John Horry Dent, Wellborn's maternal grandfather, who came to Alabama in 1836, was a prosperous Barbour County planter. In 1866, he sold his plantation and bought a farm in Floyd County, Georgia, where he died in 1892 Charles Iverson Graves, Wellborn's father-in-law and a Georgia native, served as a midshipman aboard the U.S.S. Minnesota of the East India and China Squadron in 1853, spending several months in China. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1857. In 1861 he resigned his commission and entered the Confederate Navy. After the war, he farmed in Newton County, Georgia, until 1875, when he accepted a commission in the Egyptian Army. He returned to Georgia in 1878, dividing his time between farming and civil engineering until his death in 1896. Maximillian B. Wellborn, raised and educated in Eufaula, Alabama, was in the insurance, real estate and banking business in Anniston, Alabama, from 1887 to 1914. When the Federal Reserve System was organized in 1914, he was named Chairman of the Board of the Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank, and was selected governor of the bank in 1919. After retiring in 1927 and returning to Alabama, he served as Calhoun County's state senator from 1934 to 1937.