USA > Georgia > Fulton County > Atlanta > History of Atlanta, Georgia : with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers > Part 11
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Daniel Grant, the son of Thomas Grant, and the father of the subject of this sketch, was born in Wilkes county, Ga., March 9, 1782. On June 20, 1810, he married Lucy Crutchfield, daughter of John Crutchfield, who is also mentioned in Smith's history of Methodism in Georgia, and who was, with Thomas Grant, one of the executors of the will emancipating the slaves. He afterwards settled in Greene county, Ga., and there opened and improved a plantation, and had a country store near his home called Grantville. About . 1820 he removed to Athens, Ga., to which place he was attracted by the ad- vantages it offered for the education of his children, and built there a tasteful house, which is still in good repair, near the present Episcopal Church. He was a prosperous planter, and the influence of his rigid honesty and sturdy traits of character was a strong factor in molding the useful and honorable lives of his children. While residing in Greene county, his son, John T. Grant, was born on December 13, 1813. The educational training of the latter was received at home and in the Grammar School at Athens, until his preparation for a collegiate course, when he entered the University of Georgia, from which institution he graduated in the class of 1833. After graduating young Grant began business life on his father's plantation, but remained only one year, when he turned his attention to railroad construction, then in its infancy. In this field of work he directed all his energies with an intelligence and persist- ence that could not fail to bring substantial success. He was a large contractor on most of the railroads built in Georgia before the war ; also in Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas. At the time of his death he, with Colonel L. P. Grant, of this city, and the estate of his brother, James L. Grant, still owned sixty thousand acres of land in Texas, which they had re- ceived for the construction of the first twenty miles of the Southern Pacific road, now a portion of the Texas Pacific.
During the war Colonel Grant suffered the reverses of fortune which came to every material interest of the South. Not only was his business ruined, but nearly all the property his years of toil and industry had acquired had been swept away. His residences at Athens and Walton had been saved, but beyond them he had but little to commence anew the work of retrieving his fallen fortune. He had in his possession the day of his death more than $100,- 000 of Confederate money, most of which had been paid him but a few days before the surrender of General Lee.
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John J Grants
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Soon after the termination of the war he removed to Atlanta and resided with his son, while he improved the beautiful place on Peachtree street, at which he died. Meanwhile, from almost the day of the downfall of the Con- federacy, Colonel Grant was employed in repairing some of the wrecked rail- ways of Georgia. With no current funds but with an untarnished credit he had no trouble in procuring labor or supplies. Later he was a large contractor on the Macon and Augusta, Macon and Brunswick, Brunswick and Albany, Georgia Air Line, Georgia Pacific and Northeastern railroads, and soon re- gained the fortune he had lost.
Colonel Grant's career as a business man was crowned with rare success, achieved by fair and honorable methods. He ever held his honor sacred, and every obligation he assumed was faithfully carried out. No trust was ever slighted, and no duty or business laid upon him was ever evaded. He pos- sessed a remarkably clear and well poised judgment, and was seldom in error upon any business project he had carefully investigated. He was broad and clear in his intellectual grasp, quick in decision, and wise and just in adminis- tration. Through every movement of his business and private life there shone a rigid and unflinching integrity which never yielded to any stress of circum- stances, and was never misled by any plausible consideration of policy. The allurements of political life had no charms for him, and beyond the discharge of the duty every private citizen owes to public affairs, he took but little part in politics. With the exception of representing Walton county in the State Senate in 1856, we believe he never held a public office. His title of colonel was bestowed upon him on account of his having served as an aide on the staff of Governor Howell Cobb. The home of Colonel Grant was three times changed, for, in addition to the house he built in Athens and sold to the late Senator Benjamin H. Hill, and his late elegant mansion on Peachtree street, now occu- pied by his wife, and which is regarded as one of the most desirable residence properties in Atlanta he built a beautiful country home in Walton county.
For some months preceding his death Colonel Grant had been feeble in health, the result of old age and a long and active life. On January 18, 1887, at the evening meal he was stricken with paralysis, was assisted to his bed, and there, with his hand in the hand of his only son, fell asleep, peacefully and tranquilly, never again to awake on earth. The loss of this well-known citizen called forth genuine and heartfelt sorrow. No one has become more deeply entwined in the affections of the people among whom he had so long resided, and whose true nobility of character commanded the respect of all. He was extremely modest and retiring in disposition, and this was shown in his busi- ness, in social intercourse, and above all in his Christian character. He dis- liked parade, and was quiet and unostentatious in every way. Thoroughly admired by all who came in contact with him, he was intimate with few. Prob- ably the warmest friend of his whole life was his brother-in law, the late Chief
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Justice Jackson. The two were near and dear to each other, and the relatives and friends of the one were also united to the other by common ties. The death of Judge Jackson preceded that of Colonel Grant only a few days, and the loss of his friend seemed to weigh very heavily upon him and broke him down with grief, the first time he had been known to be so completely over- come. It seemed a strange fatality that their lives should end so near together. United in early life by the bond of near relationship, they continued to the last, living, working, and almost dying hand in hand. Colonel Grant had a sympathetic nature, and his pity was easily excited and never appealed to with- out generous response. But the extent of his benefactions, scattered with lav- ish hand among his fellows for more than half a century, will never be known, because they were bestowed without publicity, and in many cases without the knowledge of his family or most intimate friends. He shrank from all parade of giving in his deeds of charity, and it was only by accident when his acts of kindness were brought to light. When death closed the earthly career of Col- onel John T. Grant, the words of eulogy that fell from many lips, and the warm tribute of praise to his admirable qualities of mind and heart in the public press of Atlanta attested in a measure the place this quiet and unobtrusive man held in the estimation of those who had known him longest and best. The Atlanta Constitution paid the following editorial tribute to his worth :
"A great man once stood by the side of a little coffin. Over the coffin, in which a boy with waxen and weary face lay sleeping, the preacher said : 'The heart that is stilled there forever never held an ignoble passion; the life ended there never wronged a human being.' The great man said : 'I would give all the honors and wealth I have won to have that said truthfully of me when I am dead.'
" If this was excellent to be said over the coffin of a child, how much more excellent when it can be said at the grave of an old man. How rare that from the struggles and temptations of a long life a man emerges so fresh and un- spotted as to suggest, much less to justify, such praise. Of Colonel John T. Grant, whose death Georgia mourns to-day, these words can be spoken in full and perfect truth. In his life the ideal business man was typified. Broad, liberal, comprehensive, sagacious, of rich integrity and unswerving honesty, he justified the axiom : 'His word is as good as his bond.' Easily mastering the details of his great business, he had leisure and inclination for the gentler and more elegant phases of life, and no better type than he of the old-fashioned Southern gentleman could be found. His hand was as open as his heart, and the day of his death-indeed on the very day of his death-it was given to thoughtful and generous charity. In this, as in much else, his memory is pre- cious and his example inspiring, in teaching the lesson that fortune may be found through better paths than those of sordidness and selfishness, and that wealth, properly won and held, will expand and enrich a noble heart, even as- it hardens and contracts an ignoble one.
n= & Grace
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" He lived a long life, in which good deeds were sown with unstinting hand and far-reaching arm. He died as the tired and weary man falls asleep. The end came to him in no storm or convulsion ; but gently as a leaf parted from the bough in an autumnal breeze floats adown the waiting silences of the for- est, his life, parting from the world, passed into the vast unknown, which men call Death. 'Earth is better for his having lived-heaven will be brighter because of his coming.'"
Some idea of the personal characteristics, native strength and genuine nian- hood of Colonel Grant can be gained from the above, and yet no pen picture can present the man as he was, and call him back in the full proportions hield in the memories of those who knew him best. He leaves behind him a record without a blot, an example which the dust of the whirring years cannot hide, an influence whose choice magnetism will still pervade the society in which he moved, and the memory of those virtues which made his character so admira- ble and rendered his life so symmetrical and wholesome and worthy. As a man he was true in all the relations of life ; as a husband, fulfilling to the utmost the duties which that relation imposed; as a father, kind and indulgent ; as a friend he was steadfast in attachment, and generous to a fault; as a citizen he was law abiding in sentiment and conduct, patriotic in motive, and a helper and well wisher of every good work having for its object the elevation and improvement of his fellow citizens.
Standing under the light of a life and character like this, and viewing the ground in which they had germ, and the influences under which they grew, one cannot but feel that the best types of manhood are created and developed on this American soil, and that what one has done worthily another may do as well. Viewed thus, the work of Colonel Grant is not yet done, but out of the past his memory arises in grand proportions and stands as an example and incentive to the youth of the generations that are to come.
Colonel Grant's domestic life was ideal in its congeniality and mutual love. He was married on December 13, 1834, to Miss Martha Cobb Jackson, the daughter of William H. Jackson and Mildred Cobb, and granddaughter of Governor James Jackson. The marriage took place in Athens, at the home of Mrs. Grant's uncle, John A. Cobb, and the father of Generals Howell and T. R. R. Cobb. To Colonel Grant and wife but one child was born, Captain W. D. Grant, who was intimately associated with his father in business for many years, and whose biography appears elsewhere in this volume. Mrs. Grant still survives her husband and resides at the beautiful home on Peachtree street, which Colonel Grant, during his last years, had delighted to beautify and adorn.
RANT, WILLIAM DANIEL, the only surviving child of John Thomas J Grant and Martha Cobb Jackson, was born at Athens, Ga., on the 10th day of August, 1837, in the house of his paternal grandfather, Daniel Grant.
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When Mr. Grant was about seven years of age his father settled in Walton county, Ga., one mile from Monroe, on the road to Social Circle. Mr. Grant attended school at Monroe until he was fifteen years of age, and at that time entered the freshman class at the University of Georgia, at Athens. After leaving college he studied law under his uncle, the late Chief Justice James Jackson, and was admitted to the bar, but did not practice. Before he was twenty years of age he took charge of his father's plantation in Walton county, which he managed with marked success for four years. He was the first per- son who used commercial fertilizers in Walton county, raising a bale of cotton to the acre on entire fields of very thin soil. He was unanimously elected captain of the first cavalry company sent from Walton county, and served in the Confederate army until discharged on account of ill health. Later during the war he was superintendent of the construction of the fortifications around Atlanta, under the direction of Colonel L. P. Grant, of the engineer corps. Soon after the war Mr. Grant settled in Atlanta at the place where he now lives, and became associated with his father in building railroads and other public works, and was actively engaged in that business until the year 1885. In the meantime he was a large and successful planter, raising for several years fifteen hundred bales of cotton per annum, and at the same time raising his own plantation supplies. He has improved a large amount of real estate in Atlanta, and is at this time said to be the largest city taxpayer.
Mr. Grant was married June 13, 1866, to Miss Sallie Fannie Reid, the daughter and only child of William Reid and Martha Wingfield, of Troup county, Ga. They have two surviving children : John W. Grant, aged twenty, at present teller of the Bank of the State of Georgia, in Atlanta, and Sallie Fannie Grant, now at school in New York City. Mr. Grant retired from active business during the year 1884, and since then has devoted his attention to the improvement and management of his property, the education of his children and the pleasures of his family. He has a voluminous and well selected library, and spends much of his time with his favorite authors.
G OODE, SAMUEL WATKINS. Perhaps the most elaborate family his- I tory ever published in this country is that now being prepared respect- ing the Goodes, by Professor G. Brown Goode, of the Smithsonian Institute, Washington. He has made this work a labor of love, and for many years has, as a pastime, been collecting matter for this family book. He traces the an- cestry of the Goodes back to the fourteenth century in the west of England. The spelling of the name was first G-o-d-e, and " Richard Gode," is the first ancestor now known. Following his descendants down from generation to generation, the second, third and fourth generations were each represented by "William Gode"; the fifth, by Richard; the sixth, by Walter Gode; the seventh, by William Goode, who married Joan Whitstone, of Whitstone, in Cornwall,
Lamil W Good
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BIOGRAPHICAL.
England. Richard Goode, of " Whitley," represents the eighth generation, and it is his name in which the spelling is G-o-o-d-e for the first time. He married Isabel Penkevil, of an ancient Cornish family, descended from William the Conqueror, and the Saxon and Scotch kings of England. The ninth gen- eration was represented by Richard Goode, who married Joan Downe, of Dev- onshire, England, in A. D. 1580. The tenth generation was also represented by a person of the same name, Richard Goode, and the eleventh, by John Goode, a Royalist soldier, who married Martha Mackarness, of the island of Barbadoes, in the West Indies, and who came to Virginia about A. D. 1660, and settled on the James River, about four miles below Richmond. His was the first house built there, and it was called " Whitby," in memory of the old English home. He was the friend and neighbor of " Bacon, the Rebel," and was with him in his earlier campaigns.
Samuel Goode is heard of the first time in the family record in the twelfth generation. He seems to have been born about A. D. 1660, on the island of Barbadoes, and came with his father, John Goode, to Virginia, where he mar- ried Miss Martha Jones, the daughter of Samuel Jones, a Welsh colonist of Virginia, near Richmond, in Henrico county, and died some time after A. D. 1734. He left a son, Samuel Goode (the thirteenth generation), born in Hen- rico county, Va. (1690 to 1700), who married a Miss Burwell, and who died 1760 to 1780. He left surviving him his second son, Mackarness Goode, born from 1735 to 1740, and who died between A. D. 1780 and 1810, and of the fourteenth generation. In the fifteenth generation comes Samuel Goode, son of Mackarness, who was born from 1710 to 1740, who probably married a Miss Watkins, and who died about A. D. 1760 to 1796.
The full name, "Samuel Watkins Goode," first appears in the family record in the sixteenth generation, and he was the grandfather of the present Samuel Watkins Goode, of Atlanta, the subject of this biography. He was born in Mecklenburg county, Va., in 1780, and died in Montgomery, Ala., in 1851. He married Miss Eliza Hamilton, of Athens, Ga., by whom he had born six sons and daughters, one of whom, Samuel Watkins Goode, was the father of the gentleman of whom we now write. Thus it will be seen that Samuel Watkins Goode, of Atlanta, Ga., has the same name as his father and grandfather. His grandfather removed, when quite a lad, to Edgefield district, South Carolina, where he was educated. He settled 1790-95, in Washington, Wilkes county, Ga., and engaged in the practice of law. Here he married and brought up his elder sons, and was at one time the wealthiest man and heaviest taxpayer in the State, owning extensive plantations, and serving as judge of the Superior Court. He was a man of fine culture and elegant manners, upright and de- vout, and noted for his charities and good works. The father of our subject was born and reared in Washington, Wilkes county, Ga. He graduated at the State University in Athens ; was thoroughly prepared at the best schools of
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the time for the medical profession ; practiced successfully the allopathic sys- tem, until during the last ten years of his life, which he devoted with enthusi- asm to homeopathy, and was rewarded with a lucrative practice. He was a gentleman of refined manners, of studious habits, and broad culture, and he was. an exemplar of the high moral principles he taught his children, of whom there were three sons and five daughters. His wife, the mother of these, Miss Mar- tha Elizabeth Kirpatrick, was in many respects a remarkable woman. Both of her parents died before 1858. In 1860 her husband, Dr. Samuel W. Goode, also died. Not one of her eight children was then grown or married, and one was unborn. The " war between the States " came on. She had the respon- sibility of managing about one hundred slaves on a large plantation in Stewart county, Ga., and of maintaining and educating her children. Bravely and suc- cessfully she met her duties. She had rare intelligence, unbounded energy, and great practical judgment. Her faith in God was unwavering, her life a beautiful example and a powerful iufluence for good upon her household and community; and here it was that her son, Samuel Watkins Goode, about whom we write, imbibed those lessons of frankness, courtesy and uprightness which so strongly characterize him. He was born in Stewart county, Ga., and not quite thirteen years old when his father died. Up to that time he had attended the best schools and had the benefit of his father's instructions at home - a father ambitious that his son should be thoroughly educated and generally cul- tivated both in manners and books, and a father very competent to instruct by precept as well as example. Hence it was that his progress in his books was thorough and rapid. But the father's death, followed quickly by the war, seri- ously interrupted this training. Teachers went to the war, schools suspended, and confusion and anxiety prevailed. One year was spent in school at Wav- erly Hall, in Harris county, Ga., with Mr. Ira Foster as teacher, and a few months at the Georgia Military Institute, at Marietta, just before the armies came along there; and this was about all the time Mr. Goode gave, during the war, to academic studies. He left Marietta with the cadets, under Colonel F. W. Capers, went with him to West Point, to Milledgeville, and then to the trenches around Atlanta. He was the first of all the Georgia cadets to be wounded, be- ing shot through the left shoulder by a minnie ball in the trenches near the present boulevard in Atlanta. This wound unfitted him for further field ser- vice, and, after being at home some weeks, he was assigned to duty in the en- gineering supply department with Major Nathaniel Green (afterwards president of the Lebanon Law School of Tennessee), at Macon, Ga., where he remained until the surrender. This was in the spring of 1865. He now went to his. home in Stewart county, Ga., and took the management of the large farm of his mother for that year. Arrangements for 1866 were made so that the farm could be looked after by an overseer, and, anxious to continue his studies, he accepted an offer from the principal of a very large school to teach as assistant
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BIOGRAPHICAL.
in Brundidge, Pike county, Ala. He was now just eighteen years old, and as there were many advanced classes among the seventy-five pupils, it was argeed that he should have special charge of Greek and Latin and the higher mathe- matics. He succeeded admirably, and at the end of the year was offered the place as principal, his friend retiring. This position he declined, and in 1867 accepted an offer of $1,200 to teach seven pupils, four boys and three girls, in Bibb county, Ga., and it was in this private select school, with so much time to devote to each recitation, that he made a reputation which, coupled with a wonderful facility for illustration of the subject of the lessons, and for impart- ing information, and with fine disciplinary powers, enabled him to make about ten thousand dollars in the five years he taught. His vacations he spent in traveling, mainly in the Middle and New England States and Canada, and in these five years he continued his studies far beyond the usual curriculum of our colleges. The first money he made was applied to the obligations incurred by his mother during the trying years of the war for the maintenance and school- ing of his younger brother and sisters, and for the plantation expenses; and dur- ing all of the five years of his work in the school-room he contributed largely to the board and education of his brother and sisters. In the winter of 1870 he quit a certain income of $2,500 a year, as teacher of a select school, to enter upon the study of law. Introduced by Hon. Alexander H. Stephens to friends in the North, in January, 1871, Mr. Goode became a law student at the Al- bany, New York Law School, now part of Union College, and out of a class of seventy-five, representing most of the universities and various colleges from Maine to California, he was the only Southerner. Notwithstanding this fact, and the existence of the strong sectional prejudices of that time between the North and the South, his standing and deportment were such that in the only popular election held by the class for any place he was elected "speaker of the House," as it was then constituted to represent the lower House of our na- tional Congress, to train the students in parliamentary law. He graduated in 1871, taking his degree of Bachelor of Laws, and on motion of Hon. Ira Har- ris, Roscoe Conkling's predecessor in the United States Senate, was admitted to practice in all the State courts of New York, and in the United States courts. In January, 1872, he opened an office in Savannah, Ga., and was admitted to both the State and Federal courts of this State. In November, 1872, he re- moved to Eufaula, Ala., to live. There he made friends rapidly and did a large practice, being employed on one side or the other of the most important cases. He and Hon. Sterling B. Toney, then residing at Eufaula, became associated as law partners under the firm name of Goode & Toney, and they soon became noted for their ability and success. Mr Toney removed to Kentucky in 1876, where he is now judge of the Law and Equity Court at Louisville, and is recog- nized as one of the best lawyers and judges in that State. Mr. Goode re- mained in Eufaula practicing his profession with marked success until 1881.
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While there he identified himself thoroughly with the community in various ways. For instance, he taught an infant class in Sunday-school for years, in- creasing the number of pupils from nine to more than one hundred. He estab- lished a public library in Eufaula, and was for several years its president. The editor of a local paper in referring to this in 1879, said : "It will be cheerfully conceded that to Mr. Samuel W. Goode Eufaula is indebted for a library that cities of larger pretension would be pleased to number among their institutions, and we, in common with all who are informed on the subject, accord to him all honor for the conception that led to the formation of the society, and for the zeal and energy that has kept it alive and prosperous in the face of ob- stacles and difficulties which, to most men, would have been insurmountable."
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