1. Edwin Wiley Grove was
born in Whiteville, Tennessee, in 1850 and moved to Paris in 1874.
2. He became a clerk in a drug store for Dr. Samuel Houston Caldwell,
Nathan Bedford Forrest’s
battlefield surgeon, and A.B. Mitchum, a prominent
Paris businessman.
3. Grove produced “Grove’s Tasteless Chill Tonic” in 1878
and established the Grove Pharmacy in 1880.
4. “Grove’s Tasteless Chill Tonic,” a preventative and
treatment for malaria, quickly became a household
name. By 1890, more bottles of the chill tonic were
sold than bottles of Coca-Cola.
5. The British Army made the tonic standard issue for every soldier
going to mosquito-infested lands.
6. Grove’s principal investor, Col. O.C. Barton, became Paris’
first millionaire. In 1916, Col. Barton
built
Cavitt Place—now home to the local historical museum, the Paris-Henry County Heritage
Center.
7. Grove formed the Paris Medicine Co. in 1886, which grew so large it
moved to St. Louis in 1889.
Ownership and the board of directors remained largely
in Paris.
8. The Paris Medicine Co. produced the world’s first cold
tablets—Grove’s Bromo Quinine.
9. Grove established a summer residence in Asheville, North Carolina, in
1898.
10. Grove Park Inn was dedicated on July 12, 1913. William Jennings Bryan as
the keynote speaker.
11. Grove spent $100,000 to build one of the nation’s first motor roads
in North Carolina.
12. Thomas Wolfe in his book, You Can’t Go Home Again, criticized E.W.
Grove for tearing down the old
Battery Park Hotel in Asheville and
building a downtown area in its place.
13. In 1905, Grove became the principal stockholder in the Atlanta Georgian,
which later became the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
14. According to family members, Grove bought one million acres in Mexico. He
wanted to sell it to the
United States government to square off the
U.S.-Mexico border. The plan did not materialize.15.
In 1902, the Henry County Court rejected Grove’s first offer to endow a public,
tuition-free high school
due “to the Prevalence of smallpox for the
past three years” in the
county and other reasons.
16. On July 3, 1905, Grove’s second offer was made to the county court
and was accepted.
17. The cornerstone for E.W. Grove-Henry County High School was laid in a
Masonic ceremony following
a parade from downtown Paris on June 26,
1906. Among other items, a chill tonic bottle and a package
of Bromo Quinine tablets were placed in
the cornerstone.
18. Grove Tower was designed by Chattanooga architect, Reuben Harrison Hunt,
who had designed the
Henry County Court House, built in 1896.
19. The high school became the first privately endowed public secondary school
in Tennessee and the third
county public high school in the
state—following Lake and Rhea counties.
20. Thirty students took classes in the Paris City Hall until the Tower was
completed.
21. The school was one of the nation’s first institutions accredited by
the Southern Association of Colleges
and Secondary Schools.
22. Grove Tower held the nation’s first vocational agricultural program
under the 1917 Smith-Hughes Act.
23. Principal Dudley M. Clements was the nation’s first vocational
agricultural teacher under the federal act
and was instrumental in creating the Future
Farmers of Tennessee—a forerunner of the Future Farmers
of America—and established the
nation’s first FFA leadership training camp in Doyle, Tennessee.
24. The school’s first graduation took place at a Sunday tent revival in
1908. There were two graduates.
25. Cavitt Hall, originally a girls’ dormitory, was built in 1910 and
supported largely by Col. O.C. Barton.
26. In 1907, Grove provided uniforms for the school’s first football
team, the Chill Tonics.
27. Grove sent money to purchase apples, oranges, and peaches for the students
and regularly gave money
for other school needs.
28. Grove paid for much of the construction of First Presbyterian Church in
Paris, where his funeral took
place in 1927.
29. Grove died in his new Battery Park Hotel in Asheville. His death made
front-page news in St. Louis,
Asheville, and Paris. He is buried with his
family in the Paris City Cemetery.
30. Grove began construction of the Grove Arcade, the nation’s first
indoor shopping mall, in downtown
Asheville. The Arcade was completed two years
after Grove’s death.
31. In 1996, E.W. Grove School became the nation’s first
institution for high school freshmen with its own
campus. Grove Tower, placed on the
National Register of Historic Places in 1980, was restored as
a Homecoming ’86 project and became
the home of the Henry County Board of Education. |
