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 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,
In 1840, he was given the position of assistant engineer of the Georgia Railroad, under John Edgar Thomson, the chief engineer. His part of engineers located the line between Madison and Atlanta in 1840. In 1841, he became assistant in the engineer corps of the Central Railroad, of which L.O. Reynolds was the chief engineer, but in 1843 returned to the Georgia Railroad and served it until the grading was completed to Marthasville. 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 Abana, 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.
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on flooding Midwest banks with Georgia currency so avoided that scandal but eventually went broke and their charter was revoked in 1856.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 [These possibly the Athens Ga Grants, JT and WD Grant, contractors. Neither are related to LP Grant.] as 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.
From 1853 to 1858, he was engaged in railroad construction contracts in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. In 1858, he was elected president of the Southern Pacific Company of Texas, and was succeeded by J. Edgar Thompson in 1859.
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 [Correction: His son John A, served as water commissioner
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, including the International Tennis Hall 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.
thumb|[[Lemuel P. Grant Mansion|Grant Mansion, 2012]]
Grant Mansion in Grant Park
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.
Bobby Jones, the legendary golfer, was born in this home while the Jones family was in town visiting from Canton, GA.
L.P. Grant's great-grandson, Bryan M. "Bitsy" Grant, the famed tennis player named to the International Tennis Hall of Fame, 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.
References
- Sarah Wadley diary