Julia Tarrant Barron

Julia Tarrant Barron (1805–1890) was a founder of Judson College in Marion, Alabama, and Howard College, renamed subsequently to Samford University now located in Homewood, Alabama. She also co-founded The Alabama Baptist newspaper with pastor Milo P. Jewett and donated the land for the construction of the Siloam Baptist Church. She was posthumously inducted into the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame.

Biography Julia Ann Tarrant was born on December 18, 1805, in Abbeville, South Carolina, but her family moved in the mid-1810s to Alabama Territory before statehood settling in Elyton. She married the merchant and plantation owner, William C. Barron, in 1828 and the following year, their only child, John Thomas Barron was born. William died within 4 years of their marriage in 1832, she helped found The Alabama Baptist newspaper with Jewett, who at that time had succeeded as the pastor of Siloam Church. Then John died in 1868 and his wife died in 1875, leaving an impoverished Barron to care for their two daughters.

She died on February 5, 1890, in Marion, Alabama. She was inducted into the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame in 1991, the largest residence hall on the Judson College campus was named in her honor, and in 2008 a commemorative project of the Selma, Alabama, chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution honored Barron as a woman whose contributions to Alabama helped both the state and the nation.