwood. Mr. XVeiler is one of ibe leading members of tbe (ireenwood
Synagogue; a thirty-second degree Mason; a Shriner, an Elk, a Rotarian, a
director of the Greenwood Chamber of Coinnierce, and is active in all public
spirited movements. He married Miss Belle Kronacber .Ajiril 22, 1892. 'Lheir
children are Millard K. and Miss Louise XX'eiler.

806

Z08

M'.'LIL'I.W -y

^".ff « -»»* ^^ --^

* y,

f. p. Carttorigljt

AMb:S BUI'ORD CARTWRKil IT, iil.-mler, fforisl, breeder of
registered cattle and hogs. Bray's Station, near Collierville,
'Lennessee, was born on the old family boniestead in that por
tion of Shelby County, May 26, 1858, the son of .Albert L^oberr
and Priscilla Buford ((Jiddens) Cartwright. On his father's
side, Mr. Cartwright comes from one of the oldest families in
the South, pioneers as long as there was a frontier, and sturdy factors not only
in the maintenance of new settlements against natural enemies but also for the
establishment and maintenance of law and order in them. Mr. Cartwrigbt's
ancestor, seven generations back, John Cartwright, was born in 1602 in F.ngland,
where the family dates back to the Norman coiKjuesl, with a coat of arms
bearing the motto "Defend the Fold." John Cartwright was a member of tbe
Jamestown, Virginia, settlement in 1623 and possibly one of its organizers. This
(. artwright's great-great-grandson, Robert Cartwright, born in 1722 in Princess
.Xniie County, X^irginia, moved with bis ftiinily and slaves first to Norlb C'aro-
lina, thence to the XVautauga settlement in 'Lennessee, where he was one of the
signers of the contract of government in opposition lo the British which ante
dated the Declaration of Independence 'Lhence he was one of the party which
went down the Cumberland River with Colonel Donelson and was one of Robert
son's most sturdy defendants of the French Lick settlement out of which Nash
ville grew. 'Lhe grandson of this Robert Cartwright, Albert Robert Cartwright,
who was the father of James B. Cartwright, moved from Spring Hill, 'Lennes
see, to Shelby Counly in 1857. 'Lhe lad grew up on bis father's plaiitati(.)n, was
educated in the grade and high schools of Collierville. The pioneer spirit called
him to the St. b'rancis Basin of .Arkansas, where he owns two sections of land
on the Mississippi River near the line between Crittenden and Lee counties.
He also owns seven hundred acres of land near Centreville, Mississippi, and
possesses a beautiful tract of land for a home in Shelby County. (An these he
raised not only cotton and corn, but registered Jersey cows and Poland C liiiia
bogs. On December 3, 1889, he nuirried Miss .'Xlice Townsend. .She was ;il\\avs
a great lover of fiowers and her private garden, under her skill and energy, in
which Mr. Cartwright later joined, has expanded into one of the most beautiful
in this section of the country. They have set aside ten acres of land on which
there is a magnificent variety of forty-three species of ]ieonies and sixtetn bnn-
dred roses, the blossoms of which are sought even in Chicago. Mr. and IMrs.
Cartwright have five children: Mrs. Brooxie P)uford .Stewart of Santa Ikirbara,
California; Charles Kirby Cartwright; James Monroe Cartwright; bllizabelli
Cartwright and Albert David Cartwright. Mr. Cartwright is a nieniber of lhe
Methodist Church. He has never sought or held public ollice

B. CARTWRIGII

809

^be ^c!)arff

BE SCHARFb", Memphis, 'Lennessee, secretary and general
manager of Kraus & Company, cleaners and dyers, president
of the Belgium Cleaning Coiiqiany and bank director, is a shin
ing example of what may be accomplished in tbe Mid-South
by early industry and frugality combined with maturing busi
ness judgment in later years even by one left an orphan early
in life and without means or backing upon which to start life. Mr. Scharff
was born in Memphis, June 7, 1881, tbe son of Bernard and .Amalia (Karlaback)
Scharff', Mrs. Scharff having been tbe widow of the late XX'illiam L. Loeb.
Mr. Scharff received his education in the grammar schools of Memphis, and
during the time that he was a small boy in school, he went into business on bis
own account. He became the proud possessor of a small wagon, but instead of
using it merely for playing he worked up a retail ice business, delivering his
merchandise to the homes of the customers with his wagon before and after
school hours, llowever, he was able lo go only up to the seventh grade in school,
for at that time he was left an orphan by the death of both ])arents, and since
that time he has made his own way in the world. He was twelve years of age
when he left the school room and went to work in the laundry of his half-brother,
Mr. Henry Loeb, then located on the fourth floor of the southeast corner of
Main Street and Monroe Avenue. Later he went into the shirt-making depart
ment which had been added to the business and learned the trade of shirt-cut
ting. By the time that he reached twenty years of age, he not only knew from
collar to tail the shirt business, but he also bad saved enough money with which
to buy a half interest in the Henry Loeb Shirt Company. During tbe five years
that he had charge of that firm be conducted it with such success that he was
able at the end of that time to sell it for a handsome profit. Mr. Llenry Loeb
and Mr. M. H. Rosenthal bought the firm of Kraus & Company, Mr. Scharff
becoming the secretary and general manager of the firm; Mr. Loeb, the president,
and Mr. Rosenthal the vice-president. Under his management, Kraus & Com
pany has enjoyed a volume of business second to few in the United States in
that line, while the firm's equi])nient is superior to any other in the country.
Mr. Scharff is a director in the Liberty Savings Bank & 'Lrust Company and
interested in many other local concerns. He is a member of the Rex Club ;
Ridgeway Country Club; I. O. B. B. ; Al Chymia Temple; Scottish Rile; City
Club ; Rotary Club ; Memphis Chamber of Commerce and Chamber of Coinnierce
of the United States. During the World XVar he was one of ten cleaners
selected to control the cleaning and dyeing of millions of (lieces of government
clothing and draft specifications for the industry throughout the land. Mr.
Scharff has two children : Kathleen and Arthur Bernard Scharff".

810

Alll'-. SCIIARI

811

Br. OT. ill. ^lacfe

j ILLIAM MARION SLACK, Memphis, Tennessee, one of the
leading dentists in the Mid-South, for a third of a century
active for all that tended for the improvement of Memphis,
socially, in church circles and in clean sports, like so many
of tbe other successful and prominent men of the city, is a
native of Mississippi. He was born in Pontotoc, March 2,
1862, of the old aristocracy which settled in North Mississippi when the Chicka
saw Indians were there and when Pontotoc, as the site of the land office where
titles were sought for the fertile tracts wdiich President Jackson had secured
from the Indians, was the most prosperous and active place in the Slate of
Mississippi. His father. Doctor XX'illiam Lytle Slack, was one of the leading
men in that section, head of the Baptist Female College, and an intimate friend
of the Reverend J, B. Gambrell. Doctor Slack's mother was formerly Miss
Angle Suddoth. He attended the public schools in Pontotoc and then his
father completed his education in the college of which he was the head.
Doctor .Slack being tbe only boy who ever was allowed to take the full course
there Al the age of twenty-one years, he came to Memphis ;ind attended
Leddin's Business College. 'Lhen he went to Friar Point, Mississippi, where
he conducted a drug store successfully for a time. Deciding upon a profes
sional career, he went to New York City and entered the New York College
of Dentistry and also tbe medical college of the University of New A'ork City.
In 1886 he completed the course in ilentistry. He lacked but live months of
having finished also the medical course, but deterniined upon (the former
for his profession, he came to Memphis in 1886 and began a successful career,
never completing the medical course. His talent in the line of his chosen
profession was recognized almost from the time that he opened his office and
il was but a short time until his clientele, composed of the best element in
Memphis and the surrounding country, became so large that it would have
occupied all of his time and attention. But he realized that no constitution
could withstand the strain of office work in bis exacting line for all of the
time that clients wanted his services. Ever fond of the forests, fields and
streams, he arranged his affairs so that he has spent one day out of every
week either hunting, fishing or shooting, his especial diversion being lo match
his wit against those of the wild turkey. He is a member of the St. Francis
River, Old River, Lake XTew and Marked 'Lree Outing clubs, and formerly
was a member of the Wapanocca, Big Lake, Menesha, Hatchie Coon and Five
Lakes clubs. He is a member of the Chamber of Coinnierce, Knights of
Pythias, Woodmen, Colonial Country and Kiwanis clubs; has been president of
the Memphis and Tennessee Dental societies and is a member of the National
Dental Association. He and Miss Lizzie Lou Craig were married Decem
ber 11, 1889.

812

.^"^

'^sl

DR. W. M. SLACK

813

Ci)a£{. p. ^imonton

HdE late Captain Charles Bryson .Sinionton, Covington, Ten
nessee, for half a century conspicuous in public affairs of his
city, county, state and nation, was born in 'Liplon County,
'Lennessee, Se])teniber 8, 1838, the son of XX^illiani and Cather
ine (Ferguson) Sinionton. His paternal grandparents were
John Simonton, a Revolutionary XX'ar soldier and patriot,
and Marthy (Strong) Sinionton; and his maternal grand]:iarems, James and
Catherine Ferguson, nearly all of Scotch-Irish descent. Captain Sinionton went
lo Erskine College, Due VX^csl, South Carolina, graduating in 1859. XX'ben the
Civil XX^ar occurred, he promi)lly enlisted and was elected captain of Company C,
Ninth Tennessee Infantry, C. S. A., in which position he served with gallantry
until the battle of Perryville where, while leading his command, he received
a wound which disabled him. In 1873 he was adinitled lo the Covington bar,
where he soon took a commanding ])osilioii which he held until bis death,
June 10, 19II. He served two terms as clerk of the Circuit Court; one term
in tbe Tennessee (ieneral .'Xssenibly ; Iwo lenns, 1870 lo 1883, as congressman;
was United Slates district attorney for the Western District of 'Lennessee,
and for ten years was president of the Covington Board of Education, An
able debater and finished orator, be served bis party long on the hustings and
was constantly sought for jiublic addresses. He was a ruling elder in tbe
.Associate Reformed I 'resbylerian Church. Captain .Simonton w.is married
(Jctober 16, 18C36, to Miss Mary McDill, who was born in b'airfield Counly,
South Carolina, April 1, 1845, and whose life of devoted service to God, home
and huinanity ended l-'ebruary 24, 1918. 'Lheir children were: Miss .Anna;
Miss Ella, now Mrs. Mark A. XX'alker; Miss Nannie May, now Mrs. Jesse
Noell ; Charles Pressley and XX'illiam McDill Simonton, all members of tbe
Southern Presbyterian Church. Charles P. Sinionton was elected in 1906
clerk of the Tipton County Court, and re-elected in 1908, 1910, 1914 and 1918
without opposition, and was major of the .Second 'Lennessee Infantry, N. (j. S. 'L.,
from 1903 to 1906. Although exempt as a county official, he waived all exemp
tions and volunteered for military service in 1917, but was rcjjected for physi
cal disability and gave a great deal of bis time during tbe XX'orld XX'ar to
jiatriotic duty at home He was a delegate lo the Democratic National Con
vention in 1912. Lie and Miss Lucile Ing Pennel were married April 23, 1913.
They have one child, Mary Pennell Sinionton. William M. .Sinionton was
graduated from Cuniberland University Law .School in 1807, and after a
course at the University of X'irginia, was adinitled to tbe Covington bar,
where he has been one of the most proniineni members ever since He and
Miss Sara CJalloway of Somerville, 'Lennessee, were married December 15, 1909.
He was an elector in 1908 and a delegate lo tbe Democratic National Con
vention ill 1916.

814

CHARLb:S P>. SIMONTON

815

f . Jf. ftunter

I LIE late James Franklin Hunter, Memphis, 'Lennessee, for
TiAv^ many years a leading banker and one of the most influential
mi^ men in tbe city, was born October 29, 1856, in tbe northern
^^ part of Shelby County, 'Lennessee, the son of Alfred Douglass
and Clarinda D. (XX'eaver) blunter. The father was a native
of Dinwiddle Counly, ATrginia, but as a child moved to Ken
tucky, and at the age of twenty-one years came to Tennessee, where he was
one of the early members wdio composed that refined and virile settlement
on Big Creek. Mr. Hunter grew U]) on bis father's farm and was educated
in the Mountain Academy, Tipton County, 'Lennessee. He studied engineer
ing and while quite young entered field work with a parly on the old Memphis,
Paducah & Northern Railroad, now the Illinois Central Railroad north of
Memphis. However, when he was only twenly-two years of age, he severed
his connection with the surveying party and entered the office of the clerk of
the Criminal Court in Memphis as a deputy under General A. J. Vaugban.
He remained in that ])osilion continuously for si.xteen years when, in 1894, be
was elected clerk of the Criminal Court without opposition and served for
two terms, giving a clean, honest and efficient administration of the office
In 1903 Mr. Hunter and Mr. John R. Pepper were the prime movers in the
organization of the Tennessee 'Lrust Company, which from tbe start was one
of the leading financial and fiduciary institulioiis in the city and which erected,
at the southeasl corner of Madison Avenue and Center Lane, one of tbe first
skyscrapers in the city. Mr. Hunter was the executive head of this institu
tion until 1906, when il and the Union & Planters Bank were merged into the
Union & Planters Bank & Trust Company, now the leading financial institu
tion in tbe Mid-South. Mr. Hunter was vice-ijresident of the consolidated
concern for a number of years, for a long time in charge of the savings depart
ment. There he was especially valuable lo the institution, for a few men in
the city possessed a wider acquaintance than be did and every one who knew him
had absolute confidence in his integrity and honesty. Mr. Hunter remained
with the Union & Planters Bank & Trust Company until 1913, when he
resigned to accept the vice-presidency of the Mercantile National Bank. He
remained actively with that bank until November 25, 1916, when he suffered
a stroke of jiaralysis from which he failed to recover and to which he succumbed
Jul)' 14, 1917. After retiring from the court clerkship, Mr. Hunter never
sought ])ublic office, but w.as active for tbe election of good men to office.
He was a member of the Second Presbyterian Church, the Country Club, tbe
Chamber of Commerce and a Mason of high rank. Mr. Hunter and Miss Flora
Pulliam were married December 17, 1885. 'Lheir children are; Alfred Douglass;
Miss Elise, now Mrs. Llenry Wetter, and Miss Jean, now Mrs. XX'. L. X\''illiamson.

816

1. F. HUNTER

817

^. Jf . tTaplor

Hi late .'Xlbert b'ranklin Taylor of Lunsford, Craighead County,
Arkansas, was not only one of the pioneers of tbe northeastern
portion of that state, but also one of the great factors in
laying the foundation for tbe development of that section into
what it today is — the foundation broad and strong enough
for the magnificent future whicb not only is in store but also
certain for it in the future. Mr. 'Laylor, like so many of the virile pioneers
west of the Mississippi River, was a native of Tennessee and his father before
him was a pioneer in Tennessee. Mr. Taylor was born not far from Perryville,
Tennessee, December 13, 1824, and died al Lunsford, October 5, 1901, thus
closing a life of tremendous activity and of value to his community. His
father, Abner Taylor, a native of East Tennessee, had migrated west al an
early date and was one of the large slave holders and planters of his section of
Tennessee. Llis niother was formerly Miss Polly Baker. It was with her that
Albert b'ranklin 'Laylor, when but a lad of fourteen years of age, went first
lo Ark.'insas. Tb;il was in 1838, long years jirior to the fonn.al creation of the
counly in wdiich he later was lo be such a conspicuous figure He spent four
years in the forests and jungles of the upper St. Francis River, then truly
primeval, only a limited few of the first permanent settlers of Craighead County
having preceded him. 'Lhen he returned to Tennessee, where he spent three
years, receiving bis education at Jackson. At the age of twenty-one years,
he returned lo the lowlands of Arkansas and literally carved for himself
name, fame and fortune out of the dense forests. XVhen he went to Arkansas
there was no Jonesboro, and Memphis, more than si.xty miles distant as the
crow flies, was the nearest point for supplies and market for his ])roducts. Llis
far-seeing brain worked out, and his indomitable industry and ulliinate courage
put into effect the system of country life nearly Ihree-cpiarters of a century
ago that the best brains of today agree are necessary for the prosperity of
the land. He raised at home all that the country produced for its own mainte
nance, had livestock for sale and then produced what cotton he could for a
money crop at the end of the year. His holdings were such that in one over
flow of the Mississippi River he lost one thousand head of cattle. In a
registered short-born bull, he made the first importation of thoroughbred cattle
into his section of the Slate. Once each year Mr. Taylor drove his surplus
cattle and hauled his cotton to Memphis and hauled his supplies home for
the coining season. He served in the Confederate Army and after tbe war
headed the Ku Klux in restoring order at home. He was a Master Mason and
always stood out strongly for the moral and material development of his
country, a trail inherited by the large family which he left.

818

A. v. TAYLOR

819

itlrsi. ^. Jf . i:aplor

HE late Mrs. lilizabeth Jane Snoddy 'Laylor, as the wife for
nearly half a century of the late Mr. Albert Franklin 'Laylor,
Lunsford, Arkansas, was one of the strong and useful char
acters of that section of the State in its earliest days. It
was romantic that she and her husband should have been
born in the same neighborhood near Perryville, Tennessee,
that he should have left there when she was a mere slip of a girl, neither
knowing the other, and that they should have met at maturity in what was an
almost complete wilderness in Arkansas and have become man and wife.
Mrs. Taylor's parents were of Irish extraction, her father being Forge Snoddy
and her mother's maiden name having been Sally Hamilton. Her future hus
band at the age of but fourteen years had moved from 'Lennessee into the
wilds of the St. Francis Basin of Arkansas, and when she was but a very
small child ber parents migrated to what now is Cross County, in the same
State. Others of her relatives had gone into what later became Craighead
County, where Rufus Snoddy was one of the earliest permanent settlers. Ller
uncle, Alanson 'Lrigue Snoddy, also was a pioneer in the same settlement and
later became one of the most substantial citizens and wealthiest men in the
county. It was with him that Miss Elizabeth Snoddy went to live and it was
at his home that she met Mr. Taylor. He was then one of the rising young
stockmen and farmers of tluit part of the country. They were married June
8, 1852, al Lunsford, when she lacked but fifteen days of being twenty years of
age, the day of her nativity having been June 23, 18.52. b"or nearly half a cen
tury following the marriage, she was Mr. 'Laylor's constant companion and
aid in a most active and successful career, and no small portion of the success
was due to her management of the home affairs. Iler's was the life of the
pioneer, with sixty miles of wdlderness between her and the nearest city.
Aside from the ordinary household duties, cloth was to be spun for clothing
the family, candles to be molded, soap to be made and tbe hundreds of other
necessities provided which tbe neighboring store now furnishes for the home.
Mrs. Taylor died at Lunsford, August 26, 1899, the niother of eight children,
two of whom, Saniuel lilani and Jennie, tbe only daughter, died in infaiic)-.
'Lhe other six sons grew to manhood, although Alanson 'Lrigue, the oldest
child, died in 1891, and James W., the third child, died in 1896. The four
living sons. Forge W., Albert F., John Pervines and Thomas Sloan all live
at Lunsford. She would have enjoyed living to see the full measure of their
success. 'Lhe family owns an aggregate of some ten thousand acres of the
finest sandy loam land lo be found in the world, and the four sons are the
leaders in that section of the country for all that tends toward the progress
of the community and its welfare.

820

MRS. A. I'-. TAYLOR

821

€. IS. leiWaSter

E'

DXVARD B. LE M.XS'lb'.R, liea<l of
^' J the real estate coi puralion of II. I..
(itiion Company, Memphis, 'Lennessee,
is a native of .Sbelb)- Couiit\, wliere he w.i-
born Deceniher 3, LS50. llis |);iieiils were
W. P. ;iiul Mary Bennett LelXlaslc, . His
iiiolber, widowed in LSCiO, w:is a woni;in nf
sebol.'irlv allaiiiineiils and gave Mr. l.c.Xbi:-,-
ler ;i good ediu';ilioii ;il lionu , In I cS/ 7 be
Weill into the linn of 11. I.. ( iuion \ Com-
paiU' ;is a elerk, and, iiiuler ':i :lii.;hlL
changed name has been willi ii e\er si>ro.
Tbe llrin was founded by .XIr. l.i. .XLislri ',i
uncle, IL L. (iuion, Sr., in LSoO. llis ^oii,
the late Henry L. (iiiioii, one of the luo-i
n|)right and jiopular men who exer lived in
Meni])bis, succeeded :uid ;it his death in
1809 left a business fine in volume :md u;
one hundred per cent characler for iiitet^-
ril)'. I\lr. LeMasler siu'ceeik-d him as llu
bead of the lirni lo wliieb be li.is ;idilid
{^really in volniiie and in which he lias in.iiii
l;iined tbe same high sl;ni(kirils. I'linu liiiir
to lime Mr. l.eiMasler associated Mr. .\dani
(',. Jell and Mr. L. .\. MoiiUdi.nieo wilb
hiiii ;in<l iiicorporaled lhe In in iiikLt lis
present name ol IL L. (iuion ( dinpaiu .
Mv. LeMasler has e\er taken ;iii acti\e
interest in politics, but nol a-, ;i seeker .ifler
oliice, althout;b in 1002, when iIkic w i i e
iii.any iiiipoilant inalleis before llie cil\ .i;o\'-
ernnicnl and a slront; dciiKiiid loi' ijiiud
business liien in oilier, lu' i i iN',( iilcil |..
become a nieinln'i' ol ibe C il\' Board ol Public Works. Ilis.i^re.it .-iri"\ kt iluie was wlien,
,is cliainnaii of tlie coiiiiniltei' on water, he elicited the purchase ol lhe .\iUsi:in waier
|)l.'inl b\' the cit). Tbe wisdom of that action is denioiislraled dail\ iii ihe luaiuis of ^ani-
lalioii, cconoiiH' and service lo the pt'ople Wilb all other public sei\ ice cui'|,{ir.il iuii-,
i|riii;iiuling higkier rates, waler rates long remained the same and lhe i|ii;iliiv lu-i ^ri\ed lo
an\' l.ir.i^e ciU' in the world, .XIr. l.i'.XIasler is a nieniber ol lhe C luimbei ol l. uiiniiei > i ,ii..|
\', ALL. ,\., and an ildi T in llie I die wild I 'resbylerkni ( lini cli, a lliii I \ sv-cond (K-L;ur .\l ,i- cm
.'iiiil has :ilw,ii,s lircii ,'K"live in all niii\ ciiienls lor ibc lii.-ilen,il ami iiKiial iin|ii ii\ rn unl i.l ihi
ciiiniiinnil'i . .\(iw he is espeeiall)' active in the plan lo hriii.s; llie .Soiilliwa-sii rn I 'resh\ (ni.ni
I 'iiivrisil\- lo Mciii|ihis. He and Miss Louise I'allerson, dan.L;lilei- of lhe late I'Dkuirl and
Mrs. |osiah 1 'alleisoii, wire married ( Iclohcr 2(1, 1887. llieir cliildieii are 1 1 i>r| jIiiih', juc
1'., M.Li'\, I'.dw 111 (1, J r., :iiid Louise

822

ft. B. Jtlinor

HDI'-.NT MINOR, 1,-iwyer. iXlein-
phis, Tennessee, w.as born in
Al.acon, iXlississippi, March '.',
1868, the son of Dr. Henry .Xugustine and
Mary (Dent) Minor. He atlcnded tbe pub
lic schools of M;i('on, .and tbe Mississippi
Agrictdtural & IMccbanica! C"olle,s::;e a inili-
lar\- school, at .Starkville, of which the late
(ieneral .Stephen D. Lee was president.
Gradual ing there in 1887, he taught school
for one \v;\v .and lben .allendcd Ibc Uni-
v'.'rsity of Virginia from 1888 until 1891),
vdiere be received di]ilomas in the schools
of Latin and of I'"rench and tbe degree of
bachelor of laws. On leaving the uni
versity, he went to Northport, Long Island,
where be w;is a nieniber of tbe editori.al
staff of the I'jicyclopedia of Law unlil lale
in 1802. Tbe following year be spent in
Pioslon. cdiling .a new edition of X\ nods'
]'J;iilway Law. In 1804 be moved to ]M em-
phis, where he was admitted to the bar and
began the practice of his profession. Most
of bis work led him into the Cbanccr\'
Court, although, as a local allorncv feir tbe
K. C. Al. & H. Railroad, he had inucb ex
perience in the trial of law' cases. In M:\y.
1900, be was ap[ioinlcd chancellor, ;U
INIemphis, by Governor M. R. Patterson.
In April of the following year, be was
elected by popular vote to a full term of
that office but, shortly afterwards, resi.tjned
to accept the office of .tjencral attornev of
the ^'azoo M- Mississippi X'alley Railroad C'ompany and that of district attorney of tbe Illi-
ii'iis (Cnlral l\;iib-o;id ('oni|iany and of tbe American Exjircss Company, wdiich offices be
si ill liolds. He is a nieniber of tbe law lirni of Burch, Rlinor tv- iMcK.ay; of the yXmeric.an
and rennessee R.ir associations; of the Mein]ibis Country Club; of the Tennessee C'lnb;
:iiid of (he Lawyers" Club. He served two terms as president of the Tennessee Club and in
1017 was jiresident of the Lawyers' Club. 'I'boiigh never an office holder except as cban-
eellor, be w;is, in bis younger days, active in local jKilitics and in 1000 drew (be act creat
ing the eoinmission form of t;overnmenl for Memphis. He is very fond of tbe eonnlry ;nid
s|i(ncls ;ill of bis sp;iie lime on bis f;iini. ( )n /Xpril '28, 1807, Mi, Minor m.ariied Miss
I'liireiice Liavser, of Menipbis, daiigbler of tbe late Colonel R. Dudley b'rayscr.
occurred in March, l''(),5.
((uite voun.g.

lerilealb
lere were two children of this marriage but both died while

823

. C. Carlp WILLIAM COl.b: blXRl.Y, for a
qn.arler of a eenliny a le;i(L
ing nierchanl of Meinphi-,, Ten
nessee, and one of ils most substan
tial, C(M"rect and resiiecled citizens, now
reliring from business, is a ii;ili\'e of
X'ii',L;iiiia, having been born November 21),
18()1, al I )o) lesville. llis ji.ircnls were
Jereiniab .\. and .Mildred L, (Wood) I'liirly,
the hniiier a close i"elati\e lo (leiural
Jnb;il .A. L.arly, C. S. .\. ,\lr. b.;irl\ at
tended lhe coniinon schools :ii home .md
was a student in the University of X'irgiiiia
during 1883 and 1884. .\fier having coin-
pleled his education tliere, XIr. b^.uR w;is
a traveling salesni;ni for several \e;irs ;iml
then came to iXlein|)his, where be lo(jk ihe
agency for C nd.aby Brothers .K: ( OniiJiiin,
packers. fle ra|)idl\ (le\ eloped tliis line
into a general wholesale grocer\' business,
organizing some twent\' live years ;igo the
house of X\'. C'. blarly iV (oiii|);iii\, later
incorporaU'd as the W. C. blaiL ( 'oiii|i:iii\ .
( )l nnqneslioned bonesly and slerling in
tegrity, .Mr. I'larly also showed that be jios-
sessed a high degree of efficiency. Lhese
traits, used in llis business in connection
with great industry and li;ird work, sent
the company rapidly to tbe front ol the
grocery houses of the .South, in which rank
it reni.ained until lanu.iiv 1, 1020, when
Mr. b.arh', ha\-ing lirel of the ¦-e\<re ^ii.iin
of so active a business and having .icenimi-
laled a li.andsoiiK' foilinu', Ccinsenled lii the
inerLjei' ol his eoiiip,in\' wilb lhe .Slialhin (iroeer\' ( oni|i;iii\, niidei lhe iiiiine >il llie kiirU.
.Sli.nioii ( (iiiipany, now one (jI llie l.ilj^esl i;ioc.el'\ liuilsrs in lhe iiiiiiili\. All l'!.iil\ i -.
heavily iiileresled hnaneially in tbe new coni|)aiiy and cluiiiin.in ol ils ho.ird ol direeiois,
but lets others care fen" the details. .Mr. b'arly is a devotel and atlive nieniber ol lhe .Sec
ond Rresbylerian Church, in wliich he has been a ruling elder for niany \e;irs, having
previonsl) served on lhe diaconate He is a member of the Cil\' Club, lhe .Xleiiijihis ( onn-
Iry ( Inb and i\iereh;iiits' l'",,\'cbaiige, ;ind b.as been a nieniber ol the ( li.ainlier ol ( dinnieiee
since ils (.nganization. He is a director in tbe birsl Nalioiuil l!,ink .ind sei\ed Im \iais
on the directory of the Union & Planters B.ank & 'Lrust Company. .Mi. l'^;irls- was mar
ried January 12, 1807, lo Miss (ieorgia Brinkley Goodloe, who is of one of llie oldest ;iiid
most cultured families of the Mid-.Soutb and who possesses ,i voice of r.ue sweeliuss.
lhey Irive lwo sons, Willkiin ( ole, |i., ;ind (ieorge ( i, l'";irly.

824

C p. aiiiirelug

TT

IIO.XIAS BOTTS ANDREXX'S,
I Mcnijihis, Tennessee, for tbe past
twenty )-ears head of The Davis &
Andrews Company, leading iniller.s, and
feed dealers in the l\lid-.Soutli. was born
in Maysville, Kentucky. December 18, 1858.
tbe son of Robert Dorsey and .\my II.
('Lhompson) .'Xndrews. He attended pri
vate schools at home ;nid at I'lemins^fsbnrg,
and then enlered ('entre College in l);ni-
¦\ille, Kentucky, in 1875, receiving bis i|e-
gree of bachelor of arls there in 1870. He
came to Menipbis November 15 of that
year and went to work for the old Xlenipbis
iK' C b.'irleslon R;iilro:id. I Ic la'inained there
jiisl ihree vears .and Ihen resit;iie<l tbe chief
clerkship lo go wilb lhe Mempbls (ir.iin.
b.lexalor ij\- jXl inuifaclining C (iiiip;in\'. He
succeeded the late John K. Speed as presi
dent of that company and was its head
when it was desl roved b\- fire in .September.
1808. He was .s:(eiieral manager of lhe
Dixie ]\lill Company from 1801 to 180,S
and from tb;if date to 1808, he w.as ,[:;<'ii-
cral in;ui;isjer of tbe l''at;l<' Mill C omp.ain .
l'"roin 1802 In 1805, Mr. .Xndrews w;is \ ice-
president and general in.ana.sjer of tbe I'jii-
pire Mill, Elevator iK,- Warehouse ( oinprun .
On ,Xlay 1, 1000, Mr. Andrews in partner
ship with Mr. T. L. Davis or.s,fanized the
firm of Davis & /Xndrews. Thev incor-
[)rirated the business on March 1 of tbe
following year as Tbe Davis &- Xndrews
I onip.-iii\. wilb Mr. .Xndvcws as the presideni .and be has remained in th.al posilion ever
Miiee, 'I be Im-iness in milling especially "Dixie" cream meal and as general gr.ain deilers
li:is developed sl<;idilv so that for years it has been one of lhe leaders in lbal line in this
..,,, li,,,, ,,f tlie eonnlry with a re]intation second to none for the pnrily of ils products and
the Mirreclness of its weights. Air, .Xndrews is a director in the Memphis IMercliants I'^.x-
(¦h.int,'e of wliieb be has iieen an active nieniber for many years. He is also a director in
lhe Anu'iican I'lderation of Corn Millers, He is also a nieniber of tbe Memphis ( bamber
(if ( oinmeree. Xl tbe university he was a member of the Phi Delta Tbela college fra-
lernih and f"i \<':irs be has been a ruling ebbr and one of tbe most active niembers of lhe
Xlabama Vveiine Rresbylerian church. He and Miss Nannie J. Heron of Danville. Ken-
lnck\-. were in.arried |aiiuar\ 21. 1885. They have three children, all sons: Francis XX'est,
luicene X'onng and Robert Dorsey .Andrews.

825

I^oblett l^aine

Tl

lb: IK.JNoR.XI'd.E RO\X I.bN'T
P.XINI'I, iXlayor of Meni]iliis, is not a
liolitiei;in, ne\er h:is been ;i politician.
did nol seek llu noniinalion lor M,i\oi, bin
when a eonimiltee of lhe besl cilizeiis of the
eily asked liim, on aeeonnl of bis lih-long
record as .a ijood citizen, bis known prohil)
;iml his sii.;iial siiec ess ;is ,i business m.ni,
lo make lhe race be eoilsenled lo do so and
•was i-lecled by a bandscjine nrijoritv, re
ceiving Ins lie;iyiesl vole in the resideiiti:il
wards ;ind \yliere the women exercised their
iirsl right ol siiltrai^e. He assuiiied ibe
duties of bis office |ann.ar\ 1, 1020, willi-
oilt ;i pledge savi llie olliei.d o.ilh ol ollue
and llis adminislriilion li.is been more iie.uL
free from polilics iban any other in llu
memory ol Ihe oldest iiili,ihil;inl ol lhe eil\.
There is no inche;itioii abunl the ( il) Hall
at |)reseill of :ins' polilu.al iiiaehme or aii)
desire to erecl one It is more like a bi.i;
business house with a sincere desire to sys
tematize and coordinate ;ill depariinenls iov
the sole purpose of .L;realer eliicieiicw .\iiy
proposition is weighed upon Us merits -not
by the slandanl of bow man)' voles ils
pro|)oiieiils m;iy control or b\' tlu'ir iibilil)
to stuff ballot bo.xes. .XIr. Raine w;is born
in Aleinpbis, December 22, 1870. the son
of John J . and Sarah (Uowlell) l';iiiie. He
attended llu' pnhlic schools ol the eiu .
.l;i .idiriling in ibe class of ISOd. ||i^ lu-i
employinenl \v;is in bSOl), wilh llii' ,SinL;ei
iXlannl ;ielin'nig ( ompaiiy. .Xller lliree \e,irs there, be went wilh lhe lhen K.iilniL; whole
sale grocer) linn of .\. B. 'Lreadwell & (.oinpaii)'. In 10(14 he joined lhe \oim^er ami
pro.gressive \\ liile-\\ ilsoii-Drew Coniiiany, of which be became secrelai"\ and irea^urer. In
1900 he was chosen secretary of the Memphis vXssociation of Credit .Xlen, and tbe following
)ear served as presideni of that organization. He was president of lhe Collon .Siaies .Xler-
cliants .Association in 1916, and at the same time vice-president of the .Southern W lioles:de
(irocers .Association. .Since that year he has been a direclor in the Tii-.Si,ite Lair .\ssoei;L-
tion. In 1015 he assisted in org.anizing lhe Memphis ISnre.iu of l'".iiiii 1 )e\alo])meiil, of llu
( h.iniher of ( (iinmerce and is slill a inember ol ils exeenlive coinmiliei', llis most eon
spu lions public se'rvue prior lo assiimin.g tbe iiKn'oiali\' was ;is L niled .Sl.au s imid .idmin-
isir:ilor in 1017 and lORS. He .iiul Miss .Xniiabell Hughes iii;nried Xlaieli 12, L'lS, Tluw
ha\e one child, I'Ji/abelh Rowlell I'.iiiu:,

826

Hem panlts

L

b. XI R.XNK.S, Xlenipbis, Tennessee
Iaw)('r, inercli.ant, eolton-factor, ])lant-
cr aiul breeder of pedif,'ree(l liveslock',
\v,as horn ;it Love Station. I )eSolo Counh.
jXlississippi, March 16. 1870. the son of
(ieorge Thomas .and Sallie ( Lo\e ) l';inks.
He was educated at XX'ebb's School, llell-
bitckle, Tennessee, and at \'';mderbill I 'ni-
versily, N,-isbville ( 'oniing (o Memphis in
-August, 1802, he be,^;in the practice of law
in (be office of .Xhcrs X' .Sneed. L.iler be
forined a |);irtnership wilh Mr. D. bi. Mvers
and .after the death of Mr. Myers, he ;ind
Mr. W. 11. I larrelsoii forined tbe partner
ship of Banks iK: H.arrelson, whicb is one
of the leading law firms of the .Xlid-Soiith.
S])('cializing in comnierciril law. .Sonic vears
.ago Mr. lianks became be;ivil\- inlerested
in pl.antation properties in the St. Fr.aneis
Basin of .Xrk.ansas. and with bis uncle.
Henry I'anks, or.sjanized the I^)anks (irocer^¦
Comp.anv and the Rlanters Cotton C oni-
]>an)', both of Meni])bis, the former doing a
wholesale business and the latter bcin.sj col-
ton factors in the local market. Lroin tbe
day that he became interested in .Xrkansas
lands. Air. Banks w;is a most \-aliiable .asset
lo lbal ,S|;ile lbroni;b his ;ieli\e e(i(iper:i-
tion in the form.ation ol ro.ad ,and dr.'iiiirit;e
districts and cooperation with the residenis
in .all ibat was progressi\e. lie \v;is a leader
in Memphis in the a.tjitation for iiii]iro\ed
f;irm methods and the raising of heller and
ni'ire livc^liiek .iiul feed for it. wilb lhe coiiscipu'iil iinpro\-enient of lhe soil, and |irob.ibly
w;e lhe iiKisI enii ieiil and besl posted of ,ill of lliose earlv advoc:iles .along lbal line. In
f;i. I Mr. Ranks for \e:irs li.is been i i'eognizi.i| as one of Ihe niosl vers.alile men in lhis sec-
lion in lhe wide i:mt;e of accurate information in bis ])Ossession. ble owns a magnificent
I'sl.ale. X\'aliinl Hill I'Aarm, in the s(nitb end of the county near Raines, where be lives and
<p'ii.ili/es in f:iiu\ e.illle. Mr. I'.anks b;is ne\er s(int,dU or lu'ld public office, bill b.as ae-
eepled lhe .ippoinlmeiit as one of the commissioners of Tennessee on tmifen-m Slate laws.
XIr, l'..uiks w.'is nmnied first on June 1.^, 1802, to jXliss Lilian b'ilzyerald, daughter of tbe
\-eneiabIe Ri^liop ( ), R. I'"ilzgerald of the Xletbodist Chnrcli, and after ber death be ;ind
Xlis. I'islclle (iildarl were marri(,'d June 27, l')()3. Their children are; (ieorge 'Lhomas,
M,-ir\- Love, Lem, b'.nn- l.on and XX'illiam Henry.

827

C. a. |3rice

c

ARLES ANDREXV PRICbi, man
ager of the .Xmeric.an Car ..V b'onndry
C'onipany in Memphis, 'Lennessee,
was born iXlarch 0, 1860, in Detroit, Michi
gan, tbe son of .Xndrew Jacksiai and I'lliza
Jane (Thorbuni) Price He was educated
in the Detroit grammjir schools and beg.in
life with a last freigbl line in lbal cit),
afterwards spending some twelvi/ \e;ii's
with a transfer company. In I8'i0 lie
joined the .Xnierican C'.ir \- l''oniidr\' t'oin-
paii) in Delrciil, his liisi wurk beiiii^ in llu-
supply de])artment. Lie remained with tlu-
compaii) there, in tbe supph and pnrcba--
ing depariinenls, until |0()(), when he e:iine
lo Memphis ,is Ibe head of llie local pkinl
ol lhe ((inip:niv, ol whuli he 1i,ls been in
charge ever since Since lben be lias been
one of tbe strongest boosters uf the city,
not in the sense merely of talking about
its glory, but in the real work of giving lii.-
time and talent to the development of ils
fT,-,^-;^-—^^^^^ .^^^_^^^^_ possibilities, mainly in the line of maiiii-
^KI^VhHHI^^B ^^^^^^^^H faeturing. Lie has been
I .j^Sr' v^B^^^^ ^^^^^^^^H Chainber of Coinnierce
I^^^^^D^^^H l^^^^^^^H during the days of tbe bni'e;ui
E.^^HH||^^^^^^k * ' ') ! ^^^^^^^H id pnblicil)' and developmem, lie
of lhe inosl .'lelive inemb<'i"s ol ih.u liine:in,
.Now he IS \ iee-ch.oriii;in ol lhe indiisliKil
division of the chamber, and pmbabh iu.j
other inember of tbe <h\ isiun has been more
iiistrnmenlal than he in tbe loc:iliiig of ni.iii-
nfactnrlng enlerprises hen-. Il.iviiij.^ bciii
ciig;t.geil in the operation of big pkints lioth in the norlb and the sonlli, be is able lo con
vince a jirospective Memphian that the advantage of this section, especialL in the matter
of labor is great as compared with the North. /Xltboiigb a large eiii|ilo)er of labor in es^en
tial work, he announced when lhe XX'orld War came on, that he would nol ;isk indnsirial
e.xeinplion for .any employe between the .'iges of tweiil\-one and lbiil\-live \ears. He
served with rare imp.ii lialil y ;iiid jndginent on .Shelby ('iiniil\' I'lxeinpl i(jn RimiiI, No, 2,
and filer, with Cbaneelloi I. II. I'eies .and J. L. M.itlbews of ( );iklaiid, ;is a inembei- uf
lhe .Xdvisoi)' I'o.ird lo lhe West Tennessee dislriel bo.ird. XIr. I'riee is a liijdi XLimhi
and past polenlale of /Xl C'byniia Teni[)le, a member of the Rolarv ( Inh, Mi'inphis t uun
try Club and several outing clubs. He and Miss l.elili;i I'niek were maiiiel XIaieli IS, ISOl
Tbe\ have one child. Miss Helen 'L. I'riee.

828

f ubge H. p. iUcJfarlanb

sailIbe Xlei
just
alsoaltodali ere
the In
as c
She

le \e,ar, and opened ,an office al Memphis.

LB. iMcLARLAND, s,,n of Dr. Lelix
,\. and Marlha X, (nee |)oni,d:iss )
l\lcl'arl,and, of Memphis, Tennessee,
was born /Xpril 7, 18 1,1, in Haywood coniiU ,
He was reared there, allending the public
schools and afterward atlending college al
bdorenre, .Xlabama. In , Xpril, 1861, he en
listed as ;i private in CVimpanv .A, .Ninth
Tennessee inf.anlrs'. ,\( .Shiloh be w.is
ni.ade ser^eant-ni.ajor of the re.L;inieiil, and
served as such for over ,a \e;ir. I le was
then elected second lieutenant, and soon
afterward became volunteer aid on the
staff of Cieii. Gcorsjc ALanev, serving in thai
cap.acilv niilil capliiri'cl. in April. I8(').S, .at
X\ est Loint, ( ia. He took pari in the battles
at .Shiloh. at Perryville, Murfreesboro,
C hiekaniauga, Missioiiarv Ridge, and from
Dalton to .Xtlanta, the fight at .Atlanta on
July 22, and at XX'csl Loint, (ia,, .Xpril 16,
1895, and was in many minor eng.agements.
lie was slightlv wounded at .Shiloh. lie
served for many vears at bri.s;adier general
in tbe Linited Confederate X'eterans, and
deli\-ered lhe ainin.al .address ,a( the reunion,
in lOlt); also ,a memorial tribute to (iener.al
( ieortje X\'. (iordon, deceased coniniander
.and congressin.an, ;iiid this address was
made ;i ])art of the C'on.gressional Record.
/Xfter the war closed, be moved to Memphis
and studied law. In 1867 be was gradu.ated
from the Lebanon Law school, at Lebanon,
Tennessee was admitted lo pr.aclice the
Lie was general attornev for 'Lennessee of

Xli/sonri R.acilic R;iilw;iv ( 'o,, including Iron Moiinlaiii, Cotton I'.elt. Iron Mountain of
Mpliis and the Lhiion Railway Co. ( I'elt Line), for 18 years. He was coniinissioncd
iee of tbe Supreme Court of 'Lennessee several times to hear sjiecial cases, and scrveil
one lerni of tbe court. In 1805 be w.ts appointed and coniniissioiied United .States
rne\ for (be Western District of Tennessee but declined the office. He was never a caiidi-
¦ for anv office lint active in all civic duties, ble was chairnian of the cominittcc that
-t(<l the Confederate Monuincnt in Ebnwood Cemetery, and of the committee that erected
'bennessee (Inb building. Hv was among tbe earliest riflvocates of parks for Menipbis.
L'^')'' be w:is appointed ;i jiark eonimissioner .and served six years, tbe two lirst years
bairm.in. He w.'is married, /X|)ril 4, 1872, to Miss lillcn X'. Saunders, of Courtland, .XIa,
died in |0(X), and in 1902 be married Mrs. Floy Graham Allen.

829

^, %). flfjillip^

SA.XIUb:L IIFNRX' RHILLIRS, nier
chanl, Alemphis, 'I'eniu ssei-, .dtlumgh
a resident of the cit) for half a cen
tury and for the ni.ajin- |)ortion of that
|)eriod one of its leading business men, w;is
born in Kenosha, Wi/.eon.in, ( ii lobei 18,
1853, lhe son of .Sjimnel \V illi.ain ,iiul .Sai.ib
( I'ilkinglon) I'liillips. Mr. I'hillip-' f;illier
was hmn in tbe ;uiceslr;il home "( iaile,"
Caslicl, Ireland, v\bere bis forebe-.ars li.ad
been boin for ii'iilmics |ii e\ loiish , Aside
from lhe el.i/. le tdiieaiKui w huh llu- l.illirr
received in Irekind, be look ;i course in en
gineering and arelnleelin c Sixm ,'ifler
having m.arried, lie came to ,\iiieric;i seek
ing a fortiine, bnl losl w li.il he bad <lealiii,g
in Chie;i.i;o real eshile 11 w.is lhen lli,il
he beg:iii lhe practice of lhe profession be
li.ad leariu/d in Irebimk In IS6() be e.iiiie
l<i Menipbis lo draU a m;ip ul k.lniwoud
( emeli'i \ , and lemaiiic-d lure fiuin lbal
linn- niilil his dealli in IS.SL Tin- son w;is
edne:ileil al ( jiiiirdeau's pi ep,i i-;ilor\- ,~( houl
and Leddin's Business ( olle.ge here, and
at the age of eighteen years went into the
grocei-\ business with lhe \\lioles;ile huU'-e
of bord, I'orler ..K: Comp;iii\-, kiler I'urler,
T;i\lor \- t'oiiip;in\- ami slill kiter Lorler
\- M,-u-rai'. lie I'emameil Willi llie-c luii-
ceriis lor nine \ears and in I S.'^l I Iciinied a
partnerslii|) with tbe kite ILii-\ev l'>, .Shanks
under tbe linn name of Shanks, I'liillips ^;
idinpanv. L pon llii' de:illi of XIr .Sli.inks
in 1004, .XIr. I'liillips succeeded him as [iresident and general inaiui.ner of ibe eoni|MiiN and
in lbal ea|)acil)' be has in;ide it one of the strongest firms in lhe .Smith as wbole-;ile ^rueer^
and .i;rain jobbers, doing an annual business agi^regaling some lour millions ol dollars. His
sl;iiiding among his associates is shown by the f;icl thai once be was elecU-d president of ili,j
.Scailliein \X holesale (irocers' /Xssoiiation. Diirin.t; llie X\ oi Id \\ :ii-. he sei\ed as cbainnan
lor Tennessee id ibe /\ mericin, I'leiiih, Biilisli, l'>el.t;i;m llliml Soldieis' \\,ii- Rilui
.S(i(-iel \ , ,-iiid w;is chairman ol lhe (-onimillee wliieb r.-iised llie ;|i25,(H)l) \U i\ ( id-s idle I hind,
111- w.e, ,1 meiiihei (il lhe old ( lnek,is;i\v (m;nd', loi l(iil\' \'i-,ii-,. .nid r, .i iih-iiili(i ul lie
lennessee I lub, llie Xlinipliis (miiili\ (bib, llu- Xleiusli,i (iiiiIiil; ( Inli, lhe Xleiih.iiils
l',ixehange and tbe Chamber of Commerce XIr, I'liillips and .Xliss bileanor tiilbeil .Xlliei's
were ni.arried .Seplember M), 10()(). Their children are; bilc-anor Xlhers, likmebe bibles ;nid
S.'ininel IL, Jr.

8.50

5^. 5^. :antier£;on

II

/XR'k'X' I'.l'iNNl'M'r XNDl'-.RSON,
kiwyer and kile lieiilen;int-coloiiel in
tbe ,\ineric.-iii bixpedilionai)- forces,
Memphis 'lennessee, is a n;i(ive of X'.an
P>uren, Michigan, where be was born No
vember 5, 1879, the son of C'olonel Seneca
Benjaniin and .Xdelaide (liennett) /Xnder-
son. lie received bis |)rimarv edncalion in
(be Miebig.an sidiools. The f;iinil\- mo\-ed
to Memphis in 1880, and be continued bis
studies here at the High .School, Perry &
Robinson's jirivati' sidiool and at the Chris
tian ISrothers' College His de.tjrce of mas
ter of arts was the last conferred by tli.at
institution. He completed bis li(crar\-
coiirse at tbe Laiiversitv of Chicago, and,
following this, went to Columbia Lbii-
ATisity, New A'ork', where he was gr:idii-
ated in 1904 wilh tbe degree of bachelor
of laws. He returned al once to Memphis
and be.sjan the practice of his ))rofessioii,
first alone ; then with A. Al. Patterson ; then
for vears with R. (irattan R>rown, under
tbe firm name of Brown & yXnderson, and
since his return from Lraiice, alone He
has not only succeeded in the law, but. be
ing a thorfiiigbly cdticaled man, he has kepi
up bis reiding unlil lodav be is considered
a man of wide learning and an or.alor of
repute in the Mid-.South. /X Republican by
birth and rearing, Cokinel .Anderson has
been a delegate lo most of the Stale con
ventions of that ])arty for the past fifteen
vears. He was selected district elector for Roosevelt in 1904 and for 'Laft in 1908. innkinr;
iirilliant if futile campaigns, ble beaded the P>ull i\Ioose rebellion for Roosevelt in Tennessee
in 1012, and, .'is elector for the slate at large made .a nieleoric cain|iaign. He is ,a nieniber
of tbe Liimberinen's Cbib, tbe Memphis Country Club, tbe Masons, the Elks, the ( )dd b'cL
lows ,-md the Ch.amber of Commerce of which be was the last president elected bv ])opiilar
v<.|e nf the meinbei ,, I'lril was ill l'M2. :ind lhe s.ime \ear be serv'cd as jiresidenl of lhe
Sl.ile ICir .Xssoei.ation. Colonel Xnderson \vas one of the first to enlist in tbe \X orld XX'ar,
;ind spent tw-('iil)-two niontlis in b'rance as judge advocate with tbe Twcnt)'-.Sixlb Division.
closing bis career there as officer in charge of rents, re(|iiisilions and claims for P.ase .Sec
tion No. 6, inclndiii.t^r tb.e Rort of Marseilles ;ind tbe entire Riviera, where he bandied mil
lions of dollars. He :iivl Miss Raltv Crook of Jackson. 'Lennessee, were married October
8, 1008. Thev b:u(' three sons and one daughter.

831

!^. ^. Parboro

AN'IONIO SI'iBAS'llAN BAR-
l'i( )R( ), for iiiaii\ )e,ii s a le;idiiig
business iii.aii and good citizen of
Meiiiijhis, 'bennessee, is a native of Ital) ,
but Memphis lias been bis hoim dm ing mosi
of tbe time for more tlian half a leiitur)'.
He was born in Genoa, Italy, the son of
Anlonio and KallK-rine l'),irboro, bnl ;it lin
age of ten years lie came to .Xlenipbis. He
bad no opportunity to go to school but re
ceived ;iii edncalion under a piiviite Inloi
when not at work. XX'iik- and good reading;
since that time, association with lhe best
of j)eo|)le, extensive tiavils ,iiid close ob
servalion, have made Mr, Baiboro a iii;ni
of well rfinnded and balanced edncalion, for
be is |)ossesse(l of a iiiiiid acenrale and woii-
derfnlly keen, Mr, l'>;irb(M-o went to
.Arkansas Cil\, /Xrkansas, lhen a \'er\ lively
and .active place, and s)ient nine \ear~ tlu;re
in the .gc-neral nierebamlise business. He
relnrned lo Memphis in 1877 :uid founded
the wholesale and relail fruil and produce
bouse on .South Main .Street which bore Ins
name fin" 43 yeirs. Tbe biisine-^s pros
|n'red from lhe sl:irt, lor Mr. liarboro pnl
into it ;i high degree of elfuiency, indelalig-
able energy, sterbn.iL; inlei;ril\ and /ibsoliile
bonesty togelher with a liriii deterimnal ion
to succeed and to give service Mr. l'>;ii'l)oi-ii
conlinned in lint location .md business niilil
the lirst of |aiin;iry, |020, then he ,ib;iii
dolled lhe relail br;ineb of hi,- business, his
lirni moving into their new warehouse al the foot of RoiUotoc .Xveime, ;i ihoidngbL mod
irii slrnetnre especially designeil by them for the wholesale Iniit and prodiue line to wliuli
XIr. Rarboro coiilmes his aetivilies. He is still ai'li\e in lhe business lull eonlmes hi- liiiu-
now ralher to the kirger affairs of the concern, le.iving the (k-lails lu \iinns;ei- nun. XIr.
liarboro has never son.nbl or held office, but lor many ye;irs has bet'ii ver\ active Im good
go\-ernnienl in the city in tbe hands of honest men. ()ften be has spent bis lime and moiie\'
liU" niovemeiits lh;il were good for the city, re;ilizing lli:it Ins aeli\'il\ would be injnrions Id
Ills business, bnl iK-lu'ving in lhe principles iiuoKail, be wiiil alie:iil. He ,iml Mi-, Id.i
l.,ivi-/zo were iiiai i ied in 1885. lheir cliildi c n ,ir(- XI aleolin ( i. I '.;o boi o, diiec lor ;ind ,ui i \ e
nieiiilK-r of ihe liriii of ;\. .S. B,-n'boro cV Co., liu., and a d, nimbler, Mrs, )oliii D ( ;iiiale.

832

Herbert #annaUjap

H

l'.RR>FR'l' (iANNA\V/\X', one of (he
loadin,g Lawyers of Memphis, Ten
nessee, was born in N.'isbville,
'Lennessee, November Id, 1878, the son of
John Edward and Marion (.A'Moss) (iaii-
iiaway. He finished with honors under
"C)ld Sawney" al the XVebb School. Bell
buckle, 'Lennessee, in 1897, and then went
to X^anderhilt University in Nashville,
wdiere be was graduated in 1901 as Ibe
honor ni.aii of the class with tbe degree of
bachelor of arts. I Ic earned the b'ounders'
Medal, academic (le|iartnieiit, in bis gradn-
atintj^ vear, and also earned X'oimg's medal
in oratory. He was also cililor-in-chief of
the Colle.sje Annual, b'ollowing his gradii-
atioii be was appoinb.-d ijovernnient teacher
(A baiglisb in the I'liilippine Islands and
spent the next two years there. Retnrnin.t;
lo tbe United .States be took lime to visit
Ja|ian, China, India, EgyjM, Italy, bTance
and England, thus iiiakin.g a complete tour
of the world. He went back to X^anderbilt
University, wdiere he entered the law de-
jiartnient. from which be received (be de
gree of bachelor of laws wilb honors in
loot. fle be.ix.'in the practice of his pro
fession in Menipbis in lhe f;ill of lliat \ear
in tbe office of I'-rank R. Poston. Later he
was for a lime connected \vilb the linn of
.Smith & Trezcvanl and still later with ib.-it
of XX'atson &' Perkins. He spent six years
as altorney in the title departmenl of tbe
I'l.iiik of (oinmeree cK- Trnsl ( 'onip;in\ , and at the end of lli;il time, l''ebnKir\' I, |017, be
and XIr. Uny ( liiireb formed tbe law firm of Cbiireh & (Jaiiiiawa\-, one of tbe slrongesl
law firms of the city and esjieciallv valu.able to its clients in matters of real estate and
eliaiicer\- practice Mr. Ciannaw.ay finds time from bis law work to be of valuable service
to lhe eonimnnih, espeei.allv lbront,di the Chamber of Commerce, of which be b.'is been
foi sdnie \(-,ii's a most .'lelixe iiH-niber. lie was \'<'r\' useful tlierc in the mailer of seenrln.t;
the location of .-in aviation station at Park b'ield for the Lhiitcd .States government, and in
the Iraiisfer of lliat property for tb.at purpiose Now be is chairnian of the law comniittee
of the ( lianibcr of (¦oinmeree .Xl college he w;is a nieniber of the Si,<;m;i Nn fraternitv. Tie
is a nu'iiibi'r of the Tennessee C'hib, F.gvptian Literary .Society, N;itional Geographic So-
eii-l\- ;mii| Travel (Inb of Ani-.'rica. Mr. (lannaway and Miss Lilizabeth Kline of Nashville
were m.arried Ma\ 2, 1000.

833

5). 5. libingsiton

II

b:NRY J. LI\IN(iSToN, lawyer,
Xlempliis, 'bennessee, was born in
I'rownsyille, 'Lennessee, J.annary 2.
1875, the son of Henry J. and 'Leilipi;
(.Somervell) Livingston. llis f:ilher \\-as
for more than ;i gener.ition one of tlie lead
ing lawyi.-rs in Tennessee and lor over
Iwelily \'ears cbaneelloi of lhe 'Iciilb dis
lriel, a man of exceplionally bi.^li character
and lovable dis])osition. His mother was
of tile .Soiiiervell faniib', wliii b was |ironii-
nent in Noiinaiuh', pailieipaled m llie eon
ipiesl of I'aigland under X\ illiam, ;md li;is
been eoiispicnous lor all thai is good in
X'irginia, Carolin.a and W esi Tennessee
since the early C'oloni;il days. -Xfler having
attended ])rivale sel;ools in I'jrowiisx'ille,
Mr. Livingston went to lhe X\'ebb School al
Bellbuckle, Tennessee, and from there to
A^anderbilt L.Ini\'ersity, where be took bis
bachelor of arts degree in 180.S and bis
b:iebelor of laws lwo years kiler, lle
c'lrneil by liis scbolaiship a inembei slii]) in
the I'hi Beta Kajipa soeiel)- and was ;i
member of the I'hi Delta Tliel;i social fra-
leniitv. L^pon llu; receipt of his diploma,
Mr. Livingston came lo Memiiliis and bei;an
tbe practice ot law. I le lias risen sle:idih'
until he ranks as one of the besl kawvers
at the Memphis bar. l"\jr \'e:Lrs he lias been
a nuinber of the linn of ALIieliee Livings
Ion iK: l'"arabon.t;li. XIr. Lixiiii^sion w;is
elected attorney for llie Cit) of .Xlenipbis in
October, 1916, and served until December 31, 1019. llis term of office was ;il a time when
ibe cily adminislration's ship sailed tempestiions seas, but I roiii wlrilever dineiion eaiiu
the wind, no one ever snsiiecled Mr. Livingston ol being inllneiict'd b\ pcibius in :in\ lei;.il
o|)inion that be rendered, llis most consiiictioiis acts in tb;u c;ipacil\- wen- lhe lights th:n
be waged against the raise in gas rates and street car fares. He defe.iled lhe i:iise in ,i;.i-
rates, and people who were f.ainiliar wilb the conditions in ihe street i,iilw;i\ I'igbl con
sidered lliemselves forlnnale lliat he held the new rale down lo six eeiils. He was aLd
aclive in dr;iftirig the .Xndilorinm and 'bilbercniosis llospilal boiul bills, where for the
first time both city and county joined in bond issues tor public enlerprises, Xli livingsion
was married Jaiinar) 27, 1004, lo Xliss .M.irtha J. Sbelb), Tlie\ lia\e no ehil.l. He is a
member of the C'liamber of Comnieree and tbe Memphis (,'miiili-\ (lull.

834

ft. Jf. MilliS

H

b:NRY b'RANKLIN WILLIS. Tnr-
rell, yXrkansas, one of tbe most
active f.aeteirs in the developinent of
Ihe upper porlion of ('ritlenden Coiintv', is
a native of JM ississipipi, having been born
in Ripilc)', in the )-ear 1878, the son of Cap-
biiii Thomas O. ;iiid l.aviiia ( I'orlis) Willis.
He .attended the |uiblic schools of Tipjiali
('oiinly for a time, but the lure of the aclive
world was so strong lli.at ;il tbe ;ige of ten
ve'irs be went to work in Ibe oKiee of (be
Sonlliern .Se-iilinel. He inastered lhe art
of conducting a newsp;iper with such rapid
ity and had such an ambition tei go the front
that at the a.sje of seventeen years be started
a new'spa]X'r at Amory, Mississippi — the
Aniory /Xr,gns-News. Lie was wididy
Icnnwn ibrougbont Alississip|ii as the \-oiing-
esl editor in the sl.'ile He renr'iined in
that line of acti\'itv' for three years and at
the end of that lime reached the concbision
lbal some other line would pnn'c more
prolit.able He tiirned llis attention next Ifi
railroad work, vvbicli he entered in ,i clerical
capacity at twenty \-ears of .a.i^e, ¦,\\}(\ in
which he remained for ten vears. blicii he
went wilb the I'aker Lumber Coni]ian\' ;iiid
worked for il for lliree years in (. ritlenden
County. He bad been in the wonderful
.Saint Francis Basin but a short time when
be foresaw al least some of the prosperity
which wouki come to that fertile section
just as soon as the lands could be cleared
;ind pnl into cnltiv.alion. In 10)1. be se\-ere<l bis connection wilh the hiniber coinpanv .and
dpeiu'd a sfdre in Tiirrell. To tbe nierchandise business be ipiickU- added giiiiiiiiy: and
fariniiiy. having .acpiired some of the b(~st land in that section. In 1010 be sold eitjht liun-
di-'-d acres rit .'i handsome profit and be is now ra[iidly devcIopiiiE^ the remaining four linn-
dri'd acres lo a bi.tjii st.ate of cnllivation. Mr. XX'ilb's has taken an active interest in |)olilics
evi-r sinre 1,'oinL,'- to /X rk;iiis,-is .and in 10)7 became a nieniber of the .Stale let^n'slatnre There
lie vvas most .active in )'erf eitiii.t; the ro;id laws so that the river counties could work iinder
tlieiii, .Now- lie is seerel.ary of three of the largest road districts in the nortbern porlion of
lhe eouiil\- and Ihe strongesl f;u'lor (here in developing what bis country needs most — goofl
ro.-iils Mr. Willis and Miss M;iiy l'"l)nl were m;irried in 1002. They have Iwo sons:
I lenrv and John VX'aldo Willis.

835

^, IB. mins

TlKJiXIAS BR(.)WN KING, Xlempliis,
'Lennessee, best known to the general
public for his clinrch ;uid eleemosy
nary work, and for bis aih'ocaey of goeul
roads, was born in White ( ouiil\-, .Xrl:aii-
sas, July 10, 1861, the son uf 'I'liomas B.
and b^liza B, King, He rei-eived bis eirly
edncalion in lhe ihree-monllis seliool- of
his iialive eouiily, and diiiint; llu- leiiii of
1880-81 worked bis w.'iy ibroiigh the Tr:iiii-
ing School lor funs al Xlurfreesboro, Ten
nessee ,Xt the age ol iwenly )-ears he
Weill lo work as a clerk in a hardware store
al Bells, Tennessee, where he- spent four
years. I'Aillovving thai he traveled for v.'iri-
ous Mein|jbis collon factors, soliciting sliip-
ineiils and bad probalily a l;ir.ger lollowing
lluiii any other man in the iMiiLSouih, for
none who knew bini could help bk;in.^ him,
nor could doubt bis inlegriu'. b'roni 1802
lo 1805, he was cashier ol lhe Bniwiisville
(bennessee) I'j.ink, and for the lollowm.i;
three years editor ul lhe Brow n-^ville
.Slates-1 )enioerat. During the legislative
session of 1886, he represenled C'roeketl
Count)' in the Tt'iinessee (ieneral .Xsseinbb-.
In 1003, he moved bis residence from
lirownsville to Memphis, since which time
he has been one ol the most iiromnieni and
useful men in tbe cit)' tiloiig all good lines.
He was president of tbe directorv of ibe
y. M. C. A. from 1004 lo 10)0, dniniL'
which period llu- iiriL'mhc nl sinulnii- on
jXladison .Xveime w;is biiill. He has been .a (onsislenl niemliei dl ihe Xlellmdisl i. liiiuli
for nearly half a century and for twenty consecutive years was a lav <lele,n;ile lo lhe (u/ii-
eral Conference, He organized lhe lennessee Workshop for lhe Blind, and orijiini.ad and
was exeenlive officer of the Collon b'aetois' /Xssociation from 10)() id 10) 7, lie wa-- ,i
inember of the .Shelby County C'(,iinniission from 1012 to 10)4. .Since 10)7, )ie )ias )ieeii
secretary and fin.ancial .agent for lhe Melbodisi 1 lospit;il. b'oi years he has been ;i le;ider
in all niovenienls in the Mid-South for belter ro.ids, and on aeeonnl of bis abililv /iIoiil;
lbal line, lhe (bamber of Commerce induced liiiii to become manai^i r ol ils f.;ood ro;uL
departmenl. He is president of one, viee-jiiesident of lwo, direclor in lwo ,ind seerelarv of
one iiiterst;ile and transcontinental highway associations. Mr. King b;is keen married Iwic
— to Miss Mollie IL XX'illianis in 1887, and lo Miss Ivinnie King in 1004. ( )iie child survive^
the former wife.

836

1, $. jWiles

L

.Xrkansas.
lo return
\i-kans;\s
Roane X\':
that dat<'
service li/i
llu- .Sn)ire
,eenring i
liecn 1.-iil;(
p -p, , led
M( Ibodisl
i'^raternit v
Lovick 1'.

OX'ICK I'II':R(|': XIILbiS, lawvcr,
iXlempbis, Tennessee, is a n;ilive of
Virgini.a, having been born at
Marion, May 17, 1871, the son of the Rev
erend George \X'. Miles, a Sontberii .Xletbo
dist minister, a native nf .South Caroliii.a,
and Rebecca /Xustiii Miles, a nativ-e of
'Lennessee Tie was ,t;r;idiialed from b^morv
& llenry College, X'irginia, Iniic, 180], and
later studied law at tbe University of X'ir
ginia. H'e came to Memphis in 1804 and
spent five v'cars here with 'I be Commer
cial .A|)peal, first as a reporter, in which
capacity he at once look first rank, not
only for the .accurate .and graceful arrange
ment of his facts, but also for the fine vein
of liiimor wdiich be injected into so maiiv
stories, and later as correspondent at the
national ca|)ital and as assist;nit inana.tiinL,'
editor. In 1800. Mr. Miles severed his
connection with The Commercial /Xpiieal
and cnterefl the practice of law in I'~ori
.Smith. Arkansas, joining an older lirotlier,
Osear L, Miles, who was then and unlil bis
I death one of Ihe leading l;iw\-ers of thai
.Sl;ile. Mr. IMiles dining bis sla\- in ,\rk,aii-
sas. ill addition lo engaging in geii('r;il
practice was ,'issislaiit attorney of the Mis
souri I'acific Railway .System from 1902
until 1908, and from tbe latter date until
1912 was general attorney for the same
system for XX'cstcrn .Arkans.as and Okla
homa. His success was conspicuous in
bill luu'ing lived and married in Memphis lip favorablv considered a sug.ijestioii
and in 1012 resi.gncd bis raibo;id connections, gave up bis jirivate practice in
and ii'lnnied to Memphis, forming with llonorable Luke l'l XX'ritjht, I\laior
;iriiif; ,-nid .Sanmel R. XX'alker the firm of XX'right, Miles, XX'ariiig & XX'alker, from
one df the leading law firms of tbe .South. .Mr. Miles' most recent conspicuous
s lieeii. represent int,"^ the Memphis .Street Railway Comp.aii)', in fstablisliing before
me ( onrt of the .St.ite the constitulionalit)- of the .State Utilities Act. and in
chef for bis client from the Stale Utilities Conimission. XX'hile bis clientage li.as
1\- <orpoi;ile, Mr. Miles e;irly appreeiati'd :w\(] li.'is consisieiilly recognized .'iiid
the liidits of tbe pnlilic ;iiid of l.-ilior in ;d) lont rov-ersies. ))e is .'i ineni)ier of l)ie
(Iniicb, the bennessee, and Menipbis Country Clubs, and Rlii Delta Tbel:i
He married Miss Kate C'rawford in 1906. Their children arc /Xiinc Crawford,
r., ;ind K.aie IMiles.

837

5. "^J. aau^f)

JAX)1';S X'lCTok' )U;S)), Memphis,
') eiinessee, lieai) of the Rush Lumber
Company, one of the le;iding hardwood
lumber mannfacturers of tlie South, w:is
born in Edinluirg, lii(li;ui;i, Xla\ 20, 1858,
the son of Doctor William I'orter ;ind
biliza ( .Slonl ) R'nsb. He is ,i grandson of
b'.lilin Slonl, who in bSOl pnbli ,lu d ihe
X'mceniies Sun, lhe lirst newsp;iper in In
diana. Mr. Rush was cdneaied in the coni
inon and high schools of bidinbnrg. I le
began bis business career liefon.' bis eigli-
teeiitb year with the t~oliimbns Wordeii
I\lills. 'bbeii he s]ieiil a year :iiid a half ;it
I'A'ansville as )iookke'eper ami liavelin.L;
salesman for tbe biyaiisville Woolen Alills.
bXjllowing ibi.s he went wilb llu- wholes.de
dry goods concern of AL'ukes'-Nisbel ( om-
pany in ISO.L .leipiii in.v; an inleiesl in the
company and reinaining ils seerelai \ and
treasurer until 1007. lie then resigned lii.i
eonneelions with tbe dry goods coinpanv Id
;ii'iepl the presidency of llu- Mereanlile
'brusl & Savings Bank and also of lhe ALr-
caiitile National Iknik of bivansville \\ bile
in Fvansville be was an aclive factor in
the development of lhe interurban eleelrie
lines, especially so m the orj;aniz;iluin of
lhe I'Aansville, iXlonnl X'errion and Rock-
port lines. -Xfler their coiisobd:ilioii he w.is
elected a director in ihe eoinpaiu' and, over
bis prolesl, w.'is re-elteleil lo llu- same pd-i
lion alter be bad moved lo AL-mphis, In
|009, lie became a nieniber of tbe lumber firm ol iXloltett, liownian \ Rush, and severing;
his connections in I'^viiiisville, moved lo Menipbis and seleeled a locaiion lor a mill lor llu-
coiiipan\-. The lollowing \ear the mill was built with ;in initial capaeilv ol .Ls.OOO leei per
(ki) , sjiei iaiizing in oak and .i^tini. Upon tlie death in L'lO df Air. ()-,\eii Moffell, XIr. Rush
bought lhe Bowman interests and the tirni w.is reorganized as llie Rush Lnmlu-i CDmi'aiiv.
composed of himself, bis son Paul Rush and iXIrs, L^liza (i, AlolTett. Mr. Rush's slaiuling
among his fellows is attested by his being ]iresideiil of the .Xlempliis l.iimbei inan's C bili.
He IS ;i fonrlli ik-grt-e Kiiigbl of ( ohimbns and a consislenl niemliei- ol llu- Rdiirin ( ,illid
lie ( luircli. He was twice piesidenl of llie Ev;insville C bainbei- of lomimiee. .-md v iv i-
presideiil of tbe .Xssoeiiled Charities there In Memphis he helped oreain/e llu Xssdei;iled
(, h;irilies. He and Xliss b'annie W'inans of ("ulnnilins, lndi;ina, were married Xl;i\ _!ii, 188,5,
Ibev have one son, I'anI Rush.

838

Br. J. $. Bougto

DC»C'LOR JOHN I'RIOR DOU(iL:\S,
.Xrlington, I eiinessee, oldest resi
dent of tb.at (-il\-. pl.-inler and relireil
]iliysician, was born in wli.at now is |Ii;il
cily, January 11. 1844, the son of (ieorge
Livingston and Joanna XX'orinerly (.Sander-
ford) l.'oiiglas. His father had been a
pioneer settler there and was a planter and
slave owner of consequence in that coni-
imiiiitv. A'oiiiig I obit grew up on his fath
er's pbantalion and attended the coiiiilv
schools until the Civil XX'ar, when he \-oliin-
tccrcd and fought for four years with (ien
eral Forrest. The Soulier relnrned at once
to Arbiii^'ton and studied medicine in tlu-
oflires of bis brothcr-in-kaw. Doctor C M,
.Stewart, and Doctor D. ( i. Godwin. Then
be went lo lhe Universily of Tennessee in
Nashville, wlu'ie be received bis degrei' ol
doclor of medicine in I87,L Doclor I.'oiil;-
las ininu'diatelv bcgjiii tbe practice of his
profession in .Arlington, where he was cnii-
iicntly successful from the start. XX'ben llu-
XX'est Tennessee Hospital for the Insane
was established al Riolivar. he was chosen
assistant to the superintendent, ;nid iiiioii
bis death the following year, bi)octor
Douglas succeeded him. I'or fifteen -rears
be lielfl that jiosition, resi.q-ning. on accouni
of ill hcaith, three years prior to the cud
of bis last term. Dnrin.s; bis lon.s: mv\ suc
cessful career at Bolivar be uscfl neither
crib nor straight-jacket. On tbe contrarv,
le knew (¦.¦leb paticnl b\- name, beraine the personal friend of each, reasoned that a dog knew
lis frii-nd :ind lbal even a erazv man li.ad more sense than a dog and by the charm and force
if bis personnlitv .almost always succeeded in rpiietitig any turbulent patient. Long before
le left the hospital. Doctor Douglas was recognized as one of the leading aiitborities in the
'nited Stales in tin; Irealmeiit of the feebleminded. He was etpially as efficient there
IS ;ni admiiii-lrator as he was professionally. L'pon leavin.t:;^ the hospital. Doctor Don.c;-
as relnrnefl to Arlington, where he biiill a handsome residence on his father's old home
site, and resnmerl the iiractice of bis iirofcssioii and the managenienl of his plantations.
i:.;;.';i-ei.;al ini,' some two tlions;nid acres. Doctor Doiigl;is has been married twice lirsl to
Xliss ( arrie l.on I'illiiKm, lheir onl)- son being John P. Junior, llis second wife w;is Miss
leeniiie I'.allle of lirownsville. 'bennessee.

839

JK. 3. tKiirlfP

T

illOMAS JFb'l'b:RSON 'lURI.LA',
one of tlie leading v^:A estate and
moitgiige lo,-ui men of the Mid-.Sonlh,
is a native of IMemphis, where he had s]ient
llis entire life He was born .Noveiiiber Z7 ,
1876, at the old 1 uiK-y honuslead on the
luntheast corner ol Linden av^¦nne and
XX'ellington street, where his f.ilbei w.is
born and died, tbe son of Tlioni;i- Rallle
and Irene ( Rayiier ) Tiirlc). His father ;
his grandfallur, for whom he is named, and
a great-nncle, Instice \\ illi/ini \ , I'nib).
have left their iniiness slani]ied for all time
on the develo])inenl of the law in 1 eiine^-ee.
while tbe I'lattle and Buddie families, from
which he is descended also, .ire two of llu
oldest, largesl and best f;iniilies in tlie
South. ( )n Ins nieilher's suli' he eoiiies ol
fine of the sturdiest I'.iveile CdiiiiU f.imi-
lies, she being a woman ol lhe raresl cull lire
and refinemenl. Mr. Tin le) 's father, a
Coiifeder;ite soldier ;il sixteen viais of ,age
and in every- enga.L;enieiil with the Xriii'i ol
lhe lennessee' I rom I'ehiiont lo Beiilmi
ville ; a memlH-r of lhe Uiiiled .Si ales SeiriU-
by ;ippointiiient and then bv eleelion fidiii
1807 to 1001, was surpassed diiriiii; bis
long career by no in;in in llie Sonlli for bis
allainmenls as a kiw)ei ;iiid a^ .i sl.ilesnrin ;
lor his kindness ol lieail, soniidnes,.- dl
jiidgment and hdiiesl) . XIr. Tiiilev inlu-i
iled lhe cb;iracler and .•ill.iinnienis df boili
ol his paieiils. I L- was ediiealed al lhe
Memphis Military .Xcademy, the X'irginia Militar)- .Xeadeiii)- and al the Univeisitv of X'n-
giiiia. In 1806 be enlered the business world as an employe of the Memphis Trnsl Compaii)',
which later by consolidation with an old bank, became lhe Bank ol C oiiimeree iV I lUst
Company. /Xfler ten years of training in that fin.-nuial iiislilnlion, Mr. Tnrle) weiil iiilo
business lor himsell, dealing in rial eslale. He has .idikd iiioi lt;,iL;e lo;nis lo lh;il bii'-iiu^s,
now being bead of the 'biiiley-Rinllinglon Mortgage ( onip.ni) and \ ice-presulenl df ihe I'nr-
ley, Naill t\: ( ijilbrealli Coiii|ian)', one ol tbe lar,i;esl red eslale In ins in llie .Sonlli. His jiuIl;-
meiil, frankness and honesty are given full lailli and credit in ;m\ Inisiness li ;iiiN,u;iiiin in
iXlenipliis and he is held in lhe same esleein by I'.asU-rn coneeriis wisliiiiL; lo make kii.L;i
lo;ins in this section. IMr. 'biirle)' and Miss .Sb;ill)e iobnsldii were m.iiiied |iiiii 27. P'Od
'nie\- live ,il lhe Xl(-nililiis (oiinlrv ( Inb ol wlii(-h Mr. I iiibv li.is hi-eii pic -id(-iil for a iiiliii
bi'r of lerins. He is also ;i meniber of the Tennessee (Inb,

840

lai. ID. molierts

w:

'ILLLAXI D'JALXLA RoRd':R'kS,
retired capitalist, Memphis, Tennes
see, one of tbe pioneer cotton oil
nieii of the coiintr\-, w;is bom November
12, 1848 in Dvi'rsbiii'g, 'Tennessee, tbe son
of John b'dward ;iiul Xlar\- (Davis) Rob
erts, llis f;itlu'r moved to Tennessee from
X'irgini.'i and llis motber came from b'raiil<-
lin, Tennessee. /Xt twcniv years of ;i,t;c be
went into lhe grocery business for himself
in Dverslmr.t,'-, expanding later into general
merchandising. He was one of the or-
.yanizers of the Citizens I'ank in Dyersburg,
one of Ibe oldest and slroiujest rni.-nici.-il iii-
stitiilions in West Tennessee onlside of
Xlempliis. In 188 1 be weiil inlo the collon
oil business, bnilding a mill in Dyersburg.
1 le ;ilso Iniilt and oper.aled the lirsl oil b;ir-
rel slave mill in Dversluirg. The |)oor
lie;il|li of Mrs. Roberls m;ide a drier clim.ile
iiecess;irv and in 1801 the family moved
from Dyersbnrt; to Cbattaiioo.ya. lY'imessee.
where he organized the Richmond Collon
Oil ( 'onipany. building a mill in Cb.alt.a-
nooga. which companv later built and oper
ated mills in .Sheffield. .Alabama. Menipbis,
'Tennessee and Kenm-tt, Missouri. This
expansion necessitated Mr. Roberts reinov-
\n<^ to Memphis in 180^) where be would be
better located to look after the business,
.Soon thereafter Chattanooga friends caused
him to become interested in the Alemphis
Morning News, then bciii.g organized, and
indiiei-d him to aecepi the presidency of the coin]i;in)- which was baler merged with the
b.venini; .Seimitar, , Xlionl |0(),S he relired from tbe Richmond ( otlon ( )il Coinp,-inv- and
devoted hiniself lo the inisiness of (he Roberls (otlon ( )il Company which li.'iil been org;ili-
ized some )-ears lufdre bv himself and son, \X'. .S. Roberts. He biiill its lirsl mill al
Cairo, Illinois, which was followed b\- mills at |oncsbriro, Arl<aiisas, and Maiden, Alissonri.
In 1017 111' n-sigiK'd as nresidenl of the Roberts C'otlon (.)il Companv in favor of bis son,
W. .S. Roberts, who is now jiresident and gcneial mana.ger of the company. He is a member
of (he firm of Roberls, Carter X' Company cotton buyers and exporters, a direclor of the
M,-iliotial ( il\' Ri.inl;, inleiesled in real est.-iie .and v;irioiis oilier enlerprises, :i inember of lhe
S, ...'..- --.  1  ...,,--,  t.__.r,-....  _„ T..  10-7-

I,.lipwi!,ir ' ii> I. ,1.11., III,,,. ¦!.  ...... ..I,,.,.,,, ..I,,., .,..., I  ,,, .. ,,,.,,,,,., .., ,,,.
.Second I 'ri'sbylerian (. hiircli and the C b.ainber of Commerce In ( )ctober, 1872. be marriec
Miss ( irace /\ , Sw-e.areiigeii of Mississi]i|ii who died January 7, 191 5, leaving three sons. XXil-
,S.. )dlin bulw;ird .-md James Rolierts, all of whom are associated with their father in
niill anil eotton Inisiness as well as other enterprises.

ham
the Ol

841

Cijoma^ ^. tTuttoiler

npi

\llOMAS II. 'TU'T\VII.I':R, president
of the iXlenipliis Street R.iilwav
C omp;iny, general manager and, eo-
receiver for the properly, is a native of
X'irginia, where be was born .Se[ileniln-r 22,
18(i6, al R;iliilvr;i, the son of 'Thus, II. ;iild
Caroline Sloan 'Lntwiler. .Xfk-r having n -
cencd ;i conimon school edncalion, be chose
for bis life work engineering, which he
studied nii(kr private liitorship and in which
he has achieved such si.L;nal success. His
lirst cinispiciioiis work was in I8S0 wlu-n, he
bail charge of tbe conslrnclion of the draw
bridge over Sunffower River in Alississippi
for tbe Georgia Pacific Railroad. bAir the
lwo years following lli;il he was wilh lhe
Louisville, New ( )rleaiis i.K; lexas (now the
X'azoo & Alississip|ii Delia) Railroad in ihe
construction of the line from Ckirl;sibile
down tbe 'Tallahatehie River, passing
through the town of 'Tutwiler. named for
him. In that d;iy the virile men of tlie
Tallahatehie River coniilr)' nu';isni'ed ,l m.in
siilel)- by wb.al w;is in him, paying no .iiu-n
lion to bis title or possessions, B\' that
slandard, Mr. 'Tutwiler stimd high anuiim
them. i'Xir nine ye/irs following IS^>2. )ie was
l.^A'-^ii engineer for the New Orieaiis .Slreel Raib
i' ' '^^' ^^BSBi^'^''''^ •Sl^'^^^K.'^''^'i'^'' '%-''W^7'^'^' ^^y svslein, then eii,'.^ineer for the Binning-
m ^tMHmI?^'^^^^^^''^ ^^ffw '*'"" ^""''''' ''^''''''¦¦'^' ^^'^''¦"' '"'*' ''¦'' ''"¦
^?« 1 ¦ 'tV^^^^^HHE&i^'«i.V'(^Bt?':y'! -X'l^Hr^ neat work of converling lhe Iraelioil s\sleiii
rt ol lhe Two Kansas Cilvs I rom c;ilile In
electric power. In 100,^ and |004, he bad
cliar.i;!' of lhe rehabilitation of the Nashville .Street R.ailway system .md Ihe )(-ar following,
i-;niie lo Menipbis when lhe Nevvin.in inU'resls lion.i,dil llu- local svslein I rom ( , l\ , G. I'.il
lini;s. He has laaii ^eii/-rd mana{;er ol the svsUni Iroin thai lime lo lhis. ;e v ua- pia^ideni
for the lirsl year and since 1006 as piesidenl. One of tbe niosl accomplished conslniction
eii.i;iiuers in (be linited .Stales, lu- rebilill almosl lhe enure Memphis sv^lcin. /ind iii-.l:illed
new eipiipmeiil, greall\' lo the comfort of the palrons. Tie has proven Innisell ecpialK as
efficient an operative official as he is in the engineering line. During the leceiil le;iii \e;irs
for owners of street railways, he has been able to maintain the properly in exeellenl physi-
c;il condition. He is a member of the /Xnierican .Socii-ty of t'ivil bingineers, baigiiuering
.'Xssociation South, Louisiana l'2ngineering .Society, 'Lennessee Club .nul Xleinphis t'onnlrv
Club. He and Miss Alary E. (ioodloe were married in December, LSO),

842

29r, J, C. affeii

J

OHN 'THOMAS ALLb'.N, physician
and surgeon, Brownsville, 'Ti'imrssee
lhe son of ;i pioneer doctor in XX'est
'Tennessee, whom be has followed in the
same jirofcssioii and in the same county.
He Wiis born December 28, 1856, in Hay
wood C oiiiitv, 'Tennessee, tbe son of Dr.
|olin R,, bis mother being |iili;i /Xiin
(.Snipes) Xllen, llis p;ileni;il L;i;iiid f.-it her
was ,'Xinsoii .Alien of X'irginia and bis mother
was froiii the old I'nrnetl famil)' of Norlb
Carolina, the ancestry bein.c; iMiglisb, 'The
family moved into Lirownsville in 1868 ;nid
Dr. ,'Xllen receiv-ed his early edncition there.
Titer :itteiiiliiig tbe .Soiilbweslern Raptisl
University ;it J.ackson. 'Lennessee, where he
w.as graduated in 1875 ( )ii the following
ve;ir he be.y;.aii the stiidv of medicine under
the direction of bis f;ithcr in Rirownsville,
later going lo Bellevue Tlospiital Medical
College in New X'ork City, where be re
ceived his de.gree of doctor of medicine
there March l', 1880. XVbilc he was a stu
dent in the P>ellevue college, the frightful
vellow fever sconr.sje of 1878 swept West
'Tennessee, being espeei.allv bad from Meni
pbis to Rirownsville. 'The doctor's home
lown -was cut oil almost enlirelv from the
rest of the world and was saved onlv bv
relief trains out from Alenipbis, itself al
most prostrate I3r. .Allen, then a first
course student, reinaincd through this with
his people al a time which fried men's souls.
1 bis vvas till- snlijecl ol bis graduation thesis. /After having practiced in Brownsville for
-onie vcii-s. Dr. Allen went .abroad and spent 1887 and 1888 finishing his course in medi
cine in I'aris. London and Rierlin, pa) ing particular attention to special surgery. He has con
tinued lo pursue this course since then without the loss of a day. For more than twenty vears
he has lieen proprietiir nf and snr.i^eon in llie ) Tome .San;iloriiiiii at I'rownsville He is also
siirijcon for the Louisville \' Nashville railroad, ;ind during tbe war served as chairman
of tlie dr,-i ft .advisor)- bo;ii(l. I le is a ineinber of the 'TcniK ssce .State Medical /Xssociation.
till' .Sinithern Xledicil Xssoei.'il ion, the /Xmer;can Medical /Xssociation .and lhe \-arions local
niedie.il iiiielii-s, in niosl of which he has been .aclive for more tb.an thirty \-e;irs. Dr. /Xllen
,-ind Miss iXlinneola Mann were married March 20, 1800. 'Their children are lobii R. /Xllen,
Mrs, XI, O, Davidson and tbe late Mrs, John R. Raglaiid.

843

C. ^. €tjerfjart

Cii.XRi.i'is s'T b: R II t; n kbt:r-
II. A R'T, for iie/irl) hall a centnrv in
the ciKil linsiness in Xlenipbis. Ten
nessee, was born in l'.rli;icli-b) -I 'Im, W nrl
teinhur.g, (iermany, Ocdiber 31, 1848, llie
son ol iXIa.x .-nul Xl.-irie .Xiiiia (Springer)
l'".berb;irl. /Xftir b,-iyiiig received bis pnblu
school edncalion at lioiiie, lu- workel for
lliree and .i b.ilf ye:irs lor ,1 linn doing ;i
reUiil grocery, coal and general insiir:iiiee
business. b'or the privilege of beiii.i^ al
lowed lo work for ibis lirni :ind le/irn ibe
Inisiiiess, bis fatlu-r p:iid $400,00, l./iler
be worked lor ;i \v;\.v and ;t ball ;is book-
kec-per for ;i wlioles.ile hmisi in breibriL'
In lhe wiiiler nl I8(i8, vvlieii he was iwenly
years df age, he i.-niiL;r.iled lo lhe Liiiiled
.Slates and spent two \ ens in .St. Louis,
Alissoiiri, and C liieago, Illinois, ;ind llic-ri
went to Helena, .Ark;insas, where be eii-
.t'ligi-'d in the iivei- co.il busim-ss, ( )ii Xbiy
I, 1873, be came lo Memphis and lie.L;an
working lor the .Saint Bcrii.ird C o/il C din-
pail)', remaining with tli.it coiii|iaiiv until il
lucanie (J. IL Br)aii i.\. C Onip/iiiv , and eon-
tinuiiig with that coiieern niilil. in I8.S0.
( . II. Bryan iV ( ompaiiv cmi~olid:ilrd vvilli
lirown iS; Jones, an old ckiI concern 111
Menipbis, and formed the I'iltsburgb Co/il
Company. He remained with tiiat com
pany until 1807, when Mr. Iiry;in ,nid be
bought the relail business of lhe I'itlsbiugli
I oal ( onipany and forim-d lhe linn ol
lir);iii \- bilierharl. .Xt ,Xlr. Rir)'an's death, Mr. biberbarl formed lhe Lillslnngb Co:il &-
('oke ( ompaii)' in 1000. and in 1012 be severed his connection wilh tli;il firm and formed
the Eberluirt Coal (.onipany, ( )ii .August 1, 1014, Mr. I'iberhart ,nid Jniie 11. Rudisill
boni^dil lhe (ialloway Co:il ('oinpany's relail business and formed lhe ( iallovv ;i)-l''.lierh;irl
Coal Company, of which Mr. b".beili;irl is piesidenl. iXlr. biberhail li.is relnnu-d lo Taiiope
twice, ill 1808 and in 1001, and luis traveled exieiisivel)- in lhe Unili-d .States /nul in C aimki
lb- is a ihirly-second degree Mason, a Knight 'Templar, a Shriner, beiiu; one of lhe oldcNl.
a member of llie ( )dd T'ellow s, and /ilso a Kniglil of I'ylbias. He ;iLo lieloiiL;ed In ihe
(iennaii Casino and the old German Rirudderbiind. He has never soiighl ov held anv
pdlitic;il office He and Miss Katie Brnder were married .April 8, 1877. 1 luv li.uellnee
living children : Charles .S. Junior, /Xnielia C.'eciba, and Katie Binder. Two others, Willi, 1111
;iiul Tinie, luive died.

844

3. mi Jfnlls

J

OHN WILL F.XLLS, proniineni in
business .-iiid soei:il circles in .Xlenipbis,
Tennessee, is a native of Menipbis.
where he w.-is born Seplember 17. 1877,
lhe son of Mrs. Clar.-i Diiiin b';ills ;ilid llu-
late lames Najiolcon b'alls, one of the
pioneer business men of Memphis and
descended from a family which bad been
leaders in North ( ;irolin,-i dniiiiL,'" (olonial
,-iiid K'ev dint idirii-y ikivs. Mr, T/ills' i;ie;it
gi ,-imlf.-illiei moved from Iredell ( iiiintv.
North ( .iiolin.-i to .Somerville, Tennessee,
in lhe earlicsl d<-iys of tbe settlement of
Wes| 'Tennessee, and bis grandfatluT. ( iii
ii ire.-ilh l'"alls. iiio\-ed from there to Xlenipbis
in 18 Ls, where be cstablisbefl the pioneer
collon buviiig and exporting firm of (i.
b'alls & Companv. Mr. Falls was educated
in the private and public schools of Mem
phis and then spent two years in l.Tjiper
C Jinada College, 'Toronto, Canada. He en
tered Phillips b'xcter, I'ixcter, iXI.-issacbn-
setls, in 180,S, trradnating from there in
1897. 'Lhence he went lo Vale, where he
took ;i sjiccial course in electrical engineer
ing, receiving the de.i^ree of baclu'lor of
sciences in 1000. He returned home .-md
in 1001 enlered lhe employ of (he X^allev
( )il X)i))s of which his father, who was a
pioneer in the cotton oil business, was the
head. In 1003 he was elected secretary
and treasurer of the coni]iany, in which
c.-ip.-icitv he remained iinlil the iiiills were
bniiied .iml till business nf the company wound up. Then Mr. balls took charge of the
b'.rt;e peisdiial business of bis father and entered the real estate business, in the manage
ment of both of which be w;is most successful. In 1909, Mr. Falls organized the Chickasaw
Liiiildin.t,' (Vimpany and under that name erected the b'alls Building on Front .Street, a
model of concrete construction and the largest cotton office buikling in the L^nitcfl .States.
XIr. balls b.-is never son,t;bt or ludd public office, but has ever stood, as bis family .-dw.'iys
Iris done for ;ill tli/il was projjressivc and good in |iulilic ;iflairs. Air. b'alls is a member
of the 'I'ennessee ( ¦)nb .-md the University Cbib, and is a charter member of the Memphis
C onntry C bib. His sound business judgment is higbb' pirizcd by llis associates in any ven
ture. His favorite pastime is the breedin<; of fancy blooded poultry, in which line he is
one of the leaders in ibis section. Mr. b'alls and Miss Camille Pryor were married March
17. 1010, 'Thev li/ive one daughter. /Xiiita.

845

Immx B. jfalli^

L

A\\'S( )N DUNN T'.XLLS, Xlenipbis,
I eiinessee, le:ider in iTie iiuhisli i;il
development of ihe XliiLSonili, is :i
iKilivc- ol Xlempliis, lb- w,is lioiii hen.
June 4, 1874, the son of Mrs. Clar;i Dnnii
b'alls and lhe lale Rnnes Na]iol(.'on T'alls,
llis palernal ancestors migr/ited from Liig-
land to what now is Iredell Counly, .Xortli
Carolina, in 163.S, and were iiromineiil
there in coloiii;d and revohilionary <kivs.
llis great-grandfatber vv;is one of the
earliest settlers of l'';i)-elle Coiiiil) , Ten
nessee llis gr.iiid fatlu-r inoved to Meni
pbis ill 18-15 ;ill(l Wiis ;i pioneer bll-ines'-
m;in lu-ie, ;iiid Ins l.illn r loi umik- ibaii
Irill a eenlinv vv;is a Icidei ilirmiglionl llie
Xliib.Sdiilli 111 lis m,-|li-ri:il, iiioi,-|l and soci.il
development. .Xfler havin.L^ been Ir/iiiied
in private schools in Memphis, XIr. balls
wi'iil lo ,Xn(lover I 're]i/ii-,ii(i|-\- .Scbudl lur
X'ale University, where be look lhe full
course 'Then went lo Ron.Ljhkc-epsie. ,\'e\v
X'ork, /md look the course in T.aslnuui's
Business College. Mr. J. N. T'alls had been
a pioneer in the maniif/ictnre of cotton seed
oil, b/iving established a mill for that pnr-
|iose /i year before tlie liirlh of XIr, I., I ).
l'",-dls. Hence- il vv;is bnl ii;ilnr;il llril llu
Sdii slunild jdin lhe father in the X'allev ( )il
C'oni|Kiiiy, Air, L, I) T'/ilL, bee/inu- the
piesidenl and m;ina,L;ei- of ib/ii concern /md
oper/iled it wilh success for ;i nnnibei- of
ye/irs, until the plain was destroved bv liie
During llu- time ib/it he w;is the he;id of the X'alley ( )il C'iiiiip;ni) , lu iir};;mi/ed the Ro)al
ReTining Coiii)ianv, of which be was presideni and vvliicb did an exleiisive business in lhe
ni:iiiiif;icliire of c/islor oil. In 1006, .XIr. Falls org;nn'zed lhe .Xmeric/in Ba^; (onipanv-,
Il is one of tbe lai-.i^isl iii.iiiiif/iclurers of bags in the country. He also oi g;iiiized llu Xniei -
icni l-'inishing C'ompany, which does a nation-wide business in the "Tdliiii.;" of cdlldii fab
rics Id iii;ike il av:iikilile for Hour liaj,;s ;ind other purposes leipiiriiii^ .i litjhlri ailick- llrni
the ol it;ili.'il vvcive He lias lieeii the president .ind .'ulive lieid dl Imlli (omeili^ ^ine,
their inci-plion. XIr. T.ilL is :i inembei- ol llu- 1 (-iimssee ;illd Xli-mphis I diiiiliv i liili ,.
the C iKimber nf ( dinmeice :iiid the iXh-rcli;inls b.xclumge, iil which he li;is served ;i~ i
director and /is v-ice-presideiit. He and Aliss May ( oHin were m.-iiried in Nov eiiibei-, LHiO,
'Their cliildren are; X irginia Lawson, Lawrence ( olTiii, l..ivvsoii I )miii. jniiioi, ;md XLiv
T'r/uices balls.

846

J. 5^. Hebparb

1()SllU/\ lllvARD LI':DX'.\RD. iiiaiin-
I faclnrer. 'Tupelo, Mississi]ipi, vv:is born
* .Septeinber .^. I87.T. in Slinlnil;i. Xlissis-
sippi, the son of 'Thomas /Xnderson and
C.'irrie (Heard) I.edyard. He attended the
public schools of Clark Count v, Mississippi,
and then went lo the /Xgriciillnr/il fs: i\le-
cbanic-il ( 'ollene al .Sl;irk ville, Mississippi,
u lieie be w.-rs i;i .idit/il ed in I802, I le
seleilec) textile niaiili fad iiriiiL; for his life
work and il is in lh;il line tint be has
,-icliieved such sigii/d success. .Xfler having
been graduated from the "/\. & M.," as the
Mississippians are fond of callintj tb.'it use
ful instilntion. he went to the then center
of knowledge in bis chosen line, Lowell,
ALissacbnselts, where be took the full
course and was gradu/ited from the Lowell
'Textile .School. Al the :\<^v oi eighteen
ve.irs be inoved to Meriilian. .Xlississi|ipi.
where be went into tbe Alcrielian C otlon
Mills ;is a bookkeeper. His close attenlion
to everv detail of his work, sterling hon
est)- and integrity told from the lie,c;inning
.¦iiid were responsible for lhe rapid promo
tions lli;il be e,-inied ,ind received, for il vv,-is
less lb;iii live years from lhe lime (h/il he
enlered tlie Meridian mills that be was in
trusted with the responsible iiosition of
treasurer of tbe company. But rapid as
was his rise in Meridian, Mr. Ledy;ird,
when be was offered the |iresideiicv and
.tjeneral inanagership of the 'Tiijielo Collon
Alills, felt that Tupelo offered a wider field for bis abilitv than Meridian did, and hence.
in 180,8, he accepted the offer. Both be and tbe enterprise have benefited greatly from
the cliantrc and now the 'Tupelo ('otlon Mills is ranked as one of the most successful and
stroimest in the XI id-South. Mr. Led)-ard dr-.es not believe that the sole work' of Ihc
be.-ifl of a bis,' concern is to make money. His company not only gives free medical trcat-
iiu'iit and i.'x.-iminalions to all employes ,-ind their families. Tint also maintains a cor]is of
trained soci.il service workers who are engaged all of the time in making conditions better
fcir the em|iIo\-es. 'They have a band which probably is the best in Northeast Mississipjii.
Mr. I.ed\-;ird is .-in .-ictive meniber of the Methodist Church, in which he is a steward and
siiperintendeiil of the .Siind/iy .School. He and Miss ,'Xnnie Robins were married Iiine 28,
1001. 'Thev li;iv(' five children, D,-ibiicv .Xllen. Robins. Carol. /Xiinie Bell and b'rancis.

847

HIgrael %), ^3ere^

I

SRAbd. IIYM.XN Rb'.Rl'.S i R, X,, ',X0,
L, L. B. '91, Al. .X., '00, X'/ile), kiwver,
Memphis, Tennessei-, ^oii ul iTie Rev
erend laeiili |. and I'va l( bills) Rere-,
born in Memphis, .\iimisl 27. LS(i7, ;itli-nded
.Xlempliis I'nblic ScliooL and I'nif, jom-^'
j-rivale .Sclindl, and i^r.idirih-d /it X :ile with
the ckiss df '8'), r.ited high in X'ale lr;idilion
for the success ol its nieiiibeis in after life
.Xlionl Iwelve ol lluni li.ivt- ln-eii nr :ii'e
|'iult;t-s df -^iipi-rioi- Cdiiils, He i.'r,idii.-ili-d
ill the X ;ile L;iw scliodl in LS')| ;ind re
ceived llis XLisler of ,\rls ili-u;re(- in 1800 in
lhe .Science of .Society ( 'diiises under Rfd-
f(-ssd|- W'llli.-im ( i, Snmni-i IT- w ;i ¦ pi' i
(l,-lll dl llu X'.ile ( lies, ( hili ,iml w dii li
ImsI pi i/,e, I le wiin llu- Rells pn/.e in llu
Law sclidol for lhe Imdiisi in, irk m jiinuir
exaiiiiiiatidii, /nul rei-iued Kent ( lub ixv-
libcale in or/ildry ;iiul di-halin.u. He w,i-
'A'ice ( iKmcelldr" dl liook .-md ( civel, a
local X'ale l./iw T'lali-rnil v whicb afu-r-
ward-i lieeaiiK' ( alhouii ( h/ipler ol Rhi
/Xlpli/i Delt;i, He bei;,-iii iiraclice in Xlein-
jiliis ill ( lelober, 180), wiih the lirni di
'Taykir /V ( /irrdll, /md kiler Ik-c/iiiu- ;i iiu-ni
her of C/ii roll lV I'eies, He llun loinuil
a p/irlnership wilb |ohii l.c-liiirin (now :is
sist;nit corpor/ilion eoniisel ol .New X ork
Cily) and l;iler pr/iclicid with Ruhi, Ti,
King ( iidvv of b'.w ing. Isin;^ \' Kihl:, I iimler
the name ol Ren-s \ Kiiil; iiiilil biiiii.uv,
10)8, when (invcnidi- Rve appdiiiied him
C li/mcelldr df the Teiilh C'liancer)' Division of 'Tennessei-, R/u I lwo. Id wliieb oliue lie
w :is elecled in ,\ngnsl, 1018, to the ei.^hth )e;ir lerin. He has a seleil law liln.irv Id whicb
be eonslantlv /idds ;iiid lu- is a strong /idvoeite of lhe text bdnk imllidd dl Ii.uIiiiil;
.Anidiij; his contribntidns to the press and m:i.!:;aziiies /ire "( iviliz.ii inn." "Sli;ike^pe;ire,"
"l)i"iiilv df Lili";ilidii," "Law nf the Road," " Ticonomic .St/iiiis ol Wdimn," "Siiinol
.Xdminislr/ilion I'rolilinis of lhe Sonlli," "Wb/il ( oiislil iiles /in LlLuu-nl Siipi riiilendeiil df
I'niilie Schools," "Russian Jewish I nimi^ralion," "Reiiall) ol ;i R.uc," " I )i,.,i ,u Ii " II
delivered llie Corner-.Slone addresses of Scottish Rile ( '.-itbedr/il, XLismiie 'I einiile ;iiid
P/irk /Xveiuu; Lodge, He is .^.^ degree Llonor;iry .Scottish Rile ALi^oii ; R.isi Xl.isler Reiki
Scott 280 b'. A. XL; Shriner; Moose; E.x-presidenl Memphis .School Board; I'ix-pi esideiii
Lions (lub and School /Xdministr/ition Deparlnunl of N. bi. .X. of wlii/li lu- is .i nu-iiilier
.-iiid beloiu's to nearly /ill the loc/il Jevvisli orj^/inizalions, 1 le iii/iii ied Xlis^ Ri heeci Belini
in March, lOOl. STie died in Dicember of tli.il year wilboiil issue.

848

^arbtuig ^eres;

H

ARDXX'Ki RFRES, niereliandise
broker, and public spirited citizen
of Memphis, 'Tennessee, is bcid of
tbe fii'in which bis f;illier founded Ibe ve/ir
tli;il be w;is born, ,-ind has been connected
with it dnriiiL; bis entire cireer. 'The son
of Jacob J. and I'A'/i (C'lnits) Reres, be vv.i'^
born in Rliil;idclplii;i, Reniisv Ivani/i, [ann-
;ir)- (i, 1850. l.,-iler thai s/iiiie year his <|is-
tiiis^Mlisbed father esi/ililislu-il in Xlempliis
llu- mercli/indise brokei.iyc liini which slill
sl/iiuks so hi.gb as Ricob |. Reres iv ( eini-
pany. iXIr. Reres ,-ilteiided the piubli-.^"
schools of Menipbis until be was twelve
vears of a.ye. when he went into bis f/itber's
firiii. then Lcdv;ird, Rerrv iv Reres, but ;is-
socintion with bis f/itlicr was in itself a
liber/il cihic.-ilion. In 1870, al sevrnleen
vears of ;ige, he vv.-is taken inlo the rirm
and niade m,-in;iger of the lir;iiich vv-liieh
w;is opened in New ( )rlc-iiis. llis father
died of vellow fever in 1870, and XIr, Reres
relnrned tri Memphis ami gr/idn/illv- look-
over the m/ma.gcincnl and aci|iiire(l the
ownership of tbe Inisiness. 'The firm vv/is
)iioncer at the time of its org/niizatioii, and
Mr. Reres has expanded the biisinoss and
m.-iinlained in /ill of its business dealiiit^s
the high standing of tbe f.-miilv n/nii'". Air.
Peres is a iiicnitier of the Rex Cbib, the
A'ouii.q- Men's Hebrew .Xssociation, the
Masons, the I'-.lks. the TVnai IVrilli, the
Moose, the Shrine, the Thirl v-seiond .Scot
tish Rill- degree, the ('itv Cbib and of tbe Cll<-)liibcr of ('oinmeree, of which he was a
director in 10)0 I'Air ni;iiiv- ve/irs )ie )ias taken an active p:irt in |iolities. seeking no office
for hiniself. lint because be had bi.ub ideals of the kind of government tli;it the citv of
Memphis on.ybt lo h;ive and was willing to spend bis time and money to |int them into
effect, llis old office on Union /Xvciiue was loipe; the scene of weekly meetings of a baiicl
of men vvlin had ibc same ideals as he and who gathered to promote them. 'They ever
stood .-igainst .yniitj rule, against the then current ballol-box stiilTing and for an efficient and
honest adminislralioii. He was their leader. .Sonietinics they won; sonielimes thev Inst,
lint all the time lhe idc/i vvas growing. In 1017, be was elected a meniber of the C'ilv
Board of Tidiicilioii ;ind ils iiresidenl, as bis f;illier .-nid bis brother h/id previously been. He
was reek-rted president in 1018 aiul 1019, where his adniinistratioii has been most efficient.

849

C. C. tlTfjonipsion

c

II.XRLFS CL/\RK Tl lO.XI I'SoN,
vice-president and gerier;il m,ni;iger
of the 'Tbonijisini Brothers iv Rrice
Cig;ir ( Ompaiiv, Alemphis, Tennessee, one
of the largest de:ilei-s in ci,g;irs ;ind Idbai-i'd
in the Smith, is ,1 iKilive ol Ril.e I miniv,
.Xlissmiri, li;iviii.g been hiini in lidwliii;.^
(ireen, b'lmi.-iry 8, 1882, the son oi Willi;im
C kiy ;ind Maggie ( S;iva,ge ) 'Tboiiipson. Hi-
f;itber was ;i desceiukinl ol I leiir\ ( kiv ol
Kentnck)-, but with the de;ilki of the Wlii.i;
party bec:iiiie ;i rock-ribbed Democr/il /nul
voted for his friend, C'luimp C kirk, at eveiv
election for forty ye/irs. ;\lr. '1 lionipsoii
was educated in the schools of bis irilive
cilv /nul later took the course /it tin- (iiiii
Cily linsiness College of (Juiiu)-, Illinois,
Lor a number of )e;irs be wa,-, one of the
most successful men Ir/ivebnt; out of XI em
phis ;ind Link; Rock, .Xrkansas, in the c\:.^av
;ind tobacco lines. In |012 he entered the
rel/iil cig;ir business in Little Rock and two
ye/irs Liter he helped to organize and in
corporate the hriii lbere of lhe 1 hompsoii
Brothers Cig/ir Comp/in)' with a capil;il
stock of $25,000. 'The brollieis pnl such an
/imonnt of sle/im ;iml Inisiness iiitegiil)- nild
the business that within ;i lew nuinlhs llu-
business vvas expanded into the 'Thompson
Brothers i\; Price C. (iinii:in\' wilb ;i capit/il
slock of $250,000, 'The coipor/nion w;is
composed dl hiiiHell, T". SUiir Thdiiipsdii.
R'nssell II, Tlloinp ,1111 ;iiid ( , (1 l'l ice,
Wilh the iiicre;ised c;ipil/il the comp/iny progressed iveii more r/ipid'y. In 1020 lhe iirii'i
ollice ol the comp/iii) vv:is inoved lo Memphis, where il creeled on Hilling .Xveinie /in idcil
building, two stories high with fifty feet fnjiitage and having /i bnniiddr c:ip;ieily for
three million cigars, said by experts lo be the besl cig;ir building in lhe Smiili. The emn
li/ni\' b/is branch offices in New C)rleans, Little Rock, Shrevi-porl, Tiils/i /iiu) Xlnskoi^e-,/
tr;ive)s fonrleen men consUinlfy mi t)ie ro;id :ind does one of lhe big^esl Inisine^sis in ils
line in lhe .Sonlli. XIr. 'Thompson is iKinied for the Rinions iXlissmni -lali-siiKin and one
of his f/ivorile brands of cig/irs be/irs the likeness ;nid n;iiiie of ( li/mip C kirk. Anoiher n
'The /Xired/de, n;imed for that sturdy breed of dogs of which be is ;i l/mcier. I le Iris /i l.uni
in Drew ( (innly, .Xik/msas, where he specializes in llerelord ciule IR- is .111 LIT, XIr,
'Thompson /iiiil Miss biditli I birper were married, in Monlicello, Ark/iiis.is. I icceinber 22.
|002. 'They h/ive one son; C. C'. Junior.

850

®r. €. W. tolov

E

Ll'.biR'T XX'OODSON 'T.XX'LOR,
Alemphis, 'Tennessi'e, one of the
leading dentists of the Alid-Smitb
<-iiul professor of proslbelic dentistry in the
Dentiil Ciillege of the University of Ten
nessee, is a native of Fast 'Tennessee He
was born near. Morristowii, October 26,
1876, the votiiii^est of si.x children of
N;itli;iii Gray and Marv l-ilizabelb ( bivaiis )
l/ivlor. ,\s be .t;rew tip lhe p/irents vv-ei-e
becoming old ;tiid be remained on tbe f/irm
with them, t;ikiiig c/ire of them ;nid doing
a lar.q-c part of the work on tbe f/irni.
XN'bili- tlius eng;iged be .s^ot bis |ireliiniiiarv
edncation from the eonntv schools and later
from the Morristown Tligh School. In
order lo Tic ;ible to /iltend the hitter, be w/is
ciini|ielled to ride three ;iiid a half miles
horseback twice each dav. Tie remained
on the f/inn until be w ;is twetitv -three vears
of age ;iiid then realizing that be w/is en
titled to ;i better chance in life th/in that
then /iflorfled bv flu; f/irni there he left
the cotiiitry and went to work in the
iii;ichiiie shop of the Soulbern Railway.
/Xfter onlv a few iiiontlis he bec;niic a lire-
ni;in on a locomotive for the r;iilro;id com-
p;iny. He remained in that work for lwo
;nid :i b/ilf vc:irs ;ind lben w/is promoled
to en.tjinecr. I le was for ne;irlv live vears
one of the best cn.niiieers on his division
and at the end of tli;it time he b;id saved
sonic iiionev and was able to borrow enough
Id lake llie fiiillier edncalion iiecess/iiv to 'Jle practice of the profession which be had
..(Iritid for hi^ fiilnn- bf(- work. Hence be left the ihioltle in .September, 10(T6, and went
Id Ihe Universilv ( nlle,'.,'!' of Xleilicine ;il Ricbmonil. X'ir.giiiia. He put in two vears of
ilosi- sindv there ;iiid at the end of tb/il time went to Vanderbilt University >'it Nashville,
vlu-ir Ik; vv/is gradii/ite'l in 10()'). He came to Memphis about tbe lime the Lhiiversity of
Alinipliis Dent/il C'ollet,u' was fonning, became a member of its faculty and vvas instrn-
inenl;il in ils consolidation with the Denl/il Colle.ge of the Lhiiversity of Tennessee in which
he li/is lu'ld lhe chair of prosthetic rlenlistry ever since Doctor 'Taylor was ni;irried first
M, (d)„ I ,',0. )'I00, Id Xliss ( or/i Hmit, vv)io ()ie() in 100.^, leaving one son. Ilow/iid. His
M-( Olid iiKiiii/igc w/is vv'lh Miss b'lliel Sullivan, .September 22, 1010. 'IJu-y have two chiL
dreii, bdib 1,'irls, I'itbel Woodsiin 'T;i)lor ;iiid Celeste bJizabeth 'Taylor.

851

#up ^. tKurner

1^45^

C>( L'Y S,X( KX'Ibl.b: 'TURNblR, im -
-| eli/mical ;iiid elcelric/il eiiL;iiierr,
Memphis, 1 i-niiessee, w:is liorri m
X\';iler X'/illev, XI issis'-ippi, .Xpril 2, 1870,
the son of Louis bidg/ir ;ind .\';innie biniily
(Rirewer) 'Tinner. He /illended lhe public
sihodls of X';ilobnsli/i ( onnl), bill ;it llie
;iL;e ol hfli-eii yi-ziis went In woi-k lur ilie
Illinois ( eiilr/il R;iil|-o;id ( oiiip.iiiv :is ,i
lele.gr/ipli opt-r/ildi-, :iiid lhe folldwnu^ ve;ir
eiilered tile shops ol lh;il comp/inv in
X\ /ile|- X'/illey ;is ni;icliiiii,-l's /ipprenl ice.
pulling in fmir full ye/os in ili/it wink,
XIr, 'Tiirm-r re/dizi-d ihal llu- silidul df e-.
peneni-e /ilmie w;is .i |iddi-, slow and expeii
sive form of edncalion. lb- yi-zirm-d lur
wliat others beside him^ilf li/id le/irned.
and, in connection vvilli Ins /lelii/il work,
lu'i^/in tak-ing correspmidenee cmirses in
engineermg, both iiu-eli/iiiic;il .iiul ek-clric/d.
I Living finished bis /ipprenliceship, lie
worked as /i ionriie)-iii;in iiKiehinisi lor llu-
old Xlenipbis i\.- ( barleslmi R;iilro,id in
Xlenipbis until /Xpril 2,i, LSOiS, wlieii he eii-
lisled in the Sign/il C orps of ihe I nited
Sl/Ues aniiy, si-rvniL; niitil Lebm/irv-, LS''''.
when he receiVL'd Ins limuii/ilile disclui rm ,
Retiiriliil,g to Mi-mpbis Tie enleied lhe em
ploy df tbe old Xlempliis l.ii;lit iv I'ovver
( omp/niy, iiredecessor ol lhe iireseiil Meni
pbis ( i;is & bileclric Com]i/niv, He rcinaineil
wilh lluil coiici-ni llirmu;li ils v.irimis
eb/inges for twenty vc;irs, bis pioniiitidiis
being sle;idy throngh llu- varions st;ilioiis in the power house on I'c/ile , Xveime lo lhe ,i;eii
cr;il ollice, where he lielil lor /i long time the posilion of be/id ol lhe iiKiiiii I .iclnring
(lep/irlmenl. lie renriined there until Xlay, 1910, when he resigned ;ind loniud llu- lirm
dl Tin ller \ 1 liriier, I lu dipiir/iled, df which be is the presiiknt. The lirm w.is lurined
as eiigimei's ;ilid e\]iens on fuel and for the wboles/de and rel/iil disl lilinlion uf coal /md
coke, but Titer tbe members bought ;i co/il mine /it Isknid, Kenlnckv, ;iml formed /ilso lhe
'Ttirner Co;il Alining ('oinp/iny, of which he is /ilso presideni. In ( Icidher, |0p), h,- and
/issoci/ites formed the ( 'oiisnmers ( )il tv C'lieiiiic;il Company, of which Mr, 'Tinner is secrc-
l;iry, tre;isurer /md iiKin/iger. He is /i nieniber of the (oloni/d (onnlrv Clnli;of lhe C li/iiii-
ber of ('ominerce; of lhe .XLisoiis ; of lhe .Xnieiicin .Sdcielv ol Mec|Kinie:il b'iiL;inei-i-s ,iiid
of the .Xmeric/in liisliliile ol bileetric/d b.ngineers. He /nul Xliss Rillh IXiiv w cm in.ii ried
.Ani;iist 27 , l'HT2. 'They li/ive one child, Doiiilby.

852

IBtan Ibamsi

D

bi.XN /XD AXIS, one of the most suc
cessful real est;ile men in Memphis,
is ;i n/itive of Kenlnckv, h/iving been
born in D;iyloii, October II, 1870, the son
of /Xloiizo /ukT Katlu'rine ( Willi/imson )
-\d/ims. lie received his education ;it tlu.-
high schools ;ind /it the age of nineteen
years went to Louisville /mil en.tj/i.t^cd in the
re/il esl/ile business, in wliieb be li/is
acliiev-ed such m/irked success /md whicb
Ii;is been bis life work, /Xt the end of three
vears in the ipiiel Kenluck-y melropolis, be
moved to the more protjressive and active
citv of Alempibis, bavin.£; re;dized that its
location and the eh;iracter of the men here
and of those who were coining in would
in/ike ;i grc/it cilv. During bis first fevv-
ye/irs here be did /i splendid business,
ni/iinlv in cit\- ;iiid siibnrb/in re/il est/ile. In
the mean while he has traveled widelv
througbout the Xfiddlc XX'est and began to
compare the ch/iractcr and vield of the
l/inds of lbal seclion wilb those of tbe .St,
b'rancis B/isiii of .\rkaiis;is and the Xlissis-
sippi Delta. He saw that acre for /icre the
sonlhern l/inds were superior /md th/it the
income from their crops w/is imicb in excess
of tli/it from the northern lands, ;itid vet
that the sale price of tbe northern kinds
was from two to five times that of the
Dell;is of tbe Mid-South. Many other
peojilc saw the same things, but Air. /Xdams
li/id vision enough to re/ilize that ibis eon-
iiild mil cunliime, ;ind ib/it the l/mdsdf the Xlid-Sontb were due ;i lart;e ;ind r/ipTI
111 pi ill- with the cunseipienl freipient cb;int;iiiL; of hands. Hence, in |0|2, be
spi I lalize in f;ii in /ind limlier kinds, .tjivin.tj particular /illention to Ibe Si. br/iiicis
R./isin. I le b/id f/iilli in the forests and faith in the land once tbe forest g;ivc place to the
I low , and, further, he bad the faculty to impart that faith to jirospective customers. The
inevitable result vv/is tJic )argc business tliat )ie has done for tJic past several vears and
slill is doing, for )iis faith is combined with a wealth of knowledge which is of real benefit
to till- l/iiid-seeker. llis activity aloti.g that line is responsible for ;i large [i/irt of the r/ipid
developmeiil in the ji/ist three years in tbe ,S|. b'rancis B/isiii. Mr. ,\d/inis is a meniber
of llie Red l'".s|/i|e bAclKinge and of Ibe ( 'baiiiber of ('oinmeree lie ;iiid Miss Catherine
lohnsoii were married in Louisville, Ajiril 18, 1000. 'They li/ive one child, named for her
niother.

I 'it ion w-
im 1 i-;ui-
liei^/m li

853

JR. il. iBoiib

R

OBbiR'T Nb'.LSON BOND, leading
business iri/iii, Liiowiiiv die, 'Tennes
see, is a iKilive of ih/il city, h/ivin,/;
been born there July 8, 187.L lhe son nf
James ;ind Helen I N'eLoii ) I'loml, He re
ceived his e/irly ediic/ilion in lhe gr/ide /nul
high schools al lirownsville /nul tlieii
Tmished ;il Riin,t,di/inTs Scbudl in .Xdiih ('aid-
line His fallu-r b.ivin.i^ died when hi- w;i-.
only seven ) ears of age. Mr. Bond, at llie
;ige of seventeen ye/irs, be.g;iii his biisiiu/s^
c/ireer as clerk in ;i driiL;- sidie in 1 'now ns
ville al the s/ikiry nf $10.00 per iiionth, /nul
before he w;is tweiitv vi';irs ol /ige he and
Miss /Xiiiiie bibzabelb b'verell wire iii/irried
on [line 8, I80.L 'They li/ive lline deliglii-
hll children. Miss Annie T,li/,ilielli I'.diid,
Rdberl .Nelson Bond, |nnior, /nul ( u-drL;e
T'.yerelt Rdiid, with whom ihe f;iinilv life
in the be/intifiil home mi \\ esi XKini
Street, graced by .XI is. Innid /nul Mi.
I'oiul's mother, is niosl delii;lilfiil. XIr.
Bond became a inemlier of the lki|ilisl
Church ;it the age of twelve ye/irs and b/i^
been ;i cmisislent nieniber ever since \\ hen
be vv/is onl)- tvyenl\' v e/irs of /ige, he |iiir-
ch;ised the drug business in Brownsville di
Willi;iins & Riddick, and comlucled il with
m/irked success for inne ve/ir-. niilil |Oo2.
when he org/inized lhe lirownsville < ottmi
()il Company, with /i e;ipiial slock of $.sO,-
000.00. In lhe bei^iiiniin; nf ihi- business,
be vv;is the secrel;ir\' and ire/isiner ol ihe
C onipanv :ind from the first se/ismi it vv/is /i success, b'liiii- \ ears kiler, XIr. Rmid ori^amzed
llie ll/iywood Coiinl\ C'mnpress C'omp/in) .iiul vv:ts elecled ils scret/iiv ami ire/isiir/i ,
These concerns h/ive prosjiered so gre/itly, and he with them, ibat in L'OS, be limiL;lit the
I 'now nsville Light & Ici- Company, built a new pl/iiil and consolid/ited lbal wilh the oil
cdinp/iny nmler lhe n/iiii'- iil lhe Brownsville Collon ( )il X; Ice (onipanv, wilh .i cipil/il
slock of $100,000,00, He /issnnied lhe |iresideiiey of lhe consolid/iicd cmici-rn /md m/idc
il one of lhe most successful in WesUrii 'Lennessee In l/icl, llu siucess vv/is sn l;ii.iI
lli/il he and his /issociates branched out into 'Tex/is, where lhey iii',i;,iinzed the \ eriion ( ol
Inn ( )il ( mnp/iny and inlo LoiiisKin;i, vvluie they org/iiiized llie Xlonidr ( dtlmi ( )il ( nin
pany. When the United .St/iles entered inlo the World War Xli. lioml w/is chosen
C bairni/in for Haywood (diinly for llie Red Cross. 'The score vv/is 200 per eeni. lb i,-
/ilso I'resideiil ol the Brownsville C oiiimei ei;il ( Inb.

854

(E:. 15. Carroll

^~AllOMAS Bb.RNARD CARROLL.
J/icksoii, 'Tennessee, cashier of the
k-li.t;esl bank in W esi 'Tennessee onl
side of Alemphis, w/is born in Chester
County, 'Tennessee September 25, 1872, tbe
son of John XX'. and Alary ( (i/ilbrailh ) Car
roll, lie attenderl the Male and Female
College of Tlenderson. 'Tennessee from
which be received the degree of m;isler of
/Ills. Willi Ibe view of perfectin.y" himself
for the life of /i siiceessfnl business iii:in,
XIr. ( '/iiroll vvi'iit to b^aslman's Business
C ollege /il Poughkeepsie. New A'orlc. .As
/I yonn.ij; iii;in, XIr. Carroll had alvv;ivs taken
I'ln /iclive interest in polilics. and very earlv
he bec/nne ;i f/iclor to be de/ill with in bis
section of the Sl:ile. In 1002 he vv/is
elecled sccretat)- ol the Sl/ile Demoer/itic
I'ixeciitive Comniittee /md when the I lon-
rir/ible James B. brazier became governor
of the .State, be asked Mr. Carroll to accepit
the ]iositioii as his private secretarv. He
/iccepied. llis Ihoron.sji Inisiness (r;iiin'ng,
coupled with his aptitude for politics, made
him a most valuable man lo the governor.
not only in assisting him to make an excel
lent governor, but ;ilso in the way of fur
thering the governor's political as|iir-itions.
XX'ben (lOvernor Frazier [lassed from the
gubernatorial chair to the United .States
.Senate, IMr. Carroll went with him in the
same cajiacity and remained there with the
same degree of efficiencv- tli;it he bad shown
111 the -hilrlimise :il N;isliville. \\\ lhis lime, however, Mr. C/irtoll realized ih/il be w/is
lilted for /i more impori/int |ilacc in the aff'airs of the world than occupviipg a iiiinor |iolitical
posilion ;iiid be resi.t^nerl, after two ye;irs in XX'/ishington, bis conncclion with the LTniled
.Spites to /iccepl a position with the Reoples .Savings Rjaiik at Jackson as assistant cashier.
Mr. (arroll was elected clerk of the .Supreme ('ourt in 1911 and served for eight years with
gre/it assistance to tbe court and the lavv)'ers who had business there .Since that time Mr.
( arroll li;is been with tbe Pcojiles Savinj:;;s l->aiik as yice-[)resideiit and cashier, and lliat iiisli
lnlion li/is cjrovv-n rapidiv until now it leads any in XX'est Tennessee except some nf the
birger ones in Memphis. He is a Mason and an Elk. Lie and Miss .Suzette Murcbisoii
were married in I'A'bruar)-. 1804. They have four sons; Raymond 'L. ; John M.; Thomas
Burns, and Kirk M. Carroll.

855

J^arrp Cofjn

H

.XRRX' CI )nN, for more lli/iii b/ilf /i
ceiilury one of lhe le/idiiit; iiur-
ch;iiits of Meinphis, Tennessee, and
head ol one of tlu- most sncce-sfnl banks
in the Mid-.Seiiitli, vv/is born in .New \'ork
City in 1848. When bnl iiiiu-leen ye/irs df
;ige be c:inie lo iXb,;iiiplns and went inlo
business on old ( li/iilesldii .Xveime. in lie-
line mil ol which lhe Di.\ii ( lolliin.i; ( mii
]iaiiy developed, which he owns, which h/is
Tieen at lhe corner of XIain Street and jel-
ferson /Xveinie so Imi^ ih.ii ii is /i kindiiKirk
and vvbicTi has clolhed llin-e t;eiieralidn,, uf
m/iii',- of tlie leading f/imihes ol XLni|iliis
Mr. Colin w;is the lir:-l iii/in In iiisi/ill in
Meni|iliis /I one- piice-e/isb -,\ -liiii ol ildiii;.;
business. 'That was /it lhe lime lli/il pi/ic-
tically /ill of tlie Inisines-. nf ibis section nf
tbe country vvas done mi credit. In fact
iTie p/iymenl of bills monthl)- vvas just cmn-
iii.g in vd.giie in tlu- eily. '1 brmighmil llu-
Cdiintr\- niosl bills weie iiride mil ,e dl d;ili-
( Jclolier 15, wlu-n llu- iiimii-\ lidin llu- cui -
ton w/is coming in. llis eompetitdrs and
the iiiereh/mls .gener;illv lorecisied llwil llu-
svslein would b;iiikriipl lhe linn, lint Xli,
Colin sllick" lo il, w/is alilc lo ^ell llu- ,;iiiie
gr/ide ol clolhiiu^ elie:ipei- lb, in weie liie
ciedit lunisi.-s, for he li/id luilher e-zpciis-.-
of liookkeeping /nul cullecliii.i; mir b.id
debts. Customers /illr/uled hv lhis .md
conrleons treatmenl, iTiuked |o his e-l.ib
lishmenl in siieh numbers ih/it for ve/iis it
h/is been one of the le/iders in its line ibroughmit llie .Xlid-.Sonth. His bi.s^li slambiiL' in llu-
inere/nitile world was responsible for his eleelion some ye;irs ;igo to lhe presidinev df tlu-
. Xnierican .S/ivings B/ink iJC 'Trust Company. Ihider bis /ible directi.ni lhe depdsils of iliis
insliliUion b;ive sU'/idily iiii reased lo more ih/ill the two niiltion dolkii iii/iik /nul ibe b;iiik
li/is become one ol llu; Ic/iding lni;inei/il instilnlions in llu cily ol XLinphi^. lis -luck Icis
beioine one of iTie niosl v;illKilile id lli/il of ;iiiy bank in lhe iil\, Xli, ( iilin h.i-- lliin-
hdliliies : his vvoik ( /llllion.i^h sevenly lwo \-e/iis ol /le.e. he is /il hi-, ^ldle ;il (i ii'ilnik evriv
morniiig); bis cbildren, of vvlioin he is justly proud, ;iiid cb/irily, lie /md Aliss .S/irah
Bosbwilz were ni/irried in 1873. 'Their children ;ire ; XIrs. I. S, I inlin. XR-,.. j. Spiio,
XIrs. X\'. ( i. .Sternberger, /Xbe Cobn, N/ith;ni Colin /md Bernard L. Colin. Thev ;iLii iuive
ten grandchildren, one of them, the son of Bern/iiil L. (dlin, beiii}; n/iined 1 Lu rv Cobn II,
for llis grandf/ilber.

8.56

f . Jf. Sail

JAMES FRANKLIN HALL, banker.
nierch/nit and iiiaiiiifartnrer. New /Xb
b/iny, M ississi|i|ii, was born in l./if;ivelte
County, Mississifiiii, .September 22. 1881,
Ihe soil of C'alcli XX illi;im ;ind L'.sther
C/itherine ( llonston ) Hall, He attended
tbe public schools al New /Xlbaiiv. and then
look- the course /it the ,Xi;ricnlliir/il iv
Mcch/inical College ,il Sl;irkville, ( )ii lhe
completion of the course /it college, Mr.
I lall look ;i jiosilion lirsl with the brisco
.System of railroads and then wilh the D. H.
Hall Liiiiiber Coinp/iny al New /Xlbany as
bookkeeper. In LXj.S the directors of the
Bank of New Albanv elected him book
keeper of that inslilntion. 'The following
ye/ir he w/is promoled lo /issist/int cashier,
and after one year in that c/ip/icity be was
made c/isbier. 'Th/it vv;is in 1007 /mil be
held lli/il position until |/inii/irv 1, \'H5.
w)ien )ie w;is r/iised to the presideiic\-, /i
position vv-)iic)i )ic stil) ]io)ds am) t)ie suc
cess of t)ie institution since be has been
the bead of il attests the wisdom of his
selection. Mr. Hall vvas esjieciallv useful
during the XX^orld XX'ar. He w/is cli/iir-
niaii of lhe commillee in charge of the
floatation of .ijoverniiienl war loans for Dis
trict Niiniber 0. comprising fwv counties.
;ind larsjcly tlirou<;;h bis own activity com
bined with his cajiacity as an on^anizer.
each of the five counties went far o\-er the
lo|i. Aside from bis banking Inisiness. XIr.
Hall is one third owner of tbe l\i]iley Slave Conip/ili)-, which is one of lhe big concerns in
ils line in lhe Mid Smith. It b/is mills at (ireeiiwoofl Springs, Rort ( iibsmi /nul Nalebez,
Alississippi, /it C/irbon Hill, /Xbibama, and at other points of vantage, with /in onlpnl of
from four to live million slaves per year. He is also a stockholder in the Marine Bank &
Trust (onipanv of New Orleans, Louisiana, and in the New Albany XX'holesale Grocery
( omp;iii) . He and several /issociates arc owners of large and valuable tracts of timber
l/,nd near New /Xlbaiiv and others near Macon, Mississippi. Mr. Hall also is balf-owncr
iii tbe Hall Insur/iiicc /Xgcncy at New /Xlbany which does a large .general insur/ince busi
ness. Air. 1 1 /ill h/is never sought political office for pirofit, but has thrice been elected conn-
cilni/in in New /Xlb/inv. He is :\ member of the Methodist Church. Mr. blall was marriel
Dei-embcr 23, L'l'k to Miss Dorothy XX'ayne Sykes, daughter of Eugene Lanier Sykes of
Xberdeen, Mississippi.

857

Jf . aa. J^arri^

F

iLETCHER REID ILXRRIS, he:id of
I' the Harris Iron & Siijipl) Company
ot iXlenipliis, 'Tc-iinessee is /i n/iiive of
Alenipbis, where he was born T'elirn/iry 3,
I860, the son of John .Sherrod and .Naliss/i
(Reid) ll/irris. He rt-ccived bis ednc/itioii
in lhe |iriv;ite schools ol I'rolessor L\oii ( i,
'T)'ler /nul Professor \\ luirton S, |mies in
.Xlenipbis, He be.g/m his Inisiness career
in Xlempliis in 1884 /is :i broker in iiier-
ch;iiidise. In 180l,J Mr, ll/irris moved lo
.S/iini Louis, Alissonri, ;nid liei;/in business
there as /m investment broker, in course of
which he h/is been idenlilud vvilli imliislri/il
enlerprises ;iiul bind developnieiils im
portant in the life /nul .urovvlli of llie Mid-
.Smilb's Mississippi X'/ille\-, .Mlboiigh liv
ing in Si. Lmiis, be h/id such 1/iilli in .Xlem
pliis th/it he ret/lined bis re;il csl/ite and
other interests in Alemphis, /md in I8')2 he
;ind his brother, l-i/irl /\. ll/irris, org;iiiized
here the ll/irris Iron lS: SnppI)- C'omp.niv,
with Its in/iin office and vv .irehmises /it 222
lo 230 .South I'Y-oril .St reel, wilb /i br/incli
office in S;iint Loms. Mr. TIeleber R.
Harris is president ol the eomp/nn, /ictively
directing its /illairs. The I l/irris Iron tS.
Supply Conip/iny is an mstiiiilion nf lhe
Mid-South, with its hnanci/d resonrces, oc-
ciipv ing its own offiC'- linilding and vv/ire-
binises, de;iliiig al wholc-s;ile in iron ;md
sli-cl lor /ill purposes, m/ileiiiil Im lhe m.iii
liRuliire dl watuins, c;i ii i/iL;es, ,iL;i-i( ;ili in al
implements, sho|i supplies, roolmgs and innumerable items inciileiil/il lo lh;il line of nict/ds
/iiiil Woodstock, /I gre/il portion of which goes directly into f/irni dev elopnuni /md 1/inn
npkeeii in the agricnllnr/il district trilnit/iry to MempTiis, /md as presideni ol lhis iinport/iiu
Xlempliis cor|ior/ilion. Air. ILirris has kept closely in loncli, /it /ill limes, wilh cmiduidiis
in his n/itive city ;ind its snrronndiiigs. He li;is /ilways been active .iiul in svinp/illiv wilh
ev-ery movement for the adv/incement of MenilJhs, .md willing lo lend ,i lulpini; hand to
;iiiy pkiii wilb lb;il in view. He is a member ol the Menipbis ('miiili) (Inb, nf ilie 'Tennes
see Cbib in Mein|)liis /iiiil the Chamber of Commerce in .XU-mpbis ; also ul ihe Ndmiday
C lull, R/icqnel Club and Cli;iniber of Coiiimerce in S.iiiit Louis. Mr. I l/iiris .md Xliss XLu ie
I'lond were iii;irried November 28, 1898. 'Lhe union li/is been blessed with two children,
Alisses Xabssti Reid H/irris and J;iiiel Bond Harris.

858

3. %). loutuitU

J

AiXII'.S TL I.OX'FW bM.L, planter, auto
mobile dealer and one of the leading
citizens of ( )sceok-i, ,\rk-aiisas, vvas
born near that litllc cily, December 6, 1874.
tbe son of John A. and Margaret ( lidring-
ton ) Lovcwclb llis f/itber li;id moved to
Mississipiii C'onnly in 1856 from XX'arrick
Count)-, lndi;iii/i, where he w;is born in
1848. llis niolber was a ik-iii.i,diler of Wib
1i;ini Ri. bidringlon, pioneer on vvliose pl/ml/i-
(ion ( )sceiil/i is localed. Mr. John ,\. Love-
well vv/is conspicnoiis in the public aff/iirs
of .Xlississippi Count)-, where be w/is sheriff
for Ill/my )-ears, during which lime he made
a most efficient peace officer. 'Lhe son
served /is deputy sheriff under bis f/ilher.
beginning in th/it c;ip;icity ;il the lime that
be was seventeen years of a,<;e In the
nic/mtinie he bad received bis education in
the iniblic schools of Alississippi Connty
and ill Searcy Crillcge Be.tjiiining in 1O04.
he served for two terms, assjretjatin.g foiir
ye/irs as the cleric of the C oiintv ('onrt of
Mississippi Count)'. Bt'tween periorls in
public office he vv;is connected with the
B/ink of ( fsceola. b'ollowing the tr/igic
dcitb of Mr. Willi/mi l'".berli;irt, Mr, Love-
well vv;is appointed /i member of the .Saint
k'niiicis Levee l'io;ird, where be served /is
a v/ilii:ible meniber of that iinportanl boiK
for five v-ears continuouslv from 1009 to
1914, During the years 'lOOO, 1010 and
1011, the bo/ird /issit^ned lo bini the dntv
illeiling tin- levee t;ixes in llis coiinl)-. ;iiid be .i;ot all that there was eotning to the
]i v/( s\ stem. :iml w/is lnt;lilv cmnplimenled for the efficiencv of bis work along that line
/md for the /iccnr/ile ni/inner in which bis books and accounts w-ere kept. In f/ict in tlii'
kin;-!- nnnibei- df pdsii inns 111 I rust in w-liich XIr. Love we 11 h/is been pl/icei-l. he b/is in i-\-erv- rase
pidvc-d liimi It wdilhv /iiiil :idded In his npnl ;i I imi fm- ((liciencv-, c,ip;icit\ and bmirst\.
.'"•incc lull,!.; Iiilme lu- icicbed llis m,-iidiilv. XIr. Lnvewell has been om- of the most ;icliv-e
fignre-s in the public /ill/iirs of Xlississippi County. Airs. Lovewell acipn'red bv iiiheripince
a l/irtje interest in the Noden/i Rl/intation. one of the finest pieces of property in Alissis
sippi ( iimilv, Wv /ilso owns the home place where he was born, some three miles west of
'Uicoki, lie /ind Xliss .Sue llampson of Memphis, 'Tennessee were m/irried Xl;ircli 8,
lOO.S. 'Thev li/ive Iwo cliildren; Mary Cbiy and M/irgaret I'ldrington Lovevvelk

if

8,S9

^. ^. illorriison

s

'>.\MLJ':L SI'i'LTLE MORRISON,
b./irle, .Xrk/in^as one of llu lc:idiiii;
iiiercli/iiits dl the .S/iirn l-'r/meis R/i^m,
is ;i n/ilive ol Rossville. 'I eiiiie^see. iv lu-ie lii-
vv/is hdrii .N'dveniber S, Rs/S, the ,~oii n\
XX'illiani .XL :ind C'arrie ;\ Morii-dii, Ik
receiveil his e/uly edne/ition in the coinmmi
scbodls dl b'/iyclli- (miiilv /md llun ;il
tended the Cdllegi- ;it Tiss/irv Springs, 'Ten
nessee, Titer cdni|ileling his ediu-zilidii m
Meinphis. ,\l the ;ii;c of Iweiilv \(-;irs, XIr,
.Xlorrismi entered llu- Inisimss wmld nn
verv dost- Id llu- bdliiini rung of Ou- l;id
ller, lor he wciil lo v, ork- ;il I w elv e and ;i
li,ill dolkirs per nimilli ;iiul lii^ bd,iid fdi
L, T,Rd)(Lii Rdssvilk- 1 le 1 cmaiiud ilu-i e
liir Idiir vi;;irs, dniiiiL; lli;ii lime 'siiiiine
expeiieiui- ;iiul /icipiiniiL; Iriliils nf iiulii-irv
wlliili ll.ive eii/ibled him In iiinnni uipulL
np the bidder nf success in the nierc/miib:
line In |002 lie ve;inied fm a bid/idt i
held fur llis /iclivillts and /ilnlilie, lli/in
w/is /illmikd 111 llu siiKill Idvvii nf K'n-,
ville ;ind i-ame to Xlenipbis, where lu-
worked for /i lime lor ibe old Aioc hmisi
df ( ioddbar k^- Comp/iii). 'Then be forined
a coniu-climi wilh Doi kerv \ Tiimrsmi /nid
on bniu/irv 1. 100,L he wi-iii lu Cub L/ikc,
DeSoto ('minis, Mississippi, where lli,il
lirni owned huge pl/inlin.i; /iiiil mereaiuile
inlcrests. He rem/iiiud with ih/it liirn fdi
six )e/irs, ;iiid on iTie bist d/iv of lOoo la-
went to biarle, wTiere be eiilen-d the einplov
ol tbe T'./irle .Supply Company as bookkeeper, b'/isciii/iled with the ferlililv of the kinds uf
tki/it section and with the spirit then manifest in the [leopk: lo in:i!se T"/irle ;i city, Mr,
Xlorrison (|iiickly identified himself with tbe comnninity ami since ib/it liiiu- h/is been one
III lhe most active factors in the wonderful jirogress of that city, Williin ;i year after bis
first conneclion wilb lhe bi/irle Supply ("onipany, he had boiii^bl /il inleiesi in llu- cmuerii.
( )ii biiiii/ii-\' I, loll. Ml". Morrison /nul Mr. XX'. IT (ir;i\, a le/idint; (dllmi f/iclor of Xlini
pliis, loniied a p/irtnership ;ind since that lime lhey have opei.iled the T..iile .SiippR Cmii
p;inv /IS geiier;il mercb/mls /ind collon buyers, with Xli. Xlmiison iii /nine ilru^i- nf llu
business. In adililion lo this business, .XIr. Xlorrismi Is an cxicnsive ami siieeessliil pkiiilei
uf eotlmi. .XIr. Morrison and Xliss .XIary b'. Ilninphreys of C ollierville, 'Tennessee, wen-
married Iniie 28, 1011. 'This iiiiion has not been blessed liv any cliiTl,

860

». ft. ifel

H

/XL IIOI.'T RI'iTiL. jmieslim-d. Xr-
k/ins/is. be/id of lhe bij^,t;esl iji-ncr/il
insnr/mee linsiness in miil lie;is| em
Ark/ins/is, w:is limn on /i l/inii ui:\v llollv
.Springs. Xlississippi. November 7. 1881, the
son of X'olnev- and ,Sns/in (Holt) Reel. He
attc'iuied private /md public schools of
Xlenipbis, 'Tennessee, /nul St. 'Thomas 1 l/ill
Xlibl/irv \c/iileniv- :il llollv SpriiiL;s. /nul /it
the ;iL;e nf seventeen ve/iis went lo work
for the Trisco .System /is leleiL',r/ipli oper/iiur.
/md l;iter in the ollices of the ;iss-isl;inl
superintendent /it Rinnini^di/ini /md tbe sii-
pei-inlemliiil ;il Xlr'iipliis lie rem/i ineil in
iIkiI line 111 work for llin-e ve/irs ;iml llu-n
went 111 the Rost;il 'Tele.s^r/i]!!! C mnp/inv- .'is
/in operator. In lOO.^ )]e w-ent to work fur
llie .New X ork- LiCi' Insnr/mce ( 'impaiiv
;nid for the next four vears he w/is /i sulici-
tor mil of the Memphis office Tie /md the
Honor/ible P. Tl/irrv Kellv. in 1007, formed
the Kcllv--Peel Insurance .Xsjencv in Xlem
pliis. which they o|iei-/ited snccessf nil v until
Jiufi^c Kelly W/IS elecled vice-mavor and lire
/md police commissioner of llu- cilv. XL.
Reel continued Id oper/ile l)ie bnsin'ess /dune
for ;i vear after |ndge Kelly severed his
eonnection wilh il. and then, in |/imi.itv,
lORL inovei) to lonesboro, ;\rk/iiis/is. where
be est-iblisbed the \X isl-l'eel Insnr/incc
/Xgeiic)-. 'This partnership w-as dissolved
in 1017. since which time Mr. Reel b/is
operated there /done under the firm luinie
of ILiI II. Reel iV ( mnp/iii)-, and devekiped the largest and most snccessftil .ijeneral iiisnr-
/uice a.<.,uncv in bis section of tbe .St;ite Ruit in doing this, he has not devoted all of bis
tmu- and cnertjv In his own affairs. XX'ben tbe XX'orld XX'ar broke out. Air. T-'eel enlered
lir/irl and purse into Ihe v/irions patriotic c/iir,paifjiis. puttin.tj his lime ;ind bis iiionev inlo
everv drive. Tlieie were seventeen of these and in everv- one of iheni he took a very active
|i/irt. rilher ;i - s/i)e. in;in/i.t;er. pn)i)icilv- ()irecloi- or c)i/iii-inaii, contrdniting larjjeb- lo tbe
.luiess df all of lluin. XIr. Reck (Iordon I'-rierson, P.. IT. Ber.tjer. T. J. Fills and V. C.
R'ltii' fmnied /i \d)nnt/irv commission which jiiirchased a beautiful monnmenl to tbe soldiers
/md s,-iiliiis of ( 'r/iit;be/id County, which w/is unveiled ALiv- 1. 1020. ivlr. Reel is /i niember
of lhe (biisii/in ( hiirch ; XLi'-miic b'r/ilci nity ; bilks; Knifjlils of Rvlbi-is; Cb/imber of ( 'oin-
iii'K-' /md l.idin lb- /md Xliss ( ir/u'c Morse were m/irried M;ii-cli2, 1007. 'They li/ive no
¦ liilil

861

C. 5. l^arnetr

c

-^ ILXRI.T'.S JONI'iS BXRNb'.'LT, who
b/is done so mncli to m/ike tlie cliiT
dren of Alemphis, 'Tennessee, li/ive
b/ippier )'oung lives, loves lo see tlieni jiki) -
ing in tbe public p/irks and w/iding in ikie
liool ;it ( lastoii P;irk, which be raised lhe
nuine)- to build, for he tluii thinks of tlie
d/i)s when be, as a child of eight \'e;iis,
went lo work in the coal mines under the
E/isl 'Tennessee MouiU/iins where he vy;is
re/ired. He was born in 'Ti-/ic\' City, beb-
riiarv 4, 1872, the son ol ]aines and XloUie
bi. Li/iriielt. He vv/is /ilile to gel :i lillie
eibic/ilimi in the vill/ige scliouTs as a child
before be weiil into tbe mines. Inn li/is been
;iii apt pupil in the school of experience
since th/it lime /Xl the /ij^e of si-vcnteen
ve/irs, be wi-iit to I'^iiTey, /Xkibama, wTieie
be worked lor tbe Tennessee Coal, Iron &
R/iilro:id C omp/niy as ;i m/u-linnsl, kitei
switching by d/iy ;ind bosllin.g at night.
Later he was lireni;iii for lhe Illinois C en-
lr;il Railro/id onl of Waler X'/ille\, Xlissis-
si|ipi, /md ill 1805 bec/nne /i loiumolive en
gineer with thai city /is bis be;iilipi:iiicis,
.Six inoiuhs Titer lu: was Ir/iiislei red lo
Alemphis and ever since ib/il d/ite luis been
wilh lhe Illinois Central svsteiii. He li/is
no superior /it the ihrollle .Since llu iii-
/in.gnr/ition of the I'/in/im/i l.imiled lr;iin,
be b/is b/imlled it belvveeii Alemphis ,ind
C'anlon, Mississippi, In L'04 he vv/is ;i
member of the conimillei- winch liionidu to
.Xlenipbis in 1006 the iiatioiKil convention of the Brotherhood of Loeummive bingiiieers.
He served for one v e/ir on lhe brolherhood's geiicr/il board of /idjiislment, ;iiid from 1804
to 180i, lie vvas secret/U) ;ind treasurer of the brotherhood for the llliiuiis I cnlral svslein.
In 1010 he w /is Deiiidc;-/itic counly eonimiteem/ni for lhe 'Tbirleenlb ward /nul cli/nini/m of
the exeenlive eonimiltee. He was a member of lhe Cilv Recrealion ( oiiiims>idn from 10)4
III )010and lhe lollowing yiar served /is a member of lhe /idvismy bo/u d nf the Inveiiik-
( mill. 111 liolli III wliicli positions Ins kindly lispd:,i|idii ,iiid miiiiuI |ild;.;iiu nl wen ul eicil
v,ilm- Id eliildien iil Xlenipbis. Dinin.L; llie Wmld War, be seived with ( I', |, XLidiiev,
Jdlin 1) M/ulin, Doctor L. L. .Xlexandei of R.uis and Doclor b. M. Xlek'ic nl I'liimi ( ilv
1111 lhe dislriel war exeniption bo/ird lor West Tennessee. XIr. R/niuil /nul Xliss .\lm.i \
Xlorilz were m/irried M/ircb 24, 1807. 'Tluy li/ive one son, C'h/irle^ Dillon I'l/iniell, hdni in
1002.

862

Br. J. 1. Crook

J

b.Rb: LAW'RbiNCb: CROOK, A,M.,
XLI)., I''.,X.( .,S., lackson. 'Tennessee.
one of the le/iding surgeons of the Mid-
Smith ;ind /ictive in cbnrcb, soci/il and Inian-
cial circles in his ¦¦omniiinitv. vv/is born in
Henderson. 'Lenness':-e. March 10. 1874. the
son of Doctor Joseph /\, and Alartba (Caw-
tlioii) Crook. /After bavin.g received his
literal')' education at Union Universilv.
Jackson, where be received bis degree of
master of arts in 1892. be dccirlcd to follow-
in the steps of his f/ilher. who is a distin-
.ij-nisbed |ilivsician and surgeon, and went lo
X';inderhilt lhiiversity. Nashville 'Tennes
see, where be vv;is awarded his detjree of
doclor of medicine in 1804. Soon after
having been .yradn/itcd, I.loctor Crook al
lendcd the iiieetiii.g of Ihc /Xnierican Med
ical .Xssociation in .S/in b'r/incisco and
while in C/iliforni/i accepted a position /is
assist/int superintendent of the Sacramento
Citv & County Ilos|ntal. Returning -to
lackson in 1805, be began, in |)artnersliip
with bis falber, the pr/ictice of bis profes
sion. He vv/is successful from the begin
ning. Later he look- post sji-adliate cmirses
in New X'ork /ind Rhil;idelphi/i /md /il lhe
Al/iv-o Clinic at Rochester, Minnesota, and
in 1008, ill connection watli bis father, he
founded the C rook San/itoriiim. a Ivventv-
five-bed modern private bosiiital. He now
is tbe personal owner and chief surfjeon of
this successful instilulion. Doctor C rook''--
with his fellows is sluivvn bv tbe fact lli/it he h/is been elected president of lhe
1 inn -^1 e Xledic/il Xssiici/ilion and XLidisoii Conntv Aledical Soeiel)-. He w/is one of the
innders nf the .Sonlliern Medical /Xssociation. and has serverl as secretary /md chairm/m of
; snrgic/il section. He has also served as president of the l\otary Club and was one of
e founders of tbe lackson Country Club. He vv/is at one time president of the Y. M.

-,l;imln T( line
fo
it
tl  - ., _ .
C, ,X, /md is a director in the Second National Bank
Aliss Tennie Inne |ones of St. Louis. Missouri, ,\pri
two sdii'i, .Seiiler ( '. :i
\\ iirld W;ir. I b vv/is iii/u riei Joseph A

piper, X'ii"t;ini;i,

Doclor Crook was iii/irricd first to
21, 1808. Sb/' died in 1002, leaving
ml |ere L. Iniiior, the former of whom vv/is ;ni avi/itor during the
I /iij/iiii jnne 17, 10)4, lo Miss X)i))i:iii ( 'oo)<e Green of C iil-
'Tlieir children are; Joseph A. II, and XX'illiam ( Ir/mt.

863

m. a. ^mitij

K

\y I'd'd'' .XI.i'iN.XNDI'.R SXll 111, Mem
phis, 'I eniiessee. one of lhe le;iilni^'
wholesale dealers of llie Alid-Soulh
in hiniber, s|ieci;ilizing in .Smitbein vellow
jiine, cypress /ind .diingles, bnl handling
;ilso li;irdvvoods, is the son ol /i disiiii-
.gnisbed divine in the 1 'resliv leiiaii ( liineli,
U. S., ;iiid is a living ex/impb- ol lhe cm
rectness of recent snnislics wliich show
that /I birger per cent of the sons of pre/ich-
I'rs succeed in Inisiiu-ss lite lb, in is line nl
lhe sdiis dl men in ;iie. ullur hm XL,
.Smith vv;is hiini m .Xllu-iis, ( u-di-i;i/i, kelnn-
;ir)' 7, 1884, the son of tlu- Reverend .\' ,
Keff Sillith, D.D.. and ( ;u rie C'levekind
(Scndder) Smilli, I R- received his e;ii 1)
edncalion in lhe ,s.,n-ainni.ir scTuiols in tbe
v;irioiis .Sonlliern cities in which h/is f/iilur
w/is serving /is /i minisler. ,\l the ;il;(- of
fifleen ye;irs while atlending llu- high
school al l'',liz/ibel blown, Rriitmkv, be lii-
g/iii wm k, /iiuLiI I he aei dl ¦ cv enleeii \ i a i -,
while al Hai'din C dlk-.^i/ilc liislilnle. a
br/iiuli df ( eiili;il Umvei^ilv nf l\iiiliickv,
<|iiit scliodl Id gd Id vvdik liir llu- (jmcii ..V
Creseenl R/iibd/id svsleiii at iXevv- Orlc/iin
at ;i s/ikii-)' df ,$2.S.OO per mmilli, 1 le
le/irned sleno.i;r;ipliv willimil /i le/icher ;iml
becaine sn priilicienl lli/it in a sluirl lime
he li/id been /idvaiiced In the piiv/ile seen -
t/nysliip lo the /issisl:iiil auditor, .\flcr -ix
ye;irs with the r/iilro/id emnp/mv-, be re
ceived /I telegr/ini in M;iv , IO07, frmn W . II,
Snlliv/in, f^'cner/il man/iger of the (ire/it .SoulTu-rn l.nmber ( oiiip/no. which w;is then
bnilding /il I '1014/diis/i, l.oiiisi/iiui, lo come lo see him, 'The resnll of llu- vi-n vv/is llrii Xlr
.Siniili became Mr. Siilbv/m's chief clerk and piiv/ile secrel/iry, Mr, .Smilli reiiKiined wilh
ih/it corii|i;inv for eij^bt /md /i half years, live ol whicb were spent /is Ir/i veliiiL; s;ilesiii;in. in
wbieli c/ip;icilv be e;ini-,-il /i promolion lo ;issisl/ml sales in/iii;iL;er, ( )n |;miiarv I, |0)ti. X)i-.
.Smilli oi-.L;;inized tbe ,Siinlli-C:inilliers Lumber ( 'oiiip;in\', which w/is di-.sdlv'ed .Xn^iisl 1.
L'RS, since which time XIr. .Smilli has been in liiisim ss /done. lie lepicseiils llu- \vliole-
s;ile yellow pine ckissillciUon in the Memphis Rol/U) ( bib, ;iiiil is .1 iiuiiibei nf llu- Xliiii-
].his C'h/imber nf C'mnnierce, tbe Hoo-Hoos, tbe Coloni/il ( oniilr\ ('Inli /nul lhe Lvergieeii
I'lcslivlerian Church. He and Miss /Xliiia L. ( >svvald of C harleslon, Smilli C arolin/i, were
m/irrieil ( Iclobi-r .iO, 10),i. ')"lieir cbikbeii are I'lm-ence ( levekiiul airl Mm/i ) )oiiL;ki^-.

864

M. $. lall

W,i

ILI.LAM RRl'.STON HALL.
Memphis. Tennessee retired steam
lio/it ni:iii ;iiiil iiKiiiii f:icl in ei ol
sl/ives, w/is born in ,X1 cLenioresville Car
roll ( onnty, 'Tennessee, Rinil/irv 4, 184.L
Ibe son of .Xlfred R, /md Dorc/is l';)iz:i-
belli (Rocbell) Hall. He was attending
the coninimi schools in Huntingdon, 'Ten
nessee, w-bcn the (ivil X\'/ir began /md left
school to join his f/itber's eomp/my in tlir
Confcflcrate /Xnii)-. The father, of jnire
.Scotch lineage, was ;i gallant Confederate
officer as he had been while first slieriff of
Carroll Counly. He ;ilso had been a mem
ber of the .State General .Asseinbly from
thai connlv-. Air. Hall's gr/indf/illier w/is
/i colonel in the Rcvolnt ion/irv Xrniv. llis
niother vvas of inire I'lench blood. X\ itli
the collapse of tbe C onfeder/icv. Air. TIall
returned to Ilniitingdmi and conipleled bis
edtic/itioii, and then read law for a year, but
;it the ciul of that time decided that be
did not care for a professional career. In
stead he went into the mereanlile business
and operated a store ;it Dyersburg. 'Ten
nessee, from 187,^ to 1876. XX'liat now is
the lllinriis Cenlral Railro;id throngh Dvers-
Inirg was completed in 187,^ only from
Memphis to Covington, and it was not until
1882 tli/it the connection was niaflc there
which gave Dversburt; direct rail connec
tion with Mein|)bis. b"or lhe last si.x vears
of the time that this connection w;is lack-
int;. XIr. I kill oper/ited a ste;iinboat between Memphis /nul I )verslnirij;, but when ll/itchie
River \v/is bridged in 1882, he chaii.£;cd bis northern teriiiinus to New Aladrid. Missouri.
bor the next eight vears lu? operated a boat of )iis own in t)iat trade, doing a business not
mil\- prrifii/iblc to himself, but at the same time of great service to the river towns. In
1800 lie sold bis steamboat to (he Lee Line and retired from the riv:'r, .goiii.g into tbe nian-
nf/ictiire of sbick sl;ives. He was a pioneer in (bat line in this section of the coiintrv- and
Iniill one of lhe first niills for that jnirpose on XX'olf River in Memphis. It now is operated
by the /Xnderson-'TiilIy ( 'onip/mv. Mr. I bill o|K'raled here under (he iKiiiie of the W. P.
H/ill Slave ( onip/ni)', with a big pl/int on XX'isconsiii .Avenue He has made Memphis bis
home since 1882, /ilw/ivs active in every movement for tbe improvemeiit of the comnuinilv
/iiid liberal both with his time /md bis means for any worthy cause Air. llall has never
married.

865

ra. K, ptt^

WILLIAM 'LblOXI.XS RLTTS, In
dianola, Mississi])pi, best known as
"Pitts, the L:nid Al/in," who has
been such ;iil /ictive f/iclor in tbe develop,
iiieiil ol Snnllower ( (iniitv, vv;is born in
Alaysville. M/idison (onnty, .\l/ib/iiii/i, ( )c-
tober 12, I80O, lhe son of Xlexander ('/ilviii
:iml T'aniiie (Milchell) Rills. Xl the /I'.^e
of thirteen ye/irs of /ige he went lo work
for his own livin.g, ,Xs a men- ymilli lu-
vv/is /ii^eiil and nper/ilor lur llu- nid Xlcm-
|iliis 1^ ( h;irleslon Railro/ul /it Biowiisboid,
/XkiTi/ima. Then he went wilh the old T.ast
'Tennessee, X irginia i^ (ieorgia R;iilro:id /is
relief /igeiit between Rome, Georgi/i, ;iiul
.Selma, .Xkib/inia, and 1/iler wilb the Mobile
li C)hio Railroad as telegr/ipb operator /it
Columbus, Alississippii, during live )e;irs.
In 1801 he went to Indianoki, .XI ississijipi,
for the Sonthi'rn R/iilw/iv-. Ile w/is r:iil-
ro/id /igenl, li;inker, lelegr/ipki oper/ilor and
luiieial bnreaii of 111 1 01 111, it ion /il liiib;iiioki
wlii'ii lli;it now priis|icioiis cilv vv;is Inil bilk-
more than a wide pTice in the ro;id. In
1800 be went into llu- b/irdware Inisimss,
lhe first store of its kiiul in liidi/iiiiik-|, lb
organized the Tbmk of Indi/iiiuki, was its
first c/ishier /nul later became its president.
In 1900, Mr. I'itts installed the first elec
tric li.t^ht plant in Indi/inoki. RroTi/iblv the
one thing tli;it be did which vv;is ol the
gre/itest Tienefit to the comnuinilv was in
the orgaiiiz/ition and bnildini.; ol the Indi
/niola C (impress iK: .Storage Company. Ile built the Indi/inoki l-irick iS. Tile (onipanv, lie
piomoled the Rlanlers ( olloii ( )il C omp/iily, a ."(dOO.OOO inslilnlion. Ile :ilso Iniill the
Holel Rills. B;iek in I80X he went into the real est:ite business. Tlu lirsi v e/ir lu- sold
Timl to lhe v/diu of ."i^OOO. In lOjO t)ie vidlie of t)ie );inds whose lilies ch;iii<;i-i) lliioipi.di
llis office /i,ggreg;iled live inillion doll/us ;iiid lie could b/ive sold more had he been able lo
find the bind for sale Ile beg/iii selling l;iiid /il some $10 per acre ;md sol.l il n|i a^ high
/IS ^.SIK). In 1015 be org/niized lhe real esl/ile firm of Rills \' Weeks, Mr. ,\. R. Weeks
being lhe junior partner. 'They have their iii/iin olfice in ]iidi:n!o):i with /i br/inch in
Alonroe, Louisi/ma, in ch/irge of I\Ir. A. C. Pills, llis largest de/il vv/is the s;ile ot sixtv-
two lhous;nid acres at -$25 per ;icre. L/iler be could h/ive sold it for $LtO |iei- :icie, XIr,
Pills and Miss M;iiiiie Lcn;i Ciardner of Columbus, Alississippi, were m:irried .Noveinber
25, 1800. 'L. M, I'ills is their only child.

866

WA. S. JIapltp

VV

ILLLX.M lll'iNK'X' ITW'Ll'A',
Alemphis, Tennessee, executive
iii/inager of the Chamber of Com
nieree, in which capacitv- he has b?eii an
active factor in the connnercial, indnsirial
/ind civic developmeiil of the cmiimnnitv-,
is a n/itive of Des .\rc, .Xrkansas, where
he w;is born J/mnarv- .M , 1871, the third son
of Patrick- Ilciirv and .Sarah (.Stewart)
ll/ivlc)-. He w/is educated in priv/itc
schools in Meinphis and finished bis course
;is /i speci/il student in ( olorado C(ille.t;;e.
.Xfler his return from college be operated
for a lime the /Xbliington Rl/iiilation which
belonged lo his faniiR- iie;ir Des .Xrc. .How
ever, the major portion of Mr. Haylcv's
aclivitv has been in Memphis, lie received
llis e/irly business training with two of the
oldest cotton f/ictoiing firms in the cilv.
( ioiiii;- into business for himself, be was
senior nieniber of tbe firm of Tlavlcv &
Beine. dealers in the products of critton
seed, lie vvas one of the iir.i.'/iiiizers df the
'Tennessee Tibre C onqianv, the pioneer in
nsiii.i; the lirst successful method of se]iarat-
ing tbe lint from tbe hull of the cotton
seed, which iiiibislrv li/is bei-mne of t;re;il
iiiipoi-t;iiiee ill the .South. Air. Ib'ivU'v is
associated in this enterprise with Air. X\\ C .
Johnson, his two brothers, Messrs. lobn /X.
and Ilu.gb .S. Llavlev, and Mr. I). AL .Arni-
slroiig. Air. Il/uley vvas also presirlent of
the Rkmters Cotton C'ompany of Des .Arc
for /I nnmbrr of ve/irs. Lor seven vears he w-/is forced to free himself from bnsiiie^;
n spmi-ibibt i',-s be(-;iiise of ill he;illli. /Xfter this he Iraveled cxIensiveR- in I'inropc /mil
be(-;iiiu- di(]ilv iiiteiestel in the liel I el nicnl of civic coiidit ions, ;ind esjieciallv- in betlei ro/nls
fur the XLinphis irrriloi)-. Relnrnins,' home with his health sre/itly iniiiroved, he became
I li/iiiiiKin of till- ( iodd Rii/ids ( ommilti-e of tbe ('bamber of Cmnmerce, where he rendered
-.erviei df iiiest im/ible v/ilne In Xlenqibis /md a lan^'^e portion of the .Soiilli. XX'ben the Lhiilcd
I-^laics (-Iltend the XX'orld XX'.ir. the secret/iry of the Chamber of Commerce, Mr. f. AT.
I nllu r, v olnntei-i I'd aiul w/is commissioiied for a<-tive service. Tie reqnested th/it bis friend,
XIr. Ibivlev-, be elected bis snccessor. ,\s Major 'Tiilher preferred to rem/iin in the armv,
the dHuen, df the ( iKimber of ( 'ommercc reipiested Mr. Ibivb'y fo reiiKiin with llicoig:in-
iz/itiiiii. XL. ILivlev ;iiid Xliss ( mncli/i I'ingenie l'";ileoniiet of Nashville, 'Tennessee, were
ni/iiried. Xiiun-t 22, I80f). 'They li/ive one son, I'-rcdcric.

867

Jf , #. $rontt

I

TVRbiDI'iRlC K GI'iORGT; RRoU) ) ,
X)emphis, 'Tennessee, consnlling en -
.gineer, specializing in desi.Ljning and
o]ier/iliiig public niilil\- /md indnsiri/d
pkinls, w;is borii in liow inaiiv ilie, ( /iii/uki,
November 17 , 1870, lhe son of XLirk Rime
and M/irlb/i ( Biirk ) Rrmul, lie vv:is i dii
ciled 111 ( /in/idian -cluiuL and lhe ein^i
llei-lillL; dcpiil linclil ul 1 he ( u ili-l /il k'.li-i I lU
( miip.ni)-, 1 le w.is .issisliiiil 111 llu- L'/aici/d
niaii/ii^er uf lhe XLildi-ii Tileelrie i iiiiip/iii\-
ai Al/ilden, ALiss/irliusells, frmn bSOT lu
1807, ;iiul c/iiiie lu Xlemplii--. \|iiil. I8''7.
/IS snperinleiulenl uf ihe Xl^¦lllphi¦^ l.ii.'lil i\
I'livvei- ( iiiii|i:mv. Willie lu- w;i- cunm i-ied
wilh lli;il emiipany be iiisl/dled ils iimlei
.L;i-diiiid comhiil sysicin lur ihe di-,1 rilnil luii
dl ils electric ciirreiil, Ile reni/iii ied vvilii
llu- Xlempliis cunipaiiv- nnlil lhe end dl ilu
vear L'O.s /nul lhen liic;iim- m.m.iLjei dl lli,-
l/ieksdii (Mississippi) R/iilw;iv, Li,i;bi i.'v
I'uvver ('mnp:inv and desiL-ned /nul iiisl/illed
ils ck'clric puvver and g:is pkinls, 1 R- nuin-
;i,L;e(l lli/il enlerprise lur Ivvii vears, lhen
returned In Xleni|ihis, vvlu-ri-, since lann/uv
1, 1008, be h/is been in business /is /i cmi
stilling eiigiiu-er except lur uiie vear dniiiiL;
the XX'orld W /ir, during wliieb he served .i-.
advisory engineer lor tbe \\ ;ir binance
t orpor/ition, W/ishinglon, D. C, :md in
iiiaknu; /i siirvcy ol I eniussee imlnsiiies in
1017 for the N/iv/il ( onsnlliii^ Ro/ud, I b-
h/is dcsi.i;iicd a niimber ol public iilihlv
pkinls in lhis seclimi. inchuling lhe vv/iler pninping svslenis lor Brow-iisville, I eiincsser ; I'l i.u
Ruiiit, /md L/iurel, Misi^siiipi; Blytheville, ( )sceoki and Lnxor;i, /\ ik/insas ; /md alsn the li;.;lii
;iiul power pkinls for Rrovv-iisville /mil I'ingbainlon, Tennessee, /nul ('levekiiul :mi| Tunic. i,
Alississippi. Ile is pre-,ideiit of the C (insnniers W'/iter (onipanv ol RRlheville, and seen.
t/iry of lhe Home Light & Ice C omp/iny of Cleveland. 1 n addition lo lhese he li/is desi.L;iu-i|
/I l/irge nnniber of pkinls for liig priv/ite corpor/ilions in this seclion of ihe cmiiili-v. At
the urgent reipiest of M/iyor P/iiiie ;md at a pcrson/il s/iciifice, XIr. Rrmill in |020 cdnsinied
to become ch/iirm/m of the Memphis X\';iter C ommissioii. He is /ilso the lepi eseiil/uiv e of
tbe C ily of Ali-mpliis in the matter of the apprais/il of the gas ;iiid eleelrie plaiils fm ibe
pnr]iose of fixing new r:iles for lhe AR-mphis ( ias X bileclric C omp;inv- Ile is ,i inisiee nl
the .Xlenipbis & Slulby '.'mint)' 'Tuberculosis .Socielv and the Willi/mi R, Xlome Selidul ni
'Technology, Mr. I'nnill and Miss L/ini:i J/nu- X'/irnold weie iir-inied |nlv Ls, L'O'i,
'They luive lwo ikiiii^hleis, jean and M;irjoiie.

808

ike ^amelsion

IKE S.XXIb'.LSON. 1c;idiiig tobacconist
of tlie Mid-.Soutb. is ;i native of Saint
Louis, altboiigb ho li/is lived in Aleni
pbis since be was two ye/irs of /igc. His
parents were L. /md C;iroliiie .Samclson
and only /i few y-'-ars after thev c;inic to
Alemphis tbe f;ither died, leaving little
Isa/ie the main support of his widow-ed
nidtliei- /nul sev-er;il vdniiL;ei children, \l
Imirleen ve/irs be vv"iil iiiln lhe slme iif
.Sol ( olem/iii. /mil after three yc/irs uf in
tense w dik lliiie he bc^an Ir/ivclinL; fm-
Slernberg iK; Lee, jiibbers in ciyars /md
Idb/ieciis. Slill onlv a lad. Tint of :i most
enL;;iL;iii.y m/inner. ;md full of eiiert^v . he
made his first trip np the R/ulnc/ib eV- Xleiiu-
|iliis R/iilro/id. novv the Illinois ('cnlral.
then eiidiiij^ /it ( ¦oviiii^ton. The idc/i of
siub ;i siiKiIl votitli mil on bis own hook :iiul
still so well |iostpd w/is in itself catcTiv. ;md
that night be loaded Coviny;ton with the
besl ciL;/irs tb/il il h/id ever li/id. le/iv iiit^ on
the one tr/iin next morniny^ fm- Menipbis.
For iivc )-ears his clientele grew rajiidlv,
and at the end of that lime, in addition lo
snpportin.n his familv. he h/id s;ived ,$500
with which be opened ;i cigar aiul lobaceo
biisini'ss for himself in a sp/icc of fifteen bv
I vvenl)--rive feet on Main .Street, just north
of Afoiiroc .Avenue, where he has been
ever since and where be has Iniilt up one of
the best businesses in the country. Alainlv
diie lo the choice line of cig/irs ib/il be
i/iiried, Xlempliis for ve/irs b/is enjoyed the distinclioii of consuniing more fine cig/irs tli/iii
anv other cilv of its size in the United Sl/iles. In the years tb/it the railroads were accns-
toiiu-d to sell tickets wholesale at reduced rates to tide them over crises. Air. .Samclson was
a l/ir£;e buver and one of Ihe bi.tjgcst dealers of them in the United States. He prospered in
that as in the ciffar and tobacco business and as the years rolled on, he widened his range
of operations, opening branches in New A'ork, Cbica.tjo and Birniingbam. His iinestnients
h;iv-c Iii'i 11 wide /uid judicious. He is a director in tbe Manhattan Savin,gs liank & 'Trust
C riinp/iny, and a nieniber of (be B'nai IVrith, Cliamber of Commerce and E)ks. Moose, T\cx
and Citv- chilis, lie has traveled widely. He and Miss Celia Lowenstein were married in
180,^. ''I'beir children ;irc Aliss Caroline; Aliss Piabette now Mrs. Herbert HerIT; Mrs.
Dorothy (loldsleiii: Lester E., and Ira .Samclson.

869

Babe Dermon

DAX'E DERXION, Alemiibis, Ten
nessee, one of the kirgest ;iiid niOsi
successful de/ileis in real cst/ile is
a native of Kiev, Russia, where be was
born, , Xpril 27, 1884, the smi uf lice and
.Xniiie Dernion. Ile /ittended tbe public
schools of bis ii;ilive ciU' for live ye/irs /nul
remained there until be h/id alhiined bis
in:ijority, when he soipgbl /i wider r:mge of
freedom of /ictivity ;iiid religion th/iii w;is
in sight in Russia. Ile c:niie to the United
-Sl/ites in 1O05 and [iroceeded direclR to
Memphis, where he opened /i sin/ill tin>-lio]).
lie prospered in this and :il llu- iiid of live
ye/us be /iilded deabn.L; in n/il e^lali- in a
sin;ill way lo bis lin Inismess. Ile b/id been
/111 clhcunl /iiiil siicccssliil imiur ;iiid win n
he entered the wider field he showed a
r;iiige of vision ikiat vv/is /nii/izing to even
his best friends. b'or ye;irs the properl)-
on Liiiion and Alonroe Avenues in the vicin
ity of the Soutliern Railw/iv h/ul been de-
]jreciating in s/ile v/dtie /iiiil in earning
capacity. He more th/m /mv other one
ni/iii in the city of Alenijihis seemed to li;ive
/I foresight ol tbe tnliire of thai properlv.
He bongbl heavily of it wlien it w:is cbc;ip.
iii/ide s/iles :is the ii|-o[ierlv which be owned
advanced and reinvested, alw/ivs wilh ihe
keenest judgment, but ever willing to i.:i\-
ibe price if only the ]iropei-iv li/id /i fiilnie
lo il. Now il is /ipp/iiciil Id all lbal llu
ii;ilni;il /mil in l/icl only lucilimi fm llu
/iiilomdbile Inisiness w/is in the direelion and loc:ilil) where be iii/ide llis lie/iviesl piircluises,
XIr. Dennon now is /i we;illby niaii for tbe simple re/ison lli/it wTkU now is apii/irent in all
vv/is /ipparenl to him when iiuicli of tli/it seclion of the city w/is covered with luniblmg
old fr;inie buildings. Reci:iitly he sold lo C. I). Siiiilh for $175,000 /i piece of properly
on Lb lion /Xveinie /X not lur of his leeeiil s/iles w /is lo llu- Union Xlolor l ';ir ( oiiip;in\- I m
,$100,000. lie slill owns iiiiich properly on Union. M/idisun /md Mmiide .Xvemu's and
R/iiiline .Slreel. Bnl /iltbungb iiuw vyealtby, Mr. Dcnriun slill m/iinl/iins bis tnishup ;iiul is
pnl ;is ciiclnl lu turn mil guud vvurk there :is wlien lli/il w/is his suk- iiie:iiis ul liveliluidd.
He and Miss Xlullie T'/iine were mariud in Kiev in lOO.S, jiist licfi n- lluv left fur llu
I'liited ,S|/il.-s. 'Thev li,ivi- lliree children; Ibiirv, i\i;illi;iii ;iml \deliiie XIr hcnmni e ;.
im-nilirr uf llu- < li.imliii- uf ( miimeMe, .Slniiie/md Ri-n ( Inb

870

J^ugij i|umpljrep£i

H

"UGH HU.MRHRFX'S, Memphis,
'Lennessee, head of a firm vvliicb is
one of the largest dealers and ex
porters of cotton seed products in the cotton
belt, and active in iiianv movcnients for the
iniprovemcnt of tbe coninuinity in which
be is one of the Icailing citizens, vvas born
on the C^ld Raleigh Road jnst cast of the
presciil cily liinils of Memphis on I'A'bniarv
17, 1876. '^llc is the son of J. Henry and
-Xnnic bl 1 liiniphri'v s. lie received bis
early education in the neighborinij schools,
but when only fourteen years of a.sjc came
lo Alemphis and went to work for Lliicjh
Pctlit &- Company, at the same time pur
suing his slndies in the night schools of the
city. XX'ben he rc/ielied bis inajorilv, be
Weill inlo Inisiness for himself. In con
junction with Mr. Herbert Godwin. i\Ir.
Hiimphrevs organized in 1898 the Hum-
phreys-Ciodwiii Comp/niy, dealing in the
products of cotton seed. Mr. Humphreys
for a number of years has been and slill
is the president and active head of the con
cern. Under bis a.ggressive direction the
business has .grown stearlilv until now it is
recognized as one of the largest and most
reliable dealers in those products. It docs
a tremendous business not onlv all over the
Lhiitcd .St/itcs, but also in foreign connlrics.
He occupied dnriiii; the XX'orld XX'ar a jiosi
tion in XX'ashiiigton probably tbe most vital
to the .South of :iiiv of the governiiietil:il
fiiiu lions, and one of tbe most iinporl/mt lo the whole country. It was in (he bood
.Xdminisi r/il inn in ch;in;e of (be collon seed indnstry. He drew An- rules and ret^nl/ilions
for Ibe vv;ii lime oper/ilion of /ill lhe collon seed iin'lls and lhe liaiidling nf tbe manufac
tured jiiodncl of cotton seed. 'Tb/il this was done with tbe fairness which can come only
from tbe strictest integrity coupled w-ith thorough knowledge of all lines of the business is
conceded bv all. Air. bluiiipbrcys has taken no part in politics, but is a nieniber of the
ALniphis Xliinicip:il l\iver & Rail 'Terminal Commission, where he with his two associates
is eiuk'/iv-oring to construct a river terminal and to restore river traffic that Menqihis may
¦.(•cnre cbeapir lr;ms]iortation and not lost; her preferential rail freight r/ifes. He is also
\-ice-presideiit of '/one 2 of the Mississippi X''alley /'Association. Air. Humphreys and Miss
b'lonrnov .Seldcn w-erc married '-  "^ "'^'^'
Seidell, "

aiuiarv /

1904. Their children are : Elise, Herbert and

871

3. C. Jlalntfjorne

THE late John Clarke Ibiwlhonie,
Jonesboro, /Xrk/insas, altorney /md
financier and planter, long one of the
leading figures in the development jiloiig
;ill good lines of Northeaslcin .\rk/ms;i-,
w;is a ii;itiye of 'Ti-nnes/.ec, wlien- be w;i.s
born b'ebi ii/iry 22. 1851, in Reiilmi ( miiiiv
He was the son of Roluii ll/iiri,M.ii ami
Elizabeth (Barker) I l/ivv tborne, Robi-il
ILiwihorne having been born in ( i(-m-,L;i/i
in LSO I /md enhsled in the ( oiireder/iie
.¦Xriiiy ill 1801 :iiul served under ( ieiicr.il
b'orresl and (ieneral Josejih E, Johnston,
;md was /it Shiloh inul iiiimerons other b/ii~
lles unlil b\-bni/ii'y, 18o.S, vvlu-n he vv/is dis
cb/irgcd on accmiiit of ill lu-.dlb. lln,
gr;iiidf;itber, Joseph IRiwlbmne, w;is /i
soldier in the .Xnierican Rcvolnlion, b;iviiig
enlisted in the spring of 1770 in C'olonel
Richard XX'inn's ;iiul Colonel Thomas 'L/iv--
lor's regiments /md w/is in lhe b;ilile of
.Slono. Mr. ILiwlhonu- w/is /idniiiled in
the bar in 1876 and pr/icliced llis profi-ssimi
/It ( orning, .\rkaiis/is, tor nine ye/irs iiiiiil
1885, when he inoved to jonesboro, becmiu
ing /it lli.it time lhe district /iltdiiicv fur liu-
S/iint Louis .SmilTiw eslern Railw/iv C'diii-
{laii) , which position he held until bis de:illi
He enjo)'ed ;i Incr/ilive praciice, /nul w;i^
interested /md a stockholder /nul director in
several b;nik's and oilu'r jii-ospermis cor-
]jor/itioils in lonesboro, ;iiid lhe iivvner id ;\
pl/iiit/itioll ill Ciillendeii C'oniilv, \rk:iiu:e
Ile look ail active interest in the construction of levees lo iinitect lhe .Saiiil br;iiicis B;isin.
and serveil ;is direclor of the .S;iiiit Francis Levee District for siver/il )ears ziiul vv;is allm-
ney for the District for four ye/irs. Ile was eleeti-d sl/ile seiKilor in 18X0 ,ind served lwo
lerms with distinction. Judge ILivvtborne vv/is ni/irried to .Xliss b.liz/ibclh I'.leamn lleld/u, -
in Corning, |nly II, 1876. 'They had three children; Don/ild Kenl ILiwlborne who w.is
born .\|)ril 2.S, 1877, am! married to Miss Rovvcn:i D/iviis, Deccmher 12, 18')') /md /ifui
her (le;itli lo Mrs. Mary Mast Riiiwyer, and is now eii^;i,gi.d in the pr;iclici- of law in Link-
Rock, .Xrk/ms/is ; John I l/iniiib/il I lawlborne, who w/is born NovcinlK-r ), 187'), ;iiul iiriri ied
to Aliss C/ilki XX'ilson on llie L'tb day of M:iicli, l')02, /nul vv,is i>sdcl.iied with his f:itlui-
iii the |ir/iclice of kivv al Jonesboro, Ark/insas ; /nul Xliss lilanclic 1 law llionie, who w/is
liorii .September 25, 1881 and married Virgil ('/iipenler I'ctlie, Deceinbe' 21, L'O), vvlui
resides ;it Little Rock /nul is Vice- I'resideiit of the b'-iiglaiul Nalimi/il B.mk at lli,il pkice
fudge ll/iwtborne died /Xiignst 25, 1020.

872

Capt. f . 01 PUacUin

I

N the ()e;ith of C'/ipt/iin James M/idison
I'lr/ickin on .Noveniber 12, IOR). nut unly
his Iialive ciinnlv- uf Dver. bnl the en
tire ,Sl;ilc of 'Tennessee, lo^t one of ils most
lii,i;lil)- respected and iisefnl citizens. He
cmild b/ive s/iid I nil b fiilR-, I luive done the
.St;ile some service, bnl he /isked of his
.Sl/ite no person/il rcw/inl, licino- s;ilis|ied
lb;it bis service li;id been for liie i;enei:il
\\c:[\. ('/ipl/iin Rr/ickin w/is born Decem
ber 2, I8.'i2, on Isk-nid No. 21 in the Xlissis
sippi river /md spent his vonlli /md vmiiig
m/mbood there 'The ediic/ition/il /idv/in-
ta.yes there /it that time w-i re iie:ir the zero
|)oint, aiu) the only chance aloni;; that line
tli/il be li/id w/is ;i few d/ivs :i| a time in
the connty coinnion si-liouls, ) |e renriined
;il the home of bis p/ireiits. 1 s/i/ic :iiu)
M/irtba Hendric Mr/ickin until 1875, when
he moved to Dvcrsbnrg. where his lirst
work W/IS in lhe flour mill of A. XI. .Slevcns.
Rcm/iinin!; there for /¦ ve/ir, be moved to
Ihe iiei,t,diIiorin,[,' low-ii of .Newbern /uul
spent /ilso /I )-e;ii- there in the s/iiiie line of
work. R'etin niiiL,' lo D)('rslinrg in 1877, he
worked two )e/ii-s for the C liilds 1 l/irrison
Drygoods Cmiip;iny. In 18/0 lu- ni/irried
Miss Geor.ijia .Stevens, dan,<.diter of bis Tirsl
cniployer, who vvas lbs devolcd comp/mimi
until tbe day of bis death and still niminis
his loss. In the s/niie )-eai- be bec;inic tn/is-
ter of the steaiiibd/il ,\lf. .S|even,. which
plied lielw-eeii Dvcislmn;. Xlempliis ami
'ciiiil Loin-.. :iml il w.is in lli/il e;ip;icilv lb:it be l/iid the fiiiiiid;ition fur Ins eshile. )ls lirsl
i/idi- w;is III Idvvin.iL; Innibei- In S/iiiil Louis and bringing b/icls frciidil to points uii lhe XI is-
sis-ippi /iml TdiT:ed I )eei Rivers. Il/ivint; been in the iiierc/iiitile business, lie /idded deal-
iiLjs Id hi-, business /nul 0 ]ii-dved :i lncr;ilive \-eiiliire Ile /md Mr. .Sleviiis /ilsn enlere,-|
111- s/n\ niill ;nid Inniber bm /md succeeded wmiderfiilly in it /ilso. ( ;i|i|;iiii Br/ickin ev-.-r
ddk: /I iiidsi /ictiv-c ]i;ir1 in jiulilics, bein.L; in the town council for m/inv- vears, scr\-in.y- on
he sl/iTis ol ( id\-eriiors R/itb tsoii. Rye and Roberts, /md vv/is for six vc/irs a member of
be .S|;ile eleelion commissimi. but never sought /i Incr/ilive office for himself. Tie died in
N/isliv-ille while 1111 Inisiness of lhe .Sl;ile. He vv;is /i devout inember of llu- Xletluidisl
"biirch. baviiig bcconu' ;i Sniubi)- school teacher before be was twentv yc/irs of /ige
Xlbert Rmics Br/ickin -nul Xliss Marie Louise, now iXIrs. John /X. .Xtkins, are his children.

87,^,

5arot) 5- $ere^

I

r 1^ II I', kite biCdli |ii-.epli Reres, vv;is nm
dl the must sclidku-R llien lli/il eer
lived in Meiiijiliis. as well /is /i iiiu~i
siiccesslnl Inisines,-, man, liiiiiiii-ei| by liciiiL;
llu- lirsl ol bis people elected ui piiblii nl'lice
111 this si'cliiin, .111(1 bigbl) respi'ded In- /ill
vv ho knew- him. .X n/ilive nf I Idlkiml, lu- vv/e
born at 1 Luirlem, T'ebrii:n-\ La, 18. iO, ilu-
smi of [osepli :iml S:ir;ili i' D/ividson ) RercT.
llis f;ilher died when llu- kul w/is milv two
)-c/irs 111 a.iu;c, ;iiid he vv;is biuiu^hl np bv ;mil
received his ediic/ilimi fii'in ;iii niu le Ile
allcnded the schuiils /md IRlircw .Seiiiiii/irv-
iii lla/irk:ni, /md, by re/isun uf sl/mding /il
the bead uf his cbi-s, vv/is /iblc lu linisli bi-
cuiirse /it I.eyden iipuii /i slipi-iul frmn llu
King df lliilkimk lie iKC/imc r/ibbi uf ilie
congregation /it ( ionda, Holland. In I8,S7,
be c;ime to .Xineric/i /nul spent a ve;ii in
Rbikidelpbia. The nexl ve;ir lie moved lu
Aleill|ihis /md the yeir fulluvv in,:.; e-l/iblisbed
the liu-rcb/indise bniker/uu- Tiriii uf jaeub
). Reres, slill sbindiiiu liii;li bcic iimlci llu
ii/inie of Jacob J. R'-res iK. C oiiip:iiu , bor
/i lime here, Mr. Reres vv/is pre/iclu-r of lhe
Cong re,g/it ion Children of Israel, /nul /ilsd
rabbi of the Cmigret^/ilion Rctli El biinelb.
-X iirofonml scliokir /md /iccoinjihsbed liii-
qiiisl, Mr. Peres bad l.ins^lit ;i ]iriv/ite scbdiil
of bis own in Philadelpbi.i. He djieiied mu
lure /md also l:nu;lil kiiu;ii;im-s in llie jiri-
v/ite school 111 Willini'^bk' \i nisnoni;. IR
vvas ;ilsii /iilmillcd lo ilu- Irii. ,-md lecimed
widely on liter/ilure ;iiid bingn/iges. He w;is a member of the B'nii l-'iiih ,iml ilu fmiiur
K, .S, R, In l8o6, Mr, Reres vv;is elecled /i membci nf the Xlemphi- ('ilv Rid:iid nf b'.dnc;i-
tion, and chosen its president, prob.ibR' only second to |mkib R, Reni.imin m llu- Smilh ;i-
/I nieiiibi-r uf Ins r/icc lu be elected tu public ullice 'I'wo ol Im suns, Israel /mil Ibiidwi.i;,
have succeeded him ,.iiici- nul unly ;is iiu-mbers, bill /ilso :is pl-e^idellls ul iluu Imdv , ;iii
Timiiir unique in the ;iiin/ils uf Alemphis. Air, Reres w/is m/irried XRiv 21. 18.s4. In XR.--
T'.\-/i I 'hills, d/inghler nf :i disliipunishcd r/ibbi in llis liiime cit v. vv hii li;id lu Ipcd Iniii ^rcilR
/IS ;i kid. 'To lliem were born leii children; Joseph, Bcni/ird, S/ii/ih. ITiiilwig, \',iiiii;i,
jiiliils, Le/ili, Isr/iel. Leo /md C'lar/i. In the score of vcais ib/il be lived in XI eiiijiliis, lU.
m/in vv/is a j^realer f/ic'ur ih/iii be lor the nieiipd /nul inor.il pru-'iis.., dj ilu- cilv. ,\l ilu-
a.t;e uf unly forty-nine vear.-,, he sncciimbcd lo the kisl vellow lever epidemic, m (Iclulici
187'), mmirned by the entire cmnmnnily .

874

(ESIiUiam Counts

I.N tbe de/illi nf \\ illi:iiii ( oinils. mi
Xlay 28. I'I20. ni.t iinlv tbe citv nf
( kit ksikile, vv bet '• be liv ed, bnl the en-
lire Mississipjii Delt/i, lost one of its most
useful and most beloved citizens. .XIr.
Counts w/is born in Canton, Kentiick-v,
M/ircb .^. 187,L lhe sun of l/ick- /nul S/irrih
Cmmts. Ile /illended tlu' common scbools
of his native connlv- until he was twelve
v-e/iis of age and then went to work- on /i
farm. At the a^e of thirteen vears he
moved from Kentucky to Coahoni/i Connty,
Mississip|ii, vvbere llis f/ithcr had acquired
some land ;iiid went to work on it. llis in
dustry from tbe beginning told in the rich
alliivinm of the Delta. He continued his
connection wilb his falber nnlil he w:is
Iweiitv-live ye;irs of /igc /nul lhen, in I8')8,
he went into business for himself as ;i
lilanler with the accompatiyiii.t; merchandise
business. From that time forward his
[iro.ijress vv/is more ra)iirl. He went ihrmi.tjh
all of the vicissitudes which befell the Delta
lilanters for tbirty-fonr )-ears and with tlieiii
shared in the prosperous seasons. His
jiid.ijment and foresight were such that tbe
overdraft of the Ic/m vears never consumed
the surplus of the prccedins; fat ones. .Xs
the surplus from bis planting became larger.
Air. Crnints be.gan making- other invest
ments, lie acipiired lar.sje boldinr^s in
XX'asliington and XX'arren counties in addi
tion to his Coahoma County plantation.
(•lie of his most f/iinons places w/is known as the "Rear ( iardcn Rlace'' Il was on /i iriii
df insjieclion of bis lower Dell/i jil/ices thai be went into VicksTinrcj /it the end of the d/iv-
df Xla\ 28, l')20. II'' had i,'-one (o bis room at a bold in app/ireiillv his iisii/d health /md
when the f/it/il stroke occurred. In adililion lo his l/iml holdings,
f stock' in the Rlanlers Bank of Clarksd.ile : in the Peoples C oni-

w/is pre|i/irin.g for dinnei
Mr. Counts wm /i holder m ,-li/i.i\ m dn < nnd.!,- i..ii,ix lu ^ hi in.^w.u. . m m^ . ....1.1^,-, .,
]ness Comji/inv of ( kirk --rlale : in the 'Tom James ( )il (ompaiiv of Memphis, with leases of
(onntry of ( )klalioiiia and in Louisiana, and in the Cotton Slates
He vv:is :i member of Ibe I'rcsbyleri/m ' hnrcb, an b.lk- and a
who knew him and res|ii'Cted by lhe entire comnuinilv
inleL;i-ilv /mil hit;-li /ibilily. Mr. ('minis /md Miss /.i|ipor;ill Blirt wei-e iii/ir-
.idovv and one d/mt,di1cr. Miss ( ieori;i;i Counts, survive him.

1,1 ri,'!- /iere/i.t;e m the < 's/ige
I .i fl' Insnr/incr ( omp/niv,
Knii.;bl of I'vlliia^. loved bv
for bis sli-rbiiij
ried |;iiiii/irv .S. 180,$. Ili

875

HO I. TON .S.M I'll!
I'lUihi;, Mmiiii, iu\ r>liiiriil li.iul.i i , I.iumi, -iIh.Iiii. , .e .1
iiiul imliln- s|iiiilril iili/eii nl i\lnii|)lii ¦,, 1 miu \.,rr, u;i, i,);i,
ill liiili/iiui|iiilis. Iiiiliaiia, Inly -,i, kSiil, llu miu nl br/iiiru /mil
-Sarah (llnlimi) .Smilh, I h- /iiiriulnl Mhnnl 111 I iiili. 111,1111 ili ,
liuliaii/i. Ill llri-^ileii. ( iciiiKuiv . aiu! ,L',railii:tli-f I irniu llu- "I'nl
Iv^e lie (ii.-nevr," S\vit/.vrl;iiui. in 1S7S In KS.S- lu- ia-i-L-i\-i.(l hi-
lU-^rce nl l.t., 1'., finiii ihr leiitriil l-.iw- .Sthiinl nl liuliaii/iiinl,.
and kiler Innk liu- ,^Il^u^K-^ iniir^i- in law al llu- Liini-ruly ni
\'i|-Kiiiia Ml- iiuueil In \ ieksluii-L; 111 Ilu- I, ill ni lIuu \ Lin
ami al'ler lliree vc/irs llurc as ;iii illv^--^l iiu-iil hanker, Iil l/ujk
111 Meiiiiiliis, vvlu-re Inr ihinv-hvv ycil^^ he li/i- hi.-Lii ,1 iiu.-i
useful cili/.eii, always aelivc Inr every iiinvLiiu-iil Inr lie
iinprnVLiiienl nl" lhe rniiiniiiiiily. Tnr v rai-^ juiiinr iiu-inhLi- nl ilu
hriii nf Oalilucll & .Smiih. he imw i> llu- luail nf ii- .iuil-im,
Smilh & I'erknu. I R- i,^ ;iii l'!|ii.-.enpahan, KnUui/ui, M,i-nu
ami a Iriulcc nf ihc tJiiiverMn nl '1 liiiu -ml ami iIil I iliu-i/'
I'e/ihnily (.'nllcHL' Inr 'I'Laclu-i-s .iml nil lhe Xaliniial On, nil .ii
llu- liny Seniil,- nf .Xiiierici XIr, Smilh ,iml .Mis- I nai. 1 I ,ii-
lik- nf i\lLiU|iliis were iiiai rieil, .luiu-- JU l.SiS'l, llii.y h.ul Iv.n
rhilihi-ii. Miss PnuisL Knllnii-Sinilii, imw- ili-,iil, .iiul ( ^irhl.
Ilnhnll Slllllll

A. n. 'i\\\ i.oK
,\iciiii'i! Kiiiieici 'IvviiiK. fnr ne/u l\ lillv VL/ir- in llu- -l.i
liniii-rv. nllUL siip|ilv ami h-mk hiisiuL-s in MLiiiphis. 'iLmiL--
Sl-L, nlU- 111 lIlL lily's mn^l \\;i1lI> klinwil lillslMLs- im u
rLs[H-elcil hv all ami Inveil li\ Ins liiiuils Inr his n.i/iil viraiMv
sU-ilinj; mli-.^riiy, alisntiUL Imiu-siy .iml kimllv ilispusilinii, vv.i-
linrii lu-.ir lliilly S|iriii,L;s, .\1 is.- i-sippi, .Viwi-mliLi- S. IK.Sl, ilu
siin nf DiiiUir William \', 'kaylnr II .iml .\lar,\ f. l.laii-.Ull
Tajlnr, ami LihiraUil in XUiiijihis .uul ,il I hiisiiaii llmllu-i-
('nlk-.HC, Si, Lnllis, Missnini 111 \ll,L;llsl, l,S7_'. IlL LIlU-liil lIlL
.staliniicry liusiiicss wilh I, .S. I l.iulier iV I niiip/iiu. hiiviii./; ih.u
husiiiL-ss iiml L-sUililishiii^ ( kijip i.'v r/iylm in IS7S lie hniiuln
llu- C'la|i|i inlerest in laiiiKii-y, IS.S.S. ,-iml (-siahhslu-il the Inm ni
-A. R. 'kaylnr t'v t'limpaii}, iiunrpnr.ilm.L; 11 111 l')hl mukr llu
present ii.ime nl A, l\. 'bivlm I niiiiiain , haih-r in ils lim-
llll nll);hlilll llu- ,\l III -.Snlllh IIl W.Is 1, 11 ill. IIU 31, lis pllsuli-lll
nl Ilic I hiikas/iw ( liih ; ailivi- in llu- 1 liu-k,isa\\ (lu.nils wlu-n
thai enmp.inv u as 1 nic.iili-i liI llu In- si ilnll il.uii 111 llu- w m hi .
illul ln|- I \vi-lll.\--niu- M-ai, ,1 im-mhil 111 llu \,il|iill,il lill.ilil
ami frniii l.S'),i in ]H'l(t hriKailier LLner.il in LninnKiiul nl .ill llu
.SlalL iiiilili.i lie ami Miss 'riiiimii- TrL.ulwLll wlh m.in u .1
Inm- -M, ISiXO. h,i\in,i; Umi ehililiLii. ,Si,iiiu-s li 1 .iiU\ lII, ,iml
.-\, k, 'l.ivlnr, Inniiii-,

876

J. K. I'Kri'Kli
jiiiiN Roii|,-,H-isiiN' rKrurii, Memphis, ¦rcnncsscc, ca|iilalisl,
mciehanl. ami nf internal inn/il slamliiu; in .'siinil/ y s.-lvml
wink, is ;i native nf \'ii-i;iiiia wlu-ir lir was linrn 'ii .\l niil^;nin-
ri V Inniity. April (i. IS.iO llu r;iim In Mrinplns at LiLhlnii
yr/iis 111 :\nv. Mr wnrkcil in ihr Wrslnn rninii 'I'l-lryiaph
nllii L ami in IXu') wrni with Sliallnii, (Inyi-i iK- I niiipaiiv. Ib
is llu- only snr\-ivni- nf |h;il hrin. whirli. as pirsiilLiii, hi- Iris
rniiliniu'i-| umlrr sliyhlly chan.yeil naim--, ,-is tlu- (inyi-r I'nm-
p/iny :il f ireenville ami the Ori-rnwnnil. ^'aznn (ily .-iml knsr-
liali' (irneer kiimpanies. in tlu-ir ri-s|iecliv-i.- litii.-s in X! ississi]ini
Mr is alsn ]i|-Lsiilent nf lhe Xlempliis Marhinr Wnrk-s ami llie
lliiiiamln 1 nsm-.'ini I- ( nin]);ni\ .nul inlrri-sinl in inaiiv sin/ilh-r
rnmerns in Mrniphis, l.nii.i; ,-iti arlivi- iiunihir nf tin ,\li-|hn
ilisi ( Iniiili (.Snnlh) lu- is |nrsiilrnl nf ils Pnaiil nl Missinns
ami nicnilicr nf ils (ieneral Siiiulay .Sclinnl l!n/ii-il. nf the
Intci-natiniial Sumlay .Sclinol Lesson ( "nnimiUce for uiijhlecn
vears. chairman nf the Xlcinpliis (/nn fi-ri-nii- lln/tnl fnr lliir'v-
lluLi' vrars /mil sii|iLrniti-nilen1 i>\ (lu- l'"ir-l ( liinrh Sim hi ,
,S( hnnl Inr Ihirly-iiiiie years, lie ami Xlis. ( ¦|i,-irlLs, Ke/ul
wen- inarricrl Xnvciulicr IX, ]ii7? Tlieii- chililren are XI is, .\,
W. Retclniin ami Samuel Xb-navitt l'ep]ir|-.

C. W. TIIOiMI'SON
( 'ii.vi<i,i-;s \\s ¦riiiiM I'SUN, hanker. Meiii]iliis. 'I enm-ssee. wa ¦
hniii ill M iihllelnn. Tnuirssee, M.-nih U. kSleS. llu- snii -if
Mr, ami Mrs, M ( '. 'rhnnipsnir lb w.is c-ihir,-il eil ;il Illm-
Miiiml/iin (Mississippi) M,-ile ,\(-ailriny. ami at the a.m- nl
I \\-i,'nl v-niir ye/it-s lii-,i.i/iii ins hnsim-ss e/ireer ,'is ,-i rU rk in .1 i^en
er/il sInre in Kipley. Mississippi. lie mnvi-il In .\Iein)ihis in
Ifi'.i.s :im| nrnanizLiI the Memphis (_)iu'riisw;ii-e (ompaiiv-. wliieh
cniicci-n he niana.t;e(i with si.s^iial success until l')14, .-\llhnirL;li
haviii.c t;iken iin active part in |iarlisan polilics. he was imlnei-il
In hi-romi' iha irnia II nf llii- .Shrlliy ( niml v ( nmniissinn in I'dCi.
wlu-rc his iinsvvi-rvim; Imm-siy ami hiisiiii-s, r\prrii-nee wi-ie nf
KTcal henelit to lhe counly at l.-ir,t;e. In Taniiavy, I')I7. in-
hccanie presideni of the .X'alional City liank of Memphis.
which position he now liolds. Mr. 'riinm|isiin and Xliss I'dnr-
cncc Slratton were married iXovemhcr M. I"(),^. and have
four intcrcstinij children; the oldest a i/irk Florence; a l)ri\-,
riiarlc.s \\',. Jr.. and a siik Tdylhe. who are twins, and llu-
.vnini.cu-st a Kirk Ma.v. Mr, 'riiompsnii is Ireasiirer nf tin
( liamlier of Coiniiu-rce ami lakes an arlive pari in all matlci-s
perl/iiniii.t; to Ihe lielterment of his riiy.

877

.1. (). lio.Mb'.K
Jiill.\ O, ruuMi-.u. l.rovviisvillL. 'l'Linu-ssi.-c. liankLi, liiinhei-man
ami puhlie sihriled eilizeii, was lioin in I .audLrd/iK- (-nunly,
Sepleiiiher 25. liSliS, lhe snii of 'k, d, .uul Mary jaiu- r.nincr
.'\ller havin.n reeeneil a eoniinon sclinnl eiliu-ation. .Mr, Homer
and his hrolliei-, hi, J,, vvviil inlo ilu- liimhei- Inisiness wilh .i
small mill al C iiinlina, snmc ten miles mil Irniii I'lrnwiisvilk-
aiul have expanded li-oiii llial lo where lliiy an- aniniu.^ llu-
hig hanlwnnd prndiieers nl llie -Smilh, Xnw ilu y leu l l--.Ilii-
sivc hnliliiiKs of limlK-r in Mississippi and Lniiisian.i, .Mr, I', J,
l!iiiiu-r niakm.n liis lu-/iili|iiai leis in \'ii-kshni-K in i liarLiL m ilu-
pi-ndiielinii p/irl nl the Tinii nf liomer HioiIilis, ami Xli. J, ( ),
lloiner i-i.-iiiaiiiing in I'.rowiisville, where lu- Ii.is cliai-;-;L ol ilu-
sales ik'iiarlniLiit, Mr. lloiiier is prcsidein ol llu- r.rnwiisv-illL
kiaiik, vvhiih he was iiisirnmeiiUil iii nri^.ini/ni.L; and wkiieli is
line 111 the niosl siilist.inlial liiiaiuial iiisliliuinns in ils sLilinir
lie also i,s :i lie.ivv slni-klinlder in llu- rnlinii ml, water wurks,
i( c and linlit idaiils, lie u, a suimich .Meilindi-l. /mil has
served several Iliiiis /is ni/ivor, Mr. I'lnim-r /mil .Miss Plaiulu-
(ialewiiod •Nmk-isnii w-ere married Inm l_'. Ilv-;') Iliiii ilnl-

di-

J (),. Jl , D.uml ( , Iil, I

mil l-.d,-, ,n J,

ai.lI':n in'(;iib:.s
Jiiiiiu. ,\i,i 1, .\' lli-i,lli-;s, one of llu- le/ulinii uu-iiiIri-s ni ilie
Meiitjihis li,ir. is a ii;iliv-e nf 'ri-nm-sstL. hm iiirmd his ink- ill
-Arkansas, lie was horn July -5, 187(1, in SIilUiv- Lnuiiiv, lhe
son nf 'khonias Nevvlnii and jM/iiy I'lisrilki I1ii,l;Iu-s. IIl
reeeived his le,!.;/il idiiealioii m llu l.iw ik p.i|-liiu-iil oi \ amii r-
liill Universilv al N,ishville, while lu- iLiLivid his ilL.L;ri i ol
haehelor ol kiws in Inm-, IS'IJ In liu- miiiiu i oi tlu fnllnw
illu, viiil , 111- Willi In I iim -,1111111, ,\i t,,m-,,e,, w lu i . lu h, :-,iu llu
in-ailiiL nl ills piolcsslnn. ^lu^l-s^, lliilh 111 till- inlnls .mil III
inakiii;,;- Iru-mls anionic str,in;.;ers aiu-ndLiI his lIIhiIs Irniii ilu-
liisi ami ill I'HI-' lu- was ek-eud ind.m- nf llu- Sunnd Jirluril
Dislriel of .Aikansas. whii li posiimu lu- lu Id Im iiiUi- \ l.u s,
when liL- i-e-i-nUri-il prnale piaLlui- in Inm-hnin lUiim.L;
I'^D-l he sLi-VLil /IS presiik-nl nf llu- XiL.ins.n P.u \ssiii;.Uinll
In l')l)7 Jiiilne MiihIu-- iiuul.I in .MLinphu ,ii,d Im mul a
en-parliiersiiip wilh llu- laU- VXilliam ,\, I'l-rm lie u a nii-in-
hcr nl llu- k/ippa -Sif^m.i i.-nlk-,i-;t- 1 ;-.ilL|-iiily ; i-;]ks ; I X-iiuls-li
(iiili, and I liamhei- nf ( "niimu-i ai.-, |iu1l;l MiiliIus .uul .Miss
l-'aiiiilk- l'"riersnii were iiiairinl ,M/ireli l'l. l.S'ln I'lu-ii- iliii-
ilreii are; .\ileii, I r , 'khmiias, (¦.innlk Willi, mi, l.mu-, Inliii
.mil ( nnmu-

878

J. R. II A 1/1/
Jamks R.VNKiN M.Aii,. planter /nul real estate man. ( oviiur-
tnii. 'Teimessi-L. is a native of 'I'iplnn ( iiniity. where he was
hm-ii iie:ir Coviiifjlnn Maii-li JX. \i<S'>. llu- son of John Xisliil
and Sar/ili ( .Xlrxander ) Mall, Mis falhrr li/ivinn died, leaviii!;-
Iwo d/inuhlers ;iml a ymiii.n son. Mr. llall w-eiil In wnrk ;is a
nu-ie youth on tlu-ir sin/ill farm In make a livinij fm them, his
wiilnwed mnlher and himself. Me iiad hut meaL;ei- selinni
ediieation, bnl priv/ile tutorship of his wise and cultured
mother and early association with his refined and .scholarly
lelatives iirspiri.d in liini a desire for le;irning wliicii he has
ai-i|iiircd hv constant readin.i,' and wide travel all over tlie
I'nited .Stales, P,y ililiiience and econnniy lie lias aceiiniiiialed
wide real rst:ile hnldiiiKs /is well /is liankin.i; iiiteresls. lie alsn
eoiili-ols much other property. ()f Ihe hi.nhesl cluiraeler and
niosl eiiKan;iiris' matincr, Mr. M/ill is one of tlie most hi.niily
respecleil as w-ell as one of tlie innst successful men in his
enniily. Me is a mcniher of the Preshylcrian (luireli. Mc
and Miss Mattie (iiveiis were married in I8K4, Their ehildren
are lohii Nishet TIall ami Miss .Alice Mail, novv Ihc wife of
Jiid,i,'e Riehard I!, baptist. Mis seenud iiiarria};e was in l')l.i
In Miss Mary \'iri;iiii/i McRee.

W. sS. JONES
f'Kiii-KSson W'li.VRio/; .SiKW.AKT JoXFS. su|ieriiilendcii t of tin-
puhlie school syslem of Memphis. Tennessee, situ-e I'lbS. /md
one of the leadiiu;- rdiie/itors of tlu- .Smith, vvas iioi n al
Miiierv/i Cnllei/i'. near N/isiiviik-. Temiessre. .'/eptemhei- 1-1.
184'). the son of the Reverend Sandy Klrnd and Catherine
( .Sli-wai 1 ) Jom-s, Mis father was ;i preaeher of the (inistian
( hurch and one of the icadin.ir educators of that denomina
tion. Mis mother vvas a sister of General A, P. -Stewart.
('. -S. A. Professor Jones received his early edue/ition under
llis father and rmisiuil his coiiise at the Keiiliirkv (now
'Tr/insylvaiiia ) Lfiiiversily, fjr-'uliiatini; with Inst honors in a
larne class :iml deliveriiu,' Ihc saiuUilory in (iierk. I'Xniii 187.^
lo 1881 he vvas |iriiicipal of I'lonrhon ColieKc at Paris, KX'ii-
tucky-, at the end of vvliirh time lie came lo Mempliis and
i-stahlisiied tile Mein|iliis Military- tiistilute, Prnfessnr Junes is
one of the best and most evenly educated men in the Mid-
-Soutli, hut lie lias specialized in mathematics, in vvhicli he h/is
few nuiais in that section. .Xs /in exei-iitive in selinnl inanayc-
ineiit. lie r/inks amoiu; the iiest in the United Slates. Profes
sor Jones and Miss Mattie P>oyil were married in 1888.

879

T. II. JACKSON
dnoM.Vs I I r N 1 JvcKsiiiN, lawyer, AlLin|ihe,, 4 emu ssn-, w.is
liiirn in Cnihert Counly, .-\lahaiiia, Sepleiiiher _'li, lo54, llie son
nf William M. and Tlu-rjiiuthis McKieniaii laeksmi, 4"he
Uiiiled Stales -X'ilrate T'kiiit Nn. 2 is ine/iled ml lhe nid familv
hnmeslead, 'llu- Lifecl nf lhe t'ivii War on llu laiiilly e-iale
was siicli al tlu- lime that he was a yoiilli dial Mr, kuksnii
was ;ihle lo receivi no ediie/ilion s.ivi lluil in tin- piihlit ..liools
nf TuscLimhi/i and he read kiw tlu-re, .\ U-w ikivs a 1 U r having
attained liis majority, lie vvas admilled In llu- bar :il 'I iis-
einnliia and ]ii-aeliccil siieeess fully lIuii. Im si.x years, wlu-n
he inoved lo i\iem|iliis in 1881, lie li.is ranked aniniiK the
leaders of the liar from tile lime llial he eaiiie In Meiii|ilns,
ami has also lakvii a lively inlerest in |inhlii- /ill/iirs. Ml ..\a-
eleeteil eily allinney in l')()(i. servin.i; llnniij^h l''ll'A and ul-"
served one lerin as lire and |inliee eoiimns.sioiiLr hy /ijipoinl-
meiil of (iov-L|-nin- Im-iiIoii Mi-.Miliiii, Ih- is a iiiLinhi r nf ilu-
Memphis Iniinliy I hib, ,i lhirl\ sLcmul i|i-;,mii M.nnii. a
.Sluim-i- /nul a diii-elm in liu- fliiinii X- i'kmiirs Ikiiik X 1 run
( nmpaiiy. Me .md .Miss RvlK-eea iXU-ix.iy- wi-il in. hi ud Vpi il
'A i8')|, Slu- died Oitnher 10, I'JKI

II. R. CIIKARS
kb-.xnv R.v,\-i,oi.i'ii CTir.VRs, .Mi-mphis, 4\-mu-ssi e, was hmii in
.-Xiuic .Arundel C'ninUy, Mai-j-laml, .XmemliLr 7, 187_', llu- snii
of Diietm- lleinaniin and -S.irali ((ii/idv ) I lu-,irs. Ml w,is
eilue/iled in die Universily u f M. 113 kind ,\l llu- .ei;L .li Iwi-iilv
years he left lhe universily In lr;ivi--i Ini- a 1. lieniiial hniise, Me
remaiued nn lhe rn.id fm several years .md sn -iieeesslnl w.is
he ill lliat line llial in a sliml lime hi- w,is proinnlLil In ..ihs
iii.iiia^Lr nl lhe ¦ oinpaiiy, lie laiiu- In MliiiiiIii-, limii 11, do
inni-e ill l''l).S ami n|-.e/iiiizcd lhe liu-ais i'lnm \ SiiLen I mn-
pany, liie iarnesl Inisiness ol ils kind in the .Snnlh, wliieli lu-
has eoiuliieU-d ever sinee ;is piesidenl ami nuin.i^^ei-. l-.ver
siiiee he c;mie to Mempliis he h/is heeii aelivL in iK.nlv l-vliv-
luovemeiil lor the iijihiiihliiiK nl llu /nmmnmlv, lb- is v u l-
]iresideiil nl lhe I h.imher ol ( oimmiie /uul mu m in ino-i
aclive nu-iiihers. Mis ninsl eniis|iK iimis wmk .ilmiL licit Iiiil
leeenlly has iieen as eiKiirman ol (lu- ( h.iiuhei- of ( niimiei ll
cminnillee nii luihliLliy fnr the d'li, Slali- I InU-l, I II is a mem-
in-r nf the Rmarv .md tnlniiial lonniiv (liihs Mr i liL.irs
.md Miss Lillian ,\il.ims wen- in 11 1 ud \n,i;nl ,ill, I'MJ lluv
h.ive om- I hlld, \'nu.lma k,milnipli I hi ,11 s

880

jnD(;i^: R. R. JJAFTIST
RienvKU ILvnistik Ibvi'risT, lawv-cr. (ovintrtnn. Tennessee.
iud.ee of the Sixteenlli Judiei/il Circnit, vvas liorii ,\pri1 '). 1874.
ill .Mason. IX-nnessi.'e, lhe son of X'athaniel Wilson and 15i-|le
Piiiyd Ikiplist. 'The family moved to t'nviii,t;tnn when Jud.ue
P.apfisi w/is a mere cliild ;iml it was there that he ,!-;revv np
and leecived his early education. He then went to \\ ehh's
School. I'cllhtiekle. Temiessre. and fniisiicd at Idamiiden Si'l-
ney C^illcRe. X'irginia. In Mi')S he vva.s licensed to practice law
and began in C'ovington a? the junior member of the fn-m nf
T'aptist &- baptist, his father, long a leading figure at the liar
and in the piiiilie affairs of the Stair, being the senior iium-
her. kollovving the ile/illi of liis f:itiu-r in l')l-S. ludge i',/iptisl
piaclii-ed /done, unlil .Seplrmiier, l')i8, when In- weul upon
the lienrli. Mining the rulire earei-r of the 1 iiiiimable bidwaid
W. Carmack in botii limiscs of the Congress, Jiul.ge Pciplist
was llis private seerelary, and until the end his inlimate per-
son;il and polilieal friend. Me is a Mason, an k'.lk and ;i
memhcr of the Preshylcrian Cluirrlr Judge baptist and Xliss
, Xlice Spencer llall were m:iri-ied . Xpril 8. I<)n8. Tlieir ehildren
/ire Martha Uiveiis, R/iliei Pnivd and I^iehard P.. Iimim',

K. M. KJ.LIS
t'jivv.vim iM.viiins Im.i.is, one of the leadin.g business men of
Menipbis, lAuiiiesser. vvas hnrn in Marsh/ill Coimly-. Mis-is-
sippi, Meeemlier i.i, 18(i.S. the son of i)/ivid /Mrxander ami
I'dizahelh (I'.aleli) I'^llis. .After luiving finished the coiirse in
the ])nhlie schools at home, he went to the New ^'ln-k Colie.gc
of Phaniiaey where he was graduated in 1888. Returning in
Mississippi, he npcucd a retail dru.g store in West I^oiul w-liich
he cniuluileil snccessfnllv' for ten years. /\t the end of Ihal
lime 111' sold mil and eaiiie lo Mi'iiiphis wlu-re he organized
llu- Mi'ssig- idlis llnig (oinp/mv, ol wiiiiTi lu- w;is the pn-si-
denl for the lirsl ten years of its exisleiiee ami which ilnrin.g
that lime h/ul /i remark/ibie growth. In Dill be sold liis sloek
in thai concern and iirgaiiized the Tdlis-Joiies Drug ( oinpany
in mil, of vviiicii be is tiic active bead and of wdiich lie has
been the only president, lliider his diiection il has heeomc
one of the Icadiiyg vvliolcsaie, nianufacluring and iinportiiig
drug concerns in tlie Mid-South. Mr, I'Tlis is a inrmhcr of
the Mempliis Country Cinh. the Ctiamlur ol Conimeric and
the T'ive-Lakcs Outing Cluii. Me and Miss .Suzanne I', Duke
were nuirried .X'ovcmiicr 6, 10(11.

881

J. iM. FLY
Jiisii'li M.vsiiN i''i,v-, iiiereiiant, Memphis, diinie-sei'. is oiie
ol lhe yoiingesl men in the eily at die head of large ,iiiil siir-
eessliil Inisiness iiistiliitioiis. limn in Alemphis July -K 1878,
he is tile son of 1). Wilsuii and /Xiigusla (.Seoti; I'R-. lie was
educated ill private seiiools in Memiiliis ami tmished in .X'evv
X'ork City. At the age of eighteen, he enlered tlie employ ui
Fly & TTohsou Company. Tlis lallu-r, ils inesideiil, was no
believer in lavoiilisin and prescribed a s|i,irl.iii-iike emirse of
Ir, lining lor bis son, demaiiding iiaid wnrk lielore piniiinlinii.
Wiling Mr, i'ly worked in v'/u ions iiosilioiis ami h> loiislaiii
appliealion liuiil iiis sueeess Irniii the gi-onnd up, U|inn llu-
dea(h of his fallier, the direclors elecled J, XL I'lv- iiresidenl
of Ihe l"'ly s^ llobson Cniiiiiaiiy. lb- also beLame prvsideiil
and generai inaiiagi,r ol the Mr, iinwrrs Slnrcs, liie,, nl vviiiih
tiiere are fmty-four. Mr. l"'iy-'s Inisiness speeialliLS are orgaui-
ziilion, adverlisiiig ami eii-oper.ilion Irnm .issoeiates iiy inspir
ing lliem Willi a vision of svrvire and a sense nl ri-spmisibililv
lo the luililie. Me and Miss I'rederik/i Kiode were nian-ied
in 190.1. diiev liave two cliiidreii, 1.1. X\ iisoii ami Alarie Loiii-t.

Tl. S. GRIFI IN
HoK,v(-E -SniNKV (iRlKKlK, -Ariiiigtuii, 'fennessee, one of llie
1/irgCst land owners in \XV-st lennessee and mnsi suhslaiiti/il
citizens ol -Sheihy (."oiiiily, was born near wii/il nnw is .Xrliiig-
loii, -Angiisl 10, 18.S-S, lhe oldest son of James llviiry /md
Zylphia (ddunnas) (biflin. Wlu-n lu: was but iiinelLLU years
of age, llis lather died, leaving bim in charge of lhe live hun-
ilred-acre |ilaiilalion. fhe younger iirnlhers all migraled In
Texas and eoulinnaliy begged him to join Iheiii. Iiul be bad
faith ill tills eiiiiiilrv, wiiiiii lie has shovvii iiy a coiisUinl
increase in liis real eslale holdings, ile has expanded Ins
home jiiace trom vvitliin half a mile of .Vriington into I'avette
Cniinty comprising snine Iwenlv'-lwo lumdred acres, lie has
a six bunilred and Iwenly-live-.iere pl.inUilioii west of .\|-|in.g-
tou and a live Inindred-aere place in T'.iVLlle Cnimiy, in addi
tion to nearly seven huiulred acres in ,\lkila Cniinlv-, Missis-
-sii)|ii, Ile has liei-n m/irried twice; hrst In Miss -Anna Thomas,
their cliild being Zviphia h-lizahelh; ami later lo Mrs, b -sic
At. Cjrilliu, lheir eliiidren being iinr/iee S,, Inninr; Xhirgarel :
lielh ; .Alin-rl N., ami diimnas William, In his leligimis
views be is a I'l esiiv Icrian .iiiil is .in ehki in lli.ii ebiireh.

882

-ISIf ¦'^V'vr'Ti?»«iM| T'TPTI

IIARRV II. LITTY
ILvRRV TT, LiTrv, capitalist and sportsman, fornicr r;iiiroad
engineer, lawyer and in/iyor of Mempliis, 'Tennessee, /ilways
a most eonipauionable man and truest of frieiiiks, vvas horn at
midnighl of Alarch 16-17, 1862, in d'oledo. (Jhio. of Swiss /ind
Trench parentage. Lfc alleiuleil high school and eoilegr hul
left school at eighteen years of age and engaged in r/iilroad
wmk as a loeomolive en.giiieer oii the Lonisvillr-St, Lmiis ,\ir
Line, Louisville & Nashville and ixansas City-, Alemphis &
P.inningliam railroads, during ;i part of that time being with
Rogers iS: P.allentiue Conipaiiy- in huildin.g railroads ihrou.gh-
mit tbe .'souiii. including the line from Meinphis to l!irming-
liam. Me came to Memphis in 1886, dr/ill in real estate sur-
eesslully. studied law under Colonel Ci. A. C. ilnll /uul
pracliei-d frmn 1800 lo tbe prisLiit time. Me was ( leM-lamls
inli-in/il leveiine colleiloi'. ineiiihrr of ( ily- Itoaiil of Pnhlie
Works fi-oiii 18',I6 to l')(l(l and mayor l')17 and l')18. During
llis mayoralty his efforts were especially directed tovvarci
winning the war and reducing inihlic expenditures. His diver
sions are fishing, shooting ami iiunting big game. ITe and
Aliss Kiizabeth C lark were married November 25. 1897. '1 iieir
children are Alarion and /Ndele.

R. r. 1.AKE
(2nL(u-n;r Ru ii.VRn Pinknf.v Lake, life underwriter and
fiuaticier, Xfcinplu's, Tennessee, son of William Lake, vvcilthy
merchant of firenada, Alississippi, was iioru there Tannery 10,
1848, where his parents had inoved from the eastern shore of
Maryland. Idis ancestors, himself and his sons, three of
whom were connuissioned in the XX^orld XX-'ar, have answered
every call of their country to arms, including the Revolution.
Colonel Lake was an oflicer in a company of boys at the out-
hre/ik of the Civil War, and s;ivv aclive service in 186-1 /mil
1865 as a lieutenant of cavalry, probably the youngest commis
sioned (oufederate officer. He was eluiiriuan of his i-mnity
Democratic committee during rernnstrtietion, hul, that aceoni-
piisiied, he withdrew from polities. For several years he wa'v
vice-president of the Alississippi & Tennessee Railroad, and
for a long time has been assistant adjutant general on the
staff of the coniniander-ir-chicf. U. C. \ , In 1885 (Ailonel
Lake vvas appointed general agent for the Fipiitahlr Life
.Xssur.ance .Society, and adding 'I'eiinessee lo his Alississippi
jnrisdielion, moved to Alemphis in 1894, vviiere lie lias been a
leading figure in inisiness and social circles ever since. Mc
and Miss Stella AIcKnight Hoffa married in January, 1878.

883

R. L. iMATTIIIAN'S
IvloisHRT Lkkuv- M.vrriiKW s, Alemphis. 'I'ennes,see, founder
and aclive head of lhe re/il eslale, morlgage loan /md iiisiir-
anee firm of R. L. ATatlhevvs & Coiupaiiy. vvas horn in Aleiu-
pliis, lile son of Robert Ceorge and \'irginia Leedy Alalllievvs.
-All of his grandp/ireuts were Virginians, vvlio later moved to
-Alatiama and Mississippi, llis 1/ilher was a ea|ilain in Alor-
gaii's klri.gaile during lhe Civil War nnlil he was wmmded.
Airs, Alatllu-ws as Aliss Leedy was a belle in -Xnrlh .Viahaiii.i
society, and during her entire life vv/is a wninaii nl rare
eulllire, rLfmement and inllueiue fnr gnoii tiirmighoiil llu:
wide circle in wliieli she iimved. Xs a triluiU- In her meiiinrv
Air. Mallhews has dmi/iled a great iiu-iiinri.il mgaii lo Si
John's Al, !''„ (.'liiireh. Much of Mr, M.illliews' ear
lier life vvas spent in .'Mierik'eii and Okolmia, .Mississippi.
where be received bis earlv ednealiou, IK- kiler Innk llu-
cniirse in l',;isim, ill's I'lUsiiu'ss ('hIIlvl .il I 'nn.i/hkn-psiL. XXw
Vnrk, Returning tn MLinpiiis. he hvi anu- u-IIli Inr llu- M.m-
haltan Savings bank li 4'rust Companv, Frniii 1894 lo 1898
he vvas a member of the hrm of Faiiisworlh & Miildiews, |iri-
vale hankers, ddieii he siieiil two wars in liu- l',a~l ;iiid in
I'lOO iiliiiiu-d lo Memphis wiu-n- lu- fniimlLil hi-, pn .iiil lirm,
a leader in ils line in lhe Mid-Sniilh,

CAPTAIN ir. C. MOORM.\.\
C.ver.vii^i Mik.VM Cr.vuk AIoorm.vx, kiw.ver ami hanker.
Somerville, deiniessee, lor luanv- years le/ider of ;ill llial was
good in morals, ethics, religion and imlities in layette Cmmiv.
was horn in Mardeiuan County, d'emiLssee, kinuary- .il, 1812.
liie son of Dr. Robert Alexander and Manila .-Vim (Morg.ui)
Aionrman. -Xfler luiving /illi-iukd llu- enmiiimi sihunls .md
receiveil his degree nf h.ielu-lnr nf /nPs limn llilhel ( nlli-gv
All I.eiiini-esviile, 4\'inu-ssi-L, lu- w,is a law slmhiil al ( innliLr-
iaiiii Uiii v'Lisil >-, Lehaiinii, 4 t-miLsset-, wlu-n lhe ( ivil Warhmke
out. Me enlisted as a iirivale in the Idiii-IeLiiIli d'emicssei-
liifantry in Alay, 1861; fought in /dl Ihe campaigns I mm i!ei-
inont to llentnnviiie ; w.is ihriee prniiinU-d Im hraveiv nn iIk-
field nf hattie ; sulTered three woiimls, the mnsi .serious al
l.ovejoy's Stalimi ill the Dalliin-ln-.\llaiila e.impaign ; l/inghl
selioni al Salem, Mississippi, and read law unlil lhe vv iiilei nl
18(i9-'70, when lie liegaii a career in .Smiierv ilk-, wliieli b.is
been iiolh sueeessfui to Iiimself and iiselnl to (he entire eniii-
uuinily. Me has been preniknl nl the I'.ivelle I niinty Hank
since 1890, and owns a beautiful farm and eoimlry- bmne jiist
west of Somerville. Mis rei-nrd as /i kiwver has been mie nl
distinclinii and sneeess. Me vvas m, in led lirsl In .Miss hi, Hues
J, Armslrong and later lo Aliss lira 11 (ireen.

884

A. G. RKRKINS
.Xi.iii-;R'r fiki-.i-NK PrRKi.x's, Alenipbis. 4'eiinessee. for ni/iiiy
years executive iiead of fiie Tennessee Cottonseed Crushers
/Xssoeialion, vvas born in Ixanfuuin ('minly, 4'ex/is. Orlober 17.
i871, tbe son of ,\ifred Meiiiy D/isluell and l''liz;ibclli ( lames)
Perkins, 'llie family inoved to Menipbis in 1877, and Mr. Per
kins grew up and vvas ediiealed here unlil he was fmiileen
years of age, when be went to vvorlL as an ollice iioy, later
becoming clerk, stenographer, bookkeeper and secretary, in
1896, of tbe Alississipiii X^aile.v- Cotton Company. LTe resigmd
thai posilion in 1899 |o heeonie secretary and treasurer of lhe
Perkins Oil Company, where he remained for Iwo vears. and
for the next four years be was sei-retai-y and treasiii-ei- nl tin'
V'/ilh-v ( "rnslu-rs .Association. Sinre l')02 hi- has been si-iilUk-v
and Iri-asiirer of the 4'eiinessee ( 'ollmiserd C rushi-rs .'\ssiiria-
tinn. f-xrepl from Noveinber 10, l')07, to December 1, 1908.
diiriirg whicli period he represented the (fniled .Sl,-ites Deparl
nienl of ( oninu'i-i,-e and L:ihor in nm-thern F,ui-n]H- ilev-eloping
markets for cottonseed products. Tde ami Aliss Mary /Xgnes
Mileheil were married Tuly 9, 1900, Their ehildren are;
Pillh Alonre; .Albert G., Jr.; Agnes AL, and .X'icbolas T.
Pi'kins.

H. J. PARRISIl
Mknrv- J.vmks Parrisii, general manager of tbe Cayoso Oil
Wnrlcs. vvas bom in 1859. close In the Tennessee-Mississippi
.State line, a few miles soiitli of Collierville. where his father.
Meiiry Parrish, was a weallhy slav-e-nwuer and plauler, llis
mnlher was fmineriy- Miss .S/iliie Marshall. Mr. I'ariisb ipiil
sclinnl at the age of scvcutceii years and came to Mein])liis.
where be went to work for Mill, Fontaine & ("onipany. .-M
the end of five years there he becaine conneeled with lhe
fiayosn Oil Works, rising rapidly lo lhe posilion of genrral
manager of the i-nniriu. which |insilioii lu- has oi lupiril rvt-r
sinre. Tor years he h:is been lerogiii/ed ;is one of the k-/idiii,r^
(-otlon oil mainilacturers in llie enllnii belt, /mil as an apprecia
tion of his ability in that line ami his high characler iii the
business vvorld. lie vvas elcrled president of Ihe Inleisl/ite ('ot-
lonseed ('rushers .Association, lie /liso servrd for a term as
president of the Memphis Alerchants F.xehange. and vv/is one
of the six men selected to build (he Excb/inge I'uilding. Me
is a member of the Pdue Lodge, a Knight Templar and a
.Shriner. Air. Parrisii and Aliss .Alice AL Alitrhell were mar
ried November 15, 1882. They have one child, Mrs. A. k.
LTudsoii.

88.'^

CARTA IN C. R. V.VNCK
Cvi'T.viN Cvi.viN Brooks V.vnci;, batesville, Mississippi, for
torly years one of lhe leading .mil most useful men in Paiinki
County, was born in thai eoiuity December 26, 1842, the son
of Klislui (jniiih.v and C'yiiress C. X-'anee. llis father w ;is an
aiitehellum slave-liokler ami collon |ilanler. Ca|ilain X'ance
was educated al (lie Kenlucky Atililary Institute ,iiid was at
tile Liniversity of Virginia when (he (ivil War began He
gave four ye;irs of his lime lo (he Conleder/iey and bis hlnod
from two wouiuls, beiii.g promoted tn (he eaplainey nf a eniu-
pany of arfiliery, Relnrning lo Hatesviile after (lie snrremler,
lu- w;is one ol llie ieadeis ol the el:iiisiiieii m reslming w liite
supremaey in lhe .South, lie was one ol lhe org.mizers ol ilu-
Hank of Batesville in 1900, and lias been its presideni since its
doors first ojieiied. He also has iieen at liie iie/id ol nlher
industries there. Captain X'ance is a large holder of farming
lauds in the hills of Panola Counly, and lias owned valuahle
laiuls ill lhe Delhi, lb- enimnandeil liu- Al ississip|)i i);vi-.ion,
VJ. ( . v., Im lliree lerms and now ennim/imis lhe .\iiny nl
4'ennessee Deparlnienl. ills wile, Im-nuily .Miss Lida Ik I'lUl-
ler, died in 1917, leaving lliree sons; I'^arl l.,.),, C, I'., Jr, and
John D.

J. S. AT.LKN
J.VMrs SeihoN /Xl.rtN, lawyer, Alempliis, d'emu-ssee. was
born August '.it, 1885, in Stamford, Connecticut, hut he is a
member of one of the oldest, most eulnired ami liiybly
respected f/imilies in Alemiihis. Me received Ins earlv ediiea
tion in the puhlie seliools of Alemphis and also aKended sehool
ill Chie/igo. lie w;is graduated from lhe Universilv oi i'en
nessee wilh the degree of baebekir of laws in l')07. and
returned at oiiee lo Alemphis, where he began the pr/ieliee of
his profession. Tie made raiiiil iirogress in the law frniu the
time that he began, and in 191(i the Monmalile ixennetli D.
Alel-Cellar, now United Slates senator, Mr, William D, Ixvser,
novv United Slates district aKorne.v-, and he formed (lie firm
of Mclxellar, Kyser & Allen, sinee thai (iiiie one of the strong
est law firms in the Alid-.Soulli. Air. .-Mkii is a member ol the
Aleinpliis Rotary flub, of tiie Lawyers C lub, of tiie (. iiainlier
of (ommerce, of the Sigma /Xl|iha F-psiloii eollege Ir.iU-rnity
and of tile Alemphis C'ounlry ( liiii. IK ,iml .Miss S.iiah Per
kins were married January .il). l')19, 4'liey luive one eliild,
.fames Seddnii .-Vllen, Jr. Mr. .Allen has never sniighl or iu-ld
any politic. ll oltiei.-, bin is ever active in ail luov i. lueiils for lhe
improvement of Memphis.

886

R. R. MILLER
I',i-;n I v.M IN Roiii x'soN Al ii,i.i;r. l!/ii-llelt, 4'en nessee, was born al
(iainesvillc, .Alabama, Alarch 22. IS6S, the son of X'X'illiam Cleg-
gelt and Afarie Louise (Robinson) Miller. Mr. Miller grew
iiUo manhood in and around New Orleans. Louisiana.
vvlii-re his hrst posilion as a hrcid winner w;is with tlie D. M,
lloliiiLs Diy Cooils Company, when- at lhe age of Iwelve, lie
was employed as a cash hoy. Me came to the Afeinphis district
/iboiit liie .vear 1890. locating at Crawfordsville, Arkansas,
wliere he was associated with A. R. Strong in the mercantile
business. In 189.i he married Aliss Willie Ik Pilackvvell, ikiiigh-
ter of Dr. N', Pdackvvell of Ikirtlell. 4'eiinessee. soon after--
wards making l',:irllell his home, where he lias hi-en emeigid
in agrieultnral pnisuils, r/iising for urirk-el besides inllou.
livestock, grain, hay, small fruits and vegelahles. .About the
year 1911 he entered politics, serving bis town as member of
the (nunly- (ourt. It was during ins tenure and lar.gely
Ihrnugh bis cffnrts vviiile a niemiier of the emirt that I'arllelt
succeeded in getting the handsome new high school bnilding.
In 1919 be was active in organizing the Bartlett -Savings Bank
&- trust Company of which be is presideni.

A. R. APPLING
.\i,v-iN RoiiER-rsoN /Xrn.iNG, Bartlett, Tennessee, one of the
leading farmers and nierebants in .Shelby ( oiinly. vvas bmn
in Byhalia, Alississippi, November 27, 1886, the son of Dr. Alviii
Ixohertson /md Ida (X'Varren) .Appling. Ile ipiil sehool al
fourteen years of age and farmed with bis fatiier until 1902
at Kllendale, Tennessee, to wliich place tlie family had moved.
'Then lie worked in the store of 1). A. Appliirg & Sons,
heconitng a member of the firm. The business has grown
with such rapidity that novv he operates grocery stores at
Bartlett, Ellendale and Cordova; cotton gins at Bartlett and
I'rniiswick, and a saw mill at Cordova. However, Air. -Appiling
flevotes most of his time to a two-thousand-acre (liaiitation.
where faiiey- Diiroe-Jersey bogs and Jersey cattle are bred in
adililion lo the raising of cotton, corn ami bay crops. Me was
one of tlie organizers of and is a director in tiie I!artiett
-Savings Bank & Trust Company. He is a meiiiher of the
Masonic fraternity, the XX'oodincn of the XX'orld and tiie
Chainber of Comnieree of Alemphis. Mr. .Appling volun
teered for service in the army during tlic XX'orld XX'ar, ami
ri niaiiicd in camp from juwc to Deceiiilier, 1918, wlieii he vvas
diseliarged as a sergeant.

887

J. ISI. 1)K/\N
John AIouion Di-.vn, reallor, Mempliis, d'l uiu-ssll, w.is bmn
in De.Soln Cninily, Mississippi, llu- snii nl J,mii-s k, /mil
Pardee /Xmelia Dean. He atlemied llie ]nihlic schools of liis
native .Stale and went to work in a country store at tlie age
nf tiiirteen years. Lie remained in tbe menanlile business for
seventeen years, niosl of tile time in d'eiiiu-ssLL. ami in 1902
entered the real estate business in Alemphis. lie is lhe seninr
inember of (he firm of Dean & 4'imkdl, real eslale :iiui general
insurance. He is ]iresideiit nf llie Alenipbis Real I'Xtale .Asso
ciation, having been elecled three con lei lUive terms nl Iwn
years each vvitlmul opiiosition ; is a member nl Ihe advisory
committee of the National Board of Review ol Aiotion Pic
tures; a direclor in the Chamber of Cmmneree ; chairman of
fhe Cnty .-\grieultiiral (.'ommillee; iiresideiit of liie Cnllnu
Buckle & 4"ag Company; former vii'e-prcsideiu of lhe
National -Assoeiatimi nf Real k-state Boards, and is tiie
Cninmillee nn Pnhlieatioii Inr the t lirislian Seieiiee eliiirelu-s
of d'eimessee. lie is also iliairin/in ol llu- Mi-mpliis llnard
of 4 bealrie/il Censors, and lias always ailininislered llie nlliei-
vvilh rare good taste and lirmness. Mr. Diaii and Xliss
Jeriislia Clark were married in 1896.

DOCTOR M. (iOLTM/W
Al.vx Cioi.i .M.v,-^, surgeon, AlLinpliis, d'enncssee, is a ii.ilive of
(ilasgnvv, .Seollaml, where lu- was liorii May 24, 18ii7, lhe son
of .Solomon and (eeilia ( Inhias ) (inlliii.m, ,\ller h.iv ing
taken the cmirses in liie (ilasgnvv public sehnnls, lu- eaiiu- m
.-Xmerica, where he took bis medieal i.-iiiii-se al Aieliill Univi-r-
sity in Alontreal, Canada, gning to Lomlnii, kulinhiirgb ,md
(Jkisgow to study by working his way on e.itlk- -hips dnrin.g
vacalions. lie also did llospilal work in .Mmilreak Me began
praeliee in X'.inlii-oke, Peiuisv Iv-ani/i, wlu-re lu- reinaiiu-d iiiilil
18')5, when be came to Alemiihis wlu-re he enjovs a spkiidid
jir;ic(iee. He is professor of surgery in (lu- MedK.il Cnlk-ge of
the University of 4'eiiiiessee, chief surgemi ;it (he .Menipbis
(ieneral and liaptisl Alemorial llos|iiuils, and from I'MIl (n
1914 vvas superinlLiideiil nf liie lie;illii Dep,irniu-iil nf llie
(ity ol Memphis, where lu- was ol glial v.iliu- lo llu- eoiii-
iiumily. Ile and Xliss .Mniiii.- SlenibLig wiie m.irrit-d 1)i.-i.liii-
her 12, 1894. lheir ehiiihen /ire: .Mired XL, a seninr mLiiii/ii
sliideiit al l-'nlnmbia University, .Xew X'mk; Lniiise, a jiiiiim
at -Smith College; Jack Slernherg, a jiiuior al lhe thiiversily
of Peiuisj iv-ania ; D.iv id William. ,mil .Maxiiie ( m-li,-.
(iolniian.

E. y. (;eers
hmvv.ARii I'''n,AN Ki.iN (ii-:rRS, Mempliis, 4'eiiiiessee, premier
reinsman of Ibe world, was horn in Wilson Conntv, Temiessee,
near Lebanon, .lanuary 25. 1851, the son of William Uideoii
and i''.miiy (Woolard) Ueers. As a mere yoiilli be displayed
niinsual skill in driving horses and vviicn hut twenty years of
/i.ge had several in his stable. Air. (ieers has been on the
Urand ('iicuil fnr forty years, lues entered about .1.000 races
and has piloled (o victory a score of ehamiiions, nolahle among
(hem being Robert J., Mai Pointer, 4'he Harvester. Anvil,
Napoleon Direcl and St. k'risco. Air. (Jeers has estalilished /i
most enviable record as a sueeess fill trainer ;uiil driver, and
has g/iineil a n/ilioii-vvide reputatioii for honesty :md inlegrily,
lioldiiig the highest respect and atfection of the Ameriean
people. He is now sixty-eighl years old, maintains his youth
ful vigor ;ind trains and races his horses with the skill dis-
plav-ed thirty years ago. For many years Air. (.Jeers liari
ciuirge of the \'illa.ge Farm r/iciiig stables owned by C. J,
1 hiinlin of F.asI .Aurora, New N'nri;, .Since Mr, Cu-rrs has
operated bis own s(/ihies at Alempliis and has had charge of
many horses owned by Air. F. (k Jones,

J. II. IRRY
losK.i'ii Hiiniis Iriiv, hanker. C ollieiviiic. Tennessee, vvas horn
in th/il cily Deeeinber I, I8(il, (be sou of M/irrisoii and M/iiiiia
(Mome) libv. ill- atlemied the public sehools ;il homr :md
Ihi-ii look lwo lerms in Ibe Universily of Mississippi at
()xford. On December 7, 1887, he organized a drug business
in Collierville with his brother. Dr. Harrison Irby, under the
tiini n.inu- of Irby i'lrotiicrs. wliieli they condneled with
marked sueeess unlil December. 1916. During (be fall of
the following season Air. Irby bec;iiiie heavily interested in
the First .State Bank & Trust Company of Collierville and
on September 25, 1917, he was elected president of that iiisti-
tulion, which iiosition be still holds. While Air. Irby- has
never sought office, he has for many years been one of the
most artlve men in the connty for tbe cause of good govern-
mi-nl ami for nearly Iwenly years served ;is an aldei-man of
tbe city-, Reeeiilly he declined a unaiiinious iiomination for
niayor. He is a master Mason, a devout meniber of the
Alelhodisl Cluinli in lhe ,Suiiday sehool of wliii h be teaches
the nihil' class, and no man in tlie counly stands liigbei- lliau
be for inlegrily. He and Miss TX/inees Sale were married
Taniiary 4, I8'J9. lhey have no cliild.

889

W/M. 1). KVSER
Wii.i.rv.vi D, Kvsi:u, atlmney-al-kivv. Menipbis, 4'i-imessee,
is a native nf Riebmoml, /Mabaina, being the son of liemge
\X'. and S/illie P. Ixyser. He was iiorii July 17, 1882, [Living
received lhe dign-e of iiailu-lor of ails al lhe Cnivcrsily nf
.Alabama, be came lo 4'eniiessee lo lake bis law emiise, reeiiv -
ing tbe degree of iiaehelor of laws from Cumberland Uni
versity at Lebanon. In 1906 lie came (o Alemphis and vveiii
iiKo tbe law office of Carroll & Alelxellar. composed of tlu-
late lolonel William 11. Carroll and (he presenl Senalnr
Ixenneth D. Alelxellar, Upon the dissolulion nf lbal firm in
1909 be and Mr. Melxellar fnrmed the lirm nf MeixLlkir \
Kyser, and ill \')\7 lhe ii.iine was i hanged In MeixLlkir, kv-' r
& .Allen, wliich it is today. When the llnnmaiile Hubert F
Fisher iieeame United -Suites attorney for the Weslern District
ol 'I'emu-ssee. Mr Ixysei- vvas iKiiued ,is his ;issisl,Lnl. ;md
when Mr. Fisher went lo lhe Congiess in \')\7. fiisl lhe t'mnt
and kiler the Presideni luuned XIr, Kyser as his -uccessni,
Mr. Kyser is a member of tile ( hamlier ol (.'oinmeree. 'I eii
nessee Cliih, Memiiliis I'oimtry Club, Lavvvers ( lub /mil
Rol/iry ('Inb. Ml ami Miss 4'empe Dariow Svvoope vvei i-
niarried J line '), 1917. 'I hey have one son, Willi/im D,, J r.

J. V. PEETE
John X'oi'nc, Pkkte. son of Fdvvin Roheri ami J/me i-deanor
(laylor) Peere. was born in 4'iploii ('iiim(y, 4'einiessLe, He
adended lhe Keiilmky iMililary iiisiiinlr, .\s ,i f.ii-mei /uul
slnek-raiser he w.is one nl lhe niosl -iieeissfiii men in liplnn
CnuiKv-, lie served as magistrate for tweiily-om- vi.iis. om
term as eiiairniaii of Coiinl.v Courl, in 1")II8 he w.is elecud
county trustee and moved (o CovingUni, in l')18 lie vv.is
eieeled judge of tile Cnuiily Cniirl, lie is ;i Meduulisi. .i
Abisnii, /111 Odd I'A-llnw and member nf Signi/i .Xipb/i i-'psilnn
fralernity. Me was iiKirried .Xn\ ember 24. 1875, to Miss
Roberta Park Somervell, a eharmiiig nu-mlier of lIuu f/imilv
vvhieli traces (brongh an honorahk- line back in SLollaml .iim
kuiglaml In lhe ye.ir 1060 Mis gramlfatbei was a memhi-r nf
(he \'irgiiii;i Legisianne frmn 1820 in 1825; .i gre.il-nneie,
'Thninas Peele, nf lhe -.\i\)r iinikv from 1800 to 1805. ,mil .i
great-greal-uncle, (.olmiel koiicrl Bignall, w ,is on (,eiier,il
Caswell's slalf in the Colonial /iriiiy-. .After lhe ikalh of his
wile. Judge Peele in.irried Mrs, Fr, uicis I .i l 'I'a.v inr. In everv
position of puhlie trust lie luis sli veil liis peniile wilii (be
higiiest credit to himself and fidelitv lo lliem.

890

TIIOiMAS C. ASIICROFT
d'noMiAs (.Xvi.vix- /XsncROFT, president of the Ameriean
i^uiiding. Loan and ionline Savings ,'\ssoei/ilioii, Inriner
iiuiynr of iMeiii]iliis. 4'eiiiiessei-, /mil fmamier. was horn in
X'erona. M ississiiqii, in 1866. (be son of 4 iimiuis (alvin and
Laura (Xoe) .Asbi-rofl, 'fhe si-nim- 4'lioinas C, .Nslu-.rofl. as
llu- captain of a gallant Mi-sissippi rrgimenl nndei- l''niii-sf,
led Ihe l/isl eluirge nf lhe forlorn hope al Selma, .Xlahaiiui.
Ihc present XIr. ,-Xslicroft. as a lari of hfleen. went to wmk
for the Alohile & (.)liin Railroad as a lele.grapli oper/itor and
seven \-e;irs later joined (he forces of the Western Union
d'ek-.graiih Comp;iiiy- in the s;iiiie e.-ipacity. /\t tweiity--fonr
ycars of age he became connected vvilli tiie .Associated Press
as a reporter and news editor and for Ivventv-live years was
with that orgaiiiz/itimi, ihiriiig the latter part of that time
iiein.g in ebar.ge of its Alemphis office. Since resi.gnin.g his
coiiiieetion with the Associated I'ress. Air. .Aslicroft has been
conneeled with a nnmher of tiie large financial instilntions of
the lily in addition to the one wliieb lie heads. lie vvas a
luemher nf the State .Seiiale during the 1916-'17 term, and
resigned to beemiie ni/iyor in l')16, servin.g into 1")17, Air.
.Aslicroft and Aliss Ida Ciealla were married in 1906.

NELSON I). WEST
Ni-;rsoN' D.Avis Wrsr. Imlel iiroprielor, C'larksd/de, Missis
sippi, vv/is born in Des Moines, Iowa, -Septemiier 21, 1875, tlie
snn of (ieorge .Adellierl ;uid Nancy (Davis) XX'est, .After two
years in arehileeturc and bookkeeiiing, he went into Ibe hotel
business in Chicago in 1896. Ten years later he moved to
Mississippi and opened a hotel in Cu-eenwood. .'Seeing that
(u-eenvvood bail superior facilities in that line to Clarksdale, in
1607 be moved tn the latter city and leased the .'Xle/izar. then
bav-iiig only forty rooms. 4"he venture vvas such a success
from the start tiiat the building soon was unable to accommo
date tbe patron/ige, Tn 1915 Xlessrs. King &• .Anderson built
the present hotel of tiie same name. Air, West contiinied In
manage it and from tbe iiioment that tiie new buikling vvas
opened its business continued to grow, until novv it is doiirg
a business in excess of $200,000 per year. It is a beautiful
structure and so managed by Air. West (hat it is recognized
as one of the best in the -South. He is a member of the Xlis
sissippi liolli Keepers' Assoei/il inn, the Cliamhei nf Coni-
lueiee /mil Ihe .Soulbern iioli-l Keepers' .Assoeiation. Mr ;iml
Al iss ( ierlrude Isabel Skmgiilcr married T'einiiary 14, 18')9.

891

olivi*:r m. [i:llis
Oliver ALvi.one I'j.i.is, of ( larksdale, Mississippi, one of llu
niosl siiieesslul plauleis ol l'oalioni,i ('nimlv, vv,is bmn near
Himlsville, .Alahama, Novemhei- 2. 1855, liu- son of J. 1!, and
Naiiey F.llis, 4'lie war having riinied llis kilher's esl/ite, .Mi
kdiis got bill lillie eduealinii. In 1878 be went lo llie Delta,
iiiaiiaging for John Clark for a year, spent the nexl year in
/Xlabama on aeeonnl of sickness, relnrned lo liu- Delia in 1880
and clerked in Shiilm-ilsville lor a ve.ii ;iiiil llun look eh.iigi
ol the Maneoek place near Cl.ii ksikik, ,\llei- leii sniiLss fid
years lbere he inarried Miss Mary Johirson, Fibriiaiy 8, 18,'-;;',
and look ovi-r llu- |iiaee of Mis. Poller, his wile's aiiiil. ami
inortgaged it for about ail il vvas wmtli. 'I his lu- nol only
paid oil, bill since tlieii has iimighl the adjoining Milihell .md
Norlieel pkiees and pnl ,lll lliue of iIiliii mi ,i p,i>me li.iis
He is a memiier of the Fliss imlge and lhe laiinlv .irc iiu-ni-
bers of tlie Melhodist Cbiireb, lo which, as well as to all other
good causes, he is a liberal contributor. He has never taken
;iny- part in imlilies, exceiit lo serve as su|iervisor lor fmir
years. ddiey have four ehildren: Misses Jessie Belle and
(ienevieve; Currie and Charles I'Tlis.

J. SAI\I llAM
.bvMi-;s .Sa.miui. Mvm of Ckirksikilr, .M ississi|ipi, h:is In-, n
one ol the best knovvii, one ol lhe niosl tisi ini ami one nl llie
hest loved men in Coaboma Connlv for Imly-tive years. 1 le
enjoys the emnpanionsbiii of his fellovv- man and thev enjny
his eombinatioii of iiiunor ralher than wit, good naliire, sound
sense and sociability. Air. 11, im vv;is bmn in kTlierl (-Xuiiiiv-,
Cjeorgia, January 1, 1850, (lie son of .Samuel .mil tXirnlina
Fiizaiielh Ibim. lie allemied sehool frmn live In eighl yi-iis
of age, and (lieu vvas eompeiled In gn (n wnrk on liu- kiiin
In 1875 he moved In C'nahnnia C'omitv- and li:is livi-d there i-ver
since. He has prospered gre/tlb and ovv ii.s a liL-aiitifnl plaiila-
lioii, where he raisi-s eotton and tine stock 1 le is -in h'lk ;ind
served as emiiity siqiervisor I rom 1882 in 18')(i, and as a mem
iier of lhe Slate Legisiatnie from I'XIO U. i'ilM. ile w ,is a
eandiilate for lhe Congress in 190(i /ig.iinsi tlu- lloiim.ihle lien
Vs. I lumphreys. lie received a good majorily in his bmne
eninily. but was delealed Im tlu- nnmimil inn. lie aniioumed
bis intention to run ag/iiii. bnl kiler wiliidiew bis e/indidaey
because, he says. Mr. ilumphrevs waked up tn tlu- imtinrl.mce
nf the Alississippi levee silnalinn.

W2

J. A. ISELE
|iisi;i'll .XxioN Is in- has speni lliiitv -tliiee aelivc /md sue
eessfui years in lhe linlel business, ni;iinly in Memphis, 4'en-
m-ssee. 'lhe son of \'ini-eiil iseie. be w/is limn lanuaiy 14.
1867, in Buessbugen, Baden, (ierm/inv , and ediiealed in llie
high schools of Siii/iffhauseii, .Switzerland, and the Ballard
priv/ite sehool in Memphis, where lie came in 1885. In 1887
he was conneeled with the Raniona Llotek Cascade, Colorado,
and in 1890 and 1891 with Lueiinnann's in AIem|ihis. He and
his imither. as Isele Brothers, were proprietors of the (Jlaren-
dmi Motel here wilb si..;nal success from 1801 to 18'19. During
190(1 they operated the Peabody Motel, and from the fnllnw-ing
year until 191.'! they nperated lhe Cordova Flotel with Ibe
same sueeess that fluy- enjoyed at the Clai-emion, In lhe
meanwhile Mr. Isele hrancbed onl and operated Ihe Roliidmix
at -S( Jose]ili, Alissonri. for four years following 1908. Re
turning to AIeni]ihis, be and iiis hrotlier have made a success
of the Arlington Hotel, and now hold a eonlraet for the
operation of the inillion and a half dollar Tri-State Hotel to
succeed that Iniildiiig. Mr. Isele and Miss Amalia Dilter were
married in 1895 and have (wo children, a son and a daughter.

A. A. HALLE
A. .AR-nii'R H.vn.E. one of the youngest and yet one of the
leading merchants of Alemphis, 4"enncssee, was horn in this
cily Dceemher 14, 188'), the son of Phil A. ami F.va (C.ahay)
Halle. He altended (he city sehools, the Mempliis University
School. Belts Academy at -Stamford, Connecticut, and X'ale
Liniversity, returning to Alemiihis in 1909 and becoming asso
ciated with bis father in Ihe clothing business, which he has
exlended to all wearing apparel. He coaehed the football leam
of the Meinphis braiiclies of the Universily of 4'eniiessee for
lliree years. Upon Ibe de/ith of bis father, December 29,
1918, Air. Halle assumed active charge of the business and lias
not only enlarged its quarters in tbe T^xchaiige Building, but
made it one of the most active businesses in its line in the
Mid-South. His capacity as a merchant was recognized by
his fellows throughout tbe State by their electing bini in 1920
as president of the 4'eniiessee Retail Clothiers Association,
He is a ineinber of the X'ale, Rex, Kiwanis, Ci(v and Ridge
way Coiinlry clubs. Mr. llalle and Aliss Dorolby Sternberg
were married June .30, 1915. They have one child. A. Arthur
Halle. Junior.

893

IL ]\1. LOVE
Hugh ALvksii.vi.l Love, X'azoo City, Alississiiipi, was horn
June 19, 1870, in X'azoo County, the son of Dewill CliiUoii
and Kate ( .Ale-xaiuler ) Love, liis fatiier being a plainer and
liaviiig been siieriif of the eoiinly. .Afler luiving alleiukd lhe
public sehools in X'azoo Cily. Air. kove Weill to the SniUli-
weslern Presbyterian University al Ciarksd/ile, 1 enne-see. in
1887, '88 .mil '89, where he was a memliir nf llu: ts.qipa Sigma
fralernity. Me enteiLil the Bank nf Wi/.un Cily on Si pli m-
bei I, 188'), ;is niLssi-iiger, and by meril luiil passid llnongli
lhe slages of booklueper and assistant lasliu-r liv T'O-I, when
be was eieeled iiresidenl, wliieb posilion lie slill holds. Dur
ing (he war Air, Love was a memiier of the emnily l.iherlv-
loaii i-mniinllee and was very aelivc in all of lhe drives in his
eoiinly lor piilrinlie purposes, lie li.is mver smiglil ollin-. Inn
for three years has iieen a memiier of the sclinnl ho/ird. He
is also a memiier of tiie k'lks. Air, Love was iiKirrud Oetnlier
9, l')07, to Aliss Janie .Aiidrus. 'i'lie union lias Iieen hlessed by
two ehildren. Iliigli Alarshall Lovl, Jnninr, and kmiise .Niidriu
Love.

S. STEIN REIU;
S.'VMUEL Stei.nuero, inerehant, eapilalisl and banker, Alem
phis, Tennessee, is a native of Pniaud, where he was hnrn in
1879. Lie received llis early edneatinn there and tame In lhe
United .States in 1896. Aloving to Clarksville. ¦feniu--sLe, he
entered the mereanlile husiuess and prosiiered so liuii in 1905
he sniighl the wider held at Memphis, llis hrm nl S, Sleiii
berg & Company has taken an active jiarl in leslmnig \b-in-
pliis lo ils old Iiosition as a hide and fur m.irkel, 4'lie Iniii
also owns the Aiemiiliis Sanitary Rediu-timi (oni|iaiiv. Air,
SteinlK-rg's imhisirv and lori-si.uhl h.ivi- bmiu iinil viiv i,ip
idly 111 Ali-mphis, .md bis jiidgiiK-nl in miisuk iiiv t-sliiu nis b.is
been eomnieiisiirate vvilli lliem, .Xnw he is vice-iiresiik-ni nl
the National City Bank; president of (he Park Molding Com
pany; iiresuleiil ol tile i.veeum Hoidin.g- C niniKiny-. ;md a
ilireetor in lhe Alenijihis Packing Cnrpnratioii, in wliieb he is
a lie/ivy sloekbolik-r. lie is a iiieiuber of the Rex Cliili, llu
I'-lks and the C li.iinber of Cmiimeri-e, in .ill ol wliieli, /is well
as in aii movements for lhe iiuprovement oi Aleiiijihis, be
lakes an active part, Ile :ind Aliss .Saiaii Weinberg nl Clarks
ville were marru-d in l'ii)2, 4 bey liavi- lliree ehildren; k.imiii.-,
Jnsephine and .Sy Ivi.i,

894

M. (i. R/\ILEV
MimriMER (iuiMiivn, I'/Vii.rv, hanker, Alemiihis, d'emiessee.
is a nalive of South Carolina, having been born at Rantnvvles,
Alarch 12, 1871, the son of Hamilton Afortimer and ]u\\n
(Wcsteoat) Ikiiley. He received his edncalion in the public
sehools ol Charleston Counly. -South ( arolina. He vv;is /isso-
eiated with Tolui 4', Walsh and /Xiilbony Walsh in the fmiua-
lioii of the Norlb Afeinphis .Savings Bank X' 'frnsl Company
aiid ils hrst cashier, llis ability as a hanker and tniiform
courtesy contributed largely to lhe wonderful success of that
institulioii from the day that its doors opened for Ihe hrst
lime. After having reiiiaincfl there for a number of years.
Mr. I'aile.v- and a number of associates formed the Liberty
.Savings Bank X' Trust Company, lie was elecled lhe tirsl
president /md h/is remaiiied in that position ever since. The
r/ipid .growlb of that institulioii reflects Air. B/iiley's caparuv
as a financier ami the a|ipreciation hy the public of his ster
ling bonesly and habitual courtesy. Air. Bailey and Aliss
Blanche Tuggk- were married Dceemher 25, 1894. 4'hey have
two ehildren. both daughters, Aliss Blanche, a V'assar student,
novv Airs. 1. C. Wilde of New X'ork City, and Aliss Helen, at
Smith (ollege. Not (1iaiu|i(on, Alassachusetts.

Iv. p. COOK.
Li-t lus PiN'cKNKV Cook, president of the Alerchants
F.xebaiige, Alemphis, Tennessee, vvas born in Paulding, Jas
per County, Alississippi, May 19, 1874, the son of Joseph and
Alary (Clayton) Cook. He completed tbe course /it the
Paulding High Sehool at tbe age of nineteen years, f/irmed
for four years, clerked and kept bonks at F.lb'sville, Mississipiii,
for two years, vvas a bookkeeper in Jackson, Alississippi, for
two years, and, in 1902, came to Alemphis as stockholder in
ami nuinager for the wholesale grain firm of Paltoii-Hallield
Company. He managed that eoneein sueeess fully for eiglil
years and al tlie end of that time formeii the firm of L. P.
Cook S' Company, he lieing Ibe sole owner, and operaliug in
Ibe same line. I'rom thai lime on lie has been leeognized as
one of the leading grain men in the Alid-South and having
started with a capital of only $20,000. be has developed the
business to where it is ten times as large as in the beginning.
T'or the last ten years he has been president of the Union
F.levator Company. In 1919 be was elected president of the
Alerchants F.xehange. Mr. Cook /ind Aliss Mary- Booker
were inarried August 10, 1911. Tluy- have om- child, l.iieiin
Pinckiiev-. Iiinior,

895

II. C. VERKES
II.VRRY CriiioKii X'erkes, vice-presidenl of (iondbar &¦ Cmii-
pauy, Alemphis, keiuiessee, was bom in Lillie Rock, .-Arkaris/is.
October ,?, 1859. the son of Reiilien .Skinner and Harriet
(Alartiii) X'erkes, ineinhers of old families ol Danville, Ixeii-
lueky. He was educated in Louisville, Ixeiilui ky, and atlemied
business eollege in Little Rock, llis hrst work was on lhe
-Arkansas (iazelle vvliieh bis l;ither owned. In February,
1876, he came to Alempliis ami, wilh lhe exception nl a lew
years spent in -St. Louis and Cliicagn learning the maniifacliire
of shoes, he has lived here eonliininiislv, iK-ing loinu-rU-d vvilli
(ioodbai- X- I onipany. For many yens llu- lale ,\l r, I, XI,
(ioodbar expressed his l.iilh in Mr, V'erkes' jiiilgiiunl and
aiiililies iiy pl/ieiiig upon liiin, among ollu-r rLspoiisihililiLs,
those of liuyer ami sales manager for his hrm. Air, \'erkes
is a deacon in the Second Presiiylerian Chureli /iiiiI a member
of the C'bamher of C'ommeree. In 1891 he was married to
Aliss Louisa .\mi -Adams of Lillie Rnek, in whom were born
lwo sons, Laurence -Adams and Clark t lilfmii 'I'erkes. 11)- his
sterling business qualities and devotimi lo duty, Air, \ erkes
has won Ihe res|ieet and admiralimi of his friends .md
associates.

DR. LOLLS LEROV
DoeioR Louis Ll-.Riiv, Alemphis, 4'eiiiiessee. one ol lhe le.id-
ing physieians of liie Alid-.Soiilb, was born in (helsea, Akis-;i-
ehusetts, September 15, 1874, the son of Charles L. .\, ,iiiil
Lizzie F, (.Smnerby) Leroy. lie vv;is edne.ileil in llie liii/h
sehool at Newark, .New Jersey, spent lliree years in llu- medi
cal deiiaitiiieiit of the Universily of iXi-vv \'o|-k and lben grad
uated from tbe Aledico-yliirurgieai College (now I'liiversitv
of Pennsylvania) in Pliiladeipiiia, Ile praetieLii iiu-diLine in
Nashville, 'keiuiessee, fioni I8')ii In I'lOii, in the me.mw liile
seeuring the degree of b.u-lielor nf seieiiee 1 rom the l'niver
siiy of Nashville in 1900, Me sludied in lhe hospitals ,iml
kihoi-alories of Paris in I'KIO and li,is dmu posi gradiiau- work
111 variniis other cities. lie was eily h.u-lLiioiogisl in Xasli-
ville in 18')8, and from 18')8 lo l")0(i vvas baeleriolngisi for ihe
Xasiiviiie City Hnspilal and also for llu .Sl.ite of 1'eiinessi.e,
He served -is vice-presidenl and tlien .is president nf the
Slate Bnard nf Ib-allb. Me has Iieen mi lhe staff of the Alem
phis (ii-iiei-al Hospital siiiie be moved here in I'lOO I h- is a
fellow ol lhe .Xmeiiean ( ollege of I'liv sii i.nis .md .i inLinher
of lhe .-\iiu-rieaii and niiiim- inediial assm i.n ions

896

J. K. SWOOPE
Tacoh K. Svvooi'E. mayor of Collierville, Tennessee, was horn
August ,M, 1869, in Lawreiire County, .Alabama, tiie son of
Cliaries Carroll and Frances (Hufchins) .Svvoope. ITc was
educated in tbe public schools of his home emuity; the .Xla
bama Normal School at Florence in 188,]-84; Liniversity of the
.Smith, Si'waiiee, 'lennessee, 1885, ;iiid .Smilli's ( 'oiuniereial
College, Lexington, Kentuekv-, 1886. Me farmed for a while
near Courtland, .Xlabama; ran a store al X-Vbeeler, .Alabama.
and later was in the mercantile business in C'oiirtland until
1')16. when he moved to Collierville, farmed in 1916. In
1919 be bongiit three hundred and twenty acres of land in
Alarshall County, Mississippi. Iieeame president of the (ollier
ville l.miilier C'ompany; virc-presideii( of the I'"irst -State Banic
ll- 'friist C oinpany, and aeiuiired four business houses in the
city, npeiimg /i drug slme in 1917. vvbieh lu- novv eondueis.
being eieeled iiiayiir of lhe eily in l')l') vvilbont opposition.
lie was active in redeeming llie last eouiity- in .Al;ibaiiia from
llic Republicans and was president of its Jury Commission
until he left Alabama in 1915. He and Aliss Lucille Alarie
.'saffrans of Honey Cirove, Te.xas. were married August 12.
1''02. 4'liev have no child.

W. T. WINSTON

XX'n.LiAivi 4'. XX'iNSTON, banker, Cleveland, Alississippi, is a
nalive of Illinois, having been born November I, 1875, at Sid-
iie.v-. Ilie son of Alillcr and Al/iry Winston. He attended the
gr;iinniar and high schools at home, then worked for a bank for
four vears and used his savings with which to take a four-
year course at Northwestern Univ-ersity, F.vanston, Illinois.
Upon receiving his diploma in 1900 he moved to Cleveland.
where be began his real career as cashier of the Cotton
F.-xchange Bank. He served in that capacity for twelve years
with such signal /ibilily and fidelity to Ihe trust imposed upon
him. that in 1912 be was elected president of the b:ink, wliieli
position he slill liolds, and in vvliieh position he lias not only
hiiiit up a great financial iiislilnlion, but also been a strong
faclor in the growth of the entire eoniniunity. Tic is a director
in tlie Farmers Bank of Boyle, and in the X'aiiey XVliolcsale
Grocery Company, and a stockholder in the Bank of Aleri-
gold. He is a inemlier of the Alethodist Chureli and the
Bogue Phalia Outing Cluh, and treasurer of the cily of
Cleveland. He and Aliss Alma X\'ells were married .August
]9. 1908. 'Lhey have two children, William Winslon and
I''1oise Winston.

897

C. R. SHANNON
Cii.aki.es R.wmonu .Su.v.xnon, puhlie aeeounlant and mem
ber of the City Conimission of Alemphis. 4'eiiiiessee, ill ciiarge
of finance, aeeounls and revenues, is a native of ix'eiUiieky, but
has iieen in Memphis since he vvas a mere lad. He was born
ill I'adueah, .Seplember 15, 1875, the son of Henry li, and
-Anna (Iiurns) Shannon, He was ediiealed in St, Patrick's
parochial seliool, and later in Cbristi.in Brntheis College and
the Hope Nigbl .School. /\( (be ;ige nf seventeen year- he
entered railroad worlc and spent twelve 3 ears in tlie freight
oHiees of varinus Incal lines. Mis nexl lliree years were spent
wilb the (ialloway Coal ('onipany and Pallirson 'Iraiisler
Comp.my. in l')07 he began iin-iiies- lor him, ill ,is /i pnhlu
/leeminlanl in wliieli lie lias heeii .1 eniispu iimis since-. s evei
since, being lhe seninr meniher nf llu- hnii nl Shannon, Rev-
nolds & Bone In 1919 the large ennnniKee ni business nun
whicii brought out a city ticket free from partisan politic-
prevailed upon him lo accept its nomination. He was elected
by a Iremendoiis inajnrily and began llis fmii-ye-ar lerni
January i, 1920. lie is /i iiu-mlier of tbe (olonial (ouutry-
C lull, llie Knights ol Coliimhus, Chamber ol ( mnim-ri e, Lmiis
and Citv eliiiis.

\V. IL HOLsro.x
VVii.Li.VM Ll. Houston, mayor of d'liniea, Alississippi, iner
ehant, planter and eollon laelnr in I iiniea f oiinly and alsii /i
leading eotton laetnr in Alemphis, 'leimessee, w;is born in
Holmes ('niint}-, Alississippi, SepteniiiLr 7, 1878, the snn 11 1
Jnlin Scott and Sallie (Hnover) Hoiislon. .\s a 3'outb lie
gr/ulualed Iroin the high seliool in Xlenipbis .uul then Weill
III Fvansville, Alississippi, vvlu-re he kepi bonks. 'I'lu-nee lu-
miiveil to 'i'lmiea. where he sli veil lor Ihru- veais ;is dipiity
eieik to the eiiaiiceiy and ciieiiil emn Is. kelnining In .M / m
pliis lie worked fm llie eotton laeloring In 111 ol A, R, -Slrmig
& Cdmpany and lben again moved to I'lmiea. where he organ
ized the 'Tiiniea Cotton Company, of which he is piLsideni and
which does a large Inisiness both there and in Alemphis,
belween wiiieh cities he divides lus lime. He was hrst eieeled
mayor nf 4'uniea in 1918 and his term will expire in l')21. In
1910 he W.IS appniiKed a membi-r nf liie Upper X'aznn l.evee
Board, and for nine years be served on lhe sehool bnard
He owns sloek in several Alemphis liani/s and llie Citizens
Bank of limiea. Tie and Ail-s .Alice ibirris, d.iugiUer of
(he foimder of 'I'lmiea, ni.iriied .liilv .1 1 , l''01 I'lu-ir onlv
eliild is X\'. IL, Jr.

898

J. Q. EATON
John (Jimm-v F.vion, iilanter ami real eslale man, Alenipbis,
'fennessee, was horn in XX/ashington, District of Columbia,
July 14, 187,1, during the time tiiat his father. Cjcneral lohn
F.aton vvas United States Commissioner of Fflueation. to
w-liich positinn he had been appointed after liavin.g served in
1870 as Cnmmissioner of Fduration in 4'ennessee. in which
posilion he laid tin- foundation for tbe (iresent State sehool
kivvs. Air, l'':ilon vv/is edurated ill Ihe |iiiblie seliools nf (he
luilinnal eapilak Alarietla (Ohio) .Academy and College while
iiis father vvas president of the latter, and Dartmoudi. New
Hampshire, in 18').^. havin.g (he degree of .A. P.. hefme his
(wi-n(ie(li birlhday. and finished in I8't5 with the degree of
master of laws from the (ieorge Wasbiugton University. He
spi-iil four vi'/irs 111 the gov-eriimenl serv-iee in W;ishiiiglrin,
live on bis phmlation in LeFlore County, Alississippi. and in
1907 moved to Alemphis and went into the real estate business.
He and Miss Mary Clough married September 5. 16()1. They
liave two eliiidren. Jolni Q. F.atoii, Junior, and Clmigli F.aton.
Dining Ihc war be was cbairman of City Draft Board No. 5.

S. M. iMcCALLLftl
.S.vMi'ii, ALvLcorvi AleC/Vi.i.i'M, retired eapilalist, was liorn
December 28. IS49, on tbe lii.g Fgypt Plantation vvhieli bis
father owned a few miles northeast of Raleigh. 'Tennessee, the
son of Malcolm and Mary Cl'liomas) AlcCallum. Ile weul
to college but says that he learned little of value there, add
ing that for (vventy-five years, without the loss of a day. he
vv;is in the school of hard knocks, where inexperienee ;uid
poor equipment brought him many trials. He altribtites his
siiieess largely to the fact that lie has never sougiit and seldom
taken advice, conlming his ventures to those lines wliieb he
luis thougbt out for himself. /Xl malm-ily lie eaiiie lo Alem
phis. wdiere he luis lived ever sinee, having spent i-veiy sum
mer ol his life in Shelby C ouiity ami never luiving paid .-i
doctor's bill. /\( twenty years of age be was /i mereluint and
at forty-five he retired, investing in Alenipbis and Los .Angeles
property. He is a charter meniber of tlie Alemphis f'ountry
Club hut does "not work at golf." He has never sought or
held puhlie ofliee. Air. AleCalbim and Aliss .\miie C. Afeaeham
were married in 188,k 'I'vvii ehildren. Diniran and Miss
Martha, blessed the union, but both are novv dead.

899

J. C. PRlCi:
LvMi-;s t vriii-ii-r I'lm r. hanker, I'.alesville, Mississippi, was
hnrn Deeemher ,)1, 185(1, in Nevvlmi, Dale ( oiiiity, .¦Alabama.
the sou of Hardy V\'illiain limwn /uul Jack 1/liza Price
After having finished al the bigli sehnnl in k-ufaula. -Alabama.
he worked on a farm from 187,5 lo 1880, when he went nii the
road ;is .i triu-eiing salesman, in wbieli line he renuiined until
1900, when he moved lo Batesville and imugiit emitroi of liu-
Bauk of Batesville. Siiiee that time lie lias been one of tlie
niost active f.ielors for Ihe deveiopmenl of iXnrtli Alississippi,
lie has nrgaiiized Ihirleeii banks in lhe Stale, mganized llu-
llalesvilk- Spnke Faelory, lhe lialesville t otlon Mill and lhe
Ikitesville be Alanii faeturing Compaii). Now he is the owiier
of a controlling interest in Ihe i-'armers .Savings li/mk m
ikilesv-ille and is ils e.ishier. Ile is a member nf llie .Mis-is-
sippi gr/uid lodge of Alasoiis and of liie liuanee t-oiiimillee nl
Ihe Knights nf Pyllii;is. During ClevelaiuTs /ulminislr/ilinii he
served as Indian Ir.uler inr tiie Osage liilie .0 llmniny I'li-l
(Jklahom/i. Air. Price and Aliss l'"lla Muggins were marrieil
May 18, 1884. 'I'lieir eliiidren /ire Alaiipin I'liee, I. I'alhert
Piiee, Jiininr, Alice Price ami Inuigeiie I'riee.

J. A. FOW l]<:r
JosEi'ii Arthur Fowi.er, Alemphis, 'femu-ssee, was hnrn iii
that eily Oetoijer 0, 188,i. He vvas ediiealed in llu- Alemphis
public seliools until he reaehed lhe age of fonrleen ve.irs,
when neeessily forced iiiiii inlo einpioyiueiu vviieii, by eli. uue.
he became engaged in (he electrical husiuess. He speiil llu
next Ivvlve years with two eoiiierns /mil devoted every nppor-
liinily to lile study of his line of work. In i')10 lie i-nlered inlo
linsiness for himsell, esl,iblishiiig the I-owIli I'IhIik I mu
pally, now one ol tin- ie.idiiig iimrses ol lis kind in tlu- .Smilli
Fnr many vears be lias held executive pnsilinns with iiatinn/il
organizations with wliii-h his business is enimeeled. Air, l-'o-w -
ler has presided over practieally all of the ALisonic mg.iiiiza-
tioiis in Alenqihis. serving in l')18 as iioleiitale nf the -Sln-nie
and in l')19 as grand liigh priest oi liie gr;ind eliapler of
4'eimessee. Lie is a member of lhe First Alethodist ('hiireli,
Rotary Cluli, (olonial Country I'hih and Ins served :is ,,
direclor ol lhe Chamiier ol l oinmeree, lie li.is had an ailive
part ill nearly all lhe local war .uul eli.ii il v drives. Me and
Aliss T'llilh ('.111 inglnii wen- iii.ii lii-d l.ninaiv 18. t'llt lluv
have line eiiild, ilelsve l-nwiei.

900

J. K. PARR
J.VMES k'nw.VRii Parr, financier, Jonesboro, .Arkansas, vvas
horn in that city January 8, 1876, the son of Lfoiner and Alary
F.Iizahetb (Sparks) Parr. At the age of twenty-one years he
entered the banking line as a bookkeeper for tiie Citizen-
Bank, where he remained until 1911, when that bank was
converted to the First National Bank and be vv/is eieeled
eashier, H'e w;is with Ihal instilnlinn nnlil laniiary 8. I')I7.
when he resigned In become active vice-president ol the liank
of Jonesboro, wliieli position he has filled with signal succe--^
sinee that time. He is also in-esir1enl of tbe Jrineslmt-o Cnni-
piess (Aimpany and the United Insuraiice .Agetiey (bic);
direelnr and seeielary of the .-\ B. T"nes Company, wliolesale
grocery, and (he ,'\, J. Seo(( ( 'omp;iny, ice rream mamifaetiir-
I rs : seeri-lary and Ireasiirer of the 'I'rmuan Farms Cmupany.
and the Jonesboro Light, Water i.'v- Sewer 11o;iril. and a ilireelor
in lhe Nash Drug Company. Jonesboro Hardware Company.
Jonesboro Bnilding i& Lo/m Association. Tuink of Nettleton.
Bank of 4'ruinan and Bank of XVeiiier, and an ardent arlvoeate
of better schools, better farms and better living eomlitions.
Afr. Parr and Aliss Floy Rogers were married July 5, 1905.
1 bey have no child.

V. M. ROSE
'fill; uvii- .bulge llri/ib M, k'ose of Little k'oek. Arkansas,
for ye/irs leading lawyer of the .Smilh and equal of any uuiii
at the Ameriean bar, vvas born in Marion County. Kentuek-.v-.
Alarch 5. 18.34. the son of Doctor Joseph and Naney I Simp-
sou) Rose. He died in Little Rock August 12. 191,1 He
received bis ediieation in 4"raiisylvania Law .Sehool in Ken
tucky, at the age of nineteen years was admitted to tlie bar
and ninvi-d In Ikitesville. .-Arkaiis/is. where be pr/irliied frnm
I85.i In 1861 and Irmn that time at Washiiiglmi, .Arkans/is. to
1865, when be moved to Little Rnek. Ile served as ehaneellm
from 1858 tn 1865. He was one of the organizers of tlie
/Xmeriean Bar .Association, and its president in 1901. He
held no odier official position except hy appointment of Presi
dent Roosevelt as a lueniber of 4'be Hague Peace 4'ribunal
in 1907. where his thorough knowledge of the law in all its
ramifieatiotis. familiarity with all of the world's written his-
lory, breadth of reading, depth of thinking and abilily as a
linguist made him the eijiial of anv meniber of the liibimak
and an ornanient to his country. He and Aliss Alargaret 4'.
Gibbs were married October 25. 185.k

901

W. J. NORTIICROSS
The l.vtk William James .Northeross, for a quarter of a
century one ol the leading business men of Aiempihs. 'fennes
see, longer one of its liesl citizens and lor li.ill nl lb, it lime
oiie 111 the most eoiiscienlinus veslrymen nl .Si. Luke's kipis-
i-iqial parish, was liorn in Alarshall f'nimly, Alississippi,
Nnvemher 18, 1864, Ihe son of J. Al. and l-dizabelh Jaue
( Dickey) Northeioss. He vvas eduealed in the eounlry
schools llu-re and later look a business emirse in Aleni
jihis, and during bis eiilire life was a wide reader and
close student of gmid literature. Mr. .Xorthernss organized in
kS94 lhe X\'. J, Nmlheross Alanlel & (ir/ile Companv, Willi
pr.ietieally no assislanee he developed lhis inlo a splendid
business of wbieli be was the bead unlil his ile;illi. Dei ember
18. 1918, at vvbieh time lie also vvas llu- president 'li tbe -Smiiii-
erii District Akinlel &¦ 'file Dealers ,\ssni-i/ii mii. Ml was
eiiairnum ol llie eommillee wbieli built (he pies/iil Si, Luke's
Chureli building, was a member of the I, liamber of (-'niii-
meree. Knights of Pythias, F.Iks and various h-s-ui- nrders.
Air, Norlheross /md Aliss Lee Wilson nf Cnllierville, 'I'ennes-
si-e, were married lanuary 9, 1889. 'lheir ihildreii are; Wil-
snii I. and Li-nii M, .Xmlhilnss,

IL P. JOIIXSO.X
4Tie I-.vte Harry Prince Johnson speiK (wen(y-(wo vears /if
his life in Aiempiiis, eaeli of them useful for tlu- npbuiiding of
(be city. He vvas born F'ebru.iry 25, 18(i0. in ()iilai-in. ( .m.ul.i.
the son of the Reverend l-'oiin C, (a eaimn of the Cadiedral of
S(, -Alhan at 'forouto, Ontario) and kleleii ( Clark 1 Johiison,
.'Xl lhe ;ige of eigliteeii he entered the Mmilson P., ink al Alon
treal, Province of (juebee. .\l Iwenly ye.irs nl agi- Ile vv.is
manager of (be iiaiik's liraneb al St, 'fhom.is, ( liU.irio, and in
1882 be inoved tn Little Rock. .Arkansas, entering lhe eoiton-
seed oil business. In 188(i he vvas m.ide maiuiger of lhe Smub-
ern Colloii Oil Cnmiiany, and lakr disln/l ni.iuager ,ii Alem
phis, mnviiig to (his ei(y in I8')8. In I'l04 lu- i-/--igiu.d irniu
the eompany and formed tlie tlninii S/iiid iv Mali rial l~niii-
piiiiy, ialLi- eniisnlidaling il with llie Aii.-niiri I'miiiiml ('liuliii
( niupaii}', ol wliieli he was vii e-presideiil ,Liid gem-iai nniiKigi r
uiitil his death Oelober '), l')i9. Ili- w ,is :ilso piesidenl oi the
Broadway Coal & lee Company, ile was .i member ol fir.ue
I'.piseopal (-'iuireii. ami .il-o sevirai soei;il ehihs Me married
Miss Aliriaiu lull kA-hrnaiy II. 1885 I lu ir i-|iiidiLii .ire
lleleii, Feleei.i, X'ligini.i .mil Mildred.

902

J. IL MALONE
JvMis Mixiiv- Mviiixi, fnrmi-i in/iynr, a le;idiiig kivvver and most
p/ilrintu eili/i-ii 111 Memphis, 'fennessee, vv/is hnrn in Limestone ( ouiifv-,
,\kili;mi/i, Oelnber ,il. 1851, the son of Fianklin TcTb'!''^''" 'i"'! Xbi''.v
Lou (Hardin) .Malmu-, He vvas ediieated in Siielhy Coiintv. 'fennessee.
/mil was graduated from tlu: C iimberiaml University Law School at
Lrh:mon. ¦fi-nm-ssi-L. in 1872. siiiii- vvbiili lime he lias been a mrmhi-r
nf liie Memphis b/ir. l-'.ieeled nn /i leforiil liekel, be was mayor for
fmir yiiirs follnwing i')06. his mnsi lasliiig puhlie serviee being in the
securing of the application of the front-foot paving act to the eity.

II. MORRIS
Hii'siii AloKRis. president of tbe Afaiihattan Savings P.aiik X- 'friisl
Company, /md senior meniber of the firm of 11, Alorris & l-Srother. wa-
liorn in 1848 in Spamlau. (iermany. He received bis early eduealion
there and at lhe age of eighteen years w-ent to work. ITe engaged in
tlie relail drv goods business in 1869, in the manufacture of clothing
in 1880, and since 189') has been the head of the Alanhattan Bank, one
of the strongest institutions in the Alid-South. He is a inemlier ol
the Ri X Club and X'. AL II, ,A . and director in the Cnssitt Library.
He and Aliss Fannie Loeb married in 1880. 'lhey have one sou. Baiiili.

DR. P. IL WOOD
Dm IOR Peri V- II. Woiiii. one o f the leading pr:iel ilimiers of medieine
;iiiil surgery in Alemphis. 'fennessee. vvas horn in this eity Jaiuuiry 27.
1885. the son nf Jacob AL ami Pdanehe Wood. .After having taken the
course at the Alenipbis University -School, be went to tlic University
of Pennsylvania, where he received his degree of doetor of medieine
in i'llO, Me spenI lhe following lwo years in ,Sl. .Agnes' and .^1. (hri--
loplur's hospilals in Philadelphia, /uul has been practicing in Memphis
since I91,k He and Aliss Amelia Russell were married Noveniber 25,
1914. 4'Iiey have two ehildren, Amelia and Percy.

V. I). EITI/LER
Frvn'k Darwin FerrrR. Memphis, 'fennessee, seerelary and execu
tive he/id of the 4'ri-State Fair .Association and member of the State
.Sen/lie, was born in .Adrian. Aliibigan. February '). 1809, the son of
Cieoige J. and Alary .Xugusla (,-XIdrirb) Fuller. He was reared and
educated in Nashville. 4'eiuiessee. and worked for a time for the Louis
ville fk Naslnilie Railroad and for C. F. F.uiery in C leveland. Oiiio.
Aside from bis great sueeess as bead of the 4 ri-Stale T'air, his main
life work lias Iieen breeding faiuy harness horses, caltle, hogs and
sheep near Nashville, on his farm, which be sold in 1919.

903

vv. W. McCilNNIS
XVn.EV W.v.sniNinoN AlelimNis, merchant, Collierville, 'Lennessee,
was born in Aliller .Slatinii, (jeorgia, July 14, 187(i, Ihe son of Wilev
Hinkle and Alalinda (Aliller) Aletiinnis. He vvas educated at /i private
sehnol ill Ramlolph, /Xlabama, and puiilie seliool in Collierville, /nul in
1898 started a hiniber, haidware and paint business ,it t ollierville,
which he still eondueis, vvitli general coulracting. He has Iniilt several
Shelby County school huildiiigs /nul most of (be luodern resideiues
erected in t ollierville in tile past lilteen years. He is a Scnltisli Rils
and Knight d'emplar Abisnii, and a Shriner,

J. M. JONES
J.-VMES AToNUOE JoNKS, planter, and one of the oldest and mo-t
respected citizens of Fayette t-'ouuty, fennessee, was bmn in Somer
ville, Deeemher 8, 1846, the son of Calvin Jones, who moved wilh his
parents from .Xortli Carolina lo (iiies (.'oiinly, 'I'eniu-s-Li-, and llu-n In
.Somerville ill 18,57. His mother vvas Millie ( Williamson 1 Jnne-
Air. Jones was educated in .Somerville and Oxford, Alississippi; fmiglil
ihrougii the Civil War under (ieneral Fnrrest, Ile lives nn in- -< veii-
tei-ii-lumdred-aere plantation west nl .Somerville. He vvas inai-ried
first to Aliss /Anna Tlortense Moody and later lo Miss Laiir/i Slaiuhaek.

E. C. ROSVVELL
linOENE C.\rti-;r Boswei.e, planter and stock raiser, Somerville
4'eiinessee, vvas liorn November 5, 1857, al Alaeoii, 'I'enne-see, the son
of Dixon Sinipson and Alary Bosvveil, lie Liinied :il .Maemi nnlil
|892 wlien he moved lo the present plaiilatioii. elLVi--ii miles iim-lhwesl
ot Somerville, vvhi-re not only eotton /nul enrii are prndiieed im Itu-
tlie thousand acres, but also there are lierds nf Siiorthoru caltle. Smitii-
ttuwn sheep, goals and hogs. Air. Boswell served ibree iLrius as slieritl.
always fearless liiit kind. Lie is an ardent lover of tbe eliase, lie was
inarried in 1891 to Aliss Lillie Cannon, who died in 1902.

LOLLS LIPSK\'
Loris Lii'SKV, nu-rehant and planter. .Somei-viile. leinu-ssLe, w.i-
borii March 1, 1870, in .Suvvaikie, Poiaud, the son ol JnsLpli .mil I'.mhne
l.ipsky. Ile came lo Ibe Uiiiled Slates in 1884, Inealing in Si, Lmiis,
lhen imiiing to Mempliis, vvbeie he pLildled nntinie. ,md i .m ,i ¦.in.dl
slou-. In 18').), lie moved lo SmiieiviIlL vvluic- lu- iiiui In- lunllui .uu i
have opera led a largi- np-lo-dalL slm i- ,iiid en mini 1 ,i Iwn ihmi-,md ,ii i l
plant/ilion. Me is a .Shriller, ;mil ;i iiu inbi-r ol tlie Alemphis ( niigu -
galion (.diildren of Israel. Lie and Aliss llallie Sk.iiier were married
January 10, 1898. 4'liey li.ive four ehildren.

904

1. w, mmxa^

^OlIN T/\I.Hb:RT THOMAS, (irenada, Missi-ssippi, president
of the Grenada liank and its dozen or more branches located
in up]ier Central Mississippi, recognized as one of the most
successful bankers in the Mid-South and generally classed as
^;-^^^yVY^/^.r\\ "^^' ""^^^"^ useful man in the various coinnuinities where his
xS^S^g^S^ banks arc located, is a n;itive of Creiiada County, having been
born May 20, 18ri0, a few miles west of the City of Crenaila, the son of
Mr. and Mrs. /\. X'. B. 'lhomas. Me was educated in the public schools at
home and then took a course in a business college. Returning to Mississippi,
where his f/illier was clerk of lhe Chancery Court, Mr, 'riionias wenl into
lhe olliee as depiily, l/ilcr beeoiniiig county eoiiit clerk and slill l;iler clerk of
the Cbjincery Court, lie was serving in the latter capacity in 1889 when the
(jrciiada Liank vv;is organized with Mr. J. X\'. Griffis, one of the leading men
of the conininnilv-, ;is |iresideiit and Mr. 'khonias as cashier. The bank grew
steadily until 1907 when Mr. Criffis died and Mr. 'riiomas succeeded him as
Iiresident. Its growth again was steady until 1916 when the calamity of the
cotton boll weevil hit Grenada County. It was a bolt fatal to any hut the
strongest of souls, for practically the only resource of the county w-as the
cotton crop and that year the crop fell to about ten per cent of what was
iionnal. It was then that ]\fr. Thonias showed the mettle that was in him.
(Xlieis knew that the fertile soil of Grenada and the iiei.ghboriiig counties woultl
raise other things beside cotton, but with the bulk of tlicm this knowledge ceased
with giving advice. Mr. 'riiomas's bank bought $.3,000 worth of wheat and
clover seed and jilaccd it at the disjiosal of the farmers of Grenada County.
llis next bold siroke vvas lo lend lo ;in\' boy. while or black-, i-eeoiiinieiided
by tbe counly /igi'iil. enough money wilh which lo piircli;ise a pure bred
iTuroc- lersev or I'olaiid-China sow: ;ind to any girl, similarly rcconiniended,
enough lo buv a thoroughbred cockerel and four pullets. The loan was direct
to the bov or girl, without security and without interest prior to maturity, but
each borrower had lo ;igree to jilant and cultivate one acre of feed stuff under
the direction of the county /igeiil ; sell enough of lli/il or Ihe produce of the
live stock to settle the debt, and report at the end of he year the result of the
venture. The ne.xt year the system was extended to all of the branch hanks
and lhe results in lhe materi/il development of (he country were wonderful,
while the effect vvas astounding. ( )nly two of the notes to the b;iiik were
unpaid, one where the boy died ;nid the other where the pig died. The hank
c;inceled both notes. Mr. Thoiii;is and Miss Ruth Jones were married in
May, 1891. 'lhey have three children, lwo sons and one d/iiighler.

90.5

m^ B, Milltx

lA.K D/XNIEL MILLER, Marianna, Arkansas, one of the lead-
M ing iiiaiiufaclurers of hardwood himlier in the South and akso
feM one of the most [iromineiit factors for the development of
(^ the lower portion of the St. Erancis liasin, was born Novem
ber 13, 1874, in Paola, Kansas. He received his early educa
tion there and weiit to the Paola High School for a time,
but at the age of fourteen years, he decided that he would make a fortune for
himself and with th;il end in view went to Kansas City, Missouri, where he
found a position in the day lime in the ofliee of a coal company, and at night
went to school. About the time that he went to Kansas City, the family moved
from Paola to Marianna, where his father went into the lumber business. The
lad remained in Kansas City for three years, where he completed his education,
but at the end of that time he failed to see in the immediate future there
Ihe fortune which he had gone there lo seek, and hence, in 1891, he followed
the lamily .Sotilli and wenl inlo the lumber business al M;iri;iiiiia with his
falber. During the eleven ye;irs lli;il (hey vvere associated togelher, lhey
sle/idily pushed the business until ;il the death of his father, in 1902, the busi
ness was recognized as one of the most substantial in that section. Since that
time Mr. Miller has been at the head of it. The degree of efficiency, indefatig
able industry and sterling honesty that he has put into it has made il grow
by lea|)s ;iiid bounds until now the est;iblishmenl occupies fifty acres of land
with ;i modern e()uipiiieiit which includes two saw mills of the most approved
design and a shook factory. The output of the mills is some twenty million
feet of lumber each year and the aggregate of the business done by the con
cern is fully a million and a half dollars. 'I'o supply this mill, Mr. Miller
owns seven thousand acres of timbered lands in the St. Francis Basin. He
litis removed the bulk of the timber from half of this tract and is ileveloping
it into jikintations. The remainder of the tract contains virgin timber. Even
the developnienl and conduct of a business of this size was not able lo con
sume all of the lime and capacity of Mr. Miller. In addition lo his mill and
lumber business, he is the able head of the Bank of Marianna, one of the
strong financial institutions of the St. Erancis Basin; of the Peoples Electric
Compiany of Marianna and of the l^ions Club. He is the vice-president of
the Marianna Building & Loan Association, and also of the Soudan Corjiora-
tion, which was recently organized to accpiire and ojierate the noted old plan
tation of that name. Mr. Miller also was ticlive in all war work in Lee County.
He and Miss Mildred XVilson of Wellsville, Missouri, were married Octo
ber 1, 1901. /Xfter her death, Mr. Miller and Miss Maude M/iitland Bair
were married in 1915. Llis children are: Ma.x; D., Jr., Mildred XX'ilson, Ella
May and Glenn Utley.

9U6

Joljn Cuningijam

|OHN CUNINGTIAM, Arlington, 'Lennessee, merchant and
capitalist, leader in every movement for the development of
his section of the counly, heavily interested in several of fhe
large financial concerns of A-Tcmphis and also having iiiaiiv
oilier wide iiivestmenls, is ;i native of North Carolina. He
was born in Rockingham County, July 31, 1859, the son of
yXlexandcr and Mary Laura (Gallaway) Cuningham. Lie received his early edu
cation in Danville, X'irginia. XX'ben but a lad, he had the misfortune to lose
both of his parents. His uncle, Mr. J. M. Gallaway, had moved to 'Lennessee
and became a man of considerable affairs in the northwestern portion of Fay
ette County, where the station on the Louisville & Nashville Railroad was named
for him. Mr. Cuningham also came west in 1873 and located at Gallaway.
I'Toni there he completed his education by going first to Webb Brothers at Cul-
leoka, Tennessee ; then to the Liniversity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and
last to the Liniversity of Tennessee at Knoxville. He had finished his education
at the age of nineteen years and returned to XX'est Tennessee. Choosing a busi
ness career, he st/irled al the bottom of the ladder. He has climbed slcadily,
rung by rung, to the top. Llis first work was in the neighboring town of Mason,
where he clerked in the drug store of Doctor T. J. Reid for a year. There he
learned the rudiments of commercial business, but in order to fit himself more
coniiilctely for that sphere in life, he came to Memphis and took the course in
Professor 'L. A. Leddin's business college. 'Lhen he went to Covington, 'Len
nessee. where a.gain he clerked in a drug store for six months, that time for
Gilles])ie & Payne. T'ieturning to Gallaway, where his uncle then was operating a
large saw mill and several farms, Mr. Cuningham worked for him from 1882
to 1888. In the meantime, Mr. Cuningham had come into possession of $7,500
which he had inherited from the estate of his father. Using this as a founda
tion, he has builded rajiidly upon it until for a number of years he has been one
of the leading figures in the financial life of his comnninity. In 1888 he bought
the mill, farms jiiid entire interests of his uncle and operated them with signal
success at Gallaway until 1904, when he moved to the w-ider field at Arlington,
where he has lived ever since as one of its most prominent, active and useful
citizens. XXHien he left Fayette County he was a member of the County Court.
.Since that time he has never sought or held public office. Lie is a director in
the Arlington Bank & Trust Company; vice-president of the McCraw, Perkins &
XX'chber Company, cotton factors, and a director in the Currie-McCraw Com
pany, wholesale grocers, of Memphis. Mr. Cuningham and Miss Bell Battle
were married January 6, 1886. They have four children: /Xle.xaiider Marion;
Miss Laura, now Mrs. M. G. Burrow of Tunica, Mississippi; XX'illiam Battle,
and Miss Bell Cuningham of Arlington.

907

(General Siibex Page
Xgrieiillnral I'",iii]iire  51
Cottnn in Mid-Snuth  5/
I'lirevvord  3
(ieoliigy of Mill-South  23
Hisliiry, the Xliil-Sonlb in  5
I l/mlvv oiids in Mid--Snn(lt  (7]
1 .evees  ^fi
Map of Xlid-Siintli  7,?

Snbex to piograpijies^

Xbb/iv, k. 1' 

I'agi-
 dSC)

.Xdams. 1 )e;tii 

 853

.Xderholdt.T S. . .

296

/Xlexander. E. \l 
/Xllen, I. M 

 476
 608

.Xllen. "|. S 

 886

Allen. I)r. |.T 

 843

.Xnderson. l'~. 1 
/Xnderson, 11. 1! 

 140
 831

.Xnderson. .'S. 1! 

 145

Xndrevvs. T. 1! 
• Xppling, .X. i\ 

 825
 887

-Xrinstroiig, X\'. 1' 
.Xshcroft, T. C 

 684
 891

Avent. T. IC 

 667

ITailev. M. (i 

 895

IT/inks. Lcni 

 827

Baptist, R. B 

 881

ITarboro. A. .S 

 832

Barnett. C I 

 862

Bam well I H 

. . . 688

P.ales. XX'. 11 

 613

Baugh 1 C)

397

Bayless, XX'. 1! 

 1 27

Beare R. 1 

 750

Bledsoe. O F 

 212

Bledsoe O V . ]v 

 217

liddinan F. J 

 170

Bomer. J. ()'. 

 878

Bond, R. N 

 854

Boswell EC

904

Bouldin. M. | 

 744

Bowers 1) C 

 625

Brackin J M..

 'f.lT^

Brashears, XX'. 1 

 470
.3')8

Brode, b'. XX' 

 718

l*r(Klii,'ix f I 1 . . .

(M)

Briioks, Dr. J. (" 

 206

I'

Brongh, C. II  720
Brown, L. I'".  151
Brown, |. .V  \(-f)
l-.rowii,'R. L  343
P.urrow, A. K  133
Burton, A. O  4()9
Calhoun, S. L  560
Callicott, C G  403
Campbell, Slaughter  ,^07
Can/ida, I. XV.'  152
Canak-, P. M  72-1
C'arnill. 'k. 15  855

 716
 175
 808
 752
 880
 ri49
 .191
 702
 856
 5ri6
 895
 55')
 2.54
 875
 722
 7.56
 182
 380
 698
 284
 863
Crump, D. IT  176
Griinip. l'\ M  181
( ¦ulberhonse. G. X\'  754
( 'uiiingham. lohn  ''07
Ciirrii'. K. I'".'  572
D.-dinev.T. (i  146

Caravvav. T. II .
Carr. R'. F 
Caidwright, j. I!
Chandler, XX'. C
Chears, 11. R...
Clarke. J. P. .. .
Colby, 11. R. .. .
Cobn, B, 1 
Cobn, Harrv. . . .
Collins. ].ii 
Cook. L' P 
Corley, S. A 
Coston, J. T. . . .
Counts, XX'illiam
Covington, XX'. T
Cox, X\'. .X 
Craft, llenry, . .
Crawfonl, J. .X .
Crawford, XX'. .J
Crawley, XX'. /\ .
Crook, Dr

909

INDE.X; TO BIOG I'age
Dalton, E. A  554
Darnell, R. J  662
Davies, Dr.J. F  673
Davis, C. R  499
Davis, H. J  410
Dean, C. C  409
Dean,]. M  888
Dean, L. G  308
Deeth, lohn  577
Denton, M. \i  271
Dermoii, Dave  870
Dewey, XX'.C  404
Dick, XV. H  313
Dodds, S. L  248
Douglas, Dr. J. P  839
Driver, XV. J  187
Early, X'V. C  824
Early, XV. R  415
Eaton, J. Q  899
Eberhart, C S  844
Ellis, E. M  881
Ellis, O. M  892
Everett, Dr. 11. B  748
Fagin, Dr. XV, R  692
Faison, G. XV  758
I'alls, L. D  846
Falls, I. N  601
Falls, j, XV  845
Fant, R. T  211
Farley, J. W  565
Feemster, Dr. L. C  506
Fitzhugh, G. T  80
Fletcher, Leslie  416
Flippin, J. 11  726
Fly, J. M  882
Fowler, J. A  900
Fox, J. XV  158
Fuller, F. D  903
Gailor, T. b^  86
Gaines, L. H  320
Gannaway, Herbert  833
Garnett, R. C  553
Garrard, XV. M  ^19
Gates, I'llias  218
(ieers, E. I'  889
Goldsmith, Jacob  188
Goltman, Dr. Max  888
Goodbar, J. B  493
Goodbar, L M  589
Goshorn, 'j . O  .547
Grifiin.H.'S  882
Grittman, Fred  548
(nosvenor, C. N  194
(Aviiin, L. b:  760

RAPIHES— Continued Page
Haley,]. L  487
Llall, J. F  857
Hall, ]. R  879
Hall, L. M  762
llall, VV. P  865
Halle, A. A  893
Halliday, XV. P  193
Ham, J. S  892
ll;iii,son,C". (¦  482
Ihirris, l-\ R  8.58
llawlhonie, |. C  872
llayley, \V. 11  867
Hays, J. XV  700
Ilenning, Dn B. G  595
Henning, Dr. D. M  385
Herrin, C. H  422
Herrin, XV. K  164
Herstein, XV. R  696
High, S. J  139
Hill, Is I''  98
Hinton, L T  325
Hoffa, XV. P.  421
llollaml,XC P  128
Holmes, |. E  728
Hopson, H. H  .386
Houck, O. K  590
Houston. XV, II  898
Hughes, Allen  878
Hughes, CC  542
Humes, L. C  481
Humiihrey, XV. R  224
Humphreys, Hugh  871
Hunter, [. F  816
Irby, L il  889
Irwin, R. C  541
Isele, LA  893
Jackson, T. H  880
James, T. G  104
janes, L. P  764
Jenkins, J. T  770
lenniiigs, .X. E  9/
"Johnson, II. P  902
lohnson, ]. II  488
¦Johnson, W. C  109
lohnson, XV. XV  768
¦(ones, II. K  686
¦]oiies, T. M  004
¦]iines, .S. M  326
¦jones, XV. C  766
¦)i)nes, XV. S  879
¦|onlaii, R. 1  680
Keesler, S. R  5^6
Killough, O. N  7.?0
King, T. B  8.5(1
910

INDEX 'LO BIOGRAPHIES— Continued

Page
Kirk, L M  427
Kvser^ X\' I)  890
LaCroix, R. b'  7.V)
Lacv, Dr. XV. I  3.52
Lake, R. P. . .".  883
Lane, XV. T  674
Lan.ge, A. C  690
Lawler, I. W  428
Lavne, M. E  331
"Leake, M. E  433
Leathernian, S. R  302
LedyanI, J. II  847
Lee. lames  602
Lee, 'R. I-;  L

Le Master, ]i. IL
Leroy, Dr. Louis.
Lewis. Morris . . .
Lipsky, Louis. . . .
Litty, IL H 
Livingston, 1 1

122
.822
.896
.772
.904 .883
.8.M
Loeb, Llenry  535
Love, G. C  278
Love, IL M  894
Lovewell, J. 11  859
Lowrance. P. I?  266
McCallum. S. M  899
McGraw. C. T  661
McDonald, S. F  235
McEJroy, Dr. LB  734
McFarland, L. B  829
McGee, B. O  229
McGehee, Dr. [. L., |r  774
McGinnis, W'.'W'..'.  904
McSweyn, J. F  200
McXVilliams, R. N  199
Macrae, G. XV  74
Mahannah, A. b:  LSO
Major, S. C  706
Mallory. XV. B  584
Malone. ]. H  903
Marks,/. D  253
Marks, Leopold  644
Marshall. A. L  530
Massey, ]. T  3,37
Martin, J. D  732
Matthews. R.I  884
Matthews, XV. II  157
Meux, Dr. G. XV  355
Miles, L. P  8,37
Millen, Mrs. M. II  583
Miller, B.R  887
Miller, M. D  906
Minor, LI. D  823
Mi.xon, LI. I  434

i age
Monteverde, F. L  778
Mooney. (-'. P. J  134
Moore, Herbert  776
Moore,]. 1  440
Moorman, H. C  884
Morris, George  704
Morris, Llirseh  903
Morrison, ILA  344
Morrison, S. S  860
Morrow, R. G  614
Moseley, A. ]  .349
Mullens, E. ]  2.50
Myrick, Iv K  780
Nash, Dr. XV. B  782
Neely, A. D  679
Newburger, [oseph  103
Nichols, XV. "B  439
Nickey, S. M  163
Noel, E. F  708
Norlheross, XV. |  902
Orgill, Frederick".  596
Outzcn, Andrew  784
Paine, Rowlett  826
Parker, XV. D  529
Parks, XV. B  356
Parr, |. E  901
Parrish, H. |  885
Partee, C. XV., Sr  445
Peel, ILII  861
Peele, J. Y  890
Pepper, A. M  786
Pepper, |. R  S,77
Peres, Hard wig  849
Peres, I. H  848
Peres, J. J  874
Perkins, A. G  885
Pfeil, CO  116
Pharr, Ll. N  643
Phillips, S. 11  8,30
Pigford, C. E  788
Piltman, F. L  790
Pitts, \V. T  866
Portlock, S. XV  .301
Pre-scott, \V. ]  710
Price, C. A  828
Price, I. C  900
Prichanl, XV. G  524
Pride, Dn XV. T  746
Proutt, F. G  868
Pyles, Will  361
Ransom, W. A  2.56
Ray, Uriah  523
Reese, A. R  362
Reese, Colyar  794

911

INDFX TO BIOGILXITIII'^S— Continued
T'liKC Page
Reese, H. II  638 .Sykes, E. L  368
Reese, Mrs. lsa;ic  792 Taylor, .\. F  818
Reeves, X\'. T  567 Taylor, M rs. A. \'  820
Rembert, Sam  451 Taylor, A. R  876
T^^emniel, ILL  796 Taylor, Dr. E. \V  851
Riddick, T. K  02 Taylor, G. T  512
Rilchie, \V. A  446 'lhomas, j. T  905
Roberts, XV. D  841 Tbompsoli, C. C  850
Robins, D. XV  277 Thompson, C. \V  877
Robinson, Clyde  518 Tomlinson, IL D  738
Rose, U. M  901 Totjmbs, Dr. P. \V  242
Roseboom, Mrs. II. I)  578 'lowlier. Dr. J. D  463
Rudisill, |. II  682 Townes, C. 1  637
Rush, J." V  838 Townes, |. A  632
Russell, D. M  620 Townes, R, C  247
Ryan, P. .X  392 Turley, T. J  840
S/ilmon, T. I''  475 'I'unier, (i. S  852
Salsbury, L. K  260 'kurner, O. |  798
Samelson, Ike  869 Tnlwiler, 'k. II  842
S;iiiiiders, Clarence  01 Uzzell, |. b'.  511
Scharff, /Xbe  810 Vance, C I!  886
Schlecht, (i. F  3.58 Walker, J. M  740
Scott, Charles  607 XValsh, /Xnlhony  631
Shannon, C R  898 Walsh, j. T  259
Sibley, Boiling  712 XX'alton, H. L  265
Simmons, A. |  ?,7.^ XValton, |. H  505
Simmons, XV .^ W  295 XX'alsoii, J . S  500
Simonson, S. b:  289 XXebli, (i. T  742
Simonton, C. I!  814 XX'ebster, X\'. A  804
Sivley, C. L  241 XVeiler, A  806
Slack, Dr. XV. M  812 XVest, N. 1)  891
Smart, T. II  379 XX'bite, D. 1 1  314
Smilh, Bolton  876 Willingham, |. T  6o4
Smith, C D  85 XX'illis, H. 1' .^  835
Smith, C. R  457 XVilson, J. C  121
Smith, P. II  517 Wilson, R. E. 1  110
Siiiilh, (i. K  6(i8 Wilson, U. I''.. L., |i  115
Smilh, |. I)  290 W inglield, W. S . '.  404
Smilh, k. A  864 Winkelman, 11. 'k  800
Stark, j.K  223 XXinkelman, |. A  802
Stratton, L. M  79 X\'iiistiiii, W.^ T  807
Solomon, J. L  283 XX'itbers, S. A  205
Steinberg, .Sanmel  894 Witzmann, I'uiiil  655
Stovall, XV. II  626 XVoud, Dr. P. II  903
Stniiii, C R  574 Wooll/inl, I). 1!  4(i4
Straub, Sebaslian  458 Wright, C. b".  (A'>
Swain, XX'. ii  452 XX'right, Moorebead  272
Swift, W. /X  571 X'erkes. II, ('  80()
Swoope, 1. K  807 Zahn, ( )tto  714

912

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