Marietta in History

The First Settlers' Parade

September 27, 1933

    The country was deep in the Great Depression when Marietta and Cobb County paused to review the first one hundred years. Merchants around the Square filled their store windows with artifacts of those early days. People moved from window to window surveying a mosaic of history composed of portraits, farming tools, clothes, guns, documents, china, and jewelry. At 2 p.m. they lined the streets as a parade began. 

    The covered wagons, ox carts, livestock, dogs and children brought the first brave settlers back to life.  A Cherokee Indian rode with his son on the beginning of the long, sad trail West.   Log schoolhouses and homes, church campgrounds, railway passengers, uniformed cadets and hoop-skirted girls were remembered.  Years of war and devastation, the return of Confederate soldiers to a ravaged homeland, patient reconstruction – all passed before their eyes.  More recent times were represented by one of the earliest automobiles, a courting couple on a bicycle and soldiers going off to yet another war. 

    The price of cotton was 4 ¾ cents that day as Marietta paused to remember its history.  At the fairgrounds, a white-haired daughter of a pioneer and a great-great-great granddaughter of another cut the birthday cake as people sang "Auld Lang Syne" and "Home, Sweet Home."

    Sarah Blackwell Gober Temple writes in The First Hundred Years, "Cobb County people had reviewed their history for the first hundred years.  If, here and there, there were tears, they were no less caused by memories of those now dead who had helped to make that history, memories of stories told about them which for the first time became to the young a reality, than by that spiritual meekness with which in considering history we inherit, not the earth, but the past."

Temple, Sarah Blackwell Gober. The First Hundred Years.

Marietta in History

Theatre in the Square

1982 – Present

    Palmer Wells recalls, "The first time I walked into the Square I instantly fell in love with it…It is truly a beautiful little southern town square."  The decision to start a downtown theater in Marietta followed.  Wells and partner Michael Horne, both IBM employees, rented space in a banquet room in the Depot Restaurant and, with $3,000 in personal capital and a small grant from IBM, founded the Theatre in the Square.  The first production in September 1982, On Golden Pond, opened to critical acclaim.   The community turned out and kept on coming.  By 1985, larger quarters were needed and the company moved to the current 225-seat space on Whitlock Avenue formerly occupied by the Lindsey-Galt furniture store.   The 120-seat Alley Stage was started in 1991 in a space behind the main theater for experimental and original productions.

    Despite a controversy in 1993 that resulted in Cobb County temporarily cutting off all arts funding, the Theatre in the Square survived and thrived with increased community support.  Currently, the Theatre has expanded into the space next door with a renovated lobby and is planning updates to its exterior and marquee.  Michael Horne died in 1996, but Palmer Wells continues to oversee the award-winning productions that draw large audiences and make the Theatre in the Square one of Marietta's most lucrative assets. 

Scott, Thomas A. Cobb County, Georgia and the Origins of the Suburban South.

Marietta in History

The Atherton Drugstore Explosion

October 31, 1963

    For many Mariettans, Halloween has never been the same since the terrible explosion.  Dr. Lucius Atherton and his son, Howard, owned Atherton Drugs, a popular shopping and meeting place.  On October 31, 1963, there had been a YMCA-sponsored Halloween carnival on the Square in the evening and about a hundred children had just left the immediate area.   There were still many people inside and outside the store at 6:23 p.m. when an earth-shattering blast turned the world upside down.  The explosion was attributed to a natural gas leak.  Mayor Sam Welch called it the greatest tragedy in the city’s history. 

    Bob Poole, the pharmacist on duty, said, "One minute the store was there and the next minute it wasn't."  Six people died and dozens were injured.  Among the heroes who risked their lives in rescue efforts was Romeo Hudgins, head of Marietta Civil Defense.  Ignoring his personal safety, he welded steel beams to shore up the building so the injured could be found and removed.  Convicts from the Cobb County prison worked all night clearing debris, which included bedraggled Halloween candy and masks.  Ruth McConnell, a cashier, was completely buried under debris and was rescued by Marietta High School football players who had been talking outside the drugstore.  In an interview given eighteen years later, she said, "That"s the first thing I think of when I wake up on Halloween morning."

November 1, 1963. The Anderson Herald (Indiana)

November 1, 1963. Atlanta Journal & Constitution

October 29, 1981. Atlanta Journal & Constitution

October 31, 2003. Atlanta Journal & Constitution

Marietta in History

Hattie Gaines Wilson

1919-2001

    Hattie G. Wilson was firmly in the corner of education.  Her children attended Lemon Street High School just as she had, but when Marietta High School was desegregated in the mid-1960s, many of the African-American students felt lost.  It was hard for them to leave their community school where they knew their teachers and their teachers knew them well enough to check on them if they were absent.  Many of them dropped out, but Mrs. Wilson told her son, "You can go to school and finish with your class…or I can quit my job and we can go to school together…"

    Mrs. Wilson worked in a variety of jobs after attending Paine College in Augusta.  She was a maid, an insurance saleswoman and a school teacher.  But she found her true calling when, after years of volunteering, she was hired in 1951 to work at the Fort Hill branch of the Cobb County Library System.  At that time, the libraries were segregated and the African-American community made do with hand-me-downs from the Clark Library.  Mrs. Wilson would borrow material needed by the neighborhood's college students and then open the library to them on Sunday.  She began the first Black History collection in the state. The Fort Hill library moved into the vacated Lemon Street Elementary School in the early 1970s, and eventually it was renamed the Hattie G. Wilson Library.

    A woman who devoted her life to education and community service, Mrs. Wilson was a member of the Marietta Housing Authority, acting as its chairman in the early 80s.  Other activities included working to form the Tenants' Associations for Fort Hill, Johnny Walker and Clay Homes residents and serving on the YWCA board of directors.  Her awards included the American Red Cross Volunteer of the Year, Eleven Alive Volunteer Honoree, Jefferson Award for Volunteering, and the Martin Luther King Jr. "Living the Dream" award.   Hattie G. Wilson said it and lived it:  "You can change things if you do it right."

Cobb County Oral History Series. Hattie Gaines Wilson Oral History.

Scott, Thomas A. Cobb County, Georgia, and the Origins of the Suburban South.

Felecca Wilson Taylor, daughter

Marietta in History

First Woman Principal at Marietta High School

1949

    Mary Hall Swain didn't like to think of herself as the first woman principal of Marietta High School because she believed that gender had nothing to do with job performance.  However, society was biased against professional women.  Appointed at a time when all county schools had male principals, Mrs. Swain was paid about a thousand dollars a year less than her male counterparts.  Raised by progressive parents who encouraged her to be whatever she wanted, she was educated at the University of Georgia and began her teaching career in Calhoun, Georgia.  When her husband accepted a job in Atlanta she tried staying at home but missed the academic life.  She taught at Smyrna School, Osborne High and Marietta High, where she became principal in 1949 and led the school for about eleven years.

    Mrs. Swain believed that a disciplined environment encouraged learning, and she found the staff and community to be supportive.  A conversation among a recalcitrant student, his or her father and the principal usually produced good behavior.  Should a student reach a third offense for missing class, smoking or using profanity, there was a 30-day suspension.  A fourth offense merited permanent expulsion.  After she left Marietta High, she served as assistant superintendent and curriculum director, later joining the staff of Kennesaw Junior College when it opened in 1966.  There she taught English until her retirement eight years later.

Scott, Thomas A. Cobb County, Georgia, and the Origins of the Suburban South.

Marietta in History

Virginia Crosby and Paving Cherokee Street

1888-1964

    "The lady has led a useful life," wrote Robert Hudson in a 1950 Marietta Daily Journal article about Virginia Crosby.  Brought to Marietta as an infant in 1888, Miss Crosby was a lifelong resident.  Her father was a druggist with a store on the Square and the family lived on Cherokee Street.  One morning Mr. Crosby said a cheerful goodbye to his family including 13-year old Virginia, walked to work, greeted his staff normally and then went into the bathroom and shot himself.  His daughter would later fund Cobb County Library's Georgia Room in his memory.

    The first woman to run for mayor of Marietta, Miss Crosby said, "I have a burning pride in anything that makes for a better Marietta…"   She was a great admirer of Alice Birney, establisher of the Parent Teacher Association, and worked long and hard as a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution to establish the Alice Birney Memorial at Marietta High School.  It is the only national memorial located on a high school campus.  Miss Crosby also spearheaded the move to preserve the Birney home with the nation-wide "penny-a-child" donation drive. 

    Miss Crosby's proud heritage as a great-great-great-great niece (the number of "greats" varies from source to source) of George Washington's sister was put to practical use. In her possession were various pieces of Washington memorabilia and she charged admission to her home for those who wanted to see these treasures.  The proceeds were used to fund a room at Kennestone Hospital as a memorial to General Lucius Clay.  The sash that Washington wore at Yorktown, complete with bloodstains, was sold to J. P. Morgan for $3500 in 1939 and the money went to pave Miss Crosby's  share of Cherokee Street.

May 31, 1900. Marietta Daily Journal.

February 16, 1939. Cobb County Times.

July 13, 1950. Marietta Daily Journal.

May 14, 1954. Cobb Atlanta Journal & Constitution.

Yearbook of the Fielding Lewis Chapter of the National Society Daughters of the  American Revolution.

Marietta in History

First Passenger Trains

1842

    In the 1820s, Marietta people were thinking about railroads.  The primitive roads and ferries of the day could not meet the increasing need to move people and supplies.  Passenger trains were developed in the United States in 1830, but as early as 1824 a news item in the Southern Recorder revealed that a rail trip had been made at an average rate of nearly twenty miles per hour.  Not everyone thought such breathtaking speed was a good idea.  One Augusta Chronicle reader deplored the intrusion of "iron monsters and unsightly rails" and reminded people that they had perfectly good rivers and canals.

    In 1835 a meeting was held in the log house of William Green to discuss a railroad line running through Marietta.  In 1836, the legislature authorized construction of a line from Tennessee to the Chattahoochee.  Funds were appropriated, surveys were taken, work was begun and in 1842 the Western and Atlantic railroad was ready for its trial run.   Everyone who could get there came to witness the arrival of that first passenger train, consisting of an engine, a freight car and a passenger car.  The event was celebrated by a banquet and dance in Marietta, attended by sophisticated visiting dignitaries who arrived – how else? – by rail. 

    Not everyone boasted such sophistication, though.  While he waited to see the train, one rural gentleman prudently decided to unhitch his horse and tie it to a nearby tree lest it be spooked.   The owner had placed himself in the shafts of the wagon to back it into a better position when suddenly the train roared into sight.  Astounded by the monstrous machine bearing down on him, the gentleman and his wagon took flight while the horse looked on calmly.  With the advent of the railroad, Marietta's days as a frontier village were over.

Temple, Sarah Blackwell Gober. The First Hundred Years.

Marietta in History

The New Deal

1930s

    It all depended on your point of view.  The New Deal was a friend of the working man, but the enemy of landlords and factory owners.  As a response to the Great Depression, the National Recovery Administration (NRA) was formed in 1933.  Then, a textile worker in Marietta got paid ten cents an hour.  Even the most enlightened mill owner was powerless to raise wages without putting himself out of business. 

    But the NRA unilaterally raised wages to a minimum of thirty cents an hour or $12 for a 40-hour week.  Textile executive Guy Northcutt said, "[When] FDR came in and slapped the thirty-cent minimum wage [on the industry], some of the old codgers thought we were ruined and couldn’t survive."  But he added that everyone adjusted to the change just fine.

    The New Deal created the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and the Public Works Administration (PWA) with the purpose of creating jobs for the unemployed.  These workers built roads and dams, dug sewers and recorded oral histories.  They expanded schools, erected public housing and created parks. 

    In Marietta, they helped build the Brumby Recreation Center, an extension to Perkinson (later named Lemon Street) High School, and Northcutt Stadium.  Mr. Northcutt, a member of the school board, recalled, "The city could get all the WPA labor it wanted." 

    Despite critics who said WPA stood for, "We piddle around," workers were able to keep their families fed during the Depression.  Many of their projects are still enjoyed today, including Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park.

Scott, Thomas A. Cobb County, Georgia, and the Origins of the Suburban South.

Marietta in History

The Whitlock House

1870s and 1880s

    After the Civil War, Marietta again became known as a resort for both summer and winter visitors.  One expressed his love of Marietta by saying that he was a traveler to many cities, towns and villages, but he had never been in any place more congenial to his taste than Marietta.  "There are two characteristics of which I would take special notice," he wrote in the Marietta Journal on April 9, 1869.  "The salubrity of the atmosphere and the sociability of the citizens.  The first cannot be surpassed, the latter (in my opinion) is unparalleled…"

    Visitors overflowed the Kennesaw House and rented rooms in private residences.  Large boarding houses were built to accommodate the large numbers of visitors, and one of the most popular was the Whitlock House.  Milledge G. Whitlock built the 150-room hostelry that occupied almost the entire block of Whitlock Avenue where the Whitlock Inn now stands.  He was a popular host and the Whitlock House was at the center of Marietta's social life. 

    Adults enjoyed diversions such as soap-bubble and bean-bag parties, fancy dress balls, amateur theatricals and especially Marietta's first Mikado party, for which the house was festooned with Japanese decorations.  The Whitlock House was destroyed by fire in April 1889 and Marietta's resort life was never to be the same again.

Temple, Sarah Blackwell Gober. The First Hundred Years.

History of the Whitlock Inn. www.whitlockinn.com.

Marietta in History

Power to the People

1938

    The Rural Electrification Administration (REA) was a godsend to rural folks in Georgia during the Depression.  While towns and cities had electricity, farms did not – only three percent of them were served by private power companies.  Stringing power lines to isolated farms was expensive and didn't produce much revenue. 

    However, the REA was part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, and its mission was to bring electric power to rural areas.  It provided low-cost loans to the Cobb County Rural Electrification Membership Co-op (Cobb EMC) to run those lines, with the money to be repaid through users' electricity bills. 

    On December 17, 1938, Senator Richard Russell arrived in Marietta and threw the switch that electrified 600 farms.  Marietta's mayor, Rip Blair said that the REA "would bring the people of Marietta and Cobb County closer together."

    Mary Ellen Simpson Allgood remembered the day the lights came on as a wonderful time.  "It was just a happy day; we could throw our kerosene lamps away."   Her boyfriend got her a radio – the first her family ever had - for Christmas that year.  

    Paul Lovinggood said that "everybody had more time after we got electricity, because we got a washing machine and an iron and a refrigerator."  In the bigger picture, the United States would soon be at war and increased farm productivity made possible by electricity would play a vital part in supporting American troops.

Scott, Thomas A. Cobb County, Georgia and the Origins of the Suburban South.

Marietta in History

Establishing the Southern Technical Institute

Late 1950s

    It was all a matter of trade-off.  In the 1950s, the University of Georgia held classes in various Marietta schools, collectively known as the Marietta Center.  But by the end of the decade, it was clear that Marietta needed its own institution of higher education, and the Marietta Kiwanis Club was approached to help obtain dedicated facilities. 

    The club's Public and Business Affairs Committee was made up of such powerful movers and shakers as Bill Kinney, Harold Willingham, Judge James Manning and Emmett Hobbs, among others.  They enlisted the support of Commissioner Herbert McCollum who helped with land acquisition.  With Bill Tapp's architectural drawings in hand, representatives from the Cobb legislative delegation and Kiwanis, along with Commissioner McCollum, went to see Governor Marvin Griffin in 1957 to ask for a new building to house the Marietta Center.

    Governor Griffin wanted to pass a rural roads bill and he was willing to deal, but only after he threw a theatrical temper tantrum.  When told that the new facility needed $800,000, Governor Griffin, raged, stomped, kicked his desk and climbed on top of it. 

    Shocked, the local delegation cut the figure to $600,000.  The governor resumed his seat and said, "Well, that's a lot better.  If you all will vote for my rural roads bill, I'll build your off-campus center and transfer the money for same to the Board of Regents immediately."  Despite this gubernatorial wheeling and dealing, the rural roads bill was defeated. 

    The Cobb leaders never received the money for the Marietta Center.  But the Board of Regents intervened in 1958 with an alternate proposal that Cobb County put in a request to become the new home of Southern Technical Institute.  For the last decade Southern Tech had operated out of the old Naval Air Station barracks in Chamblee. 

    The Regents were disappointed that DeKalb County had been so slow in
upgrading facilities.  So they were willing to entertain a better offer from Cobb.  Commissioner McCollum acquired 93 acres for a campus in Marietta (the core of the current Southern Poly campus), and the legislative delegation went back to Governor Griffin. 

    Grateful for the earlier support of Cobb's three House representatives, Griffin upped his promised $600,000 to $2 million.  He later said, "I'm not used to paying $200,000 apiece for votes upstairs, but damned if it didn't cost me $666,666 each before I got through."  With these funds and a promise from Cobb to put in all the utilities and roads, Southern Tech came to Marietta.  The new campus officially opened on October 2, 1961.

Scott, Thomas A. Cobb County, Georgia and the Origins of the Suburban South.

Marietta in History

Kathryn Roberson Woods

1908-1987

    Kathryn Roberson Woods was a teacher, churchwoman, civil rights activist and mentor.  She was the wife of principal M. J. Woods, the first African-American principal of a Marietta high school, and together they were a powerhouse in Marietta's civil rights movement. 

    Mrs. Woods organized the Cobb County Council of Colored Parents and Teachers, serving as its president in the 1930s.  She was national membership chair of the NAACP, a member of the Cobb NAACP and chairwoman of the Cobb chapter of the Georgia Human Rights Council. 

    Because of her dedicated efforts, the Marietta YWCA and the Atlanta Butler Street YWCA forged an alliance. In 1944 she helped convince Marietta's leadership that black children needed a swimming pool.  A member of the YWCA board, she helped to organize the biracial Women to Serve All People, which recruited low-income girls to participate in YWCA programs without charge. 

    Mrs. Woods was the first African-American member of the Cobb County Church Women United, serving as president and named as Valiant Woman of the Year in 1980.  One of her most prestigious honors came in 1981, when she was given the WXIA-TV Atlanta community service award. 

    Lillian Corrigan was a white activist who described Mrs. Woods as "always in the forefront of everything…a leader, my mentor."  Noting that Mrs. Woods was tireless and humble in her efforts to secure integration, Mrs. Corrigan once remarked,  "Kathryn, how can you let people use you like that?" Mrs. Woods replied, "Lil, I don't mind being used when I know I'm being used and it's for the good of my people." 

    Mrs. Woods is lovingly remembered and her work is commemorated every year by a scholarship given in her name by the Friends of M. J. and Kathryn Woods Committee. 

Scott, Thomas A.  Cobb County, Georgia and the Origins of the Suburban South.

Marietta in History

Goats and Hogs in the Square

Late 1860s

    Following the Civil War, downtown Marietta presented a checkered face.  Burned-out buildings sat next to new ones. Streets were still littered with rubbish from the devastation of Sherman's army. Goats ruled the Square, fearless and inquisitive. Ladies took to carrying umbrellas to fend them off, but the goats soon developed a taste for umbrellas and would trail the ladies from store to store, nibbling impudently. The ladies were not amused. 

    In 1869, the City Council ordered each business owner around the Square to repair or replace the dilapidated sidewalk in front of his business with brick or rock. New shade trees and shrubs were also planted as the town attempted to refurbish itself. But the goats ate the plantings and free-ranging hogs rooted up the new sidewalks. 

    The Square got its first pump in May of 1870 and it was considered a great sign of progress. Replacing the labor-intensive rope and bucket, the pump seemed a modern marvel. It brought its own problems, however, because a resulting muddy patch on the west side of the Square soon became a hog-wallow. The City Council admonished citizens to pen their animals, but it was years before the Square was livestock-free.

Temple, Sarah Blackwell Gober. The First Hundred Years.

Marietta in History
 
Sherman's Cavalry Burns the Courthouse

1864

    Sherman's army had occupied Marietta since July and it was now November.  When the order was given to leave Marietta and begin their victorious March to the Sea, some of the troops celebrated with fire.   First they burned Acworth;  then they lit up Marietta.  

    Fires were repeatedly set in Marietta's courthouse despite officers' efforts to stop the arson.  When the structure was finally blazing out of control, the fire spread to other buildings on the Square.  

    Major Henry Hitchcock recorded in his diary, "All our staff, and all other officers I heard, regret and condemn."  He also recorded the following conversation with his commanding officer, General Sherman:

Hitchcock:  "'Twill burn down, Sir."

Sherman:  "Yes, can't be stopped."

Hitchcock:  "Was it your intention?"

Sherman:  "Can't save it – I've seen more of this sort of thing than you….I never ordered burning of any dwelling – didn't order this, but can't be helped."

    One can hear the weary fatalism in Major Hitchcock's later entry:  "What a sad and fearful necessity - how terrible the guilt of those who forced this war and its unavoidable horrors!  But there is no help for it."

Guarnieri, Damien A. and Kirby, Joe. Marietta.

Temple, Sarah Blackwell Gober. The First Hundred Years.

Marietta in History

Regina Rambo

1910

    In 1910, Regina Rambo was a woman on the move.  She entered a "good roads tour," sponsored by the Atlanta Constitution.  The Marietta Journal reported that she cut a dashing figure in her tan auto cloak, brown bonnet with rosettes and long streamers of veiling and brown gauntlets.  One account says that when she appeared she was greeted by enthusiastic applause – "It was a novel sight."*  To prepare for the rigorous trip, she shortened her skirts to three or four inches from the floor.

    The roads actually weren't so good – in some places they dwindled to mere paths – but she drove 1,000 miles throughout Georgia in less than ten days in her $2,750 Columbia automobile.    She completed her trip with a perfect score and was presented with an engraved loving cup bearing these words: 

"Presented to Miss Regina Rambo by the Atlanta Constitution.  The first woman to drive an automobile 1,000 miles around Georgia.  October 26, 1910."

Glover V, James Bolan; McTyre, Joe and Paden, Rebecca Nash. Images of Marietta 1833-2000.

Knight, Lucian Lamar. Georgia's Landmarks, Memorials, and Legends.*

Temple, Sarah Blackwell Gober. The First Hundred Years.

Marietta in History

The Kennesaw House

1845

    In the mid-1840s, the railroad through Marietta was nearing completion.  Taking advantage of a location right beside the tracks, John Heyward Glover Jr., later elected Marietta's first mayor, built what is now known as the Kennesaw House.  It began life as a breakfast house, but in 1855 Dix Fletcher bought it and rebuilt it as a four-story hotel, eponymously named The Fletcher House.  It was considered one of Georgia's finest hotels.  Mr. Fletcher was a Union sympathizer and during the Civil War the hotel became a way station for Union spies.    In 1862, some of the Andrews Raiders spent the night there before they successfully captured a Southern train engine known as the General.  They fled towards Tennessee with Confederate forces in hot pursuit, leaving an echo of derring-do that still resonates today.

    The building was a Confederate hospital in 1863 and Sherman's headquarters in 1864.  The top floor was burned by federal troops, repaired after the war and opened in 1867 as the Kennesaw House.  Over the years, the Kennesaw House has been home to groups as diverse as the United Daughters of the Confederacy, who began meeting there in 1898, several restaurants, offices and currently the Marietta Museum of History.   It is owned by the Downtown Marietta Development Authority.

Kennesaw House 

Glover V, James Bolan; McTyre, Joe and Paden, Rebecca Nash. Images of America Marietta, 1833-2000.

Marietta in History

Tranquilla

1849

    In 1849, the beautiful Greek Revival house, Tranquilla, was built on Kennesaw Avenue by General Andrew Jackson Hansell.  It was home to General Hansell, his wife Caroline Clifford Shepherd Hansell and their six children. During the War Between the States, Northern army officers seized Tranquilla and used it as their headquarters.  Mrs. Hansell refused to leave and was confined to one room with her two youngest children and their nurse.  Somehow she endured that occupation, but it must have put steel in her soul. 

    During the chaotic period following the end of the war, bands of violent outlaws roamed the South.  One such group charged up to Tranquilla, waving fire brands and threatening to set the house ablaze.  They wanted to loot the house while a portion of it was in flames, then leave it to burn to the ground.  Mrs. Hansell had apparently had enough.  She met them on the front portico, carrying a derringer.  "I will shoot the first man who advances a step," she said calmly.  No one was willing to bet this small Southern lady didn't mean it.  The marauders fled.

    Tranquilla still stands on Kennesaw Avenue.  It is a private residence, the home of Marietta attorney Greg Griffen and his wife, Beth.

Temple, Sarah Blackwell Gober. The First Hundred Years.

February 1, 2009. The Marietta Daily Journal.

Marietta in History

Mattie Harris Lyon

1850-1947

    Mattie Harris Lyon was just 10 years old when she heard the news that Abraham Lincoln had been elected president.  Young as she was, she had overheard enough political discussions to say, "…I knew it was a terrible calamity for our beloved Southland.  My father was a butt-headed secessionist and was so excited over the event he wanted to fight right then."  Mr. Harris was too old to enlist, but Mattie"s brothers went to war.  They didn't come home alive.

    Mattie survived  privations and dislocations during the War and the post-war years.  She married Mr. R. Lyon, a Marietta merchant, raised children and ran a boarding house on Cherokee Street.  Pressed to record some of her memories for posterity, she wrote, "The Story of My Life - written for my dear boys to read when I am under the daisies."  Throughout her life she was known for her kindness and civic spirit, including her passionate dedication to marking the 3,500 graves in the Confederate Cemetery.   A statue was erected there in her honor on September 16, 2004, depicting her sitting on a bench reading her diary.

    She wrote, "I am a good American now for 364 days in the year and I love our flag – the prettiest in all the world – but on Memorial Day, April 26, I am a Confederate and want no flag but the Stars and Bars."

Lyon, Mattie Harris. My Recollections of the War Between the States.

Lyon, Mattie Harris. The Story of My Life.

December 3, 1947. Marietta Daily Journal.

September 16, 2004. Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Marietta in History

The Dixie Highway

Circa 1930

    Used to be, if you were traveling through Cobb County, you were traveling on the Dixie Highway, which went right through the Marietta Square on the way to parts south.  It was a fabled route that wound among piney woods and sleepy little towns, past chenille bedspreads hung out for sale, boiled peanut stands and countless mom and pop motor courts.  Stretching from the Midwest to Florida, the Atlanta Road section of the highway was paved from Marietta to Smyrna in 1920.  Three years later, the paving stretched to the Chattahoochee River and by 1929 went all the way through Georgia. 

The Dixie Highway changed things.  Now people were just passing through. They stayed at tourist camps advertised along the highway with signs that said, "Room, $1.  Heat.  Baths.  Free garage."  In her book, The First Hundred Years, Sarah Blackwell Gober Temple writes, "The Middle West, with which Cobb County is principally concerned, leaves its winter climate and its coal bills, and packing itself and its baggage into cars and trailers, passes along Cobb's highways to Florida.  Inquisitive dogs bark from the windows of Iowa and Michigan cars; supercilious cats blink from the back of Indiana and Ohio cars, bound for Florida and making a night's stop on the way down in the autumn and a night's stop on the way back in the spring."

Temple, Sarah Blackwell Gober. The First Hundred Years.

Scott, Thomas A. Cobb County, Georgia and the Origins of the Suburban South, A Twentieth-Century History.

Marietta in History

Farmers' Market

Circa 1934

    Marietta is proud of her thriving Farmers' Market, the latest manifestation of a long custom of town produce sales.  Since the days when Cherokee Indians came to sell their baskets and venison, summer Saturday mornings in the square have resembled an open air cornucopia of plenty. 

    In the 1930s, principal crops were listed as cotton, corn, hay, truck-garden crops and sweet potatoes.  Marietta citizens complained about the traffic as they threaded their way through cars, trucks and wagons brimming with fruits, vegetables, live chickens, eggs packed individually in cotton-seed hulls, butter, cider and stove wood. 

    Sweet potato varieties Nancy Hall and Puerto Rico, grown in the Lost Mountain area, were roundly praised as being the most delicious to be found anywhere.  Cobb County sorghum was declared the unsurpassable complement to hot buttered biscuits. 

    Shoppers thumped watermelons, squeezed peaches and checked out the silk on the ears of Golden Bantam or Country Gentleman sweet corn as they filled their baskets.  There may have been a Depression on, but the people of Marietta lived in the midst of a garden.

Temple, Sarah Blackwell Gober. The First Hundred Years.