Georgia Natural Wonder #100 – Athens / Clarke County (Part 3) - Before WW II. 1,445

[Top Row Dawg]

Georgia Natural Wonder #100 – Athens / Clarke County (Part 3) - Before WW II

We continue our history tangent on this Georgia Natural Wonder. We got through the Civil War, let’s cover the next 100 years today. The Reconstruction period was devastating for the entire South; however, under the leadership of the University and such men as Benjamin Harvey Hill, Howell Cobb and Joseph Henry Lumpkin, Athens soon regained its momentum and continued to grow.



In 1867, Naturalist John Muir passes through Athens on his famous 1,000-mile walk to Florida from Kentucky. In his diary, he calls Athens a remarkably beautiful and aristocratic town, containing many classic and magnificent mansions…Unmistakable marks of culture and refinement, as well as wealth were everywhere apparent. It is the most beautiful town I have seen on the journey so far, and the only one in the South that I would like to revisit.


Muir traveling somewhere

Textile factories and related businesses flourished once again, resulting in a growth virtually unparalleled in the New South. Its five rail lines, rapid rivers for powering mills and other industrial plants, and outside investment (especially after the Civil War) led to a diverse industrial base for its post–Civil War economy.


Puryear's Mill, pictured circa 1918, was located on Cedar Creek in Clarke County and operated as a cotton gin and corn mill. The facility was dismantled in 1945.



Whitehall House, added to the register in 1979, is located in the southeastern part of the county and was the home of Clarke's first large water mill, founded in 1830 to process cotton from area plantations. The mill was bought in 1837 by John White, and the town of Whitehall, incorporated in 1891, grew up around it. John White's son, John R. White, built a hydroelectric plant to serve the water mill in 1897. After undergoing financial difficulties, the Whites' property was sold at auction in 1930 to Oconee Textile Company. Thomas Textile Company, maker of children's clothing, bought the buildings in 1946. Clothing was manufactured there until 1988, when developers converted the mill into loft condominiums. The former mill owners' mansion and many mill homes are still extant. Whitehall is no longer an incorporated community. The dam at Whitehall Forest–near the confluence of the North and Middle forks of the Oconee.



Once a generator of electricity; today it is now just a river obstruction, but one that gives a window to the river’s critical role in the history of nearby Athens.



In 1887 settlers formed a town around a stone hewn mill that produced "heavenly" star-thread. A wing dam and canal raceway originally channeled Oconee waters into the giant wheel of the Star Thread Mill factory, twirling thousands of thread spindles daily. In 1911, James White built his largest and most powerful hydro electric power plant. This provided electricity not only to the factory and surrounding mill town of Barnett Shoals but also to the City of Athens, GA and its local street cars.


Basement of Star Thread Mill today.

The night sky around Barnett Shoals, GA became a candle upon a hill. An entire community consisting of over 50 home sites, a Methodist church, a local grade school, a general store and post office, a blacksmith, sawmill, and company management and payroll office thrived in this one area. Under Mr. White's direction, and later his family's supervision, the mill town flourished and realized the height of success throughout the 1920s. A talented baseball team, a local marching band, and a fraternal order of Odd Fellows helped provide ongoing communal activities. Soon, an entire village of workers, families, teachers, preachers, hydro-electirc engineers, farmers, and fellow countrymen soon grew up from these grounds. The factory was named the Star Thread Mill. As we now acknowledge, the town became known as Barnett Shoals, Georgia.


Barnett Shoals Dam – this lowhead dam dating from the early 1900s gives the impression of Niagara Falls.  At the time of its construction it powered nearby textile mills and the associated mill village. Currently, the dam produces no electricity and the land that once held the mill village has gone back to forest.

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The benefits of economic prosperity were reflected in the community: the Lucy Cobb Institute earned a reputation as one of the finest girls' schools in the country.



The Lucy Cobb Institute, a secondary school for young women in Athens, was founded in 1859 by Thomas R.R. Cobb, a prominent lawyer and proslavery writer. Between 1880 and 1928 Cobb's niece Mildred Lewis Rutherford, a Lucy Cobb graduate, taught at the school. She served as principal for twenty-two of those years. Rutherford's work in women's clubs, most significantly the United Daughters of the Confederacy, made her one of the best-known women in Georgia of her day. Her national reputation as a historian of the Civil War (1861-65) and the Old South brought the school widespread recognition and respect.



Cobb had hoped that his young daughter Lucy would attend the new school, but she died before it opened, and the institute's board of directors named the institute in her honor. Most Lucy Cobb students came from wealthy and well-established families. Nineteenth-century schools for elite young women emphasized subjects that would enhance their gentility, including art, music, and French, and Lucy Cobb was no exception. Yet even from its early days, the school offered a more academically serious curriculum than the stereotypical finishing school.


Lucy Cobb Institute

Under the leadership of Rutherford and her sister Mary Ann Lipscomb, the curriculum became even more rigorous. Students, or "Lucies," in the collegiate track studied sciences (including chemistry and physics), higher mathematics (algebra, geometry, trigonometry), logic, rhetoric, languages, history, and literature. After 1918, once the University of Georgia (UGA) began accepting women students, graduates of Lucy Cobb's collegiate program could enroll. Indeed, the school aimed its curriculum to prepare graduates to attend the university. In her extensive 1916 report on women's education in the South, Elizabeth Avery Colton of the Southern Association of College Women listed Lucy Cobb as one of the very best schools for young women in Georgia.


Mildred Lewis Rutherford

Along with academics, Rutherford and other faculty members emphasized the importance of a modest appearance and proper manners and etiquette.


Lucy Cobb Institute Library

Students were prohibited from venturing beyond the school's front yard unchaperoned, entertaining male visitors, attending parties in town, dancing, and wearing makeup or short skirts. The combination of academic rigor with education in gentility, their teachers believed, prepared students for both private and public life. Alumnae became clubwomen, librarians, teachers, authors, and businesswomen; one Lucy Cobb graduate, Caroline Goodwin O'Day, served in the U.S. Congress (1935-43).


Congress Woman O'Day

Despite its success, the institute struggled to maintain high enrollment and keep its bills paid. The school faced acute financial difficulties in the 1920s, mostly because of the agricultural depression that hurt the entire state. After Rutherford's death in 1928, the school struggled on for a few more years, finally closing in 1931. UGA purchased the building, but it fell into disuse.


Seney-Stovall Chapel

In the 1970s a group of Athens preservationists, many of them children or grandchildren of alumnae, received a federal grant to renovate the exterior of the institute's Seney-Stovall Chapel. This renovation effort was led by historian Phinizy Spalding, the grandson of alumna Nellie Stovall, who was instrumental in the original construction of the chapel. In the early 1880s, while a student at the institute, Stovall appealed to New York philanthropist George I. Seney for building funds, and the chapel, which bears both of their names, was completed in 1885.



The entire Lucy Cobb complex was renovated in the late 1980s and early 1990s, with two appropriations by the U.S. Congress of $3.5 million and $1 million, and contributions of another $1 million by public and private donors. The Lucy Cobb Institute's inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places was a major consideration in the appropriation of federal funds. In 1991 the institute became the central administrative home of the Carl Vinson Institute of Government at UGA.


Carl Vinson.

While mansions of ever-increasing grandeur multiplied throughout the city during the Victorian period. Now we did a driving tour of the Antebellum Homes of Athens. Many of the same streets have all the Victorian homes too, Milledge Avenue, Dearing Street, Prince Avenue, and the lovely area known as Cobbham out by Athens Regional.




For many years this was the home of Phi Kappa Psi but is now being occupied by Delta Phi Epsilon.



The Athens Street Railway Company was organized in 1870, and, in 1871, the seat of Clarke County was transferred from nearby Watkinsville to Athens. Watkinsville, located on land that eventually went to Oconee County, served as the county seat until 1871, when the state legislature made Athens the new seat. The town of Watkinsville had evolved slowly, while Athens, with a rail terminus, grew quickly. After the University of Georgia was established in Athens, the town became the county's center of commerce and education. The form of government changed to a mayor-council government with a new city charter on August 24, 1872, and Captain Henry was elected as the first mayor of Athens.


Old jail.

Henry Beusse was instrumental in the city's rapid growth after the Civil War. After serving as mayor, he worked in the railroad industry and helped bring railroads to the region, creating growth in many of the surrounding communities. Bob McWhorter, the first All American at UGA, was a halfback who scored 61 touchdowns from 1910 to 1913. After becoming an attorney, he returned to Athens to practice law. He was a four-term mayor of Athens (1940–1947) and a law professor at Georgia from 1923 to 1958.


Mayor McWhorter College Hall of Fame photo.

Freed slaves moved to the city, where many were attracted by the new centers for education such as the Freedmen's Bureau. This new population was served by three black newspapers: the Athens Blade, the Athens Clipper, and the Progressive Era. William Anderson Pledger was an early civil rights activist and publisher of the Athens Blade.


Pledger

The Athens Visitor center has a marvelous driving tour for Athens African American History.

Reese Street Historic District



My first house in Athens was at 660 Reese Street. I lived (unknown at time) next to my wife’s childhood nanny. Seven roommates great spot next to the old KFC. Big ole party 500 people, and our house was raided by the police 3 days later. But I digress.This district dates back to the 1860s and was an important educational center for the black community. After the Civil War, African American families settled into under-utilized areas near downtown. They built their own schools in this area (Knox Institute and Athens Industrial High School).

Knox Institute Corner of Reese and Pope Streets and no longer there



Founded by the Freedmen’s Bureau in 1868, Knox School was a private school that provided excellent instruction for black students. It was the first school for black students in Athens and was named for John J Knox, a white official of the Freedmen’s Bureau. Under the direction of the Reverend Louis S. Clark, it was reorganized as the Knox Institute and Clark served as principal from 1886 until the school closed in 1928. At its height, the school was one of the most prestigious private schools in Athens drawing its students from five states.The school offered academic subjects as well as industrial classes such as carpentry, printing, sewing, and there was a special department of music and domestic science. In 1912, Andrew Carnegie provided money for the construction of a new building named Carnegie Hall, which is where the school continued instructing Athens’ black students until financial troubles forced it to close in 1928.

Harris House 446 Reese Street

Dr. W.H. Harris was one of Athens’ most prominent early black physicians. He was a principal organizer and largest stockholder in E.D. Harris Drug Company, the first black- owned drug store in Athens which at one time was located in the Morton Theatre Building. He was co-founder of the Georgia State Medical Association in Augusta, and active in the Republican party

Athens High and Industrial School, 1913 – 496 Reese Street





The Athens Board of Education adopted plans to construct a black public school on Reese Street in 1913. It was a modern, well-equipped, steam heated, frame building. Professor S.F. Harris was the first principal, and classes were held for both elementary and secondary grades. By 1916, it became Georgia’s only black public high school and its name changed to Athens High and Industrial School. In 1922 the school was among the first to be accredited by the state. It continued to prosper and moved in 1955 to a new building on Dearing Street. The school was renamed Burney-Harris High School in 1964. This Reese Street building was sold to the Athens Masonic Association, Inc. No longer there, just an historical marker.


Reunion of graduates. Ulysses Norris (One of the first blacks to play at UGA) went to Burney – Harris

Hiram House 635 West Hancock Avenue

The Hiram House was the former residence of Ida Mae Hiram and her husband Lace Hiram. Mrs. Hiram was the first African- American woman to pass the Georgia dental board exams and the first black female dentist in Athens. Ida Mae Hiram lived in this house from 1918 until her death in 1979. The Hirams’ husband-and-wife dental practice, two of only seven black dentists in the entire state, was located at the Morton Theatre Building.

Old Commercial Center Hancock and Pope Intersection


Pope and Hill St intersection, this may be in Cobbham.

This area was a black-owned and run commercial center, complete with a hotel, café, cleaners and a pool hall. Two of the original buildings still stand, but all that remains of the hotel is the foundation walls of the southeast corner of the building.

West Hancock Historic District



This area between Milledge Avenue and the Athens city limits became a black settlement and was a little town in itself. In 1913, 1136 of the city’s 6300 blacks lived in the area. West Hancock was home to a wide cross section of Athens’ black residents. Doctors, lawyers, and tradesmen lived in the larger homes built on higher, more level sites.



An African-American middle class and professional class grew around the corner of Washington and Hull Streets, known as the "Hot Corner", where the Morton Building was constructed in 1910. This was the center of African-American commercial, financial, professional, and social life in Athens at the turn of the century. Many black businessmen established their operations here and it became important to the black middle class life.  The theater at the Morton Building hosted movies and performances by black musicians such as Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway, and Duke Ellington.



Morton Theatre, 1910 – 195 West Washington Street



Monroe Bowers “Pink” Morton was born a slave who by 1914 owned 25-30 buildings in Athens. He was the Republican delegate to the 1896 convention that chose William McKinley as a Presidential candidate. The Morton Theatre is the first Vaudeville Theatre in America built, owned, and operated by an African-American. This 350 seat theatre is one of four African-American Vaudeville Theatres on the National Register of Historic Places. Bessie Smith, Louis Armstrong, and Cab Callaway all performed here. The first floor office of the Morton building was the dentistry practice of Dr. Ida Mae Hiram, the first African-American woman dentist in the state of Georgia. She practiced for 55 years until she was 83 years old.

Wilson’s His and Hers Styling Salon - 343 Hull Street



This building used to house “The Athens Republique,” an independent black newspaper. The editor was Julian Brown, a licensed notary public. The paper’s content was dedicated to “the religious, the educational, and the industrial development of the colored race.” The Athens Republique was first published in November of 1919 and continued to serve the community until the mid- 1920s. Elizabeth and M.C. Wilson, who also own the soul food restaurant next door, own today’s salon. It is one of the few black-owned businesses still in operation on Hot Corner.

Gospel Pilgrim Cemetery, 1882 – 530 Fourth Street



The cemetery was established in 1882 for African-American Athenians as a result of a burial insurance program called The Gospel Pilgrim Lodge. Members paid a dime a week to be guaranteed a big funeral. Prominent Athenians with grave sites at Gospel Pilgrim Cemetery include Charles S. Lyons, Sr., school principal; Monroe “Pink” Morton, newspaperman William Pledger; and Madison “Matt” Davis, a former slave who became a Georgia legislator during Reconstruction and Athens’ first black postmaster. To commemorate Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday in January 2002, Michael Thurmond and local volunteers held a cleanup day at the cemetery



Oh wow, reading this historical marker, I did a google of Harriett Powers and boy is she worth a tangent link.


Powers

She was an African-American slave, folk artist, and quilt maker born into slavery near Athens, Georgia. Historians say she spent her early life on a plantation owned by John and Nancy Lester in Madison County, Georgia, where it is believed she learned to sew from other slaves or from her mistress. She was married with nine children. In 1886, Powers began exhibiting her quilts. Her first quilt, known as the Bible Quilt, was shown at the Athens Cotton Fair in 1886. It is this quilt that is now in the Smithsonian Institution. The quilt had 299 separate pieces of fabric, made into 11 panels. Broken vertical strips separated each panel. In West African design, unbroken lines were meant to startle spirits and keep evil from "moving in straight lines." The panels themselves depicted Bible Stories, like the story of Jacob from the spiritual "We Are Climbing Jacob's Ladder," which was a popular Bible story with slaves since they related with the hunted, homeless Jacob, the ladder representing escape from slavery. The other ten subjects are Adam and Eve, Eve and her son in a continuance of Paradise, Satan among the seven stars, Cain killing Abel, Cain going into the land Nod for a wife, the baptism of Christ, the crucifixion, Judas Iscariot and the thirty pieces of silver, the Last Supper, and the Holy Family.


Bible Quilt

Now only two quilts have survived, the second is the Pictorial Quilt from 1898.This quilt had fifteen sections and combines Bible scenes with both African and Christian symbols, along with stories of meteorological and astronomical events. Events like Black Friday (May 19, 1780), a series of forest fires, Georgia's cold front of February 10, 1895, the Leonid meteor shower (November 12–14, 1833), and several nights of falling stars during mid-August 1846 were all depicted in this work.


Pictorial Quilt

Finishing the Black History Tour we come to ……..

Weaver D’s 1016 East Broad Street


CKS hanging back there?

With the 1992 release of R.E.M.’s album “Automatic for the People”, the world became familiar with Weaver D’s motto. Dexter Weaver has been serving soul food to the grateful citizens of Athens since 1986. He is the author of the book, Automatic Y’all Weaver D’s Guide to the Soul.



In the 1880s, as Athens became more densely populated, city services and improvements were undertaken. The Athens Police Department was founded in 1881 and public schools opened in fall of 1886. Telephone service was introduced in 1882 by the Bell Telephone Company. Transportation improvements were also introduced with a street paving program beginning in 1885 and streetcars, pulled by mules, in 1888.



The Classic City Street Railroad Company was incorporated in 1885 in the names of H.H. Carlton, R.B. Russell, and other prominent Athenians to build a street railroad to convey "either passengers or freight, or both" along a route beginning on Broad Street and continuing to College Avenue to Clayton Street to Lumpkin Street to Hancock Avenue to Pulaski Street to Prince Avenue to Milledge Avenue to the city limits. Its mule-powered cars were named Lucy Cobb, Pocahontas, and No. 2. The company owned 19 horses, 9 cars, and 5 miles of main line. It had also expanded to serve the new Boulevard neighborhood north of Prince Avenue. Here, like many other street railways, it constructed a park to encourage ridership on Sundays and other periods when fares from commuters declined.


Boulevard today.

Around 1910 the Milledge Avenue line was incorporated into a loop that brought streetcars directly from Five Points to downtown via Lumpkin Street. After passing alongside the length of the University of Georgia campus, the northbound cars turned right onto Broad Street and then left onto College Avenue.


A streetcar turns at College Avenue and Clayton Street, c.1893.

By its centennial in 1901, Athens was a much-changed city. The first courthouse was built in Athens in 1876 and was replaced by the current courthouse in 1914. Several additions have been made to the courthouse in the years since its construction.


Now is this the Courthouse or City Hall?

In 1907 aviation pioneer Ben T. Epps became Georgia's first pilot on a hill outside town that would become the Athens-Ben Epps Airport. Epps designs, builds, and briefly flies the first airplane in the state of Georgia. The flight occurs only four years after the Wright brothers' first ever flight in 1903. Epps uses Washington Street for take-off and landing. In 1919, Epps and Monte Rolfe rent the land currently occupied by Athens-Ben Epps Airport and operate a flying service. Epps died in a plane crash on takeoff in 1937.


In 1925 Ben Epps unveiled his "light monoplane," a small single-seat aircraft. He wanted to make flying available to the average person.

Athens got its first tall building in 1908 with the seven-story Southern Mutual Insurance Company building.



Athens back when.



During World War II, the U.S. Navy built new buildings and paved runways to serve as a training facility for naval pilots. In 1954, the U.S. Navy chose Athens as the site for the Navy Supply Corps school.



The school was in Normal Town in the buildings of the old Normal School.



It closed in 2011 under the Base Realignment and Closure process. The 56 acres site is now home to the University of Georgia/Medical College of Georgia Medical Partnership, the University of Georgia College of Health Sciences.



The only other incorporated town in the county is Winterville, which was incorporated in 1904. Winterville was founded six miles from Athens soon after the Georgia Railroad built its line through the area in 1841.



The railroad depot was originally called "Six-mile Station," reflecting its distance from Athens, but later became known as "Winter's Station" after Heinrich Winter, a member of a local German immigrant family, became its section foreman. The name "Winterville" was codified in 1866 when John Winter, another family member, became postmaster.


It’s no longer a bank but it’s a great part of Winterville’s history. Winterville hosts the Marigold Festival every summer and is located 20 minutes from downtown Athens.

We found these interesting images of UGA campus evolving through the years
















Dang, Athens is heavy on history. We want to wrap this Athens tangent up tomorrow with a late 20th and 21st Century post to include the Music History, but before we leave this early 20th Century post we need to tangent on Oconee Hills Cemetery. A place of great natural landscaping and beauty after all this is a Natural Wonder Forum.



The extant cemetery opened in 1856 and is located behind the railroad tracks of East Campus Road. The official closest GNW to Sanford Stadium.


Unknown Confederate soldiers outside Sanford Stadium.

Oconee Hill Cemetery was purchased in 1855 by the city of Athens when further burials were prohibited in the old town cemetery on land owned by the University of Georgia.



In 1856, the city formed a self-perpetuating Board of Trustees to hold and manage in trust the original purchase of 17 acres on the west side of the North Oconee River as a public cemetery for the benefit of the town.On May 22, 2013, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places.



Jewish section.



Oconee Hill is significant for its landscape architecture, decorative funerary markers, distinctive cast-iron fencing, a rare through-truss bridge, and a Sexton's House of architectural significance.





The grassy and rolling terrain with woods, flowing water and scenic vistas makes Oconee Hill a pleasant place to visit and stroll among the graves of many notable Georgians including governors, University presidents, veterans, and Congressmen. Oconee Hill is still an active cemetery, and lots are available for sale.

The Wikipedia list of interments.

• David Crenshaw Barrow Jr., chancellor (president) of the University of Georgia.



• Walter Barnard Hill, chancellor (president) of the University of Georgia.



• Omer Clyde Aderhold, president of the University of Georgia.



• Frederick Corbet Davison, president of the University of Georgia.



• Andrew A. Lipscomb, chancellor (president) of the University of Georgia.



• Tinsley W. Rucker, Jr., United States Representative for Georgia's 8th congressional district.



• Augustin Smith Clayton, United States Representative from Georgia.



• Samuel Joelah Tribble, United States Representative for Georgia's 8th congressional district.



• Luther Glenn, Mayor of Atlanta from 1858 to 1860.



• William Bailey Lamar, United States Representative for Florida's 3rd congressional district.



• Crawford Long, physician noted for early use of diethyl ether as an anesthetic.



• Thomas Reade Rootes Cobb, Confederate general.



• Robert Grier Stephens, Jr., United States Representative for Georgia's 10th congressional district.



• Howell Cobb, 23rd Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, Governor of Georgia, United States Secretary of the Treasury.



• Wally Butts, Georgia Bulldogs football head coach.



• Henry Hull Carlton, United States Representative for Georgia's 8th congressional district.



• Bill Hartman, former Georgia Bulldogs football player and coach and Washington Redskins player.



• Dean Rusk, United States Secretary of State from 1961 to 1969 under presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.



• Ricky Wilson, guitarist in the rock band The B-52's.



• William M. Browne, general in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War.



• Sampson Willis Harris, United States Representative for Alabama's 3rd congressional district and Alabama's 7th congressional district.



• Eve Carson, Student Leader from University of North Carolina, and homicide victim.



• Young L.G. Harris, Athens Judge, state representative and namesake of Young Harris College and Young Harris, Georgia.



• Mildred Lewis Rutherford.



• Lucy May Stanton, artist known for her portrait miniatures.



Holy cow, did Links for permanent Forum Post. I leave you with our GNW gal for today. A Victorian doll in keeping with today's historical theme.



Plain Old Dawg adds an addendum about the Chalky Level Diaries that were written by his great great great grandmother at Chalky Level plantation just east of Athens.

We donated the diaries to UGA about ten years ago. My grandmother grew up at the plantation and we have several of the portraits, quilts, and a good bit of the silver, furniture etc. from the plantation.She wrote in her diary every day during the civil war and afterwards and her writings are considered to give one of the most complete accounts of plantation life in the South during that time, especially from a woman's perspective.Sadly, the family lost the plantation during the Great Depression.
Born December 31, 1810, to Richard and Elizabeth Meade Cox, Francina Elizabeth Cox Greer King grew up five miles east of Athens in recently formed Clarke County. In 1826, Francina Elizabeth Cox and John Cox Greer were married. Soon after, Elizabeth, as she preferred to be called, added a small inheritance when her father died. Located about five miles east of Athens on the road leading to Lexington, John Greer's plantation encompassed 300 acres along Shoal Creek. The Greers called their home Chalky Level because the drive around it was laden with limestone. The original structure was built around 1817, and had served as an inn for the stagecoach between Athens and Augusta. Elizabeth Greer became pregnant within a year of her marriage and over the next 19 years had 15 children, only three of whom survived to adulthood.She discusses living as a single woman, social life, and economic hardships. Elizabeth Greer possessed enormous energy and a strong will to survive in spite of great personal losses. She was a very slight and fragile woman who, before the war, was often confined to bed and weighed only 77 pounds.