Location: Henderson AL

Fox Henderson, Sr.

  • September 20th, 2021

Fox Henderson; noted the Troy Messenger in 1918, “was a born leader of men,” a man who possessed “attributes that would have made him a success in any field of endeavor he might have undertaken.” His principal characteristics, the paper noted, were energy, willpower and determination,” and “the intuitive judgment to use his talents to the best advantage.” Those characteristics were to benefit not only Henderson and his family, but the city of Troy, and indeed all of the people of Southeast Alabama, for during the decades before and after the turn of the century, Fox Henderson built a varied and extremely successful network of businesses and industries that strengthened the economy of his region and brought new hope to many of its inhabitants.

Born in Pike County, Alabama, in 1853, the oldest son of Jeremiah Augustus Henderson and Mildred Elizabeth (Hill) Henderson Fox Henderson moved with his family to the county seat of Troy in 1869 when his father opened a mercantile business there. Young Henderson and his brother Clem joined their father in the prospering business, and in 1881, the brothers expanded their financial, holdings by purchasing the Pike County Bank, a still struggling operation that had been in business only four years. With Fox Henderson as president, the brothers changed the institution’s name to Farmers Merchants Bank and moved the facility to new quarters. Alabama, and as its reputation for reliability spread throughout Pike County, the institution’s assets grew. “The personality of Fox Henderson,” one local reporter noted, “and the confidence and trust which the citizens of this section held for his ability and dependability were enough in itself to bring the institution increasing renown.” The Henderson brothers operated Farmers & For twenty years after its founding, Farmers & Merchants was the only financial institution in that section of Merchant’s as a private bank until 1898, when they received a state charter. Such was the growth and development of the firm’s business, however, that the board of directors decided in 1902 to expand their operations, and Farmers & Merchants became Farmers & Merchants National Bank that same year.

Banking, however, was far from Fox Henderson’s sole interest. In 1880, a year before he and his brother purchased the bank, Henderson became a partner in Michener, Henderson & Company, makers of spokes, handles, and picker sticks. Some twenty years later, the firm’s 125 employees were producing 15,000 spokes, 500,000 handles and 640,000 picker sticks a year. And they made other products too, such as a gigantic special-order cart constructed in 1902 for a mill in Goshen. “The wheels of the cart,” reported the Troy Messenger, “are ten feet high and thirty feet in circumference. The tires are nearly one-half-inch thick and almost six inches wide.”

Willing to think in expansive terms and always open to new business ventures that might bring needed capital to the area, Henderson spotted another opportunity in 1887, when Alabama Midland Railway Company was organized to build a railroad from Montgomery, to Troy, to Chattahoochee, Florida. On the same day that Alabama Midland was incorporated, Fox Henderson and others – many of whom were officers in the railway company – filed a declaration of incorporation for Alabama Terminal and Improvement Company. The purpose of the new business: to build and equip the proposed railroad. Fox Henderson served as treasurer of the company.

Three years later, in 1890, yet another venture captured his imagination. That year he opened Henderson Knitting Mills, an operation with an output of fifty dozen garments a day. Fox Henderson served as secretary-treasurer. By the turn of the century, he had become one of the largest landowners in a several-county area, and on part of his 6000-acre holdings, Henderson established the Arcadia Dairy, whose imported Jersey cows supplied the citizens of Troy with fresh milk and butter daily. Henderson then turned his attention to the shortage of fertilizer in the area. Although Troy already had a large fertilizer mill, the demand for its products was such that the county still had to import several thousand tons a year. Convinced that the market could support another mill and that its successful operation could establish Troy as an exporter of fertilizer, Henderson forged ahead as he had on many occasions before. The Standard Chemical and Oil Company that he founded became the largest plant of its kind in Alabama. By 1918, the 300 employees in the feed mill and chemical plant were handling 8000 tons of peanuts and producing 38,000 tons of crushed phosphate rock and 75,000 tons of fertilizer annually.

Henderson’s business and industrial interests had become so complex by 1911 that he formed a holding company and took his children in as partners, consolidating his own holdings and theirs for central operation. By providing financing for institutions throughout South Alabama and by backing many of the leading corporations in the area, Fox Henderson & Sons became widely known in Alabama for its progressive policies and its reliability as a financial institution. The scope of Henderson’s own business affairs was revealed in a 1911 pamphlet published by the firm. In that year, Henderson held the following offices: He was president of the First National Bank of Dozier’s, the First National Bank of Luverne, Farmers & Merchants National Bank of Troy, Henderson National Bank of Huntsville, the First National Bank of Brantley, and Standard Chemical and Oil Company of Troy. He was vice president of the First National Bank of Andalusia, the First National Bank of Brundidge, the Henderson Lumber Company of Sanford, and the Planters Trading Company (general merchants) of Elba. He was a partner in Henderson & Hill (department store and advancing merchants) of Brantley, the Cody-Henderson Company (general merchants, livestock, fertilizers) of Luverne, the Henderson-Black Company (importers, jobbers, and distributors) of Troy, and Henderson Live Stock Company (mules, horses, wagons, buggies, harness) of Troy.

The reputation for sound business dealings begun by Fox Henderson, Sr. was to be continued by the sons. “Fox Henderson & Sons,” noted the Troy Messenger in the early 1930s, “through its farsighted and constructive activities, has built the largest and strongest financial institution in Southeast Alabama and one that is reputed to be among the most stable in the entire South.” In civic affairs, also, Fox Henderson took a leading hand. When his congregation needed laborers to build a new church or when his Masonic Lodge needed a lot on which to construct a hospital, Henderson supplied them, and he donated his time and his resources to many other public endeavors as well.

Henderson’s death in 1918, following a long illness, was mourned throughout South Alabama by his family, friends, business associate, and many others who understood what his leadership had meant to the region. He was remembered b them as a quiet, determined man who never sought the limelight and who never spoke unkindly of his fellow man. He was remembered as an inventive and courageous pioneer in the world of business and industry, whose confidence in the region’s future had inspired confidence in others. As more than one obituary noted, much of the progress and prosperity South Alabama had witnessed in the preceding decades had been due in no small measure to the vision and leadership of Fox Henderson. “He was a born leader of men,” it was said, and “he was a life out of the ordinary.”

Charles Henderson

  • September 9th, 2021

Known as Alabama’s “business governor” for his many commercial interests and for maneuvering the state out of debt, Charles Henderson was also a successful local politician, education supporter, and philanthropist whose public contributions to the city of Troy and Pike County created schools and a hospital for children.

Henderson was born on April 26, 1860, at the family farm at Gainer’s Store, an area now known as Henderson, 12 miles south of Troy. He was one of six children of Jeremiah Augustus Henderson and Mildred Elizabeth Hill Henderson. Jeremiah Henderson represented Pike County at the Alabama Secession Convention and served in the Fifty-Seventh Alabama Regiment during the Civil War. He then moved to Troy and established himself as a merchant, becoming one of the wealthiest men in southeast Alabama.

Charles was educated in the private schools of Pike County, where he was greatly influenced by a teacher who had been a Baptist missionary. Henderson enrolled at the Baptist-affiliated Howard College (now Samford University), then located at Marion, but was forced to leave after two years upon his father’s death in 1877. He returned home to manage the family business. Because he was only 17, he had to seek an act of the state legislature to be permitted to run a business. With two of his brothers, he entered the mercantile business known as Henderson Brothers, which became a phenomenally successful concern that brought prosperity to the Henderson family and to the town of Troy.

Henderson and his brothers sold this business to an uncle in 1890, and the future governor established the Charles Henderson Wholesale Grocery Company. In addition to that venture, he was the majority stockholder and president of both the Pea River Power Company and the Standard Telephone and Telegraph Company. Henderson also served on the board of directors and was a stockholder in the Farmers and Merchants Bank of Troy, the Standard Chemical and Oil Company, the Troy Compress Company, and the Alabama Warehouse Company.

Henderson entered local politics when a group of Troy citizens urged him to run for mayor of that city. He was elected in 1886 and served three terms before withdrawing from public life to devote himself to his flourishing business empire. After a brief respite, he agreed to run again in 1901 and after winning, served a total of 12 years as mayor. During his tenure, the town established a public school system, and he helped to establish and serve as a trustee of the Troy State Normal College, now Troy University. On November 7, 1887, Henderson married Laura Montgomery of Raleigh, North Carolina, who was a teacher in Troy’s new public school system. The couple had no children, and Laura shared her husband’s devotion to numerous civic and cultural affairs.

Henderson’s career took another direction in 1906 when he was elected to the Alabama Railroad Commission. He was appointed president of the commission and served two terms from 1907 to 1915. Using his membership on the commission as a stepping stone to higher office, Henderson ran for governor in 1914, defeating former governor Braxton Bragg Comer in a Democratic Party runoff. He easily defeated the Republican, Progressive, and Socialist Party candidates in the November general election.

When Henderson took office in January 1915, the state was deeply in debt (nearly $1 million by one account), with dim prospects for balancing the budget. With the outbreak of war in Europe in 1914, the price of cotton plummeted, and the economy of the state was devastated. Within two years, however, the economic picture brightened, and the state began to share in the nation’s wartime prosperity as federal monies flowed into the state for the Muscle Shoals munitions development and training camps. Wages for Alabama workers increased and neared the national average. Henderson paid off outstanding debts and placed the small surplus in the treasury. Having seen the result of basing the state’s economy on a single crop, Henderson devoted much of his remaining life to encouraging agricultural diversification. He himself was a significant landowner, having an estimated 3,000 acres in Pike County when he became governor.

Henderson also faced continued problems surrounding Prohibition. As an Episcopalian, he was less committed to total abstinence than the Baptists and Methodists who made up the bulk of the state’s population. He, like former governor Edward O’Neal, favored allowing local governments to determine their own rules, but the majority of the new legislature favored absolute statewide prohibition. Henderson vetoed the legislation, only to have his veto overridden. Thus, Alabama was a dry state before national prohibition was instituted, with Alabama’s approval and ratification, by the Eighteenth Amendment in 1919.

After the United States declared war on Germany in 1917, Congress passed conscription legislation. The process of drafting young men into the armed services revealed that a disproportionately large number of Alabamians were rejected because of poor health or for illiteracy. Henderson called on the legislature to provide additional funding for the state’s Department of Health and for public schools. The legislature permitted school districts to levy a property tax for local schools, and many lawmakers took advantage of this legislation to increase community funding for schools.

Although Henderson was clearly a representative of the conservative wing of the Democratic Party, he encouraged progressive causes where he saw a need. He commissioned the Russell Sage Foundation to study the state’s governmental institutions. That report, issued late in 1918, declared that Alabama’s educational, public health, child services, and prison systems were woefully inadequate. It affixed blame for the substandard programs on the state’s inequitable tax system, a subject that has remained contentious up to the present. Henderson advocated reform, but subsequent governors Kilby and Graves acted on most of the issues raised by the Sage Foundation report.

Henderson also proposed reform of the court system, but when the legislature delivered only a part of his request, he vetoed their measure. He succeeded in passing a primary election law that established procedures for certifying candidates and for setting the dates for such elections. Henderson also worked to reform the health care and living conditions of state prisoners. He lobbied for support of the state’s highway commission, and Alabama was among the first states in the country to receive funds from the federal “good roads” bill backed by Alabama senator John H. Bankhead. Henderson’s administration was marked by a workable blend of conservative economy and mild, but important, progress.

Following his term as governor, Henderson returned to Troy to manage his business affairs, but he continued in public service. Gov. William W. Brandon appointed him to the new Alabama State Docks Commission and made him a trustee of Auburn University. He received an honorary degree from the University of Alabama in 1923. In late 1936, Henderson contracted influenza and then suffered a mild stroke. His condition worsened, and he died in Troy on January 7, 1937. At the time of his death during the depths of the Great Depression, Henderson’s estate was estimated to be worth $3 million. He provided trusts for his wife and sister, but the remainder of his estate was placed into a trust for the public good. For 20 years the proceeds went to the construction of public school facilities in Troy, and later monies were used to support the Charles Henderson Memorial Hospital for Crippled Children. A number of his relatives attempted to break the will, but its validity was upheld by the Alabama Supreme Court in two separate cases. Through this notable donation and his steady tenure as governor, Henderson’s legacy survives. An armory in Troy was named for him posthumously, as was a World War II Liberty Ship, the USS Charles Henderson.

Biographical information provided by the Encyclopedia of Alabama.

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