Joseph A. Biedenharn

Vicksburg years

Of German ancestry, Biedenharn was the oldest son of twelve children, born in Vicksburg to Herman Henry Biedenharn and Louisa Wilhemine Lundberg. Three children died in 1874/75; eight sons and one daughter grew up. Both parents were immigrants with their families following the Revolutions of 1848. Biedenharn's father and uncle owned a two-story brick building in downtown Vicksburg, which housed Herman's shoe store on one side and Joseph's candy company on the other.

After getting established, Biedenharn married Annie in 1889. They had a daughter, Emma Louise (Emy-Lou), and three sons: Malcolm S. Biedenharn, Henry A. Biedenharn Sr., and Bernard W. Biedenharn. Malcolm worked closely with his father in the family business. Though Coca-Cola was invented in 1886 in Atlanta by John S. Pemberton, it was not sold in bottles until Joseph Biedenharn developed the new procedure.

He delivered the bottled drink to rural areas outside of Vicksburg, increasing the base of customers. He established the new marketing technique of an independent network of franchise bottlers. Biedenharn had been advised by his father to 'go into the nickel business,' meaning to offer soft drinks for five cents each. Subsequently, Biedenharn and his brothers Will, Harry, Lawrence, Herman, Ollie, and Albert, and sister Katy acquired franchises to bottle Coca-Cola in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas.

The site at 1107 Washington Street in Vicksburg, where the first bottling occurred, was built in 1890. Today it is a museum. The family sold the first building, and in 1979 the Biedenharns regained ownership, renovated it, and donated it to the Vicksburg Foundation for Historic Preservation.

Move to Monroe

In 1913, Joseph Biedenharn moved with his family to Monroe in Ouachita Parish in northeastern Louisiana, where he purchased a small bottling plant to produce Coca-Cola. The Tallulah Coca-Cola Bottling Plant operated by Joe Biedenharn, built in c.1930 and c.1940 in Madison Parish, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. He and his wife had a large mansion and gardens designed for them. The Biedenharn home in Monroe is now a tourist attraction, operated as the Biedenharn Museum and Gardens at 2000 Riverside Drive, visited by 25,000 to 30,000 persons per year.

The original home is furnished as it was during the years when the Biedenharns' daughter, Emy-Lou, a contralto opera singer prior to World War II, resided there until her death in 1984. In 1925, Joseph and his son Malcolm Biedenharn, together with other entrepreneurs, purchased a crop-dusting business. They added eighteen planes, making it the largest privately owned fleet in the world. That company eventually developed as Delta Air Lines.

It operated from Monroe before moving to Atlanta. Until the late 1990s, a Biedenharn family member always sat on the Delta board. Joseph Biedenharn died in the fall of 1952 in Monroe at the age of eighty-five. In 1962, Emy-Lou Biedenharn published a memoir of her father.

In 1971, she established the Emy-Lou Biedenharn Foundation as a charitable organization in the city. Henry A. Biedenharn Jr., a Monroe native who served in World War II as a United States Navy flight instructor, also became affiliated with Biedenharn Realty Company, Inc., the Harn and Biedco corporations, the Ouachita National Bank, Premier Bank, and Bank One.

He participated in the foundation established by his aunt, Emy-Lou Biedenharn. In 1940, he wed the former Dorothy 'Doll' Hudson, a socialite also from Monroe. The couple had four children.