Culpepper Exum

Culpepper Exum

Culpepper E. Exum (born June 19, 1866 in Marion County, South Carolina, died 1920) was a founder and president of the Birmingham Fertilizer Company and the 15th Mayor of Birmingham. His term of office spanned the city's change from a Mayor-Aldermen form of government to a City Commission.

Culpepper was the tenth of eleven children born to Robert Benjamin and Mary Jane Culpepper Exum of Marion County (now Florence County), South Carolina. He spent his childhood on the family farm and, at around the age of 10, accompanied his father to Scranton and Charleston, South Carolina, where he attended public schools.

Exum completed high school at Oak Ridge, North Carolina and went to work as a clerk at a variety of businesses, including a brokerage of naval stores, a cotton factor, and wholesale grocery house. He and a brother opened a country store in Orangeburg County, but Culpepper soon left to become a traveling salesman for a Baltimore grocery wholesaler, and then a clerk for a Charleston clothing store.

Later, while working as a salesman for a wholesale clothing company, he had the opportunity to learn about the owner's other enterprise, a fertilizer factory. Convinced of the potential for that industry, he began representing the Chicora Fertilizing Company in Alabama and Georgia.

In 1897 Exum and fellow Chicora salesman Frank Burbridge relocated to Birmingham where they opened their own Birmingham Fertilizer Company. The business was an immediate success and Burbridge left to start another similar firm in Charleston, with Exum as a major shareholder. Meanwhile, Exum's investments also expanded in Birmingham. He became a director of the First National Bank of Birmingham and owned the real estate on which the Alabama State Fairgrounds was developed. In 1904 he was elected president of the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce.

As director of the Alabama State Fair Association, he offered the Fair Grounds as a location to display the Vulcan statue after the culmination of the St Louis World's Fair. In 1905 Exum married the former Lestra Kinney. The couple had four children: Lestra K., Culpepper, Jr, Frank K. and Jane.

Exum was elected Mayor of Birmingham in 1910. Shortly thereafter a citizen-led legislative change created a Birmingham City Commission to replace the Board of Aldermen. Exum remained in office as President of the Commission until November 1913.

Exum served alongside A. O. Lane and James Weatherly on the Commission, which was charged with bringing a "businesslike" competency to City Hall. In order to reign in expenditures and cover a deficit of $583,144 the commissioners abolished several offices and reduced or eliminated certain inefficient city services, including a temporary abolishment of the Department of Parks. They also renegotiated interest payments on the city's deposits by changing banks. The task of consolidating utilities and services provided by the numerous municipalities annexed into the city by the Greater Birmingham act was the primary task of Exum's administration.

While in office, Exum organized the Steel Cities Chemical Company.

Exum died in 1920 and was survived by his wife.

References

• Cruikshank, George M. (1920) A History of Birmingham and its Environs. Vol. II. Chicago: Lewis Publishing Company.

Preceded by: Frank P. O'Brien

Mayor of Birmingham 1910 - 1913

Succeeded by: Nathaniel A. Barrett