Background
Reuben Francis Kolb was born on April 15, 1839 in Eufaula, Alabama, United States. He was the son of Davis Cameron and Emily Frances (Shorter) Kolb. His father's ancestors came originally from Germany to South Carolina.
planter politician farm leader
Reuben Francis Kolb was born on April 15, 1839 in Eufaula, Alabama, United States. He was the son of Davis Cameron and Emily Frances (Shorter) Kolb. His father's ancestors came originally from Germany to South Carolina.
Kolb was educated in the public schools of Eufaula and at the University of North Carolina, graduating from the latter institution in 1859, at the age of twenty.
Kolb turned to cotton planting in his native county.
He represented Barbour in the secession convention, voted for secession, and joined the Confederate army at the outbreak of hostilities. He rose quickly from the rank of lieutenant to captain and distinguished himself on the battlefield of Chickamauga, where a memorial now stands to "Kolb's Battery. "
After the war he resumed his plantation activities and developed the "Kolb Gem" watermelon which became a favorite variety. In the movement for a scientific agriculture and for cooperation among the farmers he became a conspicuous figure.
He exhibited "Alabama on Wheels"--on a car furnished and operated by the Louisville & Nashville Railroad--to a quarter of a million people in the Central West. Vegetable and fruit farming profited especially from his advertising.
In youth Kolb had revealed a penchant for politics and had won his political spurs in the movement to rid the south of carpetbaggers. He possessed all of the arts of a popular spokesman. He steered the farmers adroitly, and when the Alliancemen decided to go into politics they thought of no leader but him. In the heated battles that followed he became to the farmers "Our Patrick Henry. " He stood for governor in the campaigns of 1890, 1892, and 1894, and threw the state into a tournament of debate and agitation. He made partisans of all--partisans who did not respect the good names of men or observe the canons of decent combat. Northern Republicans discussed the probability of his overthrowing the Democratic machine in Alabama. He accepted gracefully his defeat for governor and for United States senator in 1890, but when the party convention rejected him for governor in 1892 he carried the fight to the people, styling himself and his followers "Jeffersonian Democrats. " The Jeffersonians and Populists nominated him for governor in 1894 and he engaged William C. Oates, candidate of the "Organized Democrats, " in the most colorful campaign in the history of Alabama politics. The "Organized" labeled him a tool of Republican bosses of the North and the leader of those who desired to pillage and plunder. By scandalous manipulations they defeated him. Through the columns of his paper, the People's Tribune (Birmingham), Kolb continued for a while to thunder against election frauds.
In 1910 he was again elected commissioner of agriculture, and in 1914 he was once more a candidate for governor, reminding many persons of his quondam name, suggested by his initials, "Run Forever Kolb. " Eliminated in the first primary, he threw his support to the conservative candidate, Charles Henderson, in the second primary. This was a pathetic ending for one who had worn himself out fighting for progressive democracy in the state. His motives in supporting Henderson have often been questioned, but, whatever else may be said, he was an exponent of the new forces that began to shape the nation's life at the turn of the century.
On January 3, 1860 he married Mary Caledonia Cargile, the daughter of a Barbour County planter.
