Samuel M. Inman

Samuel Martin Inman (February 19, 1843 – January 12, 1915) was a prominent cotton merchant and businessman in Atlanta, Georgia, who is best known for the neighborhood in Atlanta that bears his name. Inman is also commemorated in the name of the Samuel M. Inman Middle School in the Virginia-Highland neighborhood.

Inman was born in Dandridge, Tennessee, in Jefferson County. He was the son of H. W. Inman and Jane Martin Inman. He went to college at Princeton College and at the age of 18 he joined Company K of the Confederate Army's First Tennessee Cavalry during the American Civil War. During the war he served as a lieutenant of his company and was present at the surrender of the army.

In 1886, Inman moved to Augusta, Georgia, and became a businessman. He joined with Joel Hurt that year to form the East Atlanta Land Company with the purpose of developing Inman Park, a residential then-suburb of Atlanta. They also formed Atlanta & Edgewood Street Railroad to provide adequate transportation to the area.

He moved permanently to Atlanta in 1867 to establish the S. W. Inman & Son cotton house with his father. The next year he married Jennie Dick of Rome, Georgia, with whom he had two sons and a daughter.

In 1869, they changed the title of the company to S. W. Inman & Co and by 1889, it was the largest cotton business in the city and it had a branch house in Houston, Texas. Some estimated at that time that Inman was worth about $750,000 to $1,000,000, a sum that would have been much larger if not for his charitable donations. By 1889, Inman was on the directory for what was known as the Inman System, a group of nearly all of the railroads covering from Richmond, Virginia, to Montgomery, Alabama, and from Bristol, [Virginia?], to Savannah, Georgia.

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