Atlanta And Its Builders, Vol. 1 - A Comprehensive History Of The Gate City Of The South. Thomas H. Martin
Of the people of Murray county, the same work says: "The amusements are dancing, racing, cock-fighting, gander-pulling and bear fights." Still, for all the roughness of their environment and the crudeness of their manner of living, these mountain-folk were law-abiding and peaceably inclined. Homicides were rare among them, as the court records of their counties will show, and they seem, by the same testimony, to have had little use for lawyers. It may sound strange, writing at this clay, to class the early inhabitants of the region immediately tributary to Atlanta, with the quaint mountaineers still presenting a picturesque type in the highland counties, but at that time DeKalb, and the other foothill counties, presented the same sociological conditions. The cultured and easy-living people of the low country regarded them as "yahoos," to use an expressive provincialism, and their fighting proclivities, as in the case of the westerner today, were exaggerated. It was the coming of the railroads that wrought the change.
Before concluding these cursory observations on the descent and characteristics of the first settlers of the wide section of Georgia that gave to the Southeast its chief city, it is well to refer to the fact that the so-called "cavalier" stock had little to do with laying the foundation of the new empire. The planter with his semi-feudal ideas and mode of life, descended from the old-line families of Virginia, was to be found further down in the state. Prosperous in his landed possessions, he had no motive to impel him to hew out a home in the wilderness to the north. "The Commonwealth of Georgia" says, apropos: "Middle Georgia, especially, is Virginian in modes of life, speech and manners. In common with her sister states of the old South, the ruling class have been the wealthy slave-owners and others in full sympathy with them." The historian could not have said this of North Georgia. Few slaves were owned in the entire region. True, the people were too poor to be slave-owners, and they had, in those times, no need for this kind of labor; but it must also be taken into consideration that they were not of slave-holding stock. A large proportion of them were of identically the same strain as the Puritans. Indeed, hundreds of them were not even born in the South. Of these some were immigrants from the old world and some from New England and Middle states. Scotchmen as straight-laced as any disciples of John Knox on their native heath, and Irishmen of strong "Orange" prejudices, were vital factors in the building of North Georgia. Wallace Putnam Reed, in his excellent history of Atlanta, notes this fact as follows: "It should be stated, however, that the state has received two noteworthy streams of immigration, one from Pennsylvania and one from New England. These immigrants at once mingled with the great mass of our people, and their descendants became typical Georgians." To one interested in genealogy, a study of the biographies of the prominent early residents of this section affords abundant proof of this singular fact. Many of the streets of Atlanta named for respected and valuable pioneer citizens, bear the names of men born in New England or elsewhere in the North. This is true of such prominent pioneers as Jonathan Norcross, William Markham, Richard Peters, Edward E. Rawson, Frank P. Rice, Sidney Root, H. I. Kimball, L. P. Grant, and others that might be named. Others Southern born came of the sturdy Scotch or Irish stock that had so much to do with the development of Piedmont Georgia. They were not of cavalier antecedents.
CHAPTER III. WHEN ATLANTA WAS TERMINUS
In the spring of 1836 the music of an axe echoed through the forest that covered the hills destined to furnish the site of Atlanta. The brain of the man who swung the axe was not excited with mental visions of a "future great" metropolis where inside lots brought a fabulous price per front foot, and an acre of sterile red clay was infinitely more valuable than all the "diggings" of the Cherokee Nation. It is doubtful if the inner vision of that hardy pioneer — Hardy Ivy — extended further than a stumpy clearing in the woods surrounding a snug cabin with his children playing about the door. The ambition that nerved his arm to strike was the common desire for a home, and in this instance the home-seeker was contented with a very humble one. Mr. Ivy was a poor man, but he possessed the better qualities of the frontiersman. He had energy, pluck and courage. It had been his original intention to locate in or close to Decatur, but land was to be had almost for the clearing over toward the Chattahoochee, and leaving his family at Decatur, Mr. Ivy mounted a mule and went on a little land prospecting expedition in the uninhabited hill country to the west. Nothing but the settler's poverty led him to select the rough piece of woodland six miles above the county seat. It was forbidding enough. Hundreds of land-hunters had rambled over the unpromising soil before, and left it like the stone that the builders rejected. However, the tract was cheap, and that was the chief desideratum. Mr. Ivy concluded he could grub a living out of it, and preferred settling then and there to taking chances in the Cherokee lottery. Accordingly, he concluded the purchase, and having erected his log hut, removed his family to their new home sometime during the summer.
As has been stated in a preceding chapter, the year in which Mr. Ivy made his settlement was a momentous one in projecting railroad enterprises for Georgia. The convention attended by delegates from seven Southern states, which met at Knoxville, Tenn., on July 4, of that year, recommended the building of a road from Cincinnati to Knoxville, to connect with the two roads already in course of construction, one from Augusta, and the other from Macon. The Macon railroad convention, held in the fall, discussed a uniform system for the routes to be followed by the several projected roads, and passed resolutions calling upon the state to build the connecting link between the Tennessee and Chattahoochee rivers. By this time, the work of construction was already in progress on the Central, Georgia and Monroe railroads, and a charter had been granted to the State road in the west, since known as the Western and Atlantic. The Macon convention was instrumental in securing the passage of a bill by the legislature that winter, extending the charters of these roads to meet the expansive ideas of the railroad enthusiasts of the state. This bill, which was bitterly fought by the non-progressive element from the back counties, passed by a very narrow majority on joint ballot in the general assembly. Governor Schley affixed his signature to the act on the 21st of December, 1836. This legislative measure was of great importance in its bearing on the unborn metropolis. By its terms it authorized the "construction of a railroad from the Tennessee line, near the Tennessee river, to the southwestern bank of the Chattahoochee river, at a point most eligible for the running of branch roads thence to Athens, Madison, Milledgeville, Forsyth and Columbus." This made the way clear for the long talked of connecting link between the great highways of commerce between the Mississippi and Atlantic seaboard. It at once elevated the State road to the dignity of a great trunk line and forecasted its grand destiny. The determination of the eligible point spoken of in the act, called Atlanta into being.
The following spring (1837), Stephen H. Long, engineer-in-chief of the ambitious new railroad, went to the southwestern bank of the Chattahoochee to locate a suitable terminus, as directed by the state. Mr. Long was a practical man with no axe to grind. He saw at once that the topography of the region made the plan of locating an important terminal and junction point anywhere on the banks of the river unfeasible. Seven miles east of the river, however, he found what he considered the logical point for the purpose desired. Here the last foothills of the three great mountain ranges of the middle South converged in a manner that made them the natural roadbed for the proposed intersecting steel highways. Indeed, nothing was left for Mr. Long to do but acknowledge nature's provision in the matter. The place approved by his scientific judgment was peculiarly well adapted for an important railroad center, and he selected it without any hesitation. There was no haphazard luck or land-scheming involved in making the selection. It was in strict conformity to the immutable law of eternal fitness. The intervening years which have made Atlanta the hub from which numerous railroad spokes radiate, have confirmed the wisdom of the chief engineer's action. In no other place could an Atlanta have been built.
At the present day, an engineer bent on the performance of a mission such as that assigned to Mr. Long, would have been followed by an army of townsite promoters and speculators. Immediately upon the official approval of his selection, a rush to the "magic city" would have ensued, and ere a year had elapsed he farms for miles around would have been laid off in townsite additions. There would have followed a veritable "boom," and the scandal of official collusion with land agents for personal gain would have been inevitable. Nothing of the kind attended the location of the South's greatest railroad center and her Empire State's future capital. Engineer Long completed his important work practically unnoticed, and Hardy Ivy went ahead