In 1904, Alabama industrialist Frazier Michel Douglass, Sr. hired a carpenter from Alexander City, Alabama to build the Douglass House, a two-story Queen Anne Victorian that might be the only home of this architectural type in Crenshaw County. Douglass was a merchant and manufacturer who, in the early 20th century, moved his cottonseed oil mill to Luverne, where he also manufactured lumber. From 1907 to the 1930s, the mill was the area's largest employer, employing forty to fifty people. Both businesses eventually failed, and Douglass closed them to pay off debts. Frazier Douglass died in 1937.