America's 'Okra King' was born and raised in Lower Peach Tree, Alabama

One of my favorite things to do is to look through old newspapers. Not only is it entertaining and educational, but I almost always run across a few surprises. I ran across one such item the other day while looking through some area newspapers that were published in the 1960s.

Under the headline “King Pharr Born At Lower Peach Tree,” I read the following news item – “King Pharr, known all over the United States as the Okra King, established a reputation second to none for the superiority of his canned goods, specializing in okra. He was born in Lower Peach Tree, Ala., the son of John W. and Alabama (King) Pharr, the latter of whom died when King Pharr was three years old. Mrs. King was born in Monroe County and came from a distinguished family. Former vice president William R. King was her great-uncle, and her grandfather was the founder of Judson college.”

As best that I can remember, this was the first time that I’d ever heard of the famous “Okra King” from Wilcox County, so I decided to do more research on this prominent figure. As it turns out, the Okra King’s full name was John King Pharr, and he was born on Oct. 25, 1882 in Lower Peach Tree to John Wales Pharr and Alabama King Pharr. (Both of his parents are buried in Wilcox County – his father at Catherine and his mother at Lower Peach Tree.)

King Pharr eventually got into the vegetable canning business (especially the canning of okra), and his name first appeared on vegetable cans in 1904. The King Pharr Canning Company was headquartered at Catherine for over 40 years, and the Catherine plant was at one time the largest canning facility in the entire United States. The company would go on to have canning plants in many places, including Uniontown, Demopolis and Selma as well as in Georgia and Louisiana.

Unfortunately, King Pharr passed away at the relatively young age of 46 on Jan. 5, 1929. If you go to the New Live Oak Cemetery in Selma today, you’ll find King Pharr’s grave beside that of his wife, Lena Cammock Pharr. King and Lena Pharr only had one son, Goodwin Pharr, and the family business apparently passed to him when his father died.

After a devastating fire at its Catherine canning plant, the company moved its headquarters to Selma in 1944, and in March 1945, near the end of World War II, Goodwin Pharr sold his interest in the company, which moved its headquarters to Cullman a short time later. The company would go on to play a huge role in Cullman history. In fact, if you go to Cullman today, you’ll find a historical marker about the King Pharr Canning Company near the town’s middle school.

According to that historical marker, the McPhillips family of Mobile brought the King Pharr Canning Company to Cullman in 1946. Led by chairman Julian B. McPhillips, the plant became Cullman's biggest employer, employing up to 400 people in the Cullman area. Many hundreds more worked harvesting crops for the company, which had over 1,000 employees in all its plants.

Sources say that the company canned and shipped 33 different types of vegetables all over the country, including berries, green beans, peas, potatoes, tomatoes, and, of course, okra. At its peak in 1959, the company had contracts with over 2,000 individual vegetable farmers. The company produced 30 million cans of vegetables each year, but the business closed in 1976, largely due to the expansion of the fast food industry.

In the end, it can be said that King Pharr went on from humble beginnings at Lower Peach Tree to have a huge impact on the lives of many people all across the country. Not only did he help provide high quality food to many in the form of canned vegetables, but his company also put a lot of people to work. If anyone in the reading audience has any additional information about Wilcox County’s famous “Okra King,” please let me hear from you.