Lauderdale County AlArchives Biographies.....Kirkman, Samuel 1832 - 
************************************************
Copyright.  All rights reserved.
http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm
http://www.usgwarchives.net/al/alfiles.htm
************************************************

File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Joy Fisher http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00001.html#0000031 September 22, 2011, 12:57 am

Source: See below
Author: Smith & De Land, publishers

  SAMUEL KIRKMAN was born at Florence. Ala., in 1832, and was educated at the
common schools, primarily, graduating from Harvard University when eighteen
years of age, the youngest man to enter the senior class from common schools.
Leaving Harvard, he returned to Florence and clerked in the store of his father
two years; going thence to St. Louis, where he established a commission house,
under the style and firm name of Kirkman & Luke. At the end of eight years he
returned to Florence, and at Tuscaloosa, in 1861, invested $20,000 in a cotton
factory. It was destroyed in 1865 by Wilson's Cavalry, and with it 700 bales of
cotton. For the succeeding six or seven years he purchased cotton at Florence
for Eastern dealers, and discovered thereat such facility that he was employed
regularly thereafter by one of the largest cotton houses in the United States as
an expert cotton crop statistician, the only man employed in such specialty in
the United States.

  Mr. Kirkman's parents were Thomas and Elizabeth (McCulloch) Kirkman, the
former a native of Ireland and the latter of Tennessee.

  The senior Mr. Kirkman came to Florence in 1821; here carried on the dry goods
business for upward of forty years, and died in 1864 at the age of sixty-four
years. He reared five sons to manhood, four of whom served in the Confederate
Army during the late war. Mr. Kirkman was a polished gentleman of the old
school, a careful, systematic, business man, and enjoyed the confidence and
respect of the community. He gave particular attention to the education of his
children, and placed them in the front rank of social respectability.

  Samuel Kirkman was probably one of the youngest men that ever graduated from
Harvard, and is to-day regarded as one of the shrewdest business men in Northern
Alabama.

  He was married at Nashville, Tenn., in 1858, to a daughter of Mr. James Woods.
She died in 1865, leaving two daughters, the eldest now the accomplished wife of
Mr. Emmet O'Neal, a brilliant young attorney at Florence.

  Mr. Kirkman has been for fifteen years a director in the Female Synodical
College of Florence.


Additional Comments:
Extracted from:

Northern Alabama: Historical and Biographical
Birmingham, Ala.: Smith and De Land
1888

PART IV.
MONOGRAPHS OF THE PRINCIPAL CITIES AND TOWNS IN NORTHERN AND CENTRAL ALABAMA,
TOGETHER WITH BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES OF MANY OF THEIR REPRESENTATIVE PEOPLE.


File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/al/lauderdale/bios/kirkman164nbs.txt

This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.net/alfiles/

File size: 3.0 Kb