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Giles County, Tennessee
Cole Biographies
COLONEL EDMUND W. COLE, born in Giles county, Tennessee, July 19, 1827, and passing away in his
native state, in 1900, honored and beloved by all, was one of the greatest pioneer spirits of the
south, whom the progressive new south of today, and especially the state of Tennessee, honors
and reveres as one of the great master minds with farseeing vision of the future which has made
their country what it is. Like all such men of the south, Colonel Cole inherited a pedigree of
achievement. We find his ancestors in Virginia, distinguished Revolutionary soldiers, and tracing
back in unbroken lines to the best of Scotch and English inheritance. A son of Captain Willis W.
and Johanna J. Cole, both Virginians, migrating first to Kentucky and then to Tennessee, like
Andrew Jackson. His father died when he was an infant, leaving his widow with nothing but a
small farm and four other brothers and one sister, besides the three months old Edmund.
The hard work of the farm until he was eighteen years old prevented Edmund W. Cole from
having anything but a scant education, but the work made a splendid physical man of him–the
mind he already possessed–and with this equipment he came, at eighteen years of age, to begin
as a clerk in a clothing store, and later in a book store, where he acquired knowledge of literature
and the classics. His career placed him among the great executive minds of the entire south. Like
all great men he inherited from his mother the spiritual gifts which formed his splendid moral
character. Johanna Cole was a most remarkable woman, with a character like the Spartan
mothers of old, gifted beyond her day and generation, of unswerving principles, intensely
religious and devoted to the Methodist church, thus stamping in her son all the qualities of her
remarkable mind, until it was said of him that he never went into a business engagement or
solved any great business problem without first considering whether or not it would be fair and
just to all concerned, regardless of his own gain. His promotion was rapid. In 1849 he became
bookkeeper at the Nashville post office. In two years he was elected general bookkeeper of the
Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad until 1857, when he was advanced to superintendent of the
road. When the Civil war broke out Colonel Cole, like all loyal southerners, joined the
Confederacy, where his career was both brave and honorable. After the war, finding his country
devastated, he began life over and moved to Augusta, Georgia, and was elected general
superintendent of the Georgia Railroad & Banking Company. Afterward he was elected president
of the Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad. He held this position for twelve years, with phenomenal
success, adding millions to the value of its capital stock. During his administration the Nashville &
Northwestern, McMinnville & Manchester, Winchester & Alabama, and the Tennessee Pacific
Railroads were added to the main line. Colonel Cole was the first to conceive the idea of a grand
trunk line under one management, from the west to the Atlantic seaboard, believing such a line
with a trans-Atlantic line of steamers practicable. This he worked out on a large scale.
Colonel Cole accumulated large private interests in Nashville, which absorbed his [p.387] time and
attention, causing him to resign the railroad presidency in 1882. In 1883 he inaugurated and
opened the American National Bank with a capital of six hundred thousand dollars. Because of the
confidence of the people in Colonel Cole, the rush to subscribe for stock in this bank was
unprecedented in the history of banking in Nashville. He became president and in six months
consolidated it with the Third National Bank of Nashville, an old and prosperous bank, well
established in the confidence of the public. Later, he inaugurated the Safe Deposit, Trust &
Banking Company in connection therewith. He was a man of indomitable will and energy to
accomplish any great task he undertook. His powers of combination were unusual, never
neglecting the minutest detail. He was of tall, commanding figure, his manner grave and polished,
he had an unusually magnetic influence over men, and was broadminded in his opinions, a liberal
and public-spirited citizen, contributing to all public enterprises, educational, religious and
charitable. He was a democrat, a Methodist, a member of the State Board of Health, a Mason, a
member of the Tennessee Historical Society and a patron of literature, music and fine arts.
Colonel Cole was twice married. First, to Miss Louise McGavock Lytle, daughter of Archibald Lytle,
one of the most prominent citizens of Williamson county, Tennessee. She died in 1869, leaving
five children. On the death of their son, Randall Anderson Cole, Colonel Cole bought and
presented to the state of Tennessee the handsome property known as the Randall Cole
Industrial School, as a memorial to his son. Second, Colonel Cole was married in 1872, to Miss
Anna V. Russell of Augusta, Georgia. Of this union two children were born, Whitefoord Russell
Cole and Anna Russell Cole (Mrs. Demsey Weaver). Mrs. Anna Russell Cole is a woman of rare
attainments and beauty, of great intellectual endowments, and gifted with regal graces of
personal charm of mind and soul. No woman ever lived in the south who has been more beloved
and admired for all the qualities of southern womanhood, which seem to have blossomed in her
spirit. She has lavishly expended her wealth on all worthy philanthropy and charities, on
everything that would uplift and ennoble her state and people. A patron of the fine arts, she
erected in her home state a classical monument to the four great southern poets. Her beautiful
home, near Nashville, where she still lives and graciously entertains, is a mecca for lovers of
literature and art, and those who would come to behold in her the last queenly type of that
noblest aristocracy of the old south.
This sketch would not be complete without mention of their son, Whitefoord Russell Cole, who,
though yet a young man, has had a phenomenal career in the business and social qualities
inherited from both parents. It is only necessary to say that, besides being at the head of many
other activities, for the past four years he has been president of the Nashville, Chattanooga & St.
Louis Railroad, and amid a long line of great presidents of that road, whose executive ability have
made it one of the outstanding railroads of the country, Whitefoord R. Cole is proving to be one of
its greatest. Modest, loyal, a southern gentleman of the old school, and yet with all the vision,
courage and ambition of a son of the newer south, Whitefoord R. Cole will carry the family name
even to greater heights of honor and success.
(Tennessee, The Volunteer State, 1769-1923, Vol. 2, John Trotwood Moore and Austin P. Foster, S. J. Clarke Publishing Co., Chicago, 1923)
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