Inman

US entrepreneurs. Samuel opened a cotton commission office which became one of the largest cotton dealers in the world. His brother John was one of the organizers of the New York Cotton Exchange, and was soon so influential that he was called the ‘Cotton King’. He began redeveloping in the South, discovering mineral deposits and promoting railway building and further industrialization. In 1881 Samuel was treasurer of the International Cotton Exposition in Atlanta, was an organizer in 1895 of the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta, and was a supporter of the Georgia Institution of Technology and Oglethorpe and Emory Universities.

They were born in Jefferson County, Tennessee. Their father's plantation business was ruined by the US Civil War, in which the brothers fought with the Confederate army. They helped organize the Southern Railway System that incorporated many of the interterritorial railways in the south in the 1880s. John was one of the directors and organizer of the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company, later absorbed by US Steel, and was a director of several banks and insurance companies.