John Pemberton John Pemberton John Stith Pemberton ( – ) was an American pharmacist whom is best known as the inventor of Coca-Cola. In May 1886, he developed an early version of a beverage that would later become world-famous as Coca-Cola, but sold his rights to the drink shortly before his death. Pemberton was born on , in Knoxville, Georgia, and spent most of his childhood in Rome, Georgia. His parents were James C. Pemberton and Martha L. Gant. He entered the Reform Medical College of Georgia in Macon, Georgia, and in 1850, at the age of nineteen, he earned his medical
John C. Pemberton Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia, where his mother and father had been buried. Despite a supposed decision that the Confederate Pemberton would be interred elsewhere; he ended up in an obscure area of the cemetery. His sisters Rebecca Clifford Pemberton Newbold (1820-1883) and Anna Clifford Pemberton Hollingsworth (1816-1884) and brother Israel Pemberton (1813-1885, a railroad engineer) were buried at Laurel Hill shortly thereafter. Other later Pemberton family burials at Laurel Hill would include his brothers who fought for the Union, Lt. Andrew Jackson Pemberton (1831-1900) and Pvt. Clifford Pemberton (1835-1897), his widow, sons John Jr. (1853-1934) and Francis (1856-1923) and