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L. A. Abshire
Engineer
Biography
L.A. Abshire was an engineer on the Indiana, Alabama and Texas Railroad by 1886. Abshire left Clarksville, Tennessee, in March 1887 for Decatur, Alabama, where he engaged in the sawmill business.
J. N. Alsup
Biography
J.N. Alsup was the contractor for the new Electric Street Railway of Clarksville, which replaced a mule-drawn system. He told the local newspaper the project would cost $38,000.
Alsup was the motorman of the first electric streetcar to rumble down Franklin Street. He sold his stock and was no longer connected with the system by June 1897.
Andrew Jackson Anderson
Engineer
Biography
Andrew Jackson Anderson, a native of Hamburg, South Carolina, joined the Western and Atlantic Railroad in 1860 or 1861 and was Jeff Cain’s fireman before becoming an engineer.
Robert A. Anderson
Superintendent
Biography
R.A. “Bob” Anderson began his career with the Western & Atlantic Railroad in about 1856.
The Locust Grove native began his career as a clerk in the railroad’s Chattanooga, Tennessee, freight office. After two years in that role, he was promoted to general freight agent.
In 1863, he left the railroad to serve for the Confederacy, holding a role in the engineering department.
After the state leased the line in 1870, Anderson was named general superintendent, and he assumed the superintendent role in about 1882 after William MacRae resigned the post.
When the Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis Railway leased the line from the state in 1890, he was named general superintendent of the Western & Atlantic’s property. However, with his health failing, he resigned from the post after only a few months.
Preston Stanley Arkwright
President
Biography
Preston Stanley Arkwright, a corporate lawyer originally from Savannah and son-in-law of former Governor Alfred H. Colquitt, was hired as the president of the newly formed Georgia Railway and Electric Company in 1902.
Arkwright also served on the Atlanta, Birmingham and Atlantic Railway board.
Arkwright served as president until May 1945, when he moved into the role of chairman of the company’s board. He died on December 2, 1946, just a few weeks after his wife, Dorothy Colquitt Arkwright
William Wallace Atterbury
President
Biography
William Wallace Atterbury began his career with the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1886 and served as a brigadier general during World War I. In 1925, “The Railroad General” succeeded Samuel Rea as president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, serving in the post until he retired because of poor health in 1935.