He then took into partnership with him his old friend and office companion, Mr. Willis Shaw, of New Orleans. The business of this firm increased daily, and their store was inadequate for it. Mr. Davin made himself quite popular with every business man of Birmingham, and soon became one of the most enterprising citizens of the city. He has started several enterprises, which now net a very handsome income, and one of which is the American District Telegraph and Merchants' Police and Detective System. The entire city is strung with wires, all leading to his general business office. On each of the principal business corners he has a signal box, from which his patrolmen, constantly on duty, are required to send signals every half hour during the entire night. This system is recognized by every business man of the city. He is a favorite, both socially and in business circles. His manner impresses his hearers at once that he is a. man of business qualities and good judgment.

Mr. Davin married Miss Hattie L. Martin, of Brookhaven, Mississippi, November 18th, 1885, and their union is a happy one.

He is one of the founders of The Alabama Medical and Surgical Journal, and one of its editors. He is a member of the Baptist Church, and quite active in church work. He is one of the editors of the Young Men's Christian Association Journal, of Birmingham, and was a director of the Association until his departure for Europe, January 17, 1887, where he went to attend the surgical clinics in London, Berlin, and Vienna.

The first schooling that William ever received was in his tenth year at Contumant Springs, in an old-fashioned log schoolhouse. In his twelfth year he left this school, and attended night school in Knoxville, where his father had moved in 1857. His education from this time was due to his personal efforts. He worked in the day and went himself to school at night. A noted part of his boyhood experience in Knoxville was the selling of Brownlow's famous work, The Great Iron Wheel Examined. As all readers are aware, this was a reply to the Great Iron Wheel. For some time he sold as many as he could carry in his arms as the result of a single evening's work. His companion in this predatory merchandise was James Brownlow, a son of the noted author, and he had the satisfaction of outstripping his competitor. At the age of sixteen he went into a foundry in Knoxville, and served an apprenticeship of more than five years, hut during all this time he continued to go to night school. At the end of this time he went to Chattanooga, and worked in a foundry and machine shop, and as this was in 1862, he did a great deal of work for the Confederate Government. He was in Chattanooga when the Federal General Buell shelled the town. In the fall of 1863, he returned to Knoxville, and worked there for a short time, and then started on a visit to relatives in Appanoosa County, Iowa. In passing through Louisville, Kentucky, and a favorable opportunity presenting itself, he went to work in an agricultural implement factory. Soon after this he was taken sick with the small pox, from which he was seriously ill for many weeks. After his recovery he worked in Louisville for a short time, and then went to Nashville and worked for several months, and during this time enjoyed the satisfying celebrity of receiving the largest wages of any foundryman or machinist in Nashville. He soon returned to Louisville and engaged to work for a stove manufacturing establishment, and continued to work at the stove manufactories in that city until 1870, and on account of the numerous strikes, which, of course, created confusion among the workmen as well as trouble with the proprietors of the factories, he quit the business for a period of ten years. During this time he followed various callings, but his principal business was the collection of debts. He organized one of the most successful collecting agencies in Louisville, and made a good deal of money.

In 1882 Mr. Dawson returned to his old business, and was employed with Phillips, Burttorff Company, of Nashville. He then returned to Louisville, and went to work for the John G. Baxter Stove Manufactory, and while in this establishment proved his great skill as a molder. At various times he was offered responsible positions but refused them. After the death of Mr. Baxter he was made general superintendent, and has continued with the same company ever since. On the organization of the John G. Baxter Stove Manufacturing Company in Birmingham, after its removal from Louisville, he was made general manager, and no officer connected with the establishment has more fully the confidence of the company.

Mr. Dawson was married in November, 1865, to Mrs. Emma Wallace, a daughter of Mr. J. G. Hewitt, one of the best known foundrymen of Louisville. He has two children—a boy. Clifford Preston, and a girl, Alice, who are to him the sacred relics of a happy wedlock.

The generation of both names, contemporary with the American revolution, were active partisans of the cause of the colonists, and since that period the records of the State attest their participancy in a prominent and honorable service to it. Isaiah DuBose, the grandfather of the subject of this sketch, was among the earliest of the immigrants to Marengo County, who brought with him a large number of slaves to clear its forests. K. C. DuBose, the father, married Elizabeth Boykin, the second daughter of Hon. John D. Witherspoon, a prominent lawyer and statesman of district. In 1850 he moved his family to the canebrakes of Marengo County, where he owned plantations.

The subject of this sketch was educated, in the classics and higher mathematics, at excellent neighborhood schools maintained by the wealthy planters, and by private tutors, Added to these opportunities he enjoyed the use of good libraries, and frequent travel in different parts of the United States. Arriving at manhood he began the occupation of cotton planting in the canebrake, by the labor of slaves inherited.

Senator Morgan, of Alabama, thus referred to Mr. DuBose's career, in this line of business, in a speech delivered from his place in the Senate: " It was but yesterday that I had a letter from a gentleman, who is a scientific cotton grower, as well as a practical cotton grower, perfectly sober in his habits, thoroughly studious; no more industrious man in the world than he is, no more intelligent man, I think, that I know of,"— the example being brought up to prove the profitless character of the business of "cotton grower" in the new era.

When the war between the States opened Mr. DuBose was commissioned quartermaster of the Canebrake Legion, the strongest and wealthiest independent military organization of the State. When the companies comprising it were separated, and mustered into different arms of the regular service, there was no place for his office. He, therefore, at once volunteered as a private. Several honorable discharges from the ranks, and a continuous line of duty in the recruiting and labor impressment departments of the army, comprise his military services.

From early manhood Mr. DuBose has been a regular or irregular contributor, as circumstances allowed, to the newspaper literature of the country. He has been regularly engaged on three of the leading papers of Birmingham, and is now on the editorial staff of the Age; has written a pamphlet of some two hundred pages, descriptive of the city; wrote the paper representing Alabama in the Report of the Federal Bureau of Statistics, for 1886, on Internal Commerce; wrote a large part of this volume; and has been appointed by the family of the great orator and statesman, William L. Yancey, to prepare his biography for publication.