1949 - 1950: Profiles of Prominent Citizens

JOHN BARBER HINSON
Businessman and Farmer

August 4, 1950


John Barber Hinson, native Georgian, was born at Hazelhurst, Jeff Davis County in 1892. He was reared to manhood at Hazelhurst where he received his common school education. For two years thereafter he attended the then State Agricultural College at Douglas.

After leaving college, Mr. Hinson was associated with his father, J.F. Hinson, in the wholesale grocery business at Hazelhurst, a connection which occupied him for ten years. Then he entered the cafe and real estate business in Kissimmee, Fla. which he operated with success until 1928. Selling out, he then moved to Waycross where he dealt in the products of International Harvester Co. and all kinds of farm equipment and trucks. In this business he spent the next seventeen years, operating a sawmill at Folkston during the last three years.

In 1944 Mr. Hinson bought the old ice plant site and the home here of Clyde Gowen, to which he moved his family in August, 1944. The plant he rebuilt into a modern ice and cold storage and meat curing establishment.
Before moving to Folkston Mr. Hinson purchased a tract of several thousand acres in Camden County, known as the Old Green Tract near Burnt Fort. On this tract he has a beautiful farm as well as a fine residence and buildings in keeping with a progressive farming plant.

In addition to a large acreage in row crop farming, Mr. Hinson has about 17,000 flowering plants of all descriptions growing on his land. His flower farm is irrigated by the water from a large artesian well which he sank soon after he started his farm, and which furnished him with better than 6,000 gallons of water per hour through the aid of a booster pump. Mr. Hinson says he plans eventually to live on this farm.

Ever civic-minded, Mr. Hinson served the Waycross City Commission from 1936 until 1940. The Waycross Commission elects its own mayor and he served in this position in 1937. Mr. Hinson was Mayor of Waycross during the period when the large city auditorium was built. He states that it was during his administration also that the first traffic light was installed in that city.

During 1947-48, Mr. Hinson served Folkston as Mayor. It was during this time that the city held a bond election in the amount of $15,000, of which $10,000 was allocated for street paving and $5,000 for water extension.
In 1949 he completed a new storage plant on route one in the city where he now enjoys a nice business catering to the needs of produce truckers [ice plant].

In 1927 Mr. Hinson was married to Miss Roberta Emerick of West Virginia. To this union were born two sons John Robert and J.B. Paul and a daughter, Mrs. John Brannon [Nancy] of Atlanta.

Mr. and Mrs. Hinson are both members of the Folkston Methodist Church.

Return to "Queen of the Okefenokee"