Biography
Woodruff was born in Columbus, Georgia, USA. After relocating to Atlanta, he made his home in Hurt's Inman Park suburb.
With his brother-in-law, Joel Hurt he founded the Atlanta and Edgewood Street Railroad which ran its first electric trolleys on April 22, 1889 and Woodruff followed Hurt as president of the Trust Company in 1904 a post he held for 18 years before becoming its Chairman of the Board.
Woodruff's greatest skill was in re-organizing existing companies to improve value by increased scale: in 1903 he combined three small ice and coal companies into the Atlanta Ice and Coal Company then in 1910 with the help of the Trust Company he organized those types of companies from Virginia and throughout the Carolinas into the Atlantic Ice and Coal. None of these companies were able to make much money on their own with high costs of home and office deliveries but combined made handsome returns to shareholders.
He married Mary Frances (Overby) Winship, only child of Robert Winship, the foundry magnate.
Then he restructured the Atlantic Steel (current site of Atlantic Station) factory and installed Thomas Glenn to get it out of debt.
This set the table for the biggest move of Woodruff's career: the take over of The Coca-Cola Company which he negotiated with Asa Candler in 1919. His sons, Robert W. Woodruff and George W. Woodruff, would run that company for years leaving Candler's son Howard Candler rather out of the picture.
Read more about this topic: Ernest Woodruff
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