My Genealogy Hound

JOHN A. STRATTON, one of the substantial and enterprising young business men of Louisville, and whose portrait appears in this volume, is a Kentuckian, and was born in Henry County, February 24, 1854. He is a son of Elisha B. and Mary (Antle) Stratton, also natives of this State, and who removed to Louisville in 1863, the former as a speculator. He afterward engaged in the brokerage business, and later as a trunk manufacturer. The family were originally from the province of Stratton, England, and immigrated to Virginia prior to the Revolutionary war. The elder Stratton died in 1878. John A., the subject, was educated in the Louisville city schools. At the age of sixteen he commenced traveling for Smith & Rammers, manufacturers of hemp brushes, and continued it for two years, when he bought the business, carried it on for one year, then sold out and returned to school, and graduated from the junior class. He was then compelled to quit school on account of ill health. He engaged in the trunk manufacturing business with R. V. Snodgrass, but shortly after sold out to Chilton, Guthrie & Co., who are now among the largest trunk manufacturers in the city. Ill health, as it had done at school, compelled him to relinquish business and to recuperate his energies. He made a trip to the far West, where he spent a year, and then returned to Louisville. He now opened a collecting agency, making the collection of rents a specialty. This latter branch so increased that, in 1879, he determined to devote his entire attention to real estate. Since that time he has made land values a special study, and is known as an expert in this delicate but important business. He has been employed to divide some of the largest estates in Louisville, and in almost every important suit at law, involving the value of realty, he is called as an expert, and eminently fair witness. No man scented Louisville’s real estate boom as far off as did Mr. Stratton, and the success of his clients was remarkable. He is also something of a real estate lawyer, and generally looks up the law in his own cases, Mr. Stratton estimates that from 1881 to 1883, his business increased 600 per cent, and that it has increased 100 per cent, every year since, up to January, 1887. For the first seven months of 1887 his sales were between $600,000 and $700,000; 300 per cent, more than for the total of 1886. He takes an active interest in all enterprises that tend to advance the growth and prosperity of Louisville, and he exerts all his energies to that end. He is a stockholder in several banks, among which are the Bank of Louisville, Louisville Banking Company, German Bank, etc. He is Secretary of the Louisville Realty Association, and Vice-president of the Daisy Realty Company. He is one of the five constituting the executive committee of the Commercial and Industrial Committee looking towards the improvement of Louisville and State, presenting her advantages and resources. Mr. Stratton was married, in 1874, to Miss Mamie Varble, a daughter of Capt. Pink Varble, one of the oldest steamboat men living in Louisville.