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Vintage Vignettes (Pioneer Profiles of Madison, Alabama)

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Vintage Vignettes (Pioneer Profiles of Madison, Alabama) VINTAGE VIGNETTES (PIONEER PROFILES OF MADISON, ALABAMA) {By John P. Rankin, Madison Station Historical Preservation Society, January 15, 2007; Revised January 23, 2007} Doctor George Richard Sullivan was born in January of 1838 and raised in the Berkley community, an area near New Hope. His father, Isaac, was a physician from North Carolina, and his mother Mary was from Virginia. By the age of 21, George was listed as a physician in the 1860 census, still living in his father’s household. However, in 1869 he purchased Lot 10 along the railroad tracks on Main Street, and he was serving as a City Councilman when Madison Station was incorporated as simply “Madison”. He later lived at 4336 Sullivan Street, when it was called the Huntsville – Decatur Road. Madison’s Sullivan Street is of course named in honor of the doctor, who treated patients in Limestone and Morgan Counties, as well as in Madison County, during his long medical career. In 1862 George married Sallie Polk Walls, whose family is believed to connect to President James Knox Polk and the local Wall family for whom the Wall-Triana Highway is named. They had a son named Oscar Washington who was struck by lightning and killed at the age of 20 while plowing a field at Nubbin Ridge, the area around the junction of Burgreen Road and Brown’s Ferry Road. They also had a daughter named Nellie who died at age 8 and has a unique tombstone with shoes on the top of it in the old section of the Madison City Cemetery along Mill Road near Hughes Road. The Sullivans had 12 children in total, with 9 of them reaching maturity. A child Jessie was born and died on the same day in 1871. Sallie died in 1917, but George survived until Valentine’s Day of 1935. In his latter years, Dr. Sullivan moved his practice to Decatur, where he lived with daughter Inez S. Harvey and her family, while continuing to treat patients into his early 90s, but he is buried in Madison beside his wife, Oscar, Jessie, and Nellie. 18 (Photo supplied by descendants, restored and enhanced by John P. Rankin) Jim Williams was born in February of 1867 and raised in Limestone County, in the Shoal Ford area, where Highway 72 crosses Limestone Creek just west of the county line. His parents (Joseph Dempsey Williams and Cornelia Jane Trotman) moved their family 18 to Arkansas when Jim was in his early teens, but Jim came back to become a sharecropper just south of Madison in 1883, at the age of 16. He farmed the land of Dr. William Thomas Pride, located southeast of Madison’s historic district, until 1892 when he bought his own farm of 180 acres. He married Martha (“Mattie”) Susan Whitworth of Madison on December 24, 1889, and by 1913 they had acquired 1900 acres of their own. About 1903 they purchased the house of Dr. William Dunn, who had been the first railroad station agent in Madison. They had the house raised on logs, turned 90 degrees to face west, and moved north on the lot at 19 Front Street so that they could construct a two-story addition facing south. Their house has long been one of the most impressive of the old mansions in the historic district of Madison, and it incorporates the old Dunn house as probably the oldest surviving home in the district. (Photo from files of Madison Station Historical Society) In addition to cotton farming and operating a sawmill, James Edward Williams opened a general mercantile store at the corner now identified as Wise Street at Main Street – a parking lot today. He raised a variety of livestock on his land and sold fresh meat and groceries, as well as dry goods in his store. He likewise had a livery business and sold farm implements. As perhaps his most farsighted move, he started the Madison Telephone Company in 1919, just 43 years after Alexander Graham Bell’s patent for the device was granted and long before most Southern towns had such a system. Williams was civic-minded, hosting a town barbeque every 4th of July at Betts’ Spring, 18 which was also called Williams’ Spring, now known as Lake Lady Ann or Sun Lake at the Edgewater development. He served as an alderman of the town, as well as being Mayor Pro-Tem in 1910. He was a trustee of the Madison Church of Christ and director of the First National Bank of Huntsville, which became First Alabama Bank and is now Regions Bank. Jim Williams died in July of 1943, at the age of 76 after traveling extensively in his “retirement” years, being driven around the country by his grandsons. Jim and Mattie at home, 19 Front St., Madison, AL (Photos from Madison Sta. Hist. Society files) Dr. John Slaughter, namesake of Slaughter Road, married Mary Lanford and had a daughter Charlotte (“Lottie”) who married James H. Cain, a Madison merchant. Dr. Slaughter’s wife lived was raised in the mansion of her father, William Lanford, who was a son of Madison County pioneer Robert Lanford. Robert and Bartholomew Jordan (a Revolutionary War patriot) were charter members of one of the earliest Methodist churches in north Alabama, known as Jordan’s Chapel, located near the Botanical Gardens on Bob Wallace Avenue. Robert had come to the area with LeRoy Pope, the “Father of Huntsville”. Robert’s son William married Bartholomew Jordan’s granddaughter Charlotte Fennell, daughter of Isham J. Fennell and his wife Temperance Jordan. The Fennell monument is one of the largest in Huntsville’s Maple Hill Cemetery. Dr. Slaughter was a physician in Huntsville when he married Mary Lanford, but when her father William developed stomach trouble in his latter years, he moved his practice to the Lanford mansion on the east side of Indian Creek, immediately north of the “S-curves” of Old Madison Pike. The mansion today is almost entirely hidden from view by trees, but it is still one of the most impressive in the region, having been the social center of the area, 18 with many elaborate dance parties held there in the 1850s and 1860s. After William Lanford’s death in 1881, his plantation was divided between Mary and her sister Martha (Landford’s son Robert had been killed in the Battle of Shiloh), with Mary inheriting the house and the southern portion of the estate. Dr. Slaughter built a small brick office building for his practice in front of the mansion, using the mansion’s basement as a laboratory. However, after his death and Mary’s passing in 1913 the house was sold out of the family. Eventually, Dr. Slaughter’s office was used as a hatchery for chickens, but today it is gone. Dr. Slaughter’s daughter Lottie married James H. Cain in 1896 and moved to Madison. She had her new house built at the corner of Arnett Street and Buttermilk Alley, which at that time was called Hobson Street. Today Jeanne and Stan Steadman live in the large dwelling. Jim Cain was a brother of Robert Parham Cain, who married Lena Martin, a daughter of Elijah Thomas Martin, who was a brother of George Washington Martin. Robert Parham Cain operated a store at 110 Main Street (Whitworth Realty today), believed to be the oldest store in Madison. This building was constructed for merchant G. W. Martin, who purchased the site on February 13, 1857, as the first known sale of a lot in the town planned by James Clemens. A son of Robert Parham Cain, Robert Earl Cain, continued to operate a store there, but tragedy struck in the 1920s. In April of 1928 his wife Annie Nance Cain was struck and killed by a train as she crossed the tracks in Madison. In February of 1929, Robert Earl Cain Junior drowned in a cistern behind the store, and his father moved away from town to Lawrence County, where he became an automobile salesman. He left his only surviving child, a daughter, in the care of his mother and visited her in Madison frequently until his own passing. More details of the family stories can be seen in the book “Madison Memories: A Connected Community, 1857 – 2007”. Lanford – Slaughter – Camper home (Photo of Dr. Slaughter 18 from files of the Madison (Photo by John P. Rankin of picture in files Station Historical Society.) of the Heritage Room at the Huntsville – Madison County Public Library, courtesy of Ranee` Pruitt.) Cain Store at 110 Main Street (now Whitworth Realty and Gallery) {Older photo of store shown below} (Photos by John P. Rankin of house plus data in files of the Madison Station Historical Society.) 18 (Photo by John P. Rankin of data in files of the Madison Station Historical Society.) James Clemens, “The Founder of Madison”, was born in Pennsylvania in 1778, but he came to Huntsville from Kentucky in 1812. He was related to Samuel Langhorne Clemens (aka “Mark Twain”), and his ancestry included Gregory Clemens (Clements), a member of the English Parliament at the time of Oliver Cromwell. Gregory signed a 18 death warrant for King Charles I of England and was subsequently hanged. His widow and children emigrated to Virginia in 1664, from which location part of the family moved to Pennsylvania, according to some on-line genealogies. James Clemens entered the mercantile business in Huntsville with a partner who returned to Kentucky after a few years. Their store was in a building at the corner of what is now Clinton and Church Streets in Huntsville, on a lot that reached south to the Big Spring.
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