Julia Tarrant Barron
American philanthropist (1805–1890)
Julia Tarrant Barron (1805–1890) was a founder of Judson College in Marion, Alabama, and Howard College, renamed subsequently to Samford University now located in Homewood, Alabama. She also co-founded The Alabama Baptist newspaper with pastor Milo P. Jewett and donated the land for the construction of the Siloam Baptist Church. She was posthumously inducted into the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame.
Biography
Julia Ann Tarrant was born on December 18, 1805, in Abbeville, South Carolina, but her family moved in the mid-1810s to Alabama Territory before statehood settling in Elyton. She married the merchant and plantation owner, William C. Barron, in 1828 and the following year, their only child, John Thomas Barron was born. William died within 4 years of their marriage in 1832, leaving Barron "one of the wealthiest women in Marion". She chose not to continue the mercantile business, but continued with the plantation. She owned thirty-five slaves and invested in several businesses, buying multiple city lots. During her years of prosperity, she donated the land on which Siloam Baptist Church was erected and funded other philanthropic ventures.
In 1838, Barron invited several local Baptist leaders including Edwin D. King, a trustee of the University of Alabama; James DeVotie, her pastor at Siloam Church; and Milo P. Jewett, who would become the school's first president, to her home to organize a Baptist girls' school.
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This entry incorporates text from “Julia Tarrant Barron” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.