Browse Items (210 total)

  • Collection: People of Interest

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Robert Jemison, Jr. was one of the most prominent, wealthy and powerful citizens in Alabama and in Tuscaloosa’s early days of development. More than just a plantation and land owner, Jemison was a lawyer, politician, industrialist, civic leader and…

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In 1901, Dr. William Dempsey Partlow became associated with Bryce Hospital in Tuscaloosa and in 1919 was elected superintendent of the Alabama State Hospitals. In 1923, the Alabama School for Mental Defficients was established in Tuscaloosa. It was…

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A. S. Van de Graaff was the eldest son of Tuscaloosa attorney and Circuit Judge Adrian Sebastian "Bass" Van de Graaff Sr. and Minnie Cherokee Jemison Van de Graaff. Adrian was born in Tuscaloosa and attended local public schools before entering the…

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Woolsey Finnell was born on October 24, 1866, in Duncanville near Tuscaloosa. He was an 1887 engineering graduate of the University of Alabama. Commissioned into the U.S. Army as a major in 1917, Finnell served in the Engineer Corps in France…

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Ruth Bolden was a library founder and civil rights worker. She was educated at Stillman College and received her master’s degree in library science from Atlanta University. She helped found what would become the Weaver-Bolden Branch Library (part of…

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Jeremiah Barnes was a veteran school master of Tuscaloosa who was described as vigorous and active, in body and in mind. As a school teacher, he was cheerful and optimistic for himself and his people..

Born a slave on the farm of Judge Washington…

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Charles Allen Stillman was a minister at the First Presbyterian Church in Tuscaloosa, who founded Tuscaloosa Institute in 1876. The Institute became Stillman College.

Initially, the college focused almost exclusively on training blacks for the…

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Washington Moody was the founder and the first president of First National Bank of Tuscaloosa.

Moody was born in Mecklenburg County, Virginia, and came to Tuscaloosa with his parents at age 13. His father, Francis Moody, bought land on Sanders…

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The Griggsby Bert Wright Family - Wright owned the first dime store in Tuscaloosa. He was married to Gertrude Alberta Barr and the couple had five sons. L to R: Albert, Louis, G.B., Howard, Gertrude , Herbert and John. Wright was born in Georgia in…

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Samuel Minturn Peck was the first Poet Laureate of Alabama. He was born in Tuscaloosa on November 4, 1854 to Elisha Wolsey and Lucy Lamb Peck. His father was a New York attorney who came to Tuscaloosa to practice and who eventually became chief…
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