Acklin Upright Hollis (1865-1947)

From the "Notable Men of Alabama", published in 1904.

     One of Lamar County, Alabama's more prominent residents during the early 20th century, Acklin Upright Hollis was a farmer and merchant during his early life and later went on to hold the offices of Lamar County sheriff and mayor of the town of Sulligent. Hollis would reach his highest degree of political prominence in 1918 when he was elected as a member of the Alabama State House of Representatives from Lamar.
  Born in Lamar County on June 11, 1865, Acklin U. Hollis was the son of former Confederate Army veteran and two-term Alabama legislator Daniel William Hollis and his wife Margaret Miller. Bestowed the highly unusual name "Acklin Upright" upon his birth, Hollis attended public schools in Lamar County and as an adolescent worked on the family farm. He married in October 1887 to Fannie Elizabeth Lowe (1865-1932) in Ironton, Missouri, and the couple later had two sons, Knowlton Lowe (1889-1950) and Peter Miller Carlisle Hollis (born 1894).
    In the early 1900s, Hollis entered the field of merchandising, becoming the manager of the Hollis Brothers Warehouse Co. in the town of Sulligent. During this time he continued farming and later won election as the sheriff of Lamar County, holding office from 1900-1907. A year after leaving this post, Hollis was elected as mayor of the town of Sulligent, serving in this capacity for six years (1908-1914). In addition to his service as mayor and sheriff, Hollis had earlier served as a justice of the peace and postmaster for Sulligent.
   The latter part of the 1910s saw Acklin Hollis continuing as a farmer and businessman, and in November 1918 the citizens of Lamar County elected their former sheriff to a term in the Alabama State House of Representatives. Taking his seat at the beginning of the new year, Hollis served in the legislature from 1919 to 1921 and during his term sat on the house committees on Corporations, Penitentiary and Criminal Administrations, and Public Roads and Highways. 
  Three years after leaving the legislature Acklin Hollis was reelected as Mayor of Sulligent and served a three-year term, 1924-1927. Little else is known of his life after this date, except a notice in the History of Alabama and Her People, Vol. 3, which notes that he maintained memberships in "the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, the Masonic fraternity and the I.O.O.F." Acklin Upright Hollis died on February 24, 1947, at age 81 and was interred alongside his wife at the Sulligent City Cemetery in Lamar County, Alabama.