1925 Biography - John R. Golson

John R. Golson is an earnest business man whose services have been of great value to Richland Parish since he became a member and president of the parish police jury. Mr. Golson is president and chief owner of the Economy Drug Company, operating stores at Delhi and Oak Grove.

He was born on his father's plantation southwest of Monroe in Ouachita Parish, January 18, 1889, son of David Postel and Elizabeth Virginia (Young) Golson. His father was a boy when the family moved out of Alabama to Louisiana, and his own individual start in life was on a place of forty acres. From that modest beginning, he has developed a plantation of about two thousand acres, is a planter and also a stock raiser and timber dealer. Since the age of twenty-one he has been a member of the Masonic Order, his lodge membership being at Cadeville. He has been a man of great industry, proved honesty and probity, and has well earned the confidence and trust of his fellow men. He is a member of the Methodist Church. He is now sixty-two years of age and his wife, who is fifty-three, was born in Winn Parish, this state. They have a family of ten living children. The sons are: C. 0. Golson; F. K. Golson, who was educated in home schools and the Louisiana State University, and is a teacher in the schools at Monroe; John R.; A. D. Golson, a shipping clerk for the pulp plant at Monroe; D. C. Golson, a garage man at West Monroe, and Thomas A., at home. Four of the sons were with the colors during the World war, F. K., attending an officer's training school at Fort Monroe; A. D. was on the Mexican border and on the battle lines in France and subsequently with the army of occupation in Germany, while D. C. Golson was in the Student's Army Training Corps at Tulane.

John R. Golson received his early education in high school, the State Normal School and the Louisiana State University. He played football on the team at Louisiana State Normal College. For five years he was a teacher, being principal of the Forest School in west Carroll Parish. He left college just a short time before he would have received his degree. When America entered the World war, he joined the Officers' Training Camp at Funston, Kansas, resigning to enter the aviation service and was trained at Austin, Texas, remaining there until the close of the war. Soon after the war he bought a drug business in Delhi with a branch store at Oak Grove.

Mr. Golson Has proved a very capable and successful business man. He served on the town council at Delhi two years while the water works and sewerage system were being constructed. In 1924 he was elected a member of the police jury and was chosen president of the jury. He has introduced a system into the business that has been responsible for much economy of administration. Mr. Golson married Lillye Smith, daughter of W. E. Smith, a wholesale feed merchant at Delhi. The only two organizations Mr. Golson has ever joined were the United States Army and the Ku Klux Klan.

Contributed 2021 Nov 04 by Mike Miller, from A History of Louisiana, by Henry E. Chambers, published in 1925, volume 2, pages 374-375.