Georgia Natural Wonder #84 - Cornelia – Habersham County (Part 2). 849

[Top Row Dawg]

Georgia Natural Wonder #84 - Cornelia – Habersham County (Part 2)

I ran out of time trying to add Habersham County to my Panther Creek Falls post yesterday. We take a history tangent on Habersham County today. In the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains of northeast Georgia, is the state's forty-sixth county. Created in 1818 from land formerly held by Cherokee Indians, it was named after Joseph Habersham. Habersham Family link.


6th Postmaster General.

Joseph Habersham (July 28, 1751 – November 17, 1815) was an American businessman, Georgia politician, soldier in the Continental Army, and Postmaster General of the United States. He was a member of the council of safety and the Georgia Provincial Council in 1775 and a major of a battalion of Georgia militiamen and subsequently a colonel in the 1st Georgia Regiment of the Continental Army. He had to resign from the army after he served as Lachlan McIntosh's second in the controversial duel that killed Button Gwinnett.



He and his brothers, James Jr. and John, were active in Georgia politics. Some older references state that Joseph was a delegate to the Confederation Congress in 1785, but this may stem from confusion with his brother John, who was a delegate at that time. Joseph served as Speaker of the Georgia House in 1785 and was a member of the Georgia convention in 1788 that ratified the U.S. Constitution. He served as mayor of Savannah from 1792 to 1793 and then was appointed Postmaster General by President George Washington in 1795 and served until the beginning of Thomas Jefferson's administration in 1801. When Habersham created the office of first assistant postmaster-general in 1799, Abraham Bradley, Jr. was appointed to the office. In 1802, Bradley named one of his sons, Joseph Habersham Bradley (later a notable Washington, D.C. attorney), after his former superior.



Habersham died in 1815. Habersham County in Northeast Georgia, from its creation in 1818, is named in his honor, along with numerous sites and streets throughout the state.Habersham County was enlarged in 1828 and 1829 when more Cherokee lands were added to it. At one time it encompassed 713 square miles, but through the years parts of it were taken to help form Banks, Cherokee, Lumpkin, Rabun, Stephens, and White counties, decreasing Habersham County to 278 square miles.


Habersham home catches fire.

The first white inhabitants, enticed by free land distributions, came after the Indian cessions of 1818 and 1819. They settled along the banks of the county's four major rivers, the Chattahoochee, Soque, Tallulah, and Tugaloo. The white population increased slowly until gold was discovered in northeast Georgia; the ensuing gold rush brought sudden growth, eventually resulting in the removal of the Cherokees from the area in 1838. Soon thereafter wealthy slave-owning planters established themselves in parts of the county that have since been annexed by other counties.


World’s largest rocking chair found in Habersham County. Stay Hendrix Stay.

Early industries included leather tanning, iron mining, and the processing and mining of such other minerals as asbestos, cynanite, and tourmaline. During the Civil War (1861-65) the Habersham Iron Works and Manufacturing Company produced arms for the Confederacy.



Nearly 1,000 men from Habersham fought for the Confederacy.The whole of Habersham County was extremely loyal to the Confederacy and was known, along with the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and countless other fertile, out-of-the-way places as the "breadbasket of the Confederacy", as thousands of bushels of wheat and corn were supplied to the troops from this area alone. On October 12, 1864, after the fall of Atlanta, a detachment of Sherman's cavalry was sent to raid the county; but the Confederate Home Guard, made up of men too old for military duty, left the mountains on which Cornelia is situated and met the Yankee raiders at a narrow pass about four miles east of the town. By making considerable noise and stirring up clouds of smoke, they scared off the enemy and saved the area from complete devastation. Today this skirmish is remembered as "The Battle of the Narrows"(also called the Battle of Currahee). A few years after the war, a young school teacher named William Herschel Cobb and his wife Amanda settled near the site of this skirmish, and she gave birth in 1886 to one of the greatest baseball players of all time, Ty Cobb.  I am going to save a Ty Cobb tangent for Royston Georgia.



Between 1870 and 1900 the county's economy was enhanced by the arrival of railroads, the planting of apple orchards and vineyards, and the founding of Piedmont College. When rail travel through the Blue Ridge brought tourists to the Tallulah Gorge beginning in 1882, Habersham County shared a tourist-based economic boost with neighboring Rabun County. Immigrants from Europe (primarily from Germany and Switzerland) arrived in the 1880s to plant vineyards and set up wineries, but the state of Georgia adopted a strict prohibition law before their labor could yield profits, and many of them returned to Europe.



Clarkesville was incorporated as a village and designated the county seat in 1823. It was named after John Clarke. Clarke was born in 1766 in Edgecombe County, North Carolina. Along with his father, Elijah Clarke, Clarke fought in the American Revolutionary War at the Battle of Kettle Creek and served in the Georgia militia. He moved to Wilkes County, Georgia, in the early 1770s. He became a major general in 1796.



Clarke served in the Georgia House of Representatives prior to being elected to consecutive two-year terms as the 31st Governor, from 1819 to 1823. During his term, he successfully defended states' rights in a US Supreme Court case over a Spanish citizen who claimed that he owned some of Clarke's slaves. He died of yellow fever in St. Andrews Bay (Florida) in 1832. His grave was relocated to Marietta National Cemetery in Georgia in 1923 by the Daughters of the American Revolution. Clarkesville, Georgia and Clarke County, Alabama are named after him.



The main street followed the broad ridge, and the town plan took advantage of the flat plateau. The wide main road on the ridge led up an incline to the center of the public square, which was located (before the "renovation" of recent years) at the highest point of the town. The opposite road followed a steep descent to the Soque River. Its layout followed the "Sparta" plan of having a square with the courthouse in the center, two main streets entering the square at the center of two sides, and other streets entering at the corners of the square. During the nineteenth century Clarkesville, with its temperate summers, attracted well-to-do families hoping to escape the heat of south Georgia. For a time there were county residents who strongly wished to relocate the county seat to Toccoa (then in Habersham County), leading to such a feud that when the Clarkesville courthouse was blown up in 1898, those advocating the move to Toccoa were blamed.



Second Habersham County Courthouse? my Google search is sketchy.



The fourth courthouse was built in 1963.



The current one.



The feud was ultimately resolved by the creation of Stephens County in 1905 with Toccoa as its seat.


Clarkesville.

Other incorporated communities in the county are Alto, Baldwin, Cornelia, Demorest, Mount Airy, and Tallulah Falls. In the 1870s the high point (the "altus") of the railroad line through the area was located at Alto, and the town took its name from this railroad term. There the Northeastern Railroad connected the Richmond-Danville Air Line Railroad.


Depot Cornelia.

Top Row Dawg addendum to Alto, the Lee Arrendale State Prison (Alto). I did a tour of this place back in 1981 as part of the UGA Criminal Justice Corrections class I took. It was all juvenile dudes, hardcore nothing to lose. I will never forget the leering faces of those inmates who walked freely among us in the yard as several of my female classmates were among our touring class. It was specifically used as a prison for youthful male offenders ages 18-25, the prison was known in the 1960s and 1970s when it had a high school rated football team and marching band. The football team was mostly undefeated until all local high schools refused to play them and lobbied the Georgia Department of Education to make them disband. The prison had come under scrutiny for failing to ensure the safety of its youth inmates. Arrendale became an all woman prison in 2005 and is still transitioning from the second most violent prison in Georgia to a general purpose women's prison including woman's Death Row. Tangent link shows some evil bitches in here.


NOT the GNW gals for today.

Baldwin was incorporated in 1896, taking its name from Joseph A. Baldwin, an Atlanta-Charlotte Air Line Railroad official who helped to construct much of Georgia’s vast rail network, one of which passed through this area. It rest on the Appalachian Continental Divide. It was originally known as Stonepile because of a large pile of stones that once stood in the center of town. The stone structure was erected and left behind by the Cherokee Indians who once roamed these lands in abundance. The stone piling’s significance to the Cherokee and why they left it remains a mystery and is now forever lost. The land, which later became the location for the City of Baldwin, was purchased from the Cherokee Indians in 1804 by the State of Georgia in an effort to take in Wofford’s Settlement along Nancytown Creek. This land was a four-mile strip known as the Hawkins Line (sometimes called the “Four-Mile Purchase Line”). The Hawkins Line served as the established boundary between Georgia and the Cherokee Nation from 1804 to 1818.

Not actual stonepileP0P)

Cornelia is home to one of the world's largest apple sculptures, which is displayed on top of an obelisk-shaped monument. At the dedication on June 4, 1926, many notables attended, including Senator Walter F. George. Towards the end of World War I, "extension agents" began to play a very important role in northeast Georgia. These people, as a group, supported the end of the one-crop (cotton) economy. In Habersham and Gilmer counties farmers increased production of apples.



Cornelia was the retirement home of baseball legend Ty Cobb who was born nearby, and was a base of operation for production of the 1956 Disney film The Great Locomotive Chase that was filmed along the Tallulah Falls Railway that ran from Cornelia northward along the rim of Tallulah Gorge.Cornelia was originally called "Blaine", and under the latter name had its start in the early 1870s when the Charlotte Airline Railroad was extended to that point.The Georgia General Assembly incorporated the place in 1887 as the "Town of Cornelia". Google search has failed me on how Cornelia got its name. If anyone knows, post a reply.



Cornelia abounds in historical lore. Near the city is the Wofford Trail. Some time in the first half of the 17th century there came from the north of England a family of Woffords, migrated and settled in Spartanburg, S.C.  There were five grown brothers and from this family descended all the Woffords in the south.  William H. Wofford was likely the most distinguished among them.  He established the first known iron works in the state on Lawson’s Fork river, and perhaps the first in the south.  His works were burned down by Bloody Bill Cunningham, a notorious Tory leader. 



He then moved to Turkey Cove, in North Carolina, eight miles north of Marion City.  He there built a fort for himself and neighbors, the site of which was plainly visible a few years ago.  During the revolution he was a colonel and was with Elijah Clarke in several engagements and expeditions to and from the colonies of Georgia and South Carolina.  In one of these he was so well pleased with a section of country through which he passed, that he determined to settle there when the war was over.  He moved to Georgia and settled near Toccoa Falls, where he died at the age of 95 years. He could read and write without the use of glasses up to the time of his death.  From this distinguished patriot have descended many Woffords in Georgia and other states, and being the only one of the family who traversed this section of the country in Georgia, the balance remaining in South Carolina for awhile.  His son, William T. Wofford, was a general in the Civil War.



William H. Wofford was well acquainted with the most direct route between Georgia and Washington City (VA).  Hence it is that portion called “Woffords Trail” takes its name from him, as there was no other Wofford at that time known in that region of the country., Many stagecoach robberies occurred on this trail. The last railroad holdup in Georgia took place at Cagle's Crossing, which is a few miles south of Cornelia.



The land where Demorest is now located was given by the State of Georgia to W. Stripling in 1829. Stripling did little with the land aside from maintaining a family farm. In 1840, the land was transferred to Dr. Paul Rossignol who built a summer home on the west side of Lake Demorest. That house became significant to the history of Demorest. Among other things, it was one of the first buildings used by Piedmont College, which was established in 1897. Demorest was platted in 1890 as a temperance town, and named after William Jennings Demorest, a prohibition advocate. Georgia General Assembly incorporated the place as the "City of Demorest" in 1889. Its original settlers were from the Midwest and New England, and the town's architecture reflects their influence.



Notable landmarks in the city include Demorest Springs Park and the Old Demorest Train Depot,



Demorest Women's Club and the former Lake Demorest.



One of Demorest's most popular landmarks is the Johnny Mize Athletic Center and Museum. The museum is owned by Piedmont College and is named for Baseball Hall of Famer Johnny Mize. Mize was born in Demorest, and played baseball at Piedmont. The museum houses Mize memorabilia from his time at Piedmont as well as from his professional baseball career with the St. Louis Cardinals, New York Giants and the New York Yankees.



In addition to the museum, Mize's childhood home is a Georgia Historical site with a private owner.



The most recent landmark is the new addition of the pedestrian bridge over a span of Historic U.S. 441 in front of the Piedmont College campus. The new bridge was assembled off-site and lowered into place by crane. The bridge was modeled after the Vanderbilt University 21st Avenue Pedestrian Bridge. The installation of the bridge was a joint project of the Georgia Department of Transportation, Piedmont College and the city of Demorest.



The county has capitalized on the market for retirement and summer/weekend homes by encouraging such development. Homesites along the shores of Lake Russell and many other smaller lakes have increased the property tax base, resulting in a solid financial status for the county.



Several museums are located in Habersham County: the Cornelia Railroad Depot Museum;



The Loudermilk Boarding House Museum, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.





It is also the home of the Panoramic Encyclopedia of Everything Elvis;

The Maybe Elvis Toe Nail.

The Elvis Wart.

And the Mauldin House Visitors Center in Clarkesville. A.M. Mauldin and his wife, a hat maker, were the first owners of the house and their descendants occupied it until 1990. Originally the property occupied an entire city block. It was typical of a small in-town farm with barns, pastures and vegetable gardens. The house was previously known as the Little Pink Cottage. The City of Clarkesville acquired the property after the death of Mary Mauldin, and completely refurbished the house and millinery shop. The Mauldin House serves as the City of Clarkesville's Welcome Center and offices for Downtown Development and Gardens and Grounds.



Top Row Dawg Addendum to Habersham County, one of the first real Mountains you reach from Athens coming to North Georgia, Chenocetah Mountain. This may be a future GNW as it is one of the largest Rhododendron stands in the US.



The Mountain stands at 1800 feet and the Chenocetah Tower atop, is the last rock-constructed, working fire lookout tower in the east.



A magnificent view Habersham County brings us up to the Mountains.



All directions.



More images Cornelia.

Front

Back

Elvis and Cornelia.



OK that was officially the second part of Georgia Natural Wonder #84. Apple eating GNW Gals as we move to GNW #85 tomorrow.