William Perry Hollingsworth
WILLIAM PERRY HOLLINGSWORTH
was born in St. Clair County, Ala.. August 22, 1828, and was a son of Jacob and
Delphia (Henderson) Hollingsworth, natives of Virginia. At the age of eleven
years he began clerking for his brother in a mercantile establishment at
Gadsden, and at the age of sixteen was given a partnership in the business. From
that time to within a short time of his death, he was an active business man. He
started in the world as a poor boy, and rounded up at a ripe old age, possessed
of an elegant fortune, and with the happy consciousness of having never wronged
a man out of a penny. No man in Gadsden ever stood higher in the esteem of the
people, than did Mr. Hollingsworth.
In August, 1861, he was elected captain of a company in the Nineteenth Alabama
Regiment, and he remained in the service until the close of the war. After his
first year in the army he was transferred to the Commissary Department, and
remained there during the rest of the time. The war depleted his fortune almost
entirely, but he subsequently, in mercantile business, recouped it to a large
extent, and when he died he was one of the wealthiest men in his county. He was
by far the most extensive dry goods merchant ever at Gadsden, if not in all
Northeastern Alabama. Throughout his entire life his efforts appear to have been
crowned with success. It is said of him, that be never took hold of anything, in
a business way, that he did not turn into money. He was a devoted member of the
Methodist Episcopal Church, South; was always actively interested in education,
and was noted for his charity, his liberality, and his punctuality in all
things.
Mr.
Hollingsworth was married November 27, 1851, to Miss Mary J. Lewis,
daughter of Joel and Ann C. (Krider) Lewis, and reared six children: Annie D. (now the wife of Mr.
Paden), Laura J. (now Mrs. Lay). Katie H. (Mrs. Standifer), Willie A. (wife of W. P. Johnson), Edmond T., and Alice M.
William Hollingsworth, the
great-grandfather of the subject of this sketch, came from England with William
Penn. Mrs. Hollingsworth's father, Joel Lewis. was a native of South Carolina.
and her mother, Ann C. Krider, was born and reared in Philadelphia.
Source:
McCalley, Henry, Northern Alabama :
historical and biographical.
Birmingham, AL: Smith & De
Land, 1888, pp. 835
|