Olan Mills Sr. (May 9, 1904 – April 15, 1978) was an American photographer and entrepreneur known for co-founding the company
Olan Mills
Olan Mills, Inc. was a privately owned American company founded in 1932 by Olan Mills Sr. and Mary Mills which was headquartered in Chattanooga, Tennessee. It provided portrait photography and church directories through its two main corporate di ...
with his wife, Mary Mills.
Life and career
In 1932, Mills and his wife launched their business in
Selma, Alabama
Selma is a city in and the county seat of Dallas County, in the Black Belt region of south central Alabama and extending to the west. Located on the banks of the Alabama River, the city has a population of 17,971 as of the 2020 census. Abou ...
. They used an old shed which they converted into a darkroom.
To improve business they started going door-to-door. In 1938, the couple opened its first permanent studio, located in
Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Pine Bluff, officially the City of Pine Bluff, is the List of municipalities in Arkansas, tenth-most populous city in the U.S. state of Arkansas and the county seat of Jefferson County, Arkansas, Jefferson County. The population of the city wa ...
.
The first Olan Mills plant opened in 1940 in
Springfield, Ohio
Springfield is a city in Clark County, Ohio, United States, and its county seat. It is located in southwestern Ohio along the Mad River (Ohio), Mad River, Buck Creek, and Beaver Creek, about west of Columbus, Ohio, Columbus and northeast of ...
.
Mills died at his home in
Dallas
Dallas () is a city in the U.S. state of Texas and the most populous city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the List of Texas metropolitan areas, most populous metropolitan area in Texas and the Metropolitan statistical area, fourth-most ...
on April 15, 1978, from
head injuries
A head injury is any injury that results in trauma to the skull or brain. The terms ''traumatic brain injury'' and ''head injury'' are often used interchangeably in the medical literature. Because head injuries cover such a broad scope of inju ...
sustained in a
fall
Autumn, also known as fall (especially in US & Canada), is one of the four temperate seasons on Earth. Outside the tropics, autumn marks the transition from summer to winter, in September (Northern Hemisphere) or March ( Southern Hemispher ...
.
[United Press International (April 18, 1978)]
Olan Mills, Founder of Photo Studio Chain, Dies at 73.
''Los Angeles Times
The ''Los Angeles Times'' is an American Newspaper#Daily, daily newspaper that began publishing in Los Angeles, California, in 1881. Based in the Greater Los Angeles city of El Segundo, California, El Segundo since 2018, it is the List of new ...
''
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mills, Olan Sr.
1904 births
1978 deaths
20th-century American businesspeople