In the early decades of the 1900's, Durham acquired a national reputation for entrepreneurship as African American-owned businesses lined Parrish Street, including N.C. Mutual Life Insurance Co., which moved to Parrish in 1906 and was led by John Merrick, Dr. Aaron Moore, and C.C. Spaulding, and Mechanics and Farmers Bank, founded in 1907 and led by R.B. Fitzgerald and W.G. Pearson.