Ardmore2021

History of Ardmore Telephone Company

Four investors bought the Ardmore Telephone Company in 1958. The three principal partners were K.W. Rogers, Jr., Lee O. Brayton, Jr., and David Nunn. The fourth partner in the Ardmore venture was a Mr. Edmundson of Cornersville. He served as vice president and general manager until the 1970s, then sold his interest to his three co-investors. Besides the Ardmore purchase in 1958, the four men bought Minor Hill Telephone Company serving 185 customers; Boonshill Telephone Company and its 127 customers; and the Dellrose Telephone Company with 108 customers. Boonshill and Dellrose were combined to form the McBurg exchange of Ardmore Telephone Company. In addition to their Tennessee properties, the men also owned the Elkmont and New Market Telephone Companies in Alabama, acquired in the late 1950s. Rogers, Brayton, and Nunn had been deeply involved in the telephone business in Tennessee. The year before they bought Ardmore, Rogers and Brayton each acquired one-sixth interest in Friendship Telephone Company from Max Earnheart. Friendship Telephone evolved into Crockett Telephone Company and was eventually bought by Telephone Electronics Corporation of Bay Springs, Mississippi. Rogers, Brayton and Nunn also invested in Cities Telephone Company (later, United Telephone Company) at the request of Elmer Bivens. He had held one-third interest in Friendship Telephone when Rogers and Brayton bought into it. Ardmore and the several systems owned by Rogers, Brayton, Nunn, and Edmundson were common

Zelma Parker had moved to Ardmore in 1904 (her family following later) to teach at the local school. She remembers the installation of the town’s first telephone four years later in a little store owned by Lonnie Ivy. Only a handful of residents had telephones of their own, so Ivy would take messages for others and pass them along. Miss Zelma recalls taking her students on a tour of the telephone company in 1928, located now in an upstairs office near the railroad depot. Bula Troxler was operator at the new magneto switchboard installed the year before. Mr. O. H. Edwards remembers that his mother, Carrie Edwards Whitt, was the operator for Ardmore Telephone Company around 1930. At that time, she was a widow with three children and they lived upstairs at the telephone office. The switchboard was down the hall from their living quarters. As a small boy, Mr. Edwards remembers his mother at the switchboard connecting calls, and he even connected a few. In order to make a long distance call, customers would have to come to the office and use the telephone there. For thirty years Ardmore remained a small, rural hamlet, suspended in time, and things changed very little, including its telephone service. By the mid-1950s the antiquated system was serving about 230 customers over 20 miles of open wire. The operation was owned by the Merrill family. Besides this business, Fount Merrill worked as a TVA engineer. In August 1955 he officially incorporated Ardmore Telephone Company and became one of the first Tennessee compa- nies to apply for a loan from the Rural Electrification Administration. With the funds Merrill installed 90 miles of new copper cable and finally replaced the aged magneto switchboard with a modern dial office in a new commercial building.

battery systems. The new manage- ment secured loan money from the Rural Electrification Administration in the late 1950s and early 1960s to convert them to central dial offices. Between 1970 and 1976 each exchange was rebuilt, buried cable was installed, and one- party service was established system-wide. Ardmore Telephone Company now served 2,600 cus- tomers.

28