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