1980 – The Alabama Business Hall of Fame

Frank Edward Spain

September 20th, 2021

“Of some men much is asked; to others much is given.” Of Frank Spain, much has been asked and much has been given, and to many, he has given much.

Frank Edward Spain was born October 11, 1891, in Memphis, Tennessee, to John Bett Kennedy Spain, a well-known Methodist minister, and Ida Lockard Spain, a former director of music at Troy Seminary.

By the time that Frank Spain was a teenager, he had decided he wanted to become a doctor. Thus, when he graduated from Barton Academy in Mobile, he enrolled in the Southern University at Greensboro, from which he earned an A.B. degree in pre-medical studies in 1910.

Shortly after young Frank graduated, his father died. In subsequent months he tried various types of employment.

Perhaps, he was thinking about his father’s earlier suggestion about a career in law-”No no higher tribute can be paid to any man than to seek his counsel. No higher service could a man render than to give it.” In 1912, he entered The University of Alabama School of Law. Even though the curriculum in those days was designed to cover a period of three years, Spain earned his law degree in only 18 months.

The year 1917 was momentous in the life of the young lawyer. He was appointed Birmingham’s Assistant City Attorney; he met and married Margaret Ketcham Cameron, a gracious and talented daughter of one of Birmingham’s oldest families; and he answered his country’s call to war and became an artillery officer.

After World War I, Spain found himself in Washington, D. C., with some questions as to where his career would lead.

But, at that point, he received a letter from the father of a young lawyer friend of his, Phares Coleman. The letter asked Spain to take the place in the partnership planned for his recently deceased son. Thus began the long connection with the law firm that became Spain, Gillon, Riley, Tate, and Etheredge.

As Spain immersed himself in the years of the Roaring Twenties, he made contact with two of his boyhood friends: Frank Samford and Bob Davison. With these gentlemen, he became active in the Liberty Life Assurance Society, a small fraternal society with assets of only about $600,000 and total insurance in force of barely three million. To permit the society to become an old-line legal reserve stock life insurance company, Frank Spain and others helped draft, and seek passage of necessary legislation. As a result, in 1929, the name of the society was changed to Liberty National Life Insurance Company. Spain became the general counsel and a member of the board of directors.

Courage, faith, and hard work for the company by Spain and others pa1d off. In 1943, Spain became the Vice President of the Company, a position he held until he became Director Emeritus in the 1970s.

Frank Spain was also involved in other enterprises. Until it was sold in the 1960s to a New York conglomerate, he served as an officer, director, and legal counsel for the Dinkier Hotel Company. In the early years of his career, he and Hudson Barker formed the Bankers’ Mortgage and Bond Company. They, in conjunction with Richard Massey, bought the corner of Third Avenue and Twenty-first Street in Birmingham and constructed what has come to be known as the Massey Building.

Spain was also an officer, director, and general counsel for Odum, Bowers, and White Department Stores, and, in the 1940s, became an officer and director of the Magic City Food Products, Inc., a small local manufacturer of snack items, which grew to be Golden Enterprises, a conglomerate and parent company of Golden Flake Snack Foods, Inc.

As a nationally known insurance attorney, Spain has served as the representative of numerous well-known insurance companies, and as a matter of fact, helped to reorganize at least one of these national insurance corporations.

While actively involved in these business ventures, Spain was contributing his services to his state, his nation, and his city. Because of his many years as a member of the board of directors and as appeals chairman for the Jefferson County Community Chest, he was appointed an honorary life member of that board. Spain further served by being Chairman of the Alabama War Chest in 1945; the Alabama Society of Crippled Children and Adults; the Birmingham Housing Authority; the Alabama Association of Housing Authorities; and the President of the Alabama Motorists Association.

He has also served as Chairman of the Insurance Section of the American Bar Association; Chairman of the Legal Section of the American Life Convention; member of the Advisory Committee of Criminal Law School; member of the Alabama Medical Center Foundation Board; Director of Ellen Douglas Home; member of the Advisory Council of Southern Research Institute.

Perhaps one of the proudest chapters in the life of Frank Spain is his association with Rotary International. He became a member in 1937, and by 1942 had been elected President of the Birmingham Club. So marked was his leadership that the District soon elected him Governor. Following that, he held numerous national offices, until, in the early 1950s, he crowned his Rotary career by becoming President of Rotary International. He was also part of the committee which built the International Headquarters Building, and he spent many years traveling in both Europe and the Orient representing the organization.

Frank Spain has also been an active member of the Episcopal Church of the Advent in Birmingham. Inside that church is a chapel which he donated. Runic lettering carved over the door states that it is a children’s chapel. Each of the letters and some of the candlesticks within that chapel was fashioned by Mr. Spain with loving care.

Over the years in business, Spain was a wise investor, and he and Margaret Spain generously shared their good fortune with philanthropic causes. At first, it was done quietly, unheralded- until former University of Alabama President Frank Rose urged the Spains to make public their generosity to encourage others to make similar contributions. They had the satisfaction of seeing President Rose’s prediction come true.

Frank Spain has not been alone in his adventurous journey through life. He was first accompanied by a lovely and talented lady, his wife Margaret, who gave him two children, Peggy and Frances. During the latter part of his life, he has been accompanied by Nettie Edwards Spain, his second wife, who shares with him many interests, including photography.

Needless to say, a man of Frank Spain’s standing accumulates legions of honors and awards. To name a few-he is a member of ODK, Phi Beta Kappa; he holds honorary degrees from The University of Alabama and Birmingham Southern; he is a member of the Alabama Academy of Art; he holds the Gorgas Award; he is a Chevalier in the French Legion of Honor, and he has had numerous buildings named for him.

To paraphrase Shakespeare, Frank Spain’s life … is gentle and the elements so mixed in him that Nature might stand up and say to all the world, “This is a man.”

William James Rushton

September 20th, 2021

The Rushton name is synonymous with Birmingham and the name William James Rushton is synonymous with Protective Life Company, which he guided and developed into a major financial institution.

William Rushton, one of the two living inductees into the Alabama Business Hall of Fame this year (1980), is the second Rushton to be inducted – his father, the late James Franklin Rushton, was inducted in 1975.

William “Bill” Rushton was born in Birmingham, Alabama, on July 10, 1900. The son of James Franklin Rushton and Willis Roberts Rushton, he was one of eight children. His father, a pioneer in the ice industry, was President of the Birmingham Ice and Cold Storage Company and the owner of other ice plants in Alabama and neighboring states.

Bill Rushton grew up in Birmingham and attended McCallie School in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where he graduated in 1917. Upon graduation, he enlisted as a private in the U.S. Army and served in the infantry during World War I. Shortly after the Armistice in November 1918, Rushton was honorably discharged with the rank of sergeant. He soon continued his education, enrolling at Washington and Lee in Lexington, Virginia, where he made his reputation as a scholar and an outstanding debater. He graduated in 1921 with a Bachelor of Science degree.

Upon graduation, Rushton returned to Birmingham where he joined the Birmingham Ice and Cold Storage Company as assistant manager, a position he held for five years. In 1927 he was promoted to Vice President, and in 1932 he was named President. By 1937 Rushton had also served as president of the three national trade associations of his company’s business the ice, cold storage, and warehouse business.

In 1927 Rushton began a long association with the Protective Life Insurance Company as a member of its Board of Directors. Protective Life had been organized in 1907 by former Governor William D. Jelks, who guided the company through its first two decades. During these first decades, Jelks gave Protective Life a sense of quality. During Rushton’s tenure, growth would be the hallmark of administration.

One of the first important changes made during his presidency was the addition of the “group creditor” line of insurance in 1939. Group creditor insurance is issued to cover small loans made by banks and other financial institutions to their customers. Later, the Company entered the pension trust and group annuity field. Under Rushton’s leadership, Protective Life became a major factor in Group Life and Group Health fields.

When Rushton became President of Protective Life and Chief Executive Officer in 1937, the United States faced financial difficulties with the Stock Market decline and its slow recovery. Soon the country faced mobilization and World War II. Protective Life weathered these financial difficulties successfully, but World War II interrupted Bill Rushton’s career with his company.

In 1926 Rushton was commissioned a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army reserves. In September 1940, Rushton, who now held the rank of major, was called to serve on the staff of Major General Lewis B. Hershey to administer the draft. In March 1942, Rushton was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel and assigned to the Birmingham Ordnance Office where he held several different positions. In the following year, he was promoted to the deputy district chief in charge of ordnance procurement in five southern states. In January 1944, Rushton was promoted to Colonel, a title by which he is still affectionately and respectfully known. In September 1944, at his own request, he returned to inactive status but later held the post of Civilian District Chief of Ordnance. Because of his service to the Army, he received numerous citations, including the Legion of Merit.

On his return to civilian life in 1944 Rushton once more took the helm of Protective Life and during the next two decades continued the pattern of success he had shown earlier. In 1947, when Protective Life celebrated its fiftieth anniversary, it had reached a significant stage in its history. Of the nearly twelve hundred insurance companies in the nation with insurance in force, Protective Life ranked sixty-fifth. Of the total of more than four hundred companies with group life in force, it ranked twenty-sixth. Much of this growth is attributable to the leadership of Rushton.

By the early sixties, Rushton was recognized as a national leader in the field of insurance. As a result of the respect of his fellow insurance executives, the Colonel was named director to a number of insurance associations including the Life Insurance Association of America, the Health Insurance Association of America, and the Institute of Life Insurance.

In 1967, after three decades as President of Protective Life, Rushton stepped down as President but was named Chairman of the Board, retaining the title of Chief Executive Officer. In 1969 he retired from Protective Life. In that year Protective Life had more than $2 billion of life insurance in force and more than $170 million in assets, a testimony to Colonel Rushton’s leadership.

Rushton’s business acumen resulted in other corporations seeking him as a director. In 1927 he was named a director of the First National Bank of Birmingham, the youngest director in the history of the bank. In addition, he has served on the board of directors of the Alabama Bancorporation; Alabama Power Company; Gulf, Mobile and Ohio Railroad; Illinois Central Gulf Railroad; and the Moore-Handley Hardware Company.

Throughout his long career, Rushton was supported by his loving and devoted wife Elizabeth Jane Perry, whom he married on November 24, 1926. The Rushton’s became the parents of two children, James Rushton and William James Rushton, III.

Colonel Rushton has had a lifelong commitment to worthwhile civic, cultural, charitable, and religious causes. A strong believer in youth, Rushton has been a supporter of the Boy Scouts. Not only did he serve as Scoutmaster but also as a director and president of the Birmingham Boy Scout Council. In religious endeavors, he has worked with the First Presbyterian Church, of which he has been a lifelong member. He has served as a deacon, and as Chairman of the Board of Trustees, as well as a member of the Board of Annuities and Relief for the Presbyterian Church of the United States. In the health field, he has served as a trustee of the Children’s Hospital and the Southern Research Institute.

Much of Rushton’s civic work has been with the Birmingham Community Chest. In 1937 he became a director of the Community Chest, in 1945 was named to the Executive Committee, and in 1954 was elected President. A few years later he was designated as one of only nine “Honorary Life Members” in the history of Birmingham’s Community Chest. He has also served as a member of the National Citizens Committee of the United Community Chest Campaigns of America.

Because of his strong commitment to community and service, the Colonel has received many awards and honors. Among those is induction into the Alabama Academy of Honor. Educational institutions have also honored him. In 1959 Rushton received an honorary Doctor of Humanities degree from Southwestern University at Memphis and in 1980 an honorary Doctor of Laws from the University of Alabama in Birmingham. For his support of scouting, he received the Silver Beaver Award from the Boy Scouts of America. In 1976 Dixie Magazine named him “Man of the South” and on November 24, 1976, David Vann, the Mayor of Birmingham, proclaimed that day as “Colonel William J. Rushton Day.”

William James Rushton has had two separate careers – businessman and soldier – in both he has demonstrated leadership and excellence. No less than the late Thomas W. Martin said of Rushton, “There is nothing he touched he did not adorn.” Fortunately, Bill Rushton continues to touch and enrich the lives of many people.

George Gordon Crawford

September 20th, 2021

In 1891, twenty-two-year-old George Gordon Crawford sat in a classroom at Karl Eberhard University in Germany.

His professors had told him that the South’s industry was in a stage comparable to the Middle Ages. Little did he know that he would take a personal hand in reshaping this image. Ironmaster, civic leader, and humanitarian, George Crawford would be the driving force to make the South a leader in the industry.

Born on August 24, 1869, on a plantation in Morgan County, Georgia, George Gordon Crawford was the son of George and Margarette Crawford. The elder Crawford, a Confederate veteran, was a surgeon and taught medicine in Atlanta.

Young George attended high school in Atlanta and upon graduation enrolled in the Georgia Military and Agricultural College in Milledgeville. He later attended the Georgia School of Technology where in 1890 he received his Bachelor of Science degree in mechanical engineering, a member of the first graduating class. The following year he enrolled in Karl Eberhard University in Tuebingen, Germany, where he studied chemistry.

Upon the completion of his studies in 1892, Crawford returned to the United States where Sloss Iron and Steel Company of Birmingham hired him as a draftsman. But within a few months, the Carnegie Steel Company offered him a position as a chemist with the Edgar Thomson Works and he accepted.

Crawford’s diligence made him a candidate for promotions. He was soon given responsibilities in the engineering department. Later, he was made assistant superintendent of the blast furnaces. In 1897 the National Tube Company hired him as superintendent of its blast furnaces and steelworks. But within two years Carnegie Steel had lured him back as superintendent of the Edgar Thomson blast furnaces.

In 1901, Judge Elbert H. Gary and a group of financiers purchased Carnegie Steel and formed United States Steel, the first billion-dollar corporation. As a result of the reorganization, Crawford was promoted to manager of the National Department of the National Tube Company, one of the largest plants of U.S. Steel. Crawford soon demonstrated his business acumen. Realizing that the four plants that comprised National Tube were outdated, he recommended modernization of the plants. During his administration he totally rebuilt National Tube’s plants for $13,000,000, making them efficient and the largest in the world.

Crawford had served his “apprenticeship” and was well-versed in all phases of iron and steel making. Industry sources acknowledged his ability as an engineer, a metallurgist, and a corporate executive. He was now ready for greater challenges and additional responsibilities. In 1907 U.S. Steel acquired the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company (commonly called the Tennessee Company or TCI). The Tennessee Company was beset by a number of technical and labor problems. A number of previous TCI ironmasters had been unsuccessful in producing steel that could compete with Northern furnaces. Crawford was offered the position of TCI President, but he was reluctant to accept. Only at the insistence of Judge Gary, Chairman of the Board of U.S. Steel, and other corporate officers, did Crawford accept. It was a challenge and he met it head-on. Crawford’s plan to overcome TCI’s problems was two-fold. First, he would solve the technical problems facing the company by rehabilitating the existing plants and then planning for expansion. This way he hoped to improve efficiency and production. Second, Crawford planned to simultaneously solve labor problems. At one time the Tennessee Company had a labor turnover of 400 percent. By improving the medical, living, and social conditions of the workers, he could provide a steady supply of laborers. Both plans would be expensive, but he had the complete backing of Judge Gary and the U.S. Steel finance committee.

Immediately, Crawford launched his rebuilding and expansion program. Within the first three years of his Presidency, a new limestone quarry and two new coal mines were opened. Other rebuilding or expansion plans over the years involved blast furnaces, wire mills, coke plants, forging mills, the electric power plant, and the Fairfield Car Works (later the Pullman Car Manufacturing Company). Particularly significant was the construction of the Bayview Dam which provided over three billion gallons of water for TCI. Throughout Crawford’s presidency, a new construction or rebuilding job was started almost every year. During the two decades he headed TCI, more than 100 million dollars were expended on capital improvements.

In solving the firm’s labor problems, Crawford implemented a multifaceted plan. He remodeled substandard housing and built new homes in planned company towns. Included in these worker villages were churches, schools, playgrounds, and other recreation facilities. The schools were among the best in the South. Crawford hired experienced social workers to organize activities in the villages. Social workers taught courses in housekeeping and nutrition and organized cultural activities for workers and their families. To improve medical services, Crawford hired Dr. Lloyd Noland from the staff of William Crawford Gorgas of the Panama Canal. Noland first improved sanitation by draining swamps and closing polluted water sources. Noland also headed a hospital to provide medical services to the Tennessee Company’s workers and their families. As a result of these improvements, TCI workers had a higher standard of living than other workers in the Birmingham District. Crawford had succeeded. He had cut absenteeism in half and by 1930 the labor turnover rate had dropped to approximately 5 percent.

Between business activities, Crawford met Margaret Richardson of New Orleans. After a brief courtship, they were married in Crescent City on February 1, 1911. They later became the parents of one daughter, Margaret.

Crawford’s interest in Southern economic development extended beyond the industry. He recognized the interdependence of industry and agriculture, and as a corporate executive sought to develop agriculture as well as transportation facilities. As TCI President he established the Farm Products Division to provide agricultural advice and promote the sale of farm products. Under Crawford’s guidance, the Tennessee Company produced fertilizer from high phosphorous slag. He promoted the development of the Alabama State Fair and the Southern forestry industry. Crawford was a member of the Alabama State Harbor Commission and served as the first chairman of the Alabama State Docks Commission, allowing him to work for improved dock facilities at Mobile and Birmingham Port on the Black Warrior River.

Because of his distinguished service to industry and agriculture, George Crawford received a number of honors. In 1925 the Ensley Kiwanis Club presented him with a silver loving cup for his “services to people of the area.” That same year he was chosen as Alabama’s outstanding business leader by the Living Hall of Fame and dubbed “Alabama’s First Citizen.” Five years later, upon his retirement from TCI, he received a loving cup that was totally paid for by only small contributions from hundreds of Alabamians. In 1931, Georgia Tech, his alma mater, conferred upon him a Doctor of Science Degree.

In 1930, after twenty-three years as President of the Tennessee Company, Crawford resigned and accepted a position as President of Jones Laughlin Steel Corporation. He held this position until 1935 when he retired and returned to Birmingham. On March 20, 1936, Crawford died in the Tennessee Company Hospital, the health care facility he had built. His final resting place is in Alabama.

George Crawford had a profound impact on Alabama and the South. When he died in 1936, he was praised by a number of people, but perhaps the highest praise came from another iron master: “The Tennessee Company is a Monument to George Gordon Crawford … “

Dr. George Washington Carver

September 20th, 2021

George Washington Carver, who entered this world on an unknown date as a son of slaves, left this world a free man, renowned for his dedication to teaching all people how to make the world a better place to live.

George Washington Carver was born a slave on a farm near Diamond Grove, Missouri, in about 1861. As a young child, he experienced the accidental death of his father and, soon thereafter, he and his remaining family were stolen by slave raiders. Only young George was later returned to the owner, Mose Carver, who exchanged a $300 racehorse for the boy.

Because of his small size, young George was assigned to household work. In his spare time, he was able to devote himself to studying trees, plants, flowers, and insects and to learn how to draw and paint them. He also learned how to play the piano in his owner’s parlor. But he could not read or write.

When he was about fourteen, he struck out on his own. He worked at odd jobs and attended grade schools in the vicinity of Neosho, Missouri, and cities in the adjoining state of Kansas. In Olathe, Kansas, he became affiliated with the Presbyterian Church, an affiliation that was to influence his entire life. By going to school and alternately working as a cook or laundryman, he ultimately received his high school education in Minneapolis, Kansas.

Upon graduation, Carver applied for admission to a college in northeast Kansas but was refused because of his race. About three years later, he moved to Iowa. Encouraged by a friendly white family, he applied and was admitted to Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa, where he gave serious thought to a career as an artist. Many of his paintings were exhibited in Iowa and in Chicago during the time. But since he ultimately felt that agriculture promised a greater economic reward for him and his people, in 1891 Carver transferred to Iowa State College of Agriculture where he received a B.S. degree in 1894, and two years later, an M.S. degree.

Upon graduation, Carver became the first black faculty member at his alma mater. In charge of the college greenhouse, he conducted numerous experiments in cross-fertilization and the propagation of plants. He also specialized in the study of plant fungi; but as Carver was later to remark, although he won much recognition for his studies with fungi, the field seemed “to be of no importance or direct benefit to my people.”

During these years of experimentation with plants, he began to believe more firmly that he could teach people, particularly his people, how to live from the abundance of the earth. With these thoughts in mind, he began to look for a place where he could put his knowledge to work for his people’s benefit.

While waiting for a reply from Alcorn College in Mississippi, Carver received a letter from Dr. Booker T. Washington asking that Carver join him at Tuskegee Institute. Carver modestly answered that he was interested in any offer, since “it has always been the one ideal of my life to be of the greatest good to the greatest number of my people.”

Carver accepted Dr. Washington’s offer of $1,000 a year and on Thursday morning, October 8, 1896, arrived at Chehaw Station to become the Director of Agriculture for Tuskegee Institute. This day marked the beginning of the legend of Dr. George Washington Carver of Tuskegee. Small in stature, eccentric in habits and tastes, high-pitched in voice, Dr. Carver acquired an image of unorthodoxy. But these traits, combined with a deep reliance on religion, a commitment to the promotion of human welfare, and an utter lack of interest in monetary rewards gave flesh to the legend. During these years he developed the concept of extended education for black farmers to teach them better agricultural methods and the values of a balanced diet. He held numerous conferences and institutes at Tuskegee and also inaugurated farm demonstration work to help train black agricultural extension agents. With the help of New York philanthropist Morris Jessup, he developed a wagon equipped to carry educational programs to the disadvantaged rural blacks of the area, and innovation that he considered as one of his most important contributions to agricultural education.

Because of the dependence of the South on a one-crop system based on cotton (which inevitably produced soil exhaustion and was increasingly becoming prey to the boll weevil) Carver began to conduct experiments in crop diversification and eradication of diseases of other Southern crops. His experiments led to the development of peanuts and sweet potatoes as commercial crops.

By 1915, he had discovered that innumerable products could be produced from peanuts. Reportedly, a lunch he once whipped up for some Alabama businessmen consisted of nine courses created from peanuts. Eventually, Carver’s experiments revealed more than 300 items that could be made from peanuts, including synthetic rubber.

In addition, he produced more than 120 products from sweet potatoes and more than 70 products from pecans and other Southern crops, such as soybeans, cotton, wild plums, and cowpeas.

Although many of the products produced by Carver offered immediate commercial possibilities, he refused to allow any of these discoveries to be patented, since he wished for them to be available for the widest possible use. Although Carver performed most of his work outside of the mainstream of American scientific research, his discoveries nevertheless brought to him multifaceted honors. He was early elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in London and was awarded the Spingarn Medal by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Simpson College, in 1921, and the University of Rochester, in 1941, conferred upon him honorary degrees. He received awards from the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Association and from the International Federation of Architects, Engineers, Chemists, and Technicians.

The honors and fame which George Washington Carver received brought attention to him from many of the captains of industry, such as Thomas A. Edison and Henry Ford. He had many lucrative offers from such men, but to have accepted these offers would have forced him to leave Tuskegee and to give up the principal purpose of his life service to his fellow men. This philosophy of Carver helps to explain his indifference to monetary rewards. He was unaccustomed to wealth and often refused increases in salary at Tuskegee. Frequently, the treasurer of the Institute had to beg him to cash his paychecks so that the books could be balanced.

Early in 1943, George Washington Carver died. He was buried at his beloved Tuskegee alongside Booker T. Washington. He left his entire estate of about $60,000 to perpetuate the work that he had started. The George Washington Carver Foundation was established to provide an opportunity for black youths to do advanced study in botany, chemistry, and agronomy.

Over the years since his death, George Washington Carver has been honored by: The issuance of a U.S. commemorative stamp and a U.S. fifty-cent coin; the establishment of a National Monument on the site of his birth; having a Polaris submarine named for him, and induction into the Hall of Fame of Great Americans.

John Bingham Barnett

September 20th, 2021

John Barnett was always keenly aware of the South’s resources and potential for development.

Into a South besieged by the winds of change, John Bigham Barnett was born on February 1, 1874, to William H. Barnett and Eliza Cunning Barnett. One of five children, he spent his early years at Bon Aire, the family home place some twelve miles from Troy in Pike County, Alabama, where he did farm work and helped in ginning cotton. As a teenager, he taught school to secure enough funds to send himself to college. He attended Alabama Polytechnic Institute in Auburn and compiled an excellent record in his freshman year. At the beginning of his sophomore year, he returned home because of his mother’s terminal illness.

After his mother died, John Barnett began work as an insurance agent for his cousin Joe Dean of Opelika. Barnett’s impressive performance soon resulted in his transfer to the Louisville, Kentucky, office of Mr. Dean’s insurance firm.

In the fall of 1898, Barnett decided to continue his education and entered The University of Alabama to study law, where he became a member of the Order of Kappa Alpha and made many pleasant acquaintances. Two of his best friends were Miller Bonner and Thomas Wesley Martin. Barnett graduated from the university with a law degree in June 1900, and moved to Camden, Alabama, to join his friend, Sherwood Bonner, in the insurance business.

By early 1901, he had moved to Monroeville to establish a law practice. The county seat of Monroe County, Monroeville, was then a small town (population a little over five hundred) with no paved streets, no sidewalks, no street lamps, and only one brick building – the courthouse. After living in Monroeville a short time, he received a very flattering offer of a position in the insurance business in Hartford, Connecticut. Barnett went to Hartford, but soon returned to Monroeville because it was “a good land with good people.” His love and admiration of the people of Monroeville never changed, nor did his love for the good earth and the fertile lands which surrounded the town.

As he became engrossed in his law practice, Barnett soon realized that Monroeville and Monroe County, like much of the South in the early 1900s, suffered from an inadequate system of credit. Because the town and county had no banking facilities, and thus a shortage of money for loans, Barnett appealed to the British-American Mortgage Company to lend money to the farmers of the area. After the company’s agent assessed the situation, Barnett’s request was approved – he would be allowed to borrow any amount of money that he requested.

In 1904, Barnett organized the Monroe County Bank, the first official bank in the county. He became its first president, a position he held for forty-eight years. In January of 1952, he became chairman of the board, and his son, John Barnett, Jr., was elevated to the presidency.

After creating the bank in Monroeville, Barnett organized banks at Excel and Uriah. He later became president of the Escambia County Bank at Flomaton and of the Peoples Bank at Jones Mill (now Frisco City). As time passed and more and more roads were paved, the need for some of the smaller banks subsided and some of them were liquidated.

In addition to helping farmers receive loans necessary for survival, John Barnett established the J. B. Barnett Fertilizer Company, providing a ready source of cheap fertilizers to help farmers of the area boost crop yields in soil that had become nutrient-poor after many years of use.

In order to supplement his income until his law practice was well established, Barnett also turned to the field he knew best, insurance. He organized the first insurance agency in Monroe County, the Barnett Insurance Agency.

At about the same time, he made contact with Colonel Bertram Lesley Hibbard, a native of Virginia, who had moved to Alabama to practice law. He and Colonel Hibbard soon formed a partnership that lasted until Colonel Hibbard’s death in 1905.

Barnett also helped Monroe County solve the problem of transportation from Monroeville to other areas. The L & N Railroad from Selma to Flomaton had missed Monroeville by about four miles. When the Bear Creek Lumber Company went out of business in 1911, John Barnett and his law partner, L. J. Bugg bought the Manistee and Repton Railroad – originally built to serve the company – and extended the line from Monroeton to Monroeville. This extension linked Monroeville with transportation facilities to the outside world, and Monroeville experienced a new surge of growth. At about this time, Mr. Amasa Coleman Lee moved to Monroeville. He became a partner to Barnett and Bugg, thus making the law firm Barnett, Bugg, and Lee.

John Barnett continued to respond to the problems the farmers of Monroe County faced during the hard years of the 1920s and 1930s. He built a cotton warehouse where the farmers could store their cotton. Through this activity, he became very interested in the cotton warehouse associations, and in 1935 was elected president of the Alabama Bonded Warehouse Association. In 1950 he became president of the National Cotton Compress and Warehouse Association.

John Barnett was always keenly aware of the South’s resources and potential for development – adequate labor supply, raw materials (cotton) at hand for development, and by the 1930s an adequate transportation system. He and his friend from The University of Alabama days, Tom Martin, invited Vanity Fair Mills to locate at Monroeville. The illustrious history of the Vanity Fair enterprise in Monroe County reflects their endeavors.

Barnett’s contributions to the financial development of the “good land of the good people” he loved extended beyond business and financial enterprises. He was prominent in the Democratic Party; he served as mayor of his city; he held high office in the Masons; and he was a member of the Lions Club.

He chaired the Liberty Loan Drives of World War I and was chairman of the Victory Drives of World War II in his county; he served as Chairman of the Red Cross Drive. He served as President of the Alabama Bankers Association and was a member of the board of directors of the Birmingham Branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. He was very much involved in the educational affairs of his community and served the Methodist Church throughout his life.

John Barnett’s earthly life ended on February 16, 1952. He was an outstanding public servant, a lawyer, a banker, and a great Christian leader. He served his day and his generation exceedingly well.