NAPOLEON HILL HOUSE. Corner of 3rd and Madison. Built in 1881 in French Renaissance style. Napoleon Hill was so successful in business that he became known as 'the Merchant Prince of Memphis.' He joined the California gold rush as a teenager in the late 1840s, returning to Memphis in 1857 with $10,000 and a plan: he would use his gold to open a cotton brokerage house. He did and he became emornously wealthy. Hill lived ostentatiously in this mansion he built at the present site of the Sterick Building. The mansion was befitting of the 'gilded age' of Memphis.
The
merchant prince of Memphis, Napoleon Hill was born in 1830, the second
of eleven children of Duncan and Olivia L. Bills Hill. Hill's physician
father died in 1844, leaving his widow an estate valued at more than
forty thousand dollars, including Longwood plantation in Marshall
County, Mississippi. At age sixteen Hill moved to Bolivar, where he
clerked in a dry goods store. Three years later, he joined the
California Gold Rush and reportedly accumulated several thousand dollars
before returning to Tennessee. By 1857 Hill was back in Memphis after a
brief stopover in Bolivar. He opened a wholesale grocery and cotton
commission house on the eve of the Civil War.
In
postwar Memphis, Hill became one of the leading businessmen among the
cotton and merchant houses of the day. He also invested in banking and
real estate, as well as in New South industrial development. As Memphis
rose to prominence as the world's leading cotton spot market and one of
the nation's largest wholesale grocery distribution centers, Hill became
wealthy, powerful, and socially prominent. The city's cotton merchants
organized the Memphis Cotton Exchange in 1873; Hill headed it in the
early 1880's. Unlike in other southern cities, Memphis cotton men
(instead of the railroads) owned and operated the city's cotton compress
and storage facilities. In 1887 Hill succeeded founder Henry Montgomery
as head of the Merchants' Cotton Press and Storage Company with its
giant warehouses and daily compress output of six thousand bales. In
1885 Hill, Sam Tate, and Robert B. Snowden formed Citizens Railway
Company, a streetcar line serving the Fort Pickering, Cole's Mill,
Scotland, Elmwood Cemetery, and Leath Orphan Asylum areas. The line was
soon absorbed by Memphis City Railroad Company. Hill's biggest
investment was in Hill, Fontaine and Company, a cotton and wholesale
grocery business. In addition to his other investments, Hill owned 1,250
shares of Pratt Coal and Coke Company, developers of the Birmingham,
Alabama, steel industry. He was also a strong investor in Union and
Planters Bank and served as a bank director.
Hill
lived ostentatiously in a mansion he built at the present site of the
Sterick Building. He died in 1909 and is buried in Elmwood Cemetery.
Napoleon Hill Jr.
Birth: Jun. 18, 1866
Tennessee, USA Death: Jul. 3, 1905
Shelby County
Tennessee, USA
From death certificate
Father: Napoleon Hill
Mother: Mary M. Wood
Married
Died from cirrhosis of the liver
Family links:
Parents:
Napoleon Hill (1830 - 1909)
Mary Morton Wood Hill (1835 - 1922)
Siblings:
William Duncan Hill (1859 - 1860)*
Olivia Polk Hill Grosvenor (1861 - 1934)*
Napoleon Hill (1866 - 1905)
May Hill Overton (1868 - 1964)*
Francis Fontaine Hill (1874 - 1935)*
*Calculated relationship
Burial:
Elmwood Cemetery
Memphis
Shelby County
Tennessee, USA
Plot: Lenow Circle, Lot 79
Created by: Neil Loftiss
Record added: Nov 10, 2011
Find A Grave Memorial# 80174975