“Organizer, Administrator, Craftsman, Artist—Father was all of these. Beauty delighted his soul—especially beauty of line and form; the beauty of fine craftsmanship, and the harmony of good design.”

 

Mary Raoul Millis, "The Family of Raoul"

 

William Green Raoul  1843-1913

William Green Raoul (left) was born July 4, 1843, and raised in Livingston Parish, Louisiana. At age 18, Raoul served in the Civil War becoming a Captain in charge of the Confederate Railway Bureau’s car construction and transportation of Army supplies. Later, he became an executive in several railroad companies, including president of the Mexican National Railroad. Other accomplishments included the invention of the air brake and starting a foundation for the eradication of tuberculosis.

 

 

“I suspect it was she (Mother) who promoted the purchase of the Deaver farm in the beginning. From that time until the sad day in 1913, when Father died, Mother was just as much a part of the Asheville venture as he was. Mother never begrudged the money she saw going into it, and she always knew we would get it back.”

 

Thomas Wadley Raoul, "The Family of Raoul"

 

Mary Wadley Raoul 1848-1936

The daughter of Georgia railroad executive, William Morrill Wadley and Rebecca Barnard (Everingham) Wadley, Mary Wadley Raoul was born March 4, 1848. Before her marriage to William Greene Raoul in 1868, she lived in Savannah and Monroe, Louisiana. She attended school briefly in Cave Spring, Floyd County, Georgia, in 1866. The twenty years between 1870 and 1890 were spent raising her ten children in Macon, Savannah, and New York. After the family settled in Atlanta in 1892, Mary became active in a number of civic and social organizations. She served on the board of the Cotton States and International Exposition in 1895, was a charter member of the Every Saturday Club, and maintained memberships in the Daughters of the American Revolution and the United Daughters of the Confederacy. She was also very active in the Woman’s Suffrage movement and she was involved in promoting the Free Kindergarten movement in Atlanta and one of the city's early kindergartens was named for her. (RFP, Emory)

 

 

“In November 1897, Gaston and I, armed with transit, level, rod and chain, arrived at the Glaser boarding house to make a survey and road layout of Albemarle Park—Gaston as engineer, and I as rodman. ‘Rodding’ over the mountain land would not now be considered exactly the cure for tuberculosis, but it was good enough for 1897, and perhaps as good as my Mexican cure. In any event I was determined that no one know I was here for my health—a delusion and a mistake. But I kept it up pretty well until 1903.”

 

Thomas Wadley Raoul, "The Family of Raoul"

 

Thomas Wadley Raoul 1877-1953

Thomas Wadley Raoul was born in Macon, Georgia, on August 13, 1877. He was educated in Savannah and New York before entering college at the Georgia Institute of Technology. In 1896, while he was employed with the cotton firm S. M. Inman and Company in Macon, he became ill with tuberculosis. During the years between 1897 and 1909, he traveled widely in the Western United States and in Europe, seeking to cure his illness. His permanent home during this period and afterwards was Asheville, North Carolina, where he managed the Raoul family's resort establishment, Albemarle Park, until 1920. (RFP, Emory)

 

If William Greene Raoul was the “architect” of the concept of Albemarle Park, it was his third son, Thomas Wadley Raoul, who was to be the foreman of the project and the one who made the vision a reality and success. He was only twenty when he began construction of Albemarle Park and he was filled with enthusiasm for the project. He began by clearing and grubbing the land, surveying it and setting posts along the perimeter while he waited for instructions from Bradford Gilbert.

 

 

From 1921 until his death in 1953, he was president of the Biltmore Forest Company and served as treasurer and clerk of the town of Biltmore Forest. He was president and director of the Asheville Chamber of Commerce and a member of the North Carolina Park Commission. He married Helen Doyle Bennett in 1910, and had two daughters , Kathleen (b. 1913) and Jane (b. 1915). (RFP, Emory)