Excel’s founder, Manning Harrison, has ties to ‘13 Alabama Ghosts’

Excel Lodge No. 655 in Excel, Alabama.

I rode down to Excel on an errand Monday afternoon and happened to enter the town limits about the time school let out. As I made my way through the slow-moving traffic, I got the notion to swing by the store for something cold to drink. Back in my truck, I noticed that the heavy school traffic had quickly died down, leaving the town’s main street as quiet as Mayberry.

I got to thinking about how Excel’s streets must have looked in its early days, when they were unpaved and long before the establishment of Excel High School in the 1920s. While signs at the town limits tell you that the Town of Excel was formally incorporated in 1948, Excel is actually much older than that. Sources say that people began settling the area in the 1870s and that the community takes its name from the establishment of a post office there in 1884.

According to “Place Names in Alabama” by Virginia O. Foscue, when the post office was established in 1884, Manning D. Harrison, who the next year became the owner of the land on which it was located, suggested the inspirational name of “Excel” because he felt the area had a “potential for excellence.” Harrison was born in 1853 and died in 1911. He is buried in the New Home Primitive Baptist Church Cemetery, about 2-1/2 miles, as the mockingbird flies, from downtown Excel.

An interesting sidenote about Excel founder Manning D. Harrison is that he was a close relative of the mysterious William “Grancer” Harrison of Kinston. Made famous by Kathryn Tucker Windham’s book, “13 Alabama Ghosts & Jeffrey,” Grancer Harrison’s ghost still supposedly dances and plays the fiddle around his grave at Kinston. My son James and I visited Grancer’s grave years ago to see it for ourselves, but that tale is a story for another day.

Getting back to Excel, perhaps the most unique building in the entire town is the Masonic Lodge. Many motorists pass this building every day, but very few probably give it a second glance. Located on the corner of Main Street and Buffington Street, this red-brick building houses Excel Lodge No. 655, which traces its roots back to its chartering in December 1907.

The lodge was organized about one year before it received its official charter from the Alabama Grand Lodge, and The Monroe Journal reported that its first officers were G.W. Salter, Worshipful Master; H.R. White, Senior Warden; R.L. Casey, Junior Warden; J.E. Kelly, Treasurer; Riley Kelly, Secretary; E. Parvin, Senior Deacon; J.C. Griffin, Junior Deacon; L.B. Cohron, Chaplain; and William Williams, Tyler. The lodge began with 10 charter members and the “prospects for growth and development are promising,” the newspaper reported.

My feeling is that this lodge building, while historic, is not the oldest building inside the Excel town limits. I’ve been told that one of the houses near the Excel Baptist Church is actually much older, but perhaps some readers know different. If so, let me hear from you because it would be nice to document the oldest buildings in the town for the generations yet to come.