Dallas County AlArchives Biographies.....Nelson, Richard Marshall 1843 - living in 1893
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Ann Anderson alabammygrammy@aol.com May 20, 2004, 2:59 pm

Author: Brant & Fuller (1893)
   RICHARD MARSHALL NELSON, president of the Commercial bank of Selma, Ala., and
president of the American Bankers' association, is in all probability one of the
most able, if not the ablest, of the financiers of the south. Mr. Nelson had
made an honorable record in the various spheres and relations in life, but it is
as a business man that he is most widely known and appreciated. Whether as an
officer of the several financial institutions with which he is identified,
member of the Bar association chairman of boards and committees, member of the
court of county revenues, vestryman, trustee of the public schools, or what not,
he is prominently a man of affairs, of which it may be truly added, none of
them, to his sense of duty, has seemed too small for careful attention, and none
of them, to his facile grasp, has been too large for easy mastery. Richard M.
Nelson was born in Wayne county, N. C., in 1843, of highly respected parentage,
being a son of Rev. Charles J. Nelson, of the Baptist church, Goldsboro, also a
native of North Carolina and of north of Ireland ancestry. When a lad of
sixteen, Richard M. was appointed a cadet at West Point by President Buchanan,
but at the outbreak of the Civil war his southern patriotism was aroused and he
resigned his cadetship to take up arms in behalf of the Confederacy, and served
in her army from May, 1861, until the close of hostilities, chiefly as captain
of ordnance. On the restoration of peace he studied law and was admitted to the
bar by the supreme court of North Carolina in 1866. The same year, he came to
Alabama and settled at Selma, where he formed a law partnership with Joseph F.
Johnston (now president of the Alabama National bank of Birmingham) under the
firm name of Johnston & Nelson, and until January, 1878, was engaged in
prosperous practice. On account of his already recognized financial ability he
was at that date chosen president of the Selma Savings bank, at that time the
oldest incorporated bank in central Alabama. Since then he has been the head of
the institution, the name of which was changed, in 1880, to that of the
Commercial bank of Selma. In 1881, Mr. Nelson became president of the Loan
company of Alabama, at Selma, the pioneer company of the kind at the south and
doing a most extensive business in farm loans. In 1875, Mr. Nelson was appointed
by President Grant United States commissioner for the state of Alabama, to the
Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia, and was a member of the finance
committee; he was deputy from the diocese of Alabama to the several general
conventions of the Protestant Episcopal church of the United States, which sat,
respectively, at Baltimore in 1871, at Boston in 1877, at New York in 1880, at
Philadelphia in 1883, at Chicago in 1886; again at New York in 1889; and at
Baltimore in 1892. He was also one of the deputation to the synod of Canada
appointed by the general convention in 1883. For years he has been an active
member of the American Bankers' association, and in 1878 was elected to its
executive council, and was annually re-elected until 1891, when he was elected
first vice-president, and at its seventeenth annual convention, held at New
Orleans in December of the last-named year, was elected president. After several
years' service as chief of ordnance on staff of the major-general, commanding
the state militia, he, in 1890, succeeded to the command of the fourth
congressional district, with rank of brigadier-general. The marriage of Mr.
Nelson took place at Selma, in 1868, to Miss Ella Hines, step-daughter of Hon.
Thos. J. Fortis, now of St. Louis, Mo. Mr. Nelson had the misfortune to lose his
wife in 1870, and in December, 1873, wedded, for his second wife, Miss Mary
McFaddin, daughter of the late Robert H. McFaddin, of Greensboro, Ala. To this
union there have been born seven children. In all the positions which Mr. Nelson
has filled in business, social and religious life, he has displayed eminent
ability and integrity, so that his name has become a synonym for fidelity in the
performance of duty and uprightness in every official trust. There is no doubt
that he will add to the honors he has already won in the position to which he
has now been elevated.



Additional Comments:
from "Memorial Record of Alabama", Vol. I, p. 894-896
Published by
Brant & Fuller (1893)
Madison, WI

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