He is the namesake of the most prestigious prize in journalism. George Foster Peabody was born in Columbus in 1852. His parents were New Englanders. They moved to New York after the Civil War, when George was 14. Peabody had a natural aptitude for business and finance, and managed railroad accounts for a New York […]
His companies, and the money they made, impact Georgia to this day. William Clark Bradley was born in 1863 on an Alabama cotton plantation. He moved to Columbus in 1885 to work for a cotton factor. He and his brother-in-law bought the company soon after and in 1888 started the two Columbus banks that in […]
Peyton Anderson was born in 1907 in Macon with newspaper ink in his veins. His uncle edited and published the Macon Telegraph and later the Macon News; his father was vice president of the company; another uncle was a columnist. Anderson began working at the paper at age 9 sweeping floors. After earning a Bronze […]
While $3.5 billion in sales a year, is not, as the saying has it, chicken feed, Truett Cathy’s family-owned corporation feeds a lot of people a lot of chicken. Born in Atlanta in 1921, Cathy came up during the Great Depression. With a deep spirituality and a determined work ethic, he opened the Dwarf Grill, […]
Coca-Cola is now a worldwide phenomenon, but the man responsible took over when the company was still struggling. Robert Woodruff was born in Columbus in 1889 and attended but didn’t graduate from Emory College. He took a job in sales with the White Motor Company, where he quickly climbed the corporate ladder. His father was […]