Virginia Hand Callaway

Other Events and Attributes:

• Residence: 1930, La Grange, Troup, Georgia, USA

Family/Spouse: Benjamin Mart Bailey. Benjamin was born on 19 Oct 1916 in Atlanta, Fulton, Georgia, USA; died on 23 Aug 1944 in France. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

1. Living

Family/Spouse: Living. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

1. Living
2. Living
3. Living

Other Events and Attributes:

• Death Certificate No.: Certificate number: 07711.
• Residence: Harris, Georgia, USA
• Residence: 1920, La Grange, Troup, Georgia, USA
• Residence: 1930, La Grange, Troup, Georgia, USA

Notes:

Cason Jewell Callaway (November 6, 1894 - April 12, 1961)

Cason Jewell Callaway, co-founder of Callaway Gardens, was born in LaGrange, Georgia, the son of Fuller Earle and Ida Cason Callaway. Cason's father was a self-made success in the business world, and by the year of Cason's birth in 1894, Fuller Callaway had built a strong retail business in LaGrange and was just a few years short of running his first mill.

By the way people treated him, Cason quickly learned that he was the son of an important man. However, his father told him not to get "puffed up." His social standing only meant he would have to work twice as hard as anyone else. Fuller did not like the idea that his success would keep Cason from knowing the adversity that builds character.

For twelve years, Cason was the only child (his brother Fuller Jr. was born in 1907). Cason's mother, Ida Cason Callaway, treated her sons gently and provided a balance to their father's toughness.

Cason Jewell Callaway

Like his father, Cason Callaway (1894-1961) spent years as a textile manufacturer, a businessman, and a state agricultural leader. He achieved his greatest success in developing Callaway Gardens after retiring from Callaway Mills. A native of LaGrange, Cason attended Bingham Military School in Asheville, North Carolina, and the University of Virginia in Charlottesville before getting a degree from the Eastman School of Business in Poughkeepsie, New York. After finishing school, he returned to Troup County to work in the mills. He developed Valley Waste Mills into a commercial success by refining recycling operations.

During World War I (1917-18), Cason joined the U.S. Navy and worked in the Navy Supply Corps' Bureau of Supplies and Accounts at Navy Headquarters in Washington, D.C. After Cason returned to LaGrange, his father stepped away from active mill management, and Cason began managing the mills. He married Virginia Hollis Hand of Pelham, and the couple had three children, Cason Jr., Howard Hollis, and Virginia.

Convinced in the 1920s that the national economy was heading for rough times, Fuller advised his two sons to choose one business arena and sell off their other holdings. The brothers sold most of their businesses and created a new corporation, Callaway Mills, which oversaw mill management. One key to Cason's success in mill management proved to be salesmanship, a trait he shared with his father. Cason established relations with General Motors, entered the rug and tire-cord business, and hired managers and salesmen to market mill products. Thanks to careful stewardship and to profits made from selling the other businesses, Callaway Mills survived the Great Depression without closing any plants, while management kept at least one member of every mill family fully employed.

In 1934 and 1935 Callaway Mills suffered two employee strikes. Eventually management won out and strikers left the area, but the economic stresses of the decade led Cason to retire. He became chairman of the board of Callaway Enterprises and served until 1937; his brother, Fuller Jr., became president. Cason accepted national positions, served on the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia, and was a director for various national companies.

During the 1920s and 1930s, Cason became close friends with Franklin D. Roosevelt, a part-time resident of west Georgia. Roosevelt began visiting Warm Springs in October 1924, while trying to overcome the effects of polio. He and Cason shared a love of the people, a desire to improve the land, and an interest in farming, even though they disagreed on politics. In 1932, the year Roosevelt was elected president of the United States, Cason led fund-raising efforts for Georgia Hall, the new administration building for the Warm Springs Foundation (later the Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute for Rehabilitation). The foundation was funded by Georgians as a tribute to their new president.

Following his retirement from the mills, Cason set up an experimental farming operation of 40,000 acres at his Blue Springs Farms near Hamilton, just south of LaGrange. He worked with the University of Georgia to develop other showplace farms as part of the One Hundred Georgia Better Farms program, which encouraged better farm practices, between 1944 and 1947. The program encouraged using machinery and developing fine production—whether in beef, wool, or fruits and vegetables. The program officially ended in 1950.

In 1947 Cason had a heart attack. His focus shifted from agriculture to the development of what later became Callaway Gardens, situated on former cotton fields that had been stripped of nutrients by intensive farming. The gardens opened in May 1952. After Cason's death, his son Howard, known as "Bo," oversaw operations of the gardens for many years.

Cason married Virginia Hollis Hand on 3 Apr 1920 in Pelham, Mitchell, Georgia, USA. Virginia (daughter of Judson Larrabee Hand and Florence Mae Hollis) was born on 21 Feb 1900 in Pelham, Mitchell, Georgia, USA; died on 11 Feb 1995 in Hamilton, Harris, Georgia, USA. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Fuller Earle Callaway

Members of the Callaway family have lived in west Georgia since the mid-nineteenth century. Fuller E. Callaway (1870-1928) was born in Troup County to the Reverend Abner Reeves Callaway and his first wife, Sarah Jane Howard. At age ten, Fuller received a nickel for bringing water to men at a barn raising. The next day, he walked eight miles into LaGrange.
Fuller E. Callaway
After realizing that the nickel would not buy the boots he wanted, he chose three spools of thread and went back to the country. He soon found three housewives who paid five cents a spool, and he thereby made a dime on his first commercial transaction.

Young Fuller continued to peddle and to farm his own tract of land. His formal education was limited to about a year in public schools in Troup County. At age eighteen, he opened a five-and-ten-cents store with $500 he had saved. He later opened four other stores and entered the wholesale business. In 1895 Callaway invested in LaGrange's first modern textile mill. Dixie Mills opened with local fanfare and New England management; nonetheless, the mill began to struggle financially within a couple of years. Other investors convinced Fuller to take over management. They threw out the secondhand equipment and brought the mill onto solid economic footing. After Fuller got his money back, he decided to leave the textile industry.

Soon, however, the lure of the industry called again, and townspeople, including Fuller, invested in a new project. Unity Mills (later Kex Plant) shipped its first cotton in 1901. Fuller served as secretary-treasurer of the company, a position he would hold in other mill projects as well. Between 1900 and 1920, Fuller and others opened several mills located within 100 miles of LaGrange.

Fuller stressed the importance of the social and educational development of employees as well as their economic well-being. Mill houses, churches, schools, parks, greenhouses, and other amenities were built along with the mills, but Fuller did not open company stores that would have competed with existing businesses. He was widely quoted as saying, "I make American citizens and run cotton mills to pay the expenses." Such paternalistic interest in his workers also served to keep their morale up and thus to keep unionizing efforts from either within or outside the mill community at bay.

Fuller also established a variety of businesses, including banks, warehouses, and an insurance company. He held positions in national textile associations, and he was president of the American Cotton Manufacturers Association. He also served as a railroad commissioner of Georgia from 1907 to 1909 and was appointed by U.S. president Woodrow Wilson to the Conference on Industrial Relations in 1919.

Fuller said that one of his greatest accomplishments was marrying Ida Jane Cason of Jewell in 1891. They met while she attended Southern Female College in LaGrange and after their marriage lived frugally on what Fuller termed "cash street rather than mortgage street." Between 1914 and 1916, he engaged architect Neel Reid to design their Hills and Dales home on Vernon Road in LaGrange. The Italian style of the home complemented the gardens that Sarah Coleman Ferrell had planted on the site beginning in 1841. Fuller and his wife had two sons, Cason Jewell Callaway and Fuller Earle Callaway Jr.

Fuller married Ida Jane Cason on 28 Apr 1891 in La Grange, Troup, Georgia, USA. Ida (daughter of Alexander T Cason and Living) was born on 16 Jul 1872 in Jewell, Warren, Georgia, USA; died on 10 Apr 1936 in La Grange, Troup, Georgia, USA. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Name: Ida C Callaway
• Residence: 1880, District 114, Hancock, Georgia, USA
• Residence: 1900, La Grange, Troup, Georgia, USA

Notes:

Georgia Deaths, 1919-98 Record
about Mrs Fuller E Callaway, Sr
Name: Mrs Fuller E Callaway, Sr
Death Date: 10 Apr 1936
County of Death: Troup
Certificate: 12349

Judson + Florence Mae Hollis. Florence was born on 6 May 1877 in Sumter, Georgia, USA; died on 10 Mar 1969 in La Grange, Troup, Georgia, USA. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Residence: 1850, Division 90, Warren, Georgia, USA
• Residence: 1850, Division 90, Warren, Georgia, USA
• Residence: 1860, Mc Crarys, Warren, Georgia
• Residence: 1880, District 114, Hancock, Georgia, USA

Alexander + Living. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]