Robert Benjamin (" RB " or " Bob ") Babington (August 24, 1869 - November 28, 1935 is a businessman, telecommunications pioneer, banker, city councilor Gastonia, North Carolina, President of the deceased Armington Hotel Co., founder of North Carolina Orthopedic Hospital and high-ranking Freemasons whose fame led to inclusion in Leonard Wilson's 1916 book series Makers of America : Biography of the Mind and Leading Action ".
Video R. B. Babington
Starter
Babington was born August 25, 1869 in Lincoln County, North Carolina to Elisha Babington and Margaret Isabelle Haynes. Elisha Babington is a foundryman and builder, in fact, Babington was born at a site called Reinhardt's stove, the remainder of the charcoal-powered iron industry that flourished in Southern Piedmont North Carolina and was replaced by a cotton and rail factory on the 19th of the century. One source links his father's line to an old metal casting and bell company in New Jersey after unknown Babington immigrated from England. His mother's genealogy contained North Carolina planters and a revolutionary veteran, Robertson Goodwin who allowed Babington to enter the Children of the American Revolution, while his maternal uncle was the sheriff of Lincoln County.
Maps R. B. Babington
Careers
He was educated in Charlotte, North Carolina at Macon High School before moving to Winston Graded School and Boys Male Academy in Winston, NC and Salem, NC, respectively. Age 17, he started working as a train agent and telegraph operator. For thirteen years in the industry, he received several promotions. As an active follower of the new invention, he began working with the telephone in 1895 and built the first independent line in his territory in North Carolina. This includes the line between the Air Line Train Depot, Post Office, and his own home in Mount Holly, North Carolina. Mt. Holly's first telephone exchange, which he built, started with twenty customers and connected the cotton, railway, post office, drugstore, etc. Babington will then invest in industries such as cotton and rail.
In May 1899, he resigned as a railroad agent and telegraph operator to move to Gastonia, North Carolina and start a phone business. From now on with sixty-four customers, it expanded its new network to more than seven districts and crossed the border into South Carolina. Babington-Love Interests, its trademark, eventually absorbed the first telephone system from Gaston County built by Henry M. McAden in McAdenville, North Carolina. Shifting away from the engineering aspect he described as "the cost of blood sweats", he became Assistant Treasurer, General Manager, and Director of the Telephone and Telegraph Company of Piedmont and over time, Vice President and Director of Armstrong Cotton Mills Company, Director of Corporate Loans and Trust Gaston , and Director of the First National Bank. A popular figure, he also elected Alderman of Gastonia. After several years, Piedmont Telephone and Telegraph Company was acquired by Southern Bell Telephone and Telegraph Company where he continued to work until June 1933.
In sympathy with being a prominent citizen, Babington purchased a second car in Gastonia in 1904, a $ 675 Locomobile Holding Ship that he often toured around town as depicted in a newspaper clipping in front of the Falls House, where the crowd used to wait for the train. The Falls House of Gastonia then became the location of the Armington Hotel in Babington which was founded in 1914 and opened on 31 August 1915 for $ 75,000. The building, named by incorporating Babington and the last name of its major partner, Armstrong, was later destroyed in 1959 and today. many of which are railway overpasses. Characteristically, every room must have telephone service. Until then, a much more altruistic project was in his mind, the North Carolina Orthopedic Hospital.
Philanthropy
Babington read in 1909 about an orphanage that has no financial means to accept a paralyzed child in his institution. His immediate reaction: "" I swear at that and there never stops until North Carolina has a place to nurture and care for its poor and poor children. I dreamed of it that night; the vision will not pass. "The project, presented to Commercial Travelers Club of Charlotte and leased on April 9, 1914, was ambitious as it would be the first orthopedic hospital in south Philadelphia and local subsidies were rare at the time.He wanted free health care , for the latest surgical techniques to be used, and for hospitals to be home to disabled children. After Babington studied orthopedics and lobbied the State for nearly a decade, the North Carolina General Assembly earned $ 25,000 in 1917 for the school construction provided partly from funds can be locally matched A woman named Lena Rivers is very important in convincing the Assembly before the Babington vote brings in local fundraising to generate $ 10,000 from Gastonia and $ 5,000 from Charlotte businessman and opened North Carolina Orthopedic Hospital (NCOH) on July 1, 1921 on 26 hectares between two urban zones ds ($ 7,500 per year) for treatment, Gastonia provides free water and electricity, and local businesses plan holiday celebrations for patients. One of the most famous surgeons was Oscar L. Miller and a year after Babington died, a famous visitor was Franklin D. Roosevelt when it had 160 beds, all filled. Coincidentally, the hospital valiantly responded to the 1940s polio epidemic. From the beginning, the NCOH received black children and in 1966, the agency was integrated. It was only in 1979, when the disease paralyzed less frequently, that the service was absorbed by other hospitals, at Duke University, and Wake Forest University.
A few years after opening the hospital, Babington may be tired, going for a world tour in 1923.
Family life
Babington married the same year his father died, at the age of 18 on February 22, 1888, Buena Vista Biggerstaff with whom he had children Robert Kenneth, Raymond and John (died in infancy), and Mildred. Widow by Buena Vista in 1897, she remarried, this time to Hattie A. McLurd, and Merle's father (died in infancy), Mary Love, Robin Benjamin (R.B. Jr.), Isabel Macauley, Harriet Maupin, and Ruth. Kenneth studied electrical engineering and would become a frequent business partner of his father and then his biographer while R.B. Jr. called for insurance business with his uncle Mr. E. G. McLurd. Babington's interest in children was manifested in a 1909 call to create schools for children with disabilities. He also provides the first free park for children in Gastonia. Her mother Margaret Isabelle died in Charlotte in June 1916 after a lifetime of community involvement that significantly affected her son. Finally, many of his family members were stone masons and while he became affiliated with all Masonic bodies, including Blue Lodge, his grandmother Catherine Sweet Babington (died 1886), had become the only female handmaid in America, inducted into Blue Lodge because she had spat- watch their meeting. Babington died on November 28, 1935 because of illness at the age of 66 and was buried in his hospital.
Further reading
- Angus M. McBryde Jr. and Read McBryde Spence, The History of North Carolina Orthopedic Hospital: A Dream Come True (1991)
- Lenox D. Baker, "Orthopedic in North Carolina," in Dorothy Long, ed., Medicine in North Carolina (1972), 725-745
- Charles J. Frankel and R. Beverly Raney, "Oscar Lee Miller, 1887-1970," Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery 53-A (1971 [portrait])
- Phone exchange
- Telecommunication history
- History of poliomyelitis
References
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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