 1870 - 1928 (57 years)
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| Name |
Fuller Earle Callaway |
| Suffix |
Sr |
| Birth |
15 Jul 1870 |
La Grange, Troup, Georgia, USA  |
| Gender |
Male |
| Death |
12 Feb 1928 |
La Grange, Troup, Georgia, USA |
| Person ID |
I9303 |
tng Genealogy |
| Family |
Ida Jane Cason, b. 16 Jul 1872, Jewell, Warren, Georgia, USA d. 10 Apr 1936, La Grange, Troup, Georgia, USA (Age 63 years) |
| Marriage |
28 Apr 1891 |
La Grange, Troup, Georgia, USA |
| Children |
| + | 1. Cason Jewell Callaway, Sr, b. 6 Nov 1894, La Grange, Troup, Georgia, USA d. 12 Apr 1961, Harris, Georgia, USA (Age 66 years) [Father: natural] [Mother: natural] |
| + | 2. Fuller Earle Callaway, Jr, b. 7 Jan 1907, La Grange, Troup, Georgia, USA d. 16 Jan 1992, La Grange, Troup, Georgia, USA (Age 85 years) [Father: natural] [Mother: natural] |
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| Family ID |
F3525 |
Group Sheet | Family Chart |
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| Event Map |
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 | Birth - 15 Jul 1870 - La Grange, Troup, Georgia, USA |
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| Marriage - 28 Apr 1891 - La Grange, Troup, Georgia, USA |
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| Death - 12 Feb 1928 - La Grange, Troup, Georgia, USA |
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| 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.
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