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Leroy Springs (1861 - 1931)

Birthdate:
Birthplace: Springfield Plantation, Fort Mill, York County, SC, United States
Death: April 09, 1931 (69)
Immediate Family:

Son of Col. Andrew Baxter Springs and Julia Blandina Springs
Husband of Grace Allison Springs
Father of Col. Elliott White Springs

Managed by: Private User
Last Updated:

About Leroy Springs

https://www.scencyclopedia.org/sce/entries/springs-leroy/

Merchant, entrepreneur, manufacturer. Springs was born in Fort Mill on November 12, 1861, the seventh of eight children of Andrew Baxter Springs and Blandina Baxter. Aggressive as a youth, Springs found college life too confining. At the age of twenty, after completing only two years at the University of North Carolina, he became a traveling merchant for Burwell and Springs of Charlotte, North Carolina, selling groceries from a wagon. He opened his first business, Leroy Springs & Company, in Lancaster, South Carolina, when he was twenty-two. In 1886 Springs founded a lucrative cotton-shipping firm, and he established the Bank of Lancaster in 1889. By 1892 he was worth $1 million. He founded Lancaster Cotton Mills in 1895. With these ventures, Springs laid the foundation of the family fortune. On December 28, 1892, Springs married Grace Allison White, the daughter of Samuel Elliott White, also a textile mill owner. The couple had one son, Elliott White Springs, who would eventually succeed his father as head of the family’s textile business.

Grace White Springs died in 1907. By this time Springs was heavily involved as a partner or sole proprietor in numerous businesses.

Leroy Springs & Company now had five South Carolina branches and one in North Carolina. Springs was the president of five mercantile companies, four cotton mills, two banks, a railroad, a power company, and a cotton-compress company serving cotton shippers in South Carolina and Georgia. He sat on the boards of directors for Southern Railroad and eight South Carolina banks and held seats on cotton exchanges in New York and New Orleans.

A volatile personality caused Springs problems during his lifetime. In 1885 he shot and killed a man in Lancaster after an altercation. He claimed self-defense, and his case was never brought to trial. His relationship with his son, Elliott, was tempestuous at best, marked by frequent disagreements and confrontations. In 1928 Springs was shot by one of his employees, whom he had recently fired.

In 1913 Springs married Lena Jones Wade, a widow who was head of the English department at Queen’s College in Charlotte. He died of respiratory failure on April 9, 1931, in Charlotte. Elliott Springs directed that his father be buried next to the enormous Lancaster Cotton Mill No. 3, where thousands of mourners attended the funeral. Elliott later expanded the plant over the grave of his father, allegedly commenting, “It’s what he would have wanted.”

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Leroy Springs was born Nov. 12, 1861, at Springfield Plantation just north of Fort Mill. His parents were attorney/planter Andrew Baxter Springs and Blandina Baxter, who were third cousins. He was the second-youngest of eight children and the grandson of cotton planter John Springs. In the mid-1850s, the Springs family fortune was valued at about $500,000 (about $9 million today), but it was wiped out by the Civil War, forcing Andrew Springs to start over from scratch.

Author Katherine Wooten Springs called Leroy a “precocious, bombastic, aggressive and attractive” child in her 1965 book, “The Squires of Springfield.”

A young Leroy developed a passion for farming and was good at it. He attended the University of North Carolina, but quit after two years. Ambitious and discontented, Leroy went to work as a salesman for Springs and Burwell, a Charlotte-based company co-owned by his brother, Eli Springs.

According to the Springs family publication “The Legacy – Three Men and What They Built,” Leroy spent much of his sales time on Carolinas back roads hawking wholesale groceries and supplies from a wagon to country stores. He became so successful at it that Springs and Burwell put him in charge of its Lancaster branch. But he longed to be in business for himself. According to “The Springs Story: Our First Hundred Years” by Louise Pettus and Martha Bishop, the 22-year-old Leroy struck out on his own in 1883. He started a mercantile store – Leroy Springs & Co. – on Main Street in downtown Lancaster. That business later merged with the Heath brothers to form Heath, Springs & Co. A no-nonsense workaholic on the job from 6 a.m. to midnight, Leroy Springs was described as a “tough mule trader” who never learned to relax. Springs also had a volatile personality. He shot and killed a Lancaster man in 1885, a case that was ruled self-defense. In 1886, Springs combined a farming knowledge with his zeal for daring business ventures, a trait that followed him for life. He began trading groceries to farmers for cotton and then started a lucrative cotton-shipping company that grew to include multiple branches across both Carolinas. A staunch Democrat, Leroy Springs got involved in politics, though he never ran for public office. In 1888, he was appointed an honorary colonel on the staff of S.C. Gov. John Richardson. He was also named as one of the state’s Democratic Party delegates and attended national conventions for more than four decades. In 1889, Leroy Springs started the Bank of Lancaster. At age 30 in 1892, he claimed to be a millionaire. That same year, he married Grace Allison White, the daughter of Samuel White, a cotton planter and textile manufacturer who had started the Fort Mill Manufacturing Co. Their marriage united two of the area’s highest-profile families. Lancaster was clamoring for a major manufacturer at the time. Robert Folks, a member of Lancaster County Society for Historical Preservation, said local leaders persuaded Leroy to start one. “Lancaster was built around him, and it’s not that he had to do it,” Folks said. Springs built the Lancaster Cotton Mill in 1895 on an old cotton field. The mill opened July 27, 1896, with 325 workers. Four days later, Leroy and Grace Springs’ only child, Elliott White Springs, was born. The town, Folks said, grew along with the mill, which was expanded from 1901-03 as Leroy Springs’ financial holdings increased. Four years later, the 46-year-old Springs was one of the top businessmen in the state. At the time, he was president of four cotton mills, five mercantiles, two banks, a railroad, a cotton-compress company and a power company. A 1907 state survey showed that the mill payroll had grown to be the seventh-largest in South Carolina with 1,050 workers. Grace Springs died in 1907 at age 35. In 1913, Leroy Springs married Lena Jones Wade, a widow and head of the English department at Queens College, now Queens University in Charlotte. Lena has her own place in U.S. history. In 1924, she became the first woman nominated for vice president in U.S. history, though the Democrats instead chose Charles Bryan as the running mate to John Davis. Lena died in May 1942. In 1914, the Lancaster Cotton Mill was said to be the largest cotton mill in the world under one roof. “His touch was golden,” Folks said. He was the victim of a shooting in 1928 on a Charlotte Street. A cotton buyer fired by Leroy the previous year, shot him in the cheek after they argued. Leroy recovered, and the shooter was never tried because of mental instability. The judge forbade both men from carrying a gun in Charlotte. The 69-year-old Leroy Springs died in Charlotte on either April 7, or April 9, 1931. He funeral was in Charlotte on April 10, and he was buried just after 5 p.m. that day in front of Lancaster Cotton Mill No. 3. A front-page editorial in the April 21, 1931, edition of The Lancaster News called him one of the South’s most influential industrial leaders. “It was said that his ambition in life is to make success of every undertaking, let it be great or small,” the editorial reads.

http://www.textilehistory.org/LeroySprings.html

Leroy Springs built cotton mills in South Carolina’s Lancaster and York Counties. One of his partners was Elliott White. Leroy Springs married White’s daughter and named their son, born in 1896, Elliott White Springs.

There was a large market for cotton cloth in the United States at the time and, with the advent of World War I, the market boomed. Leroy was a multi-millionaire, the “richest man in South Carolina”.

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Leroy Springs's Timeline

1861
November 12, 1861
Springfield Plantation, Fort Mill, York County, SC, United States
1896
July 31, 1896
Lancaster, SC, United States
1931
April 9, 1931
Age 69