Frank Park Samford, Jr.

• September 22nd, 2021

Frank Park Samford, Hr., the man credited with transforming Birmingham-based Liberty National Life Insurance Company into one of the na­tion’s leading financial services conglomerates, “was a man of many talents – and he invested them passionately into his life and the lives of others.”

Born on January 29, 1921, he was the son of Frank Park and Hattie Mae (Noland) Samford. His father was one of the founders of Liberty National. His grandfather was an Alabama Court of Appeals judge. His great grandfather was an Alabama governor.

Frank Park Samford, Jr., could have chosen to rest on the laurels of his forefathers. Instead, he chose to blaze a trail of his own with the torch of excellence passed to him.

He received his early education in Montgomery and then in Birmingham, where he was an out­standing student at Ramsey High School. At Alabama Polytechnic Institute (now Auburn Uni­versity) he achieved the highest grades of any freshman student in the school’s business admin­istration program. He later transferred to Yale University where he received recognition as a leader before graduating in 1942. After serving for three years as a United States Naval Officer on a destroyer in both theaters of World War II, he entered The University of Alabama School of Law. He graduated at the top of his class (only one B” kept him from a straight “A” average).

In 1947, the young law school graduate began his meteoric career with Liberty National Insurance Company as a securities analyst. Eventually, he would work in practically every division in the home office. By 1950, he had been elected to the company’s board of directors. He became president in 1960.

He succeeded his father as chief executive officer in 1967 and as chairman of the board in 1973. In these positions, he was able to see his vision of trans­forming Liberty National Life Insurance Company into a diversified insurance and financial services company become a reality.

In 1979, Frank Samford, Jr. led in the formation of the parent company, Torchmark, which acquired life and health insurance companies and which di­versified into such businesses as investment management. He subsequently served as presi­dent, chief executive officer, and chairman of the board of Torchmark. And through his wisdom, vision, and efforts, he saw Torchmark grow to become one of the nation’s largest stock insurance and financial institutions, with over $3.4 billion in assets.

The innovative leadership of Frank P. Samford, Jr. brought many accolades. In 1984, he received the Gold Award from the Wall Street Transcript as the outstanding chief executive officer in the life insurance industry. Twice before he had received the Silver Award as the runner-up. Other recognitions of his leadership were his induction into the Alabama Academy of Honor and his selection to be honored at the Alabama Meeting of the Newcomen Society of the United States – a non-profit membership corporation whose members are the corporate and industrial elite across the nation and abroad and whose purpose is to study the history of business and its effects on the contributions to the further­ing of mankind.

Frank Park Samford, Jr.’s pursuit of excellence for himself and others led him to the forefront in the insurance industry. But he also gave his time and talents to serve in the community and in the state.

For example, he served on the boards of BellSouth Corporation, South Central Bell, Golden Enterprises, The Southern Company, Birmingham Trust National Bank, Saunders Leasing Systems, Alabama Great Southern Railway, and the Birming­ham Branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.

He was a chairman and president of the Jefferson County United Appeal, of the Jefferson County Heart Fund Drive, and a member of the City of Birmingham Parks and Recreation Board.

He served on the boards of educational insti­tutions, such as Auburn University, the Univer­sity of Montevallo, and the Indian Springs School. He worked with the Alabama Association of Independent Colleges. He was a charter member of the board of directors of the Kidney Foundation of Alabama and a member of the Board of South­ern Research Institute. He was a member of the Rotary Club and the Independent Presbyterian Church in Birmingham.

Frank Park Samford, Jr., was, in the words of former Governor of Alabama George C. Wallace, “one of the most productive citizens in our state.”

This highly successful executive and productive citizen was what one might call a Renaissance man – that is, a complex personality who contributed and participated successfully in many facets of human life.

He has been described as a man “ahead of his time.” In the 1970’s he was one of the few CEOs who wore a beard. Often, he rode a bicycle to and from work when a car was considered the normal mode of transportation.

An avid jogger, he placed emphasis on physical fitness and was instrumental in establishing a track and exercise center in the headquarters building of Liberty National. He loved the adventure of sailing and flying, but he also enjoyed an intense game of chess. He quoted poetry from memory – and even named his sailboat the “Rubaiyat.”

Although his professional and civic endeavors took a great deal of his time, his family was always the central force of his life. In 1942, he married Virginia Suydam whom he had known since the ninth grade. They had four children: Frank III, Laura, John, and Mae.

Frank Samford, Jr. was a private man, known closely by few. But there was something about him – actually, everything about him – that quietly commanded respect, admiration, and loyalty from all those with whom he came in contact.

He died on December 6, 1986, in Hilton Head, South Carolina. Just as he ha through Birmingham, he had carried the torch of excellence on every other day of his life. He was a rare combination of dreamer and realist. He reached for the stars with his feet planted firmly on the ground.

Thomas E. Kilby

• September 22nd, 2021

Thomas Erby Kilby served as Governor of Alabama from 1919-1923, the years after World War I when society was being catapulted into the modern age. He brought to the governorship a record of business expertise and successful administrative experience, as well as a reputation as a man more interested in commercial, ed­ucational, and agricultural progress than in politics.

Thomas Erby Kilby was born in Lebanon (Wilson County), Tennessee on July 9, 1865. The son of Peyton B. and Sara Ann (Marchant) Kilby, he was educated in the public schools of Atlanta, Georgia.

In 1887, he moved to Anniston, Alabama, as station agent for the Georgia and Pacific Railroad. He continued in that position until 1889 when he saw an opportunity to establish a railway supply business with Horry Clark. Kilby rapidly demonstrated his entrepreneurial ability and soon this partnership styled Clark and Kilby, grew, and was incorporated in 1892 as Smith and Kilby, a man­ufacturer of railway supplies.

Under Kilby’s leadership over the next three decades, this business expanded and became a rebuilder of steam locomotives, manufacturer of railway cars, and producer of basic steel. During this expansion, the company established a steel foundry, a rolling mill, and a large forge shop. The company went through a series of name changes becoming Kilby Locomotive and Machine Works in 1903, later Kilby Car and Foundry Company, and finally Kilby Steel Company in 1938.

Kilby established a sub­sidiary company in 1903, Alabama Frog and Switch Company, a manufacturer of railroad switches. He served as president until this business was moved to Birmingham in the 1920s becoming Kilby Frog and Switch and later Wier Kilby Company.

Foreseeing a bright future for the cast iron pipe indus­try, Kilby organized the Alabama Pipe and Foundry Company. Within a decade, Anniston became the center of the soil pipe industry. In 1921, he formulated plans for the consolidation of some dozen independent plants into the Alabama Pipe Company, which became the world’s largest cast iron soil pipe manufacturer. He served as Board Chairman until his death.

Due to his business acumen, Kilby was named a Director of the City National Bank of Anniston. In 1902, he became president. When this bank merged with the Anniston National Bank to become Anniston City National Bank, he served as president until 1919, when he resigned to become Governor. He was subsequently elected chairman of the board of directors of the bank from 1923-1930.

According to reports, Thomas Kilby had given no thought to entering the political arena until 1889 when his friends persuaded him to run for the City Council. The city needed a good businessman on the council to rescue the city from potential bankruptcy. He ran, was elected, and as Finance Chairman managed to get the city finances in order during his two-year tenure.

In 1900, he was appointed to a two-year term on the Anniston City School Board. In 1905, he was persuaded to run for and was elected to the mayor­ship of the city. As mayor of Anniston for two successive terms, he put into operation policies of economy, law enforcement, internal improve­ments, and social reform which later became state policies during his term as governor.

After the successful completion of his mayor­ship, he traveled to Europe to study state and municipal governments of the old world. This instructive study further increased his growing interest in state government.

Thus, in 1911, Kilby ran and was elected as a state senator from Calhoun County. In 1914, he ran a successful campaign for the lieutenant governor­ship, and in 1918 he launched a campaign for the governorship.

During his gubernatorial campaign, Kilby allowed no one to contribute to his campaign fund and he made no commitments for any appoint­ments, pardons, paroles, or other favors.

Kilby’s platform was simple but purposeful. As usual, he placed first importance on the intro­duction of business methods into the affairs of the state. He also pledged support for policies and laws to improve the educational, agricultural, commercial, and social environment in the state.

Thomas Kilby was inaugurated governor of Alabama on January 20, 1919. Then began an administration marked by achievement. With the support of the Legislature, he established the Budget Commission and revenue measures which equalized the tax burden. He improved the public highways and fostered the development of the port of Mobile. He enforced the laws of the state, especially those pertaining to prohibition, and he curtailed the pardoning power.

He initiated social legislation which has had far-ranging effects. For example, he was instrumental in improving the care of and facilities for prisoners.

Kilby Prison was one result of his efforts and at the time of its construction was considered one of the most modern in the U.S. He increased appro­priations for Bryce Hospital and other institutions for the mentally ill. He sponsored legislation to provide for mentally deficient children, resulting in what is called Partlow School today. He can also be credited with the establishment of the Child Welfare Department and the Public Health De­partment; passage of a fair Workman’s Compensation Act; assistance to agriculture; and support of veterans.

At the end of his term, said one newspaper editor, this ‘business governor” had lifted the economy of Alabama from a “hand-to-mouth” economy to an economy that looked at least twenty-five years ahead. Another newspaper stated that Kilby’s administration had attained the status of the unique with its vast gains for education, the eleemosynary institutions, public health, and road and water transportation.

Thomas Erby Kilby, 37th Governor of the State of Alabama, died October 22, 1943, at his home in Anniston. He was survived by Mrs. Mary Elizabeth (Clark) Kilby, his wife of 49 years.

At the time of his death, Alabama leaders and newspapers again proclaimed his administration one of the finest Alabama had ever experienced. In recognition of this fact, in 1946, the state of Ala­bama invited the Kilby family to place a memorial plaque in the department of Archives and History in Montgomery-a building which was the cul­mination of the late Governor’s dedication of his money, time, and energies to a useful and enduring memorial to Alabama’s war dead. At a ceremony on October 25, 1946, Mrs. Kilby presented the plaque on behalf of the family.

Thus, the State of Alabama honors Governor Thomas Erby Kilby and assures him a permanent and illustrious place in its history.

Johann Gottfried Cullman

• September 22nd, 2021

The life of the founder of Cullman and of Cullman County, Alabama, has been scantily recorded in history books. But when his accomplishments are measured against the adversity he overcame, he can be ranked among the bravest and greatest of Alabamians.

Johann Gottfried Cullmann, son of Gottfried and Juliana (Schneider) Cullmann, was born July 2, 1823, in Frankweiler, Canton Landau, Rheinpfalz, Bavaria. The exact details of his early life are somewhat sketchy, but it is known that he entered upon a mercantile career after completing his education at the local school. Eventually, he became proprietor of an export business at Neustadt an der Haard where he met and married Josephine Low. They had four children: Theodore, Otto, Maria, and Alice.

The young Bavarian believed in the rights of the common man as evidenced by his participation in the Revolution of 1848, and in the Danish War in 1864. In these fights against the oppressive rule, he expended the resources of two businesses. In 1864, it became obvious that he was no longer welcomed by German authorities because of his revolutionary activities. Thus, at the age of forty-one, he left his family, friends, and homeland to begin a new life. He came to the United States with a burning ambition to establish a German colony where he and his countrymen could be free to live in peace and happiness. Many long, hard years were to pass before he was to realize his dream.

John Cullman (the Americanized version of his name) entered the U.S. through New York. Finding no suitable work, he moved to Philadelphia where he worked as a clerk. He then moved to Cincinnati which had a large German colony. Being ambitious, he studied law at night. After being ad­mitted to the bar, he found a large clientele among the Germans of the city. By 1871, he had amassed enough resources to begin his search for a place to establish a colony.

The extent of his search is unknown. But in 1871, he was in North Alabama where he made the acquaintance of former Governor Patton, who gave him much encouragement.

The beautiful Tennessee Valley must have reminded John Cullman of his native Rhine Valley. Near the end of 1871 or in early 1872, he attempted to buy land for his colony near Florence, Alabama but met with opposition (probably stemming from people’s distrust of “foreigners” during the bitter period after the War Between the States).

This failure did not discourage him. Through Governor Patton, John Cull­man learned that the Great North-South (later, L&N) Railway had completed the mainline connecting Nashville with Montgomery and was interested in any scheme of development of a largely unsettled area of North Central Alabama through which the line passed. The governor arranged for John Cullman to meet Lewis Fink, the L&N agent of Decatur. The two men explored every mile of land along the line between Decatur and Montgomery.

For his colony, John Cullman initially purchased around 350,000 acres fifteen miles on each side of the railroad near the highest point along the line between Mobile and Cincinnati. He then returned to Cincinnati to “recruit” German families for the new colony in Alabama. His oldest son Theodore (who had joined him by this time) was a great help in these efforts. Unfortunately, Theodore died of typhoid fever. A grieving John Cullman buried his twenty-five-year-old son in Cincinnati and then once more turned from adversity to work.

The actual settlement of the free German colony of Cullman began in late April of 1873. Five families were present when the first trees were felled. By the next year, there were 123 families.

John Cullman had the town laid off in perfect square blocks with streets wide enough to “drive four teams of horses abreast along their course.” The railroad was bordered on each side by parks and later hidden from view by lowering the tracks several feet below ground level. He also made certain that ground was laid aside for Protestant and Catholic churches. He himself established St. John’s United Church and donated the land on which it is built.

John Cullman does not seem to have rested a moment in his endeavors. He sought to find a suc­cessful economic pattern for his colony and to bring in as many immigrants as he could.

He encouraged the establishment of a variety of businesses in the town and in the county – including a land company, newspapers, a wine-producing company, and a savings and loan. (The Cullman Saving!? and Loan, which was the first chartered savings and loan in Alabama, was founded by John Cullman and a group of fellow citizens).

John Cullman made at least three trips to Germany to encourage immigration. It is evident that he would sell land to immigrants and then use the money from the sales to pay for others to come. They were settled in the town and in the area which became the county. Perhaps he brought more immigrants to the U.S. than any other individual.

The town of Cullman was incorporated in 1875 and Cullman County, in 1877 – both by the act of the Alabama State Legislature with which John Cull­man seems to have had considerable influence. He was also an influential man in the town, but refused to seek civil office because, according to reports, “that would be too much like his homeland where the privileged often had too much to say and the common man, not enough.”

John Cullman’s hardships and disappointments did not cease with the realization of establishing a free German colony. He was the victim of an attempted assassination by crooks and squatters sometime in 1875. In 1884, his second son, Otto, (who had come to Cullman to join his father) succumbed to typhoid fever. Otto was only twenty-nine. He is buried next to his father in the center of the Cullman City Cemetery.

Henry Fairchild DeBardeleben

• September 22nd, 2021

Henry Fairchild DeBardeleben once said, according to historians, “Break a young mustang into a foxtrotting gait. That’s what we did to the Birmingham district.

“There’s nothing like taking a wild piece of land, all rock and woods, ground not fit to feed a goat on, and tum it into a settlement of men and women, making payrolls, bringing the railroads in, and starting things going …

‘That’s what money does, and that’s what money’s for. I like to use money as I use a horse – to ride!”

And “ride” he did. He put the power of his fortune, his credit, and his tremendous vitality into the development of Birmingham as the “Pittsburgh of the South.”

Henry Fairchild DeBardeleben was born in Autauga County, Alabama, on July 22, 1840. His father Henry died when the boy was twelve years old. His mother, Mary Ann (Fairchild) DeBarde­leben, subsequently moved to Montgomery where the youngster secured work in a grocery store. Being a native of New York, Mrs. DeBardeleben sought the company of others from that area. The Daniel Pratts, whom she had known in New York, became benefactors of the widow and her three young children.

When young DeBardeleben was sixteen, he became the ward of Daniel Pratt, Alabama’s first great industrial magnate, whose plants were in Pratt­ville, a few miles from Mont­gomery. The young man lived in the Pratt mansion and attended school. He was made ”boss” of the teamsters and foreman of the lumberyard, and later superinten­dent of the cotton gin. Upon the outbreak of the War Be­tween the States, he joined the Prattville Dragoons in the Confederate Army. He served until after the Battle of Shiloh when he was detailed to take care of a Prattville grist mill and bobbin factory which supplied food and clothing to the Confederate Army.

In 1863 he had married Ellen Pratt. After the war, he continued to run the Prattville mills for his father-in-law. In 1872, Daniel Pratt bought a controlling interest in the Red Mountain Iron & Coal Company in Birmingham and made Henry DeBardeleben manager of the reconstruction of the Oxmoor furnace and the development of the Helena mines. The panic of 1873 temporarily closed the works. This same year, Daniel Pratt died, leaving his estate to the Henry DeBardelebens.

In 1877, Henry DeBardeleben joined James W. Sloss and Truman H. Aldrich in ownership of the Eureka Mining and Transportation Company, which was reorganized in 1878 as the Pratt Coal and Coke Company with DeBardeleben as president. Two years later, he and T. T. Hillman founded the Alice Furnace Company, and between 1879-81 built the Alice furnaces, named in honor of DeBardeleben’s eldest daughter.

In 1881, because of ill health, he sold his holdings and took his family to Mexico. But by 1882, apparently fully recovered, he returned to Birmingham and with W. T. Underwood built the Mary Pratt furnace (named for his second daughter). He acquired the mineral rights to a tract of land on Red Mountain. Illness again took him from Birming­ham, this time to Texas, but by 1885 he was back in Birmingham. In 1886, he and David Roberts, whom he met in Texas, formed the DeBardeleben Coal & Iron Company (apparently, whenever he traveled away from home, he could, through his personality, persuade men of means and enterprise to follow him to Birmingham). He also organized the Pinckard-DeBardeleben Land Company.

These interests led to the founding of the town of Bessemer, ten miles west of Birmingham, and near the great Red Mountain iron seam. In Bessemer, named for the British inventor of the Bessemer process of steelmaking, four furnaces and an iron mill were erected. In 1887 these two firms merged into the DeBardeleben Coal & Iron Co.

In 1891, the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company took over controlling interest in the company. DeBardeleben was made vice-president. After three years of virtual retirement in this position and the death of his wife, DeBardeleben was so restless that he went to New York and made an attempt to gain control of the company through stock purchases. He lost his entire fortune.

Indomitable in the face of ill fortune, he, with his sons, Henry and Charles, explored new fields and started mining in St. Clair County, Alabama, and in the Acton Basin southeast of Birmingham.

In 1910. What had he accomplished in his lifetime? His Red Mountain seam, with his Pratt coal seam, was the basis for the development of industrial Birmingham. He was the first to succeed in making pig iron in Birmingham cheaper than it could be made elsewhere. He built the first coal road in Ala­bama and aided T. H. Aldrich in exploring and developing the Montevallo coal fields. He con­tributed to the development of his region not only through the enterprises with which he was directly connected but also by attracting to Birmingham moneyed men of ambition who established other enterprises. He talked of making steel long before it was made in the Birmingham district, and was instrumental in the construction of the first rolling mill and furnaces.

In 1905, Col. L. W. Johns said he would pay off the Vulcan statue account provided the statue be erected in honor of Henry F. DeBardeleben. DeBardeleben declined the honor-one of the greatest honors proposed to a living person­because he felt such a monument to the industrial pioneer movement should perpetuate the character and achievement, not of one individual, but of all of the men in the past and present who led or were leaders in the industrial development of the Birmingham district. He would prefer, he said, a living, breathing monument that would be a foun­tain of wise charity. He proposed the establishment of a trust fund to be used for the hospital treatment of the poor and needy.

Thus, it can be said that Henry F. DeBardeleben was not just an industrial giant who fostered industrial growth in Alabama. He was also a man who exhibited the traits of those who believe that “every man should leave this world a better place for having lived in it.”