Edwin Wiley Grove

Edwin Wiley Grove

Edwin Wiley Grove (1850 – 1927) was a self-made millionaire most famous for his "Grove's Tasteless Chill Tonic." In this chill tonic, which came out 1878, Grove found a way to bottle a quinine mixture that would eliminate the bitter taste. The tasteless chill tonic, which some claimed was not all that tasteless, was an improvement over taking straight quinine for fevers and chills caused by malaria. A sweet syrup and lemon flavor was added to Quinine, cinchonine and cinchonidine, which were the main ingredients in crystal form in the tonic. Some sources claim that by 1890 more bottles of Grove’s Tasteless Chill Tonic were sold than bottles of Coca-Cola.

“I had a little drug business in Paris, Tennessee, just barely making a living, when I got up a real invention, tasteless quinine. As a poor man and a poor boy, I conceived the idea that whoever could produce a tasteless chill tonic, his fortune was made.” — E.W. Grove

His company was called the Paris Medicine Company [1] and it was through this fortune that he built the Grove Park Inn with his son-in-law Fred Loring Seely in 1913.

Between 1902 and 1905, Grove bought land in Atlanta which he would develop in 1912 as the streetcar suburb Atkins Park, named after family friend and mentor Colonel John DeWitt Clinton Atkins.[2] Later he would develop the Fortified Hills suburb in Atlanta, now the Grove Park neighborhood of Atlanta.

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