RAOUL FAMILY.
Raoul family papers > Letters and personal papers > Gaston C. Raoul papers

Biographical Note

Gaston C. Raoul was born March 1, 1874 at Great Hill Place in Bolingbroke, Georgia. He attended schools in Savannah, the Lawrenceville School in New Jersey, and the Georgia Institute of Technology. Between 1890 and 1903, Gaston held a variety of positions with railroads in Kentucky, Mexico, Georgia, Alabama, and New York. After a brief stint with the ship brokerage firm of J. F. Minis and Company in Savannah, he settled permanently in Chattanooga in 1905. There he headed a refrigerator and furniture manufacturing concern, known variously as the Keyser Manufacturing Company, the Odorless Refrigerator Company, the Tennessee Furniture Corporation, and the Cavalier Corporation. Gaston married Marian Alexander Haskell in 1908. The couple had five children, Alice Van Yeveren (1909-1916), William Gaston (b. 1911), Marian Haskell (b. 1913), Rosine (b. 1915), and Dorothea Van Yeveren (b. 1917). Gaston died in 1960.

Scope and Content Note

Materials of Gaston C. Raoul include his letters to family members (1886-1949), a few letters from relatives and business associates (1882-1939), and a journal he kept while attending Lawrenceville School in New Jersey and working as a rodman in Kentucky (1888-1890). Also included in the subseries is a small group of letters from Gaston's wife Marian Haskell Raoul to Mary Wadley Raoul (1907-1912).

The bulk of Gaston Raoul's letters date between 1888 and 1910 and are primarily to his mother. The earliest letters describe his activities at the Lawrenceville School (1888-1889), road-building work with the Kentucky Union Railroad (1890) and the Savannah Construction Company (1890-1891), and family life in Atlanta (1891-1894). From 1894 to 1897, Gaston worked for his father on the Mexican National Railroad, and letters from this period discuss his work on the lines and in the telegraph offices, his relationships with the Mexicans, and his despondency over his future. Subsequent attempts to find a career are documented by letters written while he worked as a division supervisor with the Central of Georgia Railroad in Macon and Alabama (1897-1899), as purchasing agent for the Mexican National Railroad in New York (1899-1,303), as a partner with the ship brokerage firm of J. F. Minis and Company in Savannah (1903-1904), and finally as president of the Keyser Manufacturing Company in Chattanooga (1905-1949). In addition to business ventures, Gaston discussed typhoid and yellow fever epidemics in the South (1898), and his extensive readings, travels, social activities, his family, and personal affairs.

Arrangement Note

Arranged by record type.