Lemuel Grant

L.P. Grant
Personal details
Born	(1817-08-11)August 11, 1817
Died	January 11, 1893(1893-01-11) (aged 75)
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Lemuel Pratt Grant (1817–1893) was an American engineer and businessman. He was Atlanta's quintessential railroad man as well as a major landowner and civic leader. In railroads he served as a laborer, chief engineer, speculator and executive all over the South. As part of his speculation, he owned enormous tracts of land in strategic areas. For example, at one point he owned more than 600 acres (240 ha) in what is now Atlanta. He designed and built Atlanta's defenses during the American Civil War and afterwards became an important civic leader: donating the land for Grant Park, Atlanta's first large park, and serving as councilman and on various boards and committees. His mansion is one of only four remaining original antebellum houses in the city of Atlanta.

Early career

Born in Frankfort, Maine, he came south in the 1840s to work on the Georgia Railroad where he started as a laborer. By 1844 he was buying large tracts of Atlanta real estate, mainly in the Third Ward.

He and John T. Grant worked for Augusta, Georgia-based Fannin, Grant & Co, which contracted to build all or parts of the Georgia, the Central, the Macon & Western, the Western & Atlantic and the Atlanta & West Point Railroads. Soon after he worked under engineer J. Edgar Thomson as a rod man assisting in surveying where he worked closely then with a man who would become a lifelong friend and business associate, Richard Peters. As rod men, their two Massachusetts-born apprentices also had big futures: Sidney Root and Joseph Winship. After completion of the Georgia in 1845, Grant became its Chief Engineer and in March 1849, he began location surveys for the northern terminus of the Atlanta & West Point. This ended up in what is now Atlanta's East Point neighborhood and served as the junction between the A&WP and the Macon & Western Railroads. Two of LP's grandsons Laurel and Bryan, Sr. were successful real estate brokers and developers.

In 1843 Grant invested in land in what is now southeast Atlanta, paying from $.75 to $2 an acre, and built his home in the center of his 600+ acres. He donated 108 acres (44 ha) east and southeast of his mansion to the city for a park that would be open and available free of charge to residents of any race, creed or color. His family then developed the surrounding neighborhoods, as evidenced by street signs named after family and friends of the family (Bryan Street, Grant Street, Loomis Street, Broyles Street, etc.). Lake Abama, where the zoo food court now exists below the panda exhibit, would have been witness to a crowd of bathers of any race, racial segregation not descending upon Atlanta until a decade or two later. During this idyllic period of relative stability of racial tension, Grant opened a trolley line between downtown and the park.

Technically, ZooAtlanta has been in violation of the condition of the gift for many years, given that they charge admission to services offered within the park. Why they have not adopted a revenue collection model similar to the St. Louis Zoo remains a question. The surviving family, having been interviewed about this legal wrinkle, expressed no active intention of pursuing the matter but did express a strong disappointment in this state of affairs.

Banker

On January 27, 1857, Grant founded the Atlanta Bank with John Mims, William Ezzard, Clark Howell, Sr., Jonathan Norcross, Richard Peters, Joseph Winship and N.L. Angier. They were warned of Chicagoan George Smith who was planning on flooding Midwest banks with Georgia currency so avoided that scandal but eventually went broke and their charter was revoked in 1856. Grant would try banking again in the 1870s.

Heading west

In 1853, he and John T. Grant headed to New Orleans to work on the Cotton Belt Railroad (then the Jackson and Great Northern Railroad). In 1857, Fannin, Grant & Co became contractors to the Southern Pacific Railroad to link Marshall, Texas, to the West Coast, and the next year Lemuel P. Grant was named president of Southern Pacific. Back in Atlanta in 1860, he and Richard Peters pushed a Georgia Western Railroad against Jonathan Norcross's Air Line.

Civil War

Before the American Civil War, Grant gave land on Jenkins Street for Atlanta's first black church, Bethel Church (now Big Bethel Baptist Church), and defended the church's right to the property after the war.

The beginning of the war saw Grant still in Louisiana. In February 1861, Fannin, Grant & Co sold out to the Southern Pacific, and Grant returned to Atlanta. After the Vicksburg Campaign, Confederate Chief of the Engineer Bureau Jeremy Gilmer contacted him to survey possible enemy crossings of the Chattahoochee River, and defensive works were begun in August, 1863. Grant explained that the fortification of Atlanta would be as difficult as that of Richmond, Virginia. Grant planned a series of 17 redoubts forming a 10-mile (16 km) circle over 1 mile (1.6 km) out from the center of town. It was bounded on the north on high ground (present location of the Fox Theatre), on the west by Ashby Street, on the south by McDonough Drive and on the east by Grant Park. Gilmer inspected the completed work in December 1863. Because of how the Battle of Atlanta unfolded, these fortifications were never really put to the test, the city's Mayor Calhoun capitulating to the siege after the railways to Macon were seized by Union forces and an untimely "accident" ignited and blew up the primary ammo dump within the city, leaving them practically defenseless.

After the war

The most important shopping area in town was Broad Street and Market Street which were separated by the railroads. A wooden bridge had been built to span the distance; when it burned, Grant designed and built a new one which was completed in July 1865. He was superintendent of the Western & Atlantic and Atlanta & West Point Railroads. In June 1867, he was on the first committee to name streets in Atlanta with Winship and former mayor William Ezzard. In 1870, he was part of the committee to lure Oglethorpe University to Atlanta from Midway. In 1873, he organized the Bank of the State of Georgia. Throughout the 1870s he represented the Third Ward in council and served on the Atlanta Board of Education and in the 1880s he served as water commissioner. In 1882 he donated roughly 100 acres (0.40 km²) in Land Lot 43 for Grant Park, current home of the Cyclorama and ZooAtlanta, later named in his honor, and the deed was issued May 17, 1883.

In 1884, he chartered Westview Cemetery with former mayor James W. English where he was buried after his death in 1893, a highly respected founding father of Atlanta. He is survived by several descendants who currently reside in the Atlanta area and elsewhere. Of note, Bryan M. "Bitsy" Grant, Jr. is his great grandson, and achieved many remarkable feats as a world-renowned tennis athlete, honored in several Halls of Fame. The City of Atlanta recognized him during the 1950s by naming a premier tennis center in his honor on Northside Parkway, Bitsy Grant Tennis Center.

Family

Grant married Laura Loomis Williams, daughter of prominent DeKalb County businessman Ammi Williams, in 1843. They had four children: John A., Myra, Lemuel Pratt, Jr., and Lettie.^[1]

Grant Mansion, 2012

Mansion

The 1856 Lemuel P. Grant Mansion is one of only three antebellum houses within the current city limits of Atlanta that are still standing in their original locations, and is by far the closest to the city limits in the 1860s. The mansion was owned by Lemuel P. Grant, Atlanta's quintessential railroad man as well as a major landowner and civic leaderafter. Grant donated the land for Grant Park, which was named for him.

The three-story mansion was built in Italianate style in 1856. Union troops burning Atlanta in 1864 spared it because Masonic paraphernalia was found there, and the troops had been instructed not to harm the homes of Masons. In December 2001, the Atlanta Preservation Center purchased the house for $109,000; restoration of, and improvements to the house and grounds are ongoing.^[2]

Bobby Jones, the legendary golfer, was born in this home while the Jones family was in town visiting from Canton, GA. Bitsy Grant, the famed tennis player, grew up in this home until the family moved to Ansley Park along 17th Street. Bobby Jones, grandson, Bobby Jones IV is an Anglican priest in Athens Ga.

At this time, Margaret Mitchell, author of Gone with the Wind and niece to Cone Maddox, Sr., director of the Atlanta Cotton Exchange, purchased the home, and then met her untimely death being run down by a taxi in Peachtree Street.^[3] The home fell into the possession of caretakers who obtain squatting rights during the settlement of Mitchell's estate. One of the two men destroyed the home by sleeping in bed with a lit cigarette.

References

• Sarah Wadley diary

External links

• Lemuel Grant at Find a Grave