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 his capture. After the war, Pemberton lived on his farm near Warrenton, Virginia, from 1866 to 1876. His mother Rebecca Clifford Pemberton (1782–1869) had survived her husband John Pemberton (1783–1847) by more than two decades, and a few years after her death Pemberton returned to Pennsylvania. Pemberton died in Lower Gwynedd Township, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania on July 13, 1881, although his widow Martha Thompson Pemberton would survive until 1907. The families of several famous people, including General George Meade and Admiral John A. Dahlgren (whose brother also served as a Confederate General), protested against the unrepentant Confederate Pemberton's burial at