Hamilton Love
Born
Henry Hamilton Love

(1875-12-27)December 27, 1875
Nashville, Tennessee, U.S.
DiedMay 2, 1922(1922-05-02) (aged 46)
Nashville, Tennessee, U.S.
Resting placeMount Olivet Cemetery
Nashville, Tennessee, U.S.
Occupation(s)Lumberman, newswriter
Known forAuthor of "The Hardwood Code"
SpouseBessie May Davis
ChildrenHenry Hamilton Love, Jr.
Robert Hamilton Love

Henry Hamilton Love (December 27, 1875 – May 2, 1922) was a lumberman, sportswriter and humorist who lived in Nashville, Tennessee. He was known as the "Daddy of the Nashville lumberman" and was the first president of the Nashville Lumberman's Club. Love wrote the Hardwood Code, a telegraphic code once used extensively in the lumber trade and that was urged by the Hardwood Manufacturer's Association of the United States.

Love contributed articles covering the American South to The Sporting News and Sporting Life. He was chairman of the local baseball committee and wrote several articles covering the Nashville Vols. He was also chair of the Nashville board of censorship of moving pictures and was active in the Rotary Club.

Early years and ancestry

Hamilton Love was born on December 27, 1875, on his father's farm about three miles (4.8 km) from Nashville, Tennessee;[1] he was the youngest child of James Benton Love and Mary Elizabeth Plummer, and was named for his grandfather. Love's father James was a coal merchant and a member of the firm Love & Randle.[2]

Love's maternal grandfather James Ransom Plummer was the mayor of Columbia, Tennessee, in 1832, 1833, 1834, 1836, and 1838.[3] Love was thus a descendant of Regulator James Ransom, and a relative of North Carolina statesman Nathaniel Macon,[4] Confederate generals Matt Whitaker Ransom and Robert Ransom,[5][6] and University of North Carolina president Kemp Plummer Battle.

One of Love's paternal great-grandmothers was a Gannaway,[7] making him also a relative of Tennessee governor William Gannaway Brownlow and Duke University professor William Trigg Gannaway.

Career and public life

News reporter

Love left school at the age of fifteen and worked as a reporter and newswriter for the Nashville Evening Herald. He then got a job writing for the Sunday Times,[8] and later for the Nashville American.[2]

Love contributed articles covering the American South to The Sporting News and Sporting Life.[9][10][11] Love was chairman of the local baseball committee[12] and wrote several articles covering the Nashville Vols.

In 1908, when the Nashville Vols team won the Southern pennant after defeating New Orleans, Love wrote:

"By one run, by one point, Nashville has won the Southern League pennant, nosing New Orleans out literally by an eyelash. Saturday's game, which was the deciding one, between Nashville and New Orleans was the greatest exhibition of the national game ever seen in the south and the finish in the league race probably sets a record in baseball history.[13]

Lumber business

Love in top hat and tails c. 1898.

Love was recognized as the "Daddy of the Nashville lumbermen".[14][15] He worked for his brother John Wheatley Love's firm Love, Boyd, & Co,[1] which avoided losing and in fact made money during the Panic of 1893.[2] From 1895 or 1896, Hamilton Love initially worked in a minor capacity but was given every opportunity for advancement and learned the trade.[1][2] By 1899, he assumed charge of the firm's Nashville office.[16][17][lower-alpha 1] In 1900, Love traveled to Europe.[22]

In 1910, urged on by the Hardwood Manufacturer's Association of the United States, he wrote the Hardwood Code,[23] a telegraphic code used extensively in the trade,[24][25][26] which became known as the Love code.[27] The same year, he also wrote an article on the timber business for the Nashville American's Anniversary Edition.[28]

In 1915, Love's brother John moved to New York, and Hamilton took over as director of the First and Fourth National Banks.[29] Shortly before Love's death the Nashville business was run by him and his relative Tom Lesueur.[30][31]

Clubs

Love was a member of several organizations; his "public spirit" was "one of his most strongly marked characteristics"[1] and he was "always doing something to help Nashville".[32] Love became the first president of the Nashville Lumberman's Club in 1910.[33][24][34] He was president until 1913.[35] In 1914 he was still active, appointed to the Lumberman's Club's "Buy-A-Bale-of-Cotton" Committee.[36]

Love was vice-regent of the Concatenated Order of Hoo-Hoo, a fraternal organization for lumbermen.[14] Love signed the Hardwood Code's introduction "B.T.T.O.T.G.B.C.", an acronym for "By the tail of the great black cat".[lower-alpha 2]

Love was an officer and one of the three organizers of the Nashville Commercial Club,[15] which was started as a group of young businessmen known as the Young Turks and was eventually consolidated into the local Board of Trade.[1][32] Love was editor of the Commercial Club Tattler.[1]

On November 25, 1913,[39] Love was a charter member of the Rotary Club in Nashville.[40][41] He was president of the club in 1915.[42] In 1916 he invited President Woodrow Wilson to Nashville.[43] He was still active in 1918, supporting the Rotary's ban on membership in other, similar organizations.[44]

Film censor board

Also in 1914, mayor Hilary Ewing Howse appointed Love chair of his local film censor board,[45] and he was appointed to a national film censor board in 1917.[46]

Personal life

On November 30, 1901, Love married Bessie May Davis,[1] whose father Leonard Fite Davis was a relative of Leonard B. Fite, and thus of the Fite sisters who were married by Vanderbilt football coach Dan McGugin and Michigan football coach Fielding Yost.[47] She was also a descendant of former Confederate president Jefferson Davis.[48] Love and Davis had two sons, Henry Hamilton Love, Jr. and Robert Hamilton Love, both of whom became seamen. "Ham" Jr. attended the Naval Academy and married Louise McAlister, the daughter of governor and Florida businessman Hill McAlister.[49]

Death

On May 2, 1922, Love died of a revolver gunshot wound to the chest, which was ruled a suicide.[50] He was buried in Mount Olivet Cemetery, Nashville. The local Chamber of Commerce, in which Love was also active, adopted a resolution in his memory, which is:

"dear to the citizens of Nashville. His matchless bravery in the face of the passing years that smote his frail body with pain and suffering almost incessantly will always appeal to us as an example of fine, undaunted courage. He went to his Maker with head erect, unconquered by the long-continued and well-nigh intolerable blow of physical agony."[51]

Love had apparently been suffering from rheumatism[34] and one of his feet was severely injured by falling boards in 1919.[52][53] He still reviewed films from his bed.[54] His poems were read at his funeral.[55]

His widow remarried to Marcel Colin in 1929.[48]

Notes

  1. ↑ The firm also had an office in Scottsville, Kentucky, where John Boyd lived.[18] Boyd married John and Hamilton's sister Nellie Love.[19] Boyd owned the first car in Scottsville.[20][21]
  2. ↑ The club's founders wanted the organization to be unconventional and unregimented. Its single aim was "to foster the health, happiness, and long life of its members".[37] In a spirit of fun, pseudonyms for some of the officers were inspired by Lewis Carroll's poem The Hunting of the Snark. The Hoo-Hoo emblem is a black cat with its tail curled into the shape of the numeral 9.[38]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 John Trotwood Moore (1923). Tennessee, the Volunteer State, 1769-1923. pp. 670–672.
  2. 1 2 3 4 "Builders of Lumber History: Hamilton Love". Hardwood Record. 32: 62. 1911.
  3. ↑ Robbins, David Peter (17 November 2018). "Century Review, 1805-1905, Maury County, Tennessee..." Board of mayor & aldermen. p. 44 – via Google Books.
  4. ↑ Dodd, William Edward (1903). The Life of Nathaniel Macon. Edwards & Broughton, Printers – via Internet Archive.
  5. ↑ James Sprunt Historical Monographs. University of North Carolina. 1900. p. 39 – via Internet Archive.
  6. ↑ Dowd, Jerome (25 August 1888). Sketches of Prominent Living North Carolinians. Edwards & Broughton, printers and binders. p. 217 – via Internet Archive.
  7. ↑ "Autobiography of Rev. Robertson Gannaway". The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography. 38 (2): 140. 1930.
  8. ↑ "Personal". The Daily American. March 20, 1892. p. 4. Retrieved July 2, 2018 – via Newspapers.com. Open access icon
  9. ↑ Hamilton Love (October 10, 1908). "South Sayings" (PDF). Sporting Life. Vol. 52, no. 5. p. 16. Archived from the original (PDF) on February 13, 2015. Retrieved July 5, 2015.
  10. ↑ John A. Simpson (2007). The Greatest Game Ever Played In Dixie. McFarland. pp. 47, 111, 136, 145. ISBN 978-0786430505.
  11. ↑ John A. Simpson (2013-10-17). Hub Perdue: Clown Prince of the Mound. p. 170. ISBN 9781476602745.
  12. ↑ "Half Holiday On Opening Baseball Day For Wednesday (sic)". The Tennessean. April 13, 1912. p. 10. Retrieved September 20, 2015 – via Newspapers.com. Open access icon
  13. ↑ Hamilton Love (October 10, 1908). "South Sayings" (PDF). Sporting Life: 16. Archived from the original (PDF) on February 13, 2015. Retrieved July 5, 2015.
  14. 1 2 "Nashville, Tennessee". The Bulletin: 73. 1911.
  15. 1 2 All about Nashville: A Complete Historical Guide Book to the City. Marshall & Bruce Company. 1912. pp. 138, 142.
  16. ↑ 1899 Nashville Directory. U.S. City Directories, 1821-1989 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011.
  17. ↑ "Nashville". Hardwood Record. 45: 41–42. August 25, 1918.
  18. ↑ "John W. Boyd, Head of Lumber Firm, Dies". The Tennessean. December 11, 1923. p. 1 – via newspapers.com. Open access icon
  19. ↑ "Mrs. Jno. W. Boyd Dies In Fall From Hospital Window". The Tennessean. April 16, 1927. p. 1 – via Newspapers.com. Open access icon
  20. ↑ "Pioneers of Allen County". The Citizen-Times. October 12, 1972. p. 7.
  21. ↑ "The Public Spring - Scottsville, KY". www.allencountyky.com.
  22. ↑ "D. D. D." Nashville American. March 3, 1900. p. 3 – via Newspapers.com. Open access icon
  23. ↑ Hamilton Love (1910). Hardwood Code. Nashville, TN: Brandon Printing Co.
  24. 1 2 "Obituary". The Southern Lumberman. 106: 42. 1922.
  25. ↑ "Hamilton Love". Lumber World Review. 42: 47. 1922.
  26. ↑ "Forest Products Laboratory". The Lumber Trade Journal. 59: 20. 1911.
  27. ↑ "Sales Manager Association Formed". The Lumber World. 12: 22A. March 1, 1911.
  28. ↑ Hamilton Love (June 1910). "Timber Business in the State". The Nashville American. Retrieved June 28, 2018 – via Newspapers.com. Open access icon
  29. ↑ "Strong Bank Electors Two New Directors". The Tennessean. January 13, 1915. p. 9. Retrieved July 2, 2018 – via Newspapers.com. Open access icon
  30. ↑ "Admit New Partners". Southern Lumberman: 40. February 18, 1922.
  31. ↑ "Pertinent Information". Hardwood Record. 52: 26. February 25, 1922.
  32. 1 2 "Hamilton Love". The Tennessean. January 15, 1912. p. 9. Retrieved September 20, 2015 – via Newspapers.com. Open access icon
  33. ↑ "Hamilton Love New Chief". The Tennessean. March 26, 1911. p. 26. Retrieved September 21, 2015 – via Newspapers.com. Open access icon
  34. 1 2 "Obituary". The New York Lumber Trade Journal. 72: 35. May 15, 1922.
  35. ↑ "Accepts Invitation to Visit". American Lumberman: 61. January 25, 1913.
  36. ↑ "Nashville Lumbermen Discuss Freights". American Lumberman. April 21, 1914 – via Google Books.
  37. ↑ "Hoo-Hoo International" (PDF). www.hoohoo.org.
  38. ↑ Hillinger, Charles (October 13, 1985). "Arkansas' Towns of Funny Names : There's Evening Shade, Greasy Corner, Stump City, Hope". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 14 July 2014.
  39. ↑ International, Rotary (May 21, 1916). "The Rotarian". Rotary International – via Google Books.
  40. ↑ "Nashville Rotary Club, Composed of Nearly One Hundred Leading Business Men, One of City's Foremost Organizations". The Tennessean. February 1, 1914. p. 9 – via newspapers.com.
  41. ↑ "Nashville #94". www.rghfhome.org. Retrieved 2018-07-02.
  42. ↑ S. W. McGill (October 1915). "A Cross Continent Rotary Stunt". The Rotarian: 387.
  43. ↑ "Nashville Letter". The St. Louis Lumberman: 35. January 29, 1916.
  44. ↑ Hamilton Love (December 1918). "Dual Membership". The Rotarian: 252, 275.
  45. ↑ Geltzer, Jeremy (2017-11-03). Film Censorship in America: A State-by-State History. McFarland. pp. 168–169. ISBN 9781476630120.
  46. ↑ "Hamilton Love Named On National Board". The Tennessean. May 8, 1917. p. 10. Retrieved July 2, 2018 – via Newspapers.com. Open access icon
  47. ↑ Elizabeth Mitchell Stephenson Fite (1907). The biographical and genealogical records of the Fite families in the United States. New York E.M.S. Fite. p. 83.
  48. 1 2 "Mrs. Colin Dies; Kin of Jeff Davis". Nashville Banner. November 25, 1963. p. 35 – via Newspapers.com. Open access icon
  49. ↑ Junius Elmore Dovell (1952). Florida: Historic, Dramatic, Contemporary. Vol. 3. p. 381.
  50. ↑ "Tennessee, Death Records, 1914-1955," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:N959-V5P : accessed 5 July 2015), Henry Hamilton Love, 02 May 1922; citing Mt. Olivet Cemetery, Nashville, Davidson, Tennessee, v 9 cn 202, State Library and Archives, Nashville; FHL microfilm 1,299,741.
  51. ↑ "What Nashville Gets From U.T." Nashville Tennessean. May 11, 1922. p. 1. Retrieved July 2, 2018 – via Newspapers.com. Open access icon
  52. ↑ "Hamilton Love Is Severely Injured". The Tennessean. April 14, 1919. p. 12. Retrieved July 2, 2018 – via Newspapers.com. Open access icon
  53. ↑ "Hamilton Love Injured". The Southern Lumberman: 38A. April 19, 1919.
  54. ↑ "Censor, Ill, Get Private Screening". The Tennessean. January 9, 1922. p. 10. Retrieved July 2, 2018 – via Newspapers.com. Open access icon
  55. ↑ "Poems By Hamilton Love Read at Memorial Service Held by Rotarians". The Tennessean. May 10, 1922. p. 8. Retrieved July 2, 2018 – via Newspapers.com.
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