John Craft (1847-1936) was a four-term state senator from Mobile who began his political career as the youngest member of the Mobile City Council in 1874. He was also a founder of Mobile’s Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and served as its president for three decades. But he was best known as the Father of Good Roads in the State of Alabama.
His interest in better roads apparently began in the 1870s when he was a partner with Henry Tonsmeire in a grocery store on the southeast corner of Dauphin and St. Emanuel streets. City streets were unpaved and, depending on the season, were either a muddy swamp or a dry dusty mess. After joining the city council, he championed for the paving of a three-block commercial stretch of Dauphin Street using wooden pavement. Next, he focused on the installation of Mobile’s first sanitary sewer system and the completion of a city water works.
Craft & Co.
After his partner’s early death in 1886, the firm operated as Craft & Co. at 75-77 Dauphin Street and advertised as “Grocers, Importers and Liquor Dealers.” Newspapers in southwest Alabama regularly carried ads for his business, such as one stating “Physicians pronounce the James E. Owen a typical whiskey for medicinal purposes and prescribe it in their practice…$1.50 per gallon.”
An ad from 1890 noted that the firm was operating on Dauphin Street “in an extensive three-story building filled with the choicest family groceries.” The store offered “Canned goods and groceries of all kinds…whiskies, wines, brandies, cigars and tobacco at the lowest possible prices.” In November, John Craft reminded his customers: “Christmas is fast approaching. Secure orders for that ingredient in egg-nog which makes it so appetizing and invigorating.”
Bananas and Lumber
By the mid-90s, Craft had joined forces with Edward W. Christian to serve as vice president of Christian & Craft Grocery Company located on South Commerce Street with the addition of a grist mill. It was also at this point that their firm began to import bananas and lumber from Central America.
As the 20th century arrived, and with a comfortable fortune, Craft turned his attention back to politics and was elected a state senator. In that position, he focused on the deplorable condition of roads around the state as the numbers of gasoline powered vehicles began climbing.
In 1901, he was named vice president of the newly formed Alabama Good Roads Association and eventually helped pass a $25 million bond issue to improve roads throughout the state. (About $1.4 billion today). Ten years later, he was a founding member of the Alabama Highway Commission, on which he served until 1923.
Craft Highway
This was a period in which the numbers of automobiles skyrocketed and highways were being built or improved to try and handle them. When the first five mile stretch of concrete highway connecting Mobile to Chickasaw was completed in 1921, it was named Craft Highway in his honor. That road eventually extended all the way to Muscle Shoals via Birmingham.
Craft retired in his early 80s as the oldest member of the state senate. He died in his home on the south east corner of Jackson and Conti streets in 1936 at the age of 89.
Of the numerous newspaper tributes paid him, one described him as “invariably polite and considerate, but with a mind of his own and the courage to express it,” while another wrote “his mind and ability were above the average…Mobile County and the other 66 counties need more like him.”
