Harvey Woodward
Harvey G. Woodward (born 1865; died November 18, 1930 in Portland, Maine) was the heir to the fortune of his father, industrialist William Woodward. He was one of the developers of the Tutwiler Hotel, and left a bequest which established the Indian Springs School in Shelby County.
Woodward was the son of William H. and Angeline Ashton Woodward. He was raised in New England and attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After moving to Birmingham he developed a reputation as a recluse, shunning religious practice and social gatherings. He dressed in workmen's clothes and was occasionally seen polishing brass fittings or fussing with the equipment at his downtown buildings.
While in his 40s he married the former Annie Louise Chase of Ithaca, New York, but never had children. He gave his wife a meager allowance for food and clothes. When his father died in 1910, Harvey inherited the Brown-Marx Building, Woodward Building and John Hand Building in downtown Birmingham, as well as major shares of the Woodward Iron Company and the First National Bank of Birmingham.
In 1926 Woodward occupied a house at 1306 19th Street South (now the site of the Birmingham Police Department South Precinct).
In 1930, while at his summer home in Weld, Maine, Woodward fell ill and was hospitalized in Portland. He died there after six weeks of apparent heart failure. He left a 25-page will that included detailed instructions for the formation of a new kind of boarding school, for white boys of British heritage. Difficulty in establishing the value of his various holdings in the midst of the Great Depression and challenges from his widow and other parties left the settlement of the estate in doubt. After numerous court appeals, the Alabama Supreme Court decided in 1947 that the establishment of a school should proceed. The planned Harvey G. Woodward School for Boys opened in 1952 as the Indian Springs School.
References
- "Will of Harvey G. Woodward again before Supreme Court" (June 17, 1947) Birmingham Post-Herald - via Birmingham Public Library Digital Collections
- Jones, Pam (Summer 2005) "Where There's a Will: The Story of Indian Springs School." Alabama Heritage, No. 77
- Buzzard, Clyde E. (1999) Harvey G. Woodward will; A Man’s Will, Harvey G. Woodward & Indian Springs School. unpublished manuscript
- Badham, Tom (October 2010) "The School For Eggheads The Origins of Indian Springs School." Jefferson County Historical Association Newsletter, p. 2