Killingsworth, Ray C.

Submitted by Mike Miller

Ray C. Killingsworth. The business activities that have chiefly commanded the time and energies of Ray C. Killingsworth have been in the cooperage industry. Mr. Killingsworth is president of the Louisiana Cooperage Company, at Plaquemine, one of the largest industries of its kind in the South.

Mr. Killingsworth was born near Fayette, Mississippi, February 2. 1878. His father, A. S. Killingsworth, was born and spent all his life in Jefferson County, Mississippi, being of Scotch ancestry. The father of A. S. Killingsworth was a native of New York State, while his mother was a Shaw, member of the prominent family of that name still influential in Jefferson County. The mother of Ray C. Killingsworth was Callier L. Comfort, of English ancestry. She was born and reared in Jefferson County, Mississippi, her parents coming from Bowling Green, Kentucky.

Ray C. Killingsworth had the advantages of good schools at Port Gibson, Mississippi; Harrison, Mississippi, and Nashville, Tennessee, and as a young man took up accounting as his profession and occupation. It was in 1905 that he became an accountant with a cooperage manufacturing business in Louisiana. and in 1907 was promoted to manager. In 1920 he resigned as manager to become secretary and treasurer of the Martinez Rubber Manufacturing Company at New Orleans. Eighteen months later, however, he returned to the Louisiana Cooperage Company. and after reorganizing the business, was elected is president. He is owner of a third interest in this corporation, which is chartered and has its domicile at Wilmington, Delaware, but its operating plant is in Plaquemine, Louisiana. Mr. Killingsworth also has an interest in approximately 3,400 acres of land in Iberville and St. Martin parishes.

In his younger years he was a member of the Mississippi National Guard, and served as a noncommissioned officer of Company B of the First Mississippi Volunteers. A democrat, he has given some of his time and assistance in the election of state and parish officials, his chief interest in public affairs probably being in behalf of good schools, he was a member of the school board from the Eighth Ward of Iberville Parish from 1909 to 1913, and was a member of the building committee which erected a high school at Plaquemine. He is a thirty-second degree Scottish Rite Mason and a Shriner, a member of the Knights of Pythias and Elks, and is a Methodist.

Mr. Killingsworth married at Plaquemine, May 14, 1908, Miss Freddie Robertson, daughter of F. D. Robertson, and a member of the distinguished Robertson family of old Virginia and later of Tennessee. Col. James Robertson was founder of the City of Nashville. The Louisiana branch of the Robertsons has been chiefly known through their prominent connections with the sugar industry.

NOTE: The referenced source contains a black and white photograph of the subject with his/her autograph.

A History of Louisiana, (vol. 2), pp. 243-244, by Henry E. Chambers. Published by The American Historical Society, Inc., Chicago and New York, 1925.