Georgia and Georgians - the Digital Library of Georgia

GEORGIA AND GEORGIANS 3123Cordele Sash, Door and Lumber Company. This is probably the largest andmost important industry of the kind in South Georgia.He was born in Cochran, Georgia, April 3, 1874, the sixth in a family ofeleven children whose parents were W. T. and Priscilla (Dykes) Roebuck.Both parents were born in Georgia, and hi_s father served with a Georgia regiment throughout the period of the Civil war, and was once wounded in battle.For many years he was a farmer and planter in Pulaski County, where hedied in 1898 at the age of sixty-seven, and his wife passed away in the sameyear at the same age.As a boy W. L. Roebuck attended grammar and high schools at Cochran,and at a comparatively early age entered the lumber business at Mitchellville.He was first employed in a clerical capacity but rapidly mastered all the detailsof the lumber trade and industry, and was with one firm*five years. In 1903 hecame to Cordele and became identified with the Cordele Sash and Door andLumber Company. He has for a number of years been its vice presidentand treasurer. This company was organized in 1898, and the first presidentwas W. C. Acock, while Mr. E. P. McBarney is now president. The industryis one of the important assets of Cordele, sincg it employs about seventy-fivemen, and has a product which goes all over the Southeastern states. Thecompany ship many carloads annually of botji finished and rough lumberand also sash, door and general house building materials.Mr. Roebuck has also made himself a factor in other affairs of that city,is a director of the Cordele National Bank, and at the present is servingas an alderman. He is deacon in the First Baptist Church, is a Mason andShriner, a Knight of Pythias and also an Elk.On September 2, 1897, at Tifton he married Miss Lola Jessup, daughterof Dr. P. A. Jessup, a well known Baptist minister at Tifton. Mr. andMrs. Roebuck have four children: Miss Evelyn, born at Cordele in 1898 andnow a student in the high school; Mildred, born in 1903 and also in school;Edwin born in 1908; and Barnwell, born in 1910.LUTHER PARKS STEPHENS, M. D., in point of years of continuous workis one of the oldest members of the medical fraternity of Atlanta. His professional career rests upon a broad foundation of scholarship and in the general field of medicine and surgery he has few peers in the state. Thirty yearsof active practice have brought him many of the most coveted honors and distinctions of the profession.He also represents an honored name in the South. His ancestry is ofRevolutionary stock. The Stephens family originated in England and sinceits settlement in the United States has lived mainly in South Carolina, Kentucky and Georgia. An early ancestor was Joshua Stephens, a wealthyplanter, who married Elizabeth Dyer, a native of England. Their son JosephW. Stephens was married in Grainger County, Tennessee, to Hannah Cox.Of their six sons and four daughters one was Maj. Sam Stephens, grandfather of Dr. Stephens of Atlanta.Born in Kentucky June 6, 1813, Major Stephens in 1835 married MarthaT. Baker. They became the parents of five sons and five daughters. Thoughwell advanced in years at the time, Major Stephens enlisted and served loyallyin the Confederate cause in the war between the states.A son of Major Sam Stephens and wife, William J. Harwell Stephens,father of Doctor Stephens, became a substantial business man of Hall County,Georgia. He was an intimate friend of the late Governor Alien D. Candler,and for a time was his associate in business. For three years he served inthe Confederate army as a member of Cobb's Legion, that brave body of menorganized by Gen. Thomas R. R. Cobb, who gave his life to the cause. William J. Harwell Stephens married Eliza M. Parks, whose people belonged toSouth Carolina. One of her ancestors was Henry Parks, a Revolutionary)