Noland Fontaine

Notes:

Noland's home, the Woodruff-Fontaine House, is a historic home in Memphis.

Noland's will probated in White Co. AR

By the age of twenty-one, and with limited experiences, Noland had developed an acute commercial sense, and became a first-class business opportunist. When war clouds began to gather in 1861, he realized that vast fortunes could be made if one were simply in the right place at the right time. For Noland, Memphis, Tennessee was the right place and 1861 the right time. Memphis was ideally located on the Mississippi River between the cotton-growing South and the Northern Mills, where one could acquire contraband cotton at a reduced price and sell it northward where the price would skyrocket. He arrived in Memphis in April of 1861, the same month in which Fort Sumter was fired upon and the Civil War began. With the backing of a certain Louisville interest, Noland quickly established himself as a cotton buyer and became president of the new firm of Hill, Fontaine & Company. By 1862 the city was occupied by Union troops and became the most important center in the South for shipment of cotton to northern mills. On April 21, 1864, Noland married in Memphis, VIRGINIA E. EANES, who was born in Tennessee in 1845. In the years following the war, he became one of the wealthiest businessmen in Memphis, ................Noland died at his home on September 14, 1912. Virginia continued to live at "Fontaine House" with some of their children until her death on July 27, 1928.

Noland married Virginia Eanes on 21 Apr 1864 in Shelby County, TN. Virginia was born in 1845 in Tennessee; died on 27 Jul 1928 in Memphis, Shelby County, TN; was buried in Elmwood Cemetery, Memphis, Shelby County, TN. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]