Cator Woolford (1869-1944), Atlanta businessman, civic leader and philanthropist, founded the Retail Credit Company (the precursor to Equifax) in 1899. Until his retirement in 1931, he successfully steered the company as general manager, president and chairman. In 1934, he co-founded the short-lived Correct Address Company, with Edwin K. Large, a former Atlanta postmaster. Information regarding his wife, Charlotte (nee Boyd), and daughters, Charlotte and Isabel, is unavailable.Through a broad range of interests and sympathies, Woolford promoted the education, health, and welfare of the people of Georgia. An early proponent of worker placement and training, he established the Atlanta Personnel Association, the Community Employment Service, the Georgia College Placement Office, and financed the Vocational Bureau. Woolford was a member of several local and national professional education and vocation organizations, including the Georgia Citizens Education Movement, the National Commission on the Enrichment of Adult Life, and the Personnel Research Federation. His civic and philanthropic activities also included numerous health care concerns. Woolford introduced dental health service in the public schools of Atlanta, financed the equipment for a dental clinic for African Americans at Grady Hospital, and, more notably, participated in the establishment of the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation (later, Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute for Rehabilitation) and initiated the movement to raise funds for the construction of Georgia Hall (now an administrative building and cafeteria), one of several buildings erected in Warm Springs, Ga. Other noteworthy causes include the state parks and gardens of Georgia. Woolford not only supported and directed the organization of the Georgia Vegetable Growers Association, but also financed the monthly publication of the Garden Club of Georgia. In 1934, Woolford gifted 350 acres of land in Glynn County to Georgia for a state park (Santo Domingo), which, a decade later, became Boys Estate, a home for underprivileged boys, and today is Morningstar Treatment Services. The Woolford family thirty-three acre estate in Druid Hills, whose current gardens were designed by Atlanta landscape architect Edward Daugherty, is now the Frazer Center, a private, non-profit agency serving children and adults with disabilities.
From the description of Cator Woolford papers, 1915-1914 (Atlanta History Center). WorldCat record id: 182560990
