WG Raoul was an Atlanta businessman and railroad builder.
He was a president of the Central of Georgia railroad from 1883 to 1887. From 1887 to 1905, he was president of the Mexican National Railroad.
He was the husband of Mary Millen Wadley. On his deathbed, he requested that no flowers be sent to the funeral or to his grave, but should instead be sent to the poor.
His obituary appears in the January 18, 1913 issue of the Atlanta Constitution.
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William Greene Raoul (W.G.) and Mary Raoul were married October 27, 1868 in Savannah, Georgia. Between the years 1870 and 1890, eleven children were born to them. In addition to the ten surviving children, the couple had a sixth son, Edward Raoul, who died in 1882 at age two. The family first lived in the home of W. G. Raoul’s father in Independence, Louisiana, where W. G. was associated with the Southern Car Works, a family railcar-building enterprise. When the Car Works failed in 1870, W. G. Raoul went to Georgia to work for his father-in-law on the Central of Georgia Railroad. For the ten years between 1870 and 1881, the family made its home in various places in middle Georgia, settling in Macon after 1874. In 1881, the Raouls moved to Savannah, where they lived in a house on the corner of Charlton and Abercorn Streets. During their seven-year residency in Savannah, the family made yearly summer pilgrimages to the cooler climates of north Georgia, the North Carolina mountains, and Martha’s Vineyard. After a summer spent in Asheville in 1886, the family chose that city as a permanent summer home and site of their hotel complex, Albemarle Park.
In 1888, the Raouls moved to New York. After four years in New York, they returned to Georgia, this time to Atlanta where they settled permanently in 1892. There they took an active role in the civic and social life of the city.
Historical papers are available in the Rare Books collection at Emory University.