Tom Ashford
Thomas Tate Ashford (born September 27, 1857 in Limestone County; died February 9, 1930 in Birmingham) was president of the Birmingham Paint, Glass and Wall Paper Company and a member of the Birmingham Board of Aldermen.
Ashford was the third of five children born to Thomas Harrison and Caroline Tate Ashford and raised at the Tate family's home, called "The Plantation", settled by Enos Tate at a site near Mooresville (between Huntsville and Decatur). He attended private schools before entering the East Tennessee University at Knoxville. He graduated in 1877 and continued to study at a commercial college in Lexington, Kentucky. He began his career as a bookkeeper for the Little Rock, Arkansas firm of Hendricks & Ables.
In 1882 Ashford took a job as a traveling salesman for the Cole Manufacturing Company of Memphis, Tennessee. He resigned after eight months to partner with H. H. Mayberry in a decorator's supply business in Birmingham. The partnership dissolved with Mayberry's withdrawal in October of 1886. Ashford reincorporated on October 22 as a public stock company and attained great success with the business, which was headquartered at 2016 3rd Avenue North.
Ashford married the former Susie Swoope, daughter of Charles Carroll Swoope of Wheeler (Lawrence County) on December 31, 1885. The couple had one daughter, Etoile Virginia, born October 4, 1886.
Ashford was elected to the Board of Aldermen under Mayor James Van Hoose in 1894.
On December 23, 1897, Ashford, still serving on the Board of Aldermen, shot traveling salesman Felix Brown. Brown had killed Ashford's brother Frederick a year before at a livery stable in Courtland, the result of a feud over a remark about a woman. Ashford confronted Brown outside Rosenthal's Jewelry on 20th Street North and shot him once in the cheek. He then followed the injured man into the store and shot him twice more; once in the left arm, and once in the back, penetrating his lung. Ashford was arrested for attempted murder and released on $1,500 bond. He claimed that Brown had made a motion towards his pistol pocket, necessitating his self-defense. Brown, whose pistol was found later in his valise, recovered from his wounds in a Birmingham hospital.
Ashford retired to his family home in Madison County and raised champion sporting dogs. He died in 1930 at a Birmingham hospital and was buried in the Tate Cemetery on the grounds The Plantation.
References
- Dubose, John Witherspoon (1887) Jefferson County and Birmingham, Alabama: Historical and Biographical Birmingham: Teeple & Smith, Publishers; Caldwell Printing Works.
- "Alabama Shooting Affray.; Thomas T. Ashford Fatally Wounds His Brother's Slayer in a Store Crowded with Women" (December 24, 1897) The New York Times
- "Col. Ashford buried at plantation home." (February 12, 1930) The Huntsville Times
- Breidenthal, Nancy Denty (n. d.) "Some Children of Thomas Harrison Ashford & Jane Elgin". nancysdeadrelatives.com