Revisiting Camp Hobson

Clara Barton

Earlier this week Douglasville Patch was so kind to re-run my column from 2011 regarding

Camp Hobson in Lithia Springs….a military camp used during the Spanish-American War.

While I strive to get the whole story with each and every column I write I often stumble across additional sources or bits and pieces of information after I’ve published something.   In this case I recently came across a mention of Lithia Springs in Clara Barton’s book The Red Cross in Peace and War.

Yes!   Clara Barton.   THAT Clara Barton you remember from your history classes!

Clara Barton was the founder of the American Red Cross in 1881.   The website for the Atlanta chapter of the American Red Cross advises…..Miss Barton’s most significant act during her closing years as head of the American Red Cross was to take Red Cross supplies and services to Cuba during the Spanish-American War. Miss Barton….went to Cuba with her nursing corps, medical supplies, and food.  Aid was given to the American forces, to prisoners of war, and to Cuban refugees. This effort was the first step toward the broad programs of service to the armed forces and to civilians during wartime that have become traditional in the American Red Cross.

The Atlanta chapter of the Red Cross per Ms. Barton’s book was also involved with providing meals at an emergency camp that was set up in Lithia Springs, Georgia.

Camp Hobson was set up to provide a place for patients to basically escape after Typhoid broke out at Fort McPherson early in August, 1898.  Camp Hobson was short-lived, but because it existed it may have saved the lives of the men who were sent there.

In her book Ms. Barton mentions a report that was sent to her regarding the camp.  Ms. Barton states:

At Camp Hobson, Lithia Springs, Georgia, a diet kitchen was also maintained under the direction of Miss Julia McKinley, assisted by the Atlanta Committee of the Red Cross, of which the following account is received:   The diet kitchen was opened here on Monday, August 9, and remained in operation three weeks; at the expiration of which time the camp broke up.  During the first week after the kitchen was established, when detachments from the Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, and Twenty-Fifth regiments were in camp, 1,176 meals were served.

The next week orders were received for the removal of the Eighth and part of the other regiments to Montauk Point, consequently the number of convalescents was reduced, but during the second and third week 2,066 meals were served, making a total of 3,242 meals served at the table and in the hospital during the time the kitchen was in operation.  The meals were furnished to convalescents in the hospital, men relieved from duty but not sick enough to be in the hospital, and to the hospital corps.  

The report then went on to describe the various foods served including many of the same things any hospital kitchen serves – breakfast cereals, milk, eggs, toast, bouillons, rice, etc. – before continuing:

The only paid help were two men and one woman, the latter lived near the camp and reported for duty at the first meal call and remained until dining tent and kitchen were in order. 

This last sentence confirms something I had wondered when I first researched the subject regarding the citizens of Douglas County…..if they helped or volunteered in some way.   I certainly would like to know the names of the individuals, but sometimes points of history are lost for all time. 

While the Douglas County workers are not named members of the Atlanta Red Cross Society were mentioned in the next portion of the report.

The other work in the kitchen was graciously done by Atlanta members of the Red Cross Society assisted by Mrs. Edward H. Barnes, Mrs. Loulie Gordon Roper (niece of General J.B. Gordon), Miss Emmie McDonnell, Miss Estelle Whelen, Mrs. George Boykin Saunders, all of Atlanta, and the ladies from the Sweetwater Park Hotel, who came over daily from the hotel, about half a mile distant from the camp, and assisted in serving table meals, also in carrying delicacies to hospitals and distributed flowers among the patients.

It affords us pleasure to acknowledge the uniform courtesy of the army officials, especially the commandant Major Thomas Wilhelm, Chief Surgeon Major E.L. Swift, Assistant Surgeons Street, Baker, and Johnson and Lieutenant Norman, Quartermaster.

Major Wilhelm had our kitchen built and fly ten for dining hall put up in a few hours after our arrival; detailed men to help wherever needed in kitchen and with finest courtesy assured us of his appreciation of what was done to add to the comfort of his sick and convalescent men.

Besides regular kitchen work at Camp Hobson, the Red Cross furnished for a short time to the hospitals one special nurse….Miss McKinley….and one trained nurse….Miss McLain, who remained until our last patients were sent to Fort McPherson General Hospital and went with them in the hospital train, ministering to their wants until they were transferred to their respective wards there.

In this connection we think proper to state that many of our Camp Hobson patients now in Fort McPherson Hospital, one of the best equipped and best managed hospitals in the country, assure us that they can never forget the unfailing kindness of Chief Surgeon Swift and assistants the faithful care of their Red Cross nurses, nor the delicacies furnished by the diet kitchen at Camp Hobson.

Even though I have looked at the pictures and visited with all of the historical documents and accounts through my research it is still difficult to realize that not only was Lithia Springs home to a magnificent hotel during 1898 but also played host to a military camp with a thousands of soldiers.

But...the hotel WAS there and so were the soldiers.  

Chatauqua Grounds - Site of the Barbecue Fiasco

I woke up Saturday morning with history on my mind - Lithia Springs history to be exact. I realize there is more than enough history in Douglasville proper to keep me on topic for quite some time with this column, but a factoid I had uncovered  during my research had pushed my interest button. The item I had come across advised during the summer of 1888 close to 30,000 people were pouring into Douglas County  from Atlanta and from points unknown via the railroad.

Think about that for a moment because 30,000 people were a large group coming in and out of our county every day with a purpose other than aiming to take up permanent residence.

30,000.

Daily.

Wow! Was Douglas County hosting the Olympics?

Well, it was something similar for the time period. They were here for the Piedmont Chautauqua.

Now when I first began my general research a few weeks ago I kept running across the word "Chautauqua" and figured it had something to do with Native Americans because the texts would refer to the Chautauqua Grounds. I assumed the texts were referring to hunting grounds or fighting grounds between the Cherokees and Creeks. Once resource I accessed had to do with Camp Hobson. I wrote about it here. The source stated: The Chautauqua grounds were about 1 1/4 miles west of the springs after which the town was named. This is approximately the intersection of Bankhead Highway and Baker Drive. The Chautauqua Grounds were west of Marsh Avenue.

Have you ever heard the old adage about assuming? I was wrong.

The Chautauqua had nothing to do with Native Americans or fighting. The purpose was education on a grand scale.

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries people were hungry for cultural and educational opportunities. The Chautauqua caught on because the events included a mixture of instruction with play. Take the atmosphere of the fair and mix in speakers, teachers, musicians, entertainers and preachers for a period lasting three to seven days mix it in with a few fireworks and you get the idea.

It's so easy today for us to hop on the Internet and visit the website for the Smithsonian or the National Gallery of Art. We can hop in the car and travel to Atlanta to see Cirque de Soleil at Atlantic Station or see a Broadway show at the Fox Theater. Here in Douglasville we have the Cultural Arts Center and the Old Courthouse Museum.  We can learn anything we want by accessing it on the Internet including college courses or by purchasing software.

For folks who lived in rural America there just wasn't an opportunity for them until the Chautauqua movement took hold across our country. The main focus was education for adults. The first Chautauqua was organized by a Methodist minister in 1874 in upstate New York as a way to provide educational training for Sunday school teachers. Other enterprising people latched onto his idea because he mixed in an outdoor setting as his venue, and put a new twist on learning. He made it fun.

The idea was copied over and over as daughter Chautauquas sprang up all over the United States. Each Chautauqua lasted for three to seven days, and each day a different headliner would perform or speak. A whole industry sprang up around the Chautauquas in order to provide the entertainment and speakers for such events similar to today's talent agencies or speaker's bureaus. President Theodore Roosevelt said, "The most American thing in America was the Chautauqua."

Several years later during World War I, President Woodrow Wilson advised the Chautauqua was "an integral part of national defense." The Chautauqua movement had its heyday in the 1920s and had tapered off by the late 1940s with the widespread use of radio and with television soon hitting the scene.

The Piedmont Chautauqua held in Lithia Springs, Georgia was the brainchild of Henry W. Grady, editor of the Atlanta Constitution and promoter of the New South following Reconstruction. Some Chautauquas across the county were on a circuit. They would breeze into small towns, set up tents, educate and entertain the people and then move on to the next town. Grady wanted the Piedmont Chautauqua to be different. He wanted it large and lavish. He wanted it permanent. He even wanted people to be able to buy or rent cottages on the grounds, so a few would have a permanent Chautauqua lodging spot though there were several large hotels in the area. I have been told that the streets behind today’s Wyatt Pharmacy in downtown Lithia Springs–Marsh Avenue, Miller Way and Kiser Avenue –are all streets that led to the area where lots were sold for cottages.

Grady chose the location of Salt Springs, Georgia because it had railroad access, it wasn’t too far from Atlanta, and the area was already established as a resort town with the magnificent Sweetwater Park Hotel. You can view the magnificent structure here or here.

It’s amazing to think such a place was right here in Douglas County–in little Lithia Springs–being visited by the likes of Presidents McKinley, Taft and Theodore Roosevelt. Members of the Astor, Vanderbilt, and Whitney families visited the hotel for the curative waters and spa treatments. They would travel in their own rail cars and then use the hotel's dummy line to reach the springs.

The Sweetwater Park Hotel property was the perfect spot for Henry W. Grady’s Chautauqua plans because if his “New South” ideals. Douglasville was a fine example of a postbellum “New South” town leaving old ways behind and attempting to embrace industry and commercial business.  Douglasville’s businessmen, professionals and politicians all adhered to Grady’s “New South” ideals.

Henry W. Grady was already friends with several of the movers and shakers in Douglasville and worked with them directly to get the project off the ground including Thomas R. Whitley, John B. Duncan, and Charles O. Peavey (see article here), editor of the Weekly Star, Douglasville’s newspaper at the time.   Joseph S. James, Douglasville’s first mayor among many other positions he held over his lifetime, was an investor along with Grady’s partner, Marion C. Kiser, a Fulton County Commissioner. Grady hired an architect and landscaper–L.B. Wheeler and Joseph Forsyth Johnston respectively–to get busy designing and building the Chautauqua grounds.

Take a look at what they came up with here.   What a wonderful structure for education and entertainment and right here in Douglas County!  The Lithia water site advises:The  Chautauqua buildings were built after the Moorish style, with plain wings and towers and minarets clustering to the center.  The Tabernacle seated seven thousand people and was located in an immense grove with exquisite gardens and lawns, rose mounds, and a reflecting lake.

In the days leading up the Piedmont Chautauqua the papers heightened anticipation regarding the Chautauqua by giving a daily progress update. Fannie Mae Davis recounted in her book, Douglas County, Georgia: from Indian Trail to I-20, a June 15 headline read, “ONLY 25,032 MINUTES REMAINING INCLUDING NIGHTS.” To celebrate some of the progress made by the end of June Chautauqua organizers decided to sell tickets to a barbeque meal where the proceeds would benefit the Confederate Veterans Home. The event was advertised far and wide and even made the Atlanta paper. The food was prepared including 30 kids, 10 young calves, 12 sheep, 300 pounds of butter, 50 dozen lemons, 200 ears of corn and 20 bushels of tomatoes. What the promoters didn’t anticipate was the timing it took to have that amount of food cooked when people showed up. They also forgot  the fence surrounding the grounds had not been finished.  It was estimated approximately 3,000 non-ticket holders managed to get on the grounds. Chaos ensued when there wasn’t enough food to serve everyone. The newspapers advised the Piedmont Chautauqua had its first and its last barbeque!

The barbeque fiasco was just a little set back. The Piedmont Chautauqua opened in fine style.  The Lithia Springs Mineral Water site advises:  [Henry W. Grady] went to great lengths to secure twenty-one eminent professors from such schools as Yale, Harvard, Princeton, John Hopkins, Vanderbilt, and the University of Virginia. The Summer College offered courses in English Language and Literature, German Language and Literature, French Language and Literature, …Latin and Greek, Physics, Botany, Chemistry, History and Pedagogies, New Testament, Arabic, Assyrian, and Hebrew Language and Literature.  The Assembly Schools included Physical Culture, Decorative Arts, Fine Arts, Elocution and Music.  In keeping with the Chautauqua program, a two-day program offered “Sunday school days” for workers and children.

Grady had intended to hire several well known writers of the time including Atlanta’s own Joel Chandler Harris aka Uncle Remus to perform readings of their works at the Chautauqua, but from a list of six famous authors he was only able to secure one–Thomas Nelson Page. The Atlanta Constitution for August 2, 1888 stated: Mr. Thomas Nelson Page, the famous southern author, arrived in Atlanta yesterday morning.  He spent the day in visiting points of interest about the city with Mr. Clarence Knowles [an Atlanta politician], and last evening went to Chautauqua.  Tonight he will give readings from his works. Page ended up reading from his "Unc' Edinburg's Drowndin" to the delight of those in attendance.

The Lithia Springs Water site further advises:  The Piedmont Chautauqua formally opened on Sunday, July 8, 1888, with sermons by three famous preachers and an illumination by ten thousand colored lights.The Eighth Calvary Regiment Band of the Republic of Mexico, proved to be such a sensation, the trains from Atlanta to the Chautauqua were packed at every scheduled run. After a rendition of “Dixie and the Star Spangled Banner” at each performance, the Band received “vociferous applause.”
Indeed, Grady’s Chautauqua had exceeded all expectations.

Sadly, Henry W. Grady would be dead with the year, but his grand Piedmont Chautauqua lives on in the history books even if the grand hotel and magnificent Chautauqua buildings are a distant Douglas County memory.

Douglas County's Spanish American War Story

There are many ways to define history, but it can be described as a study of how things change over time. Many historians examine the different ways land is used over time, and it is something that I find fascinating.

Take any spot in Douglas County and that spot -- that plot of land has a history. More than likely it was first used by the Creek or Cherokee Nations as hunting grounds, and later by this area's first settlers as farmland. Later, sections of the land would become community areas like Dark Corner, Mt. Carmel or the town of Douglasville.

Let's take a plot of land and trace its history a little. The plot in question is near the intersection of Veterans Memorial Parkway (Bankhead Highway) and Baker Drive. The street is east of Lithia Springs Church of God and next to Pro Body Shop. Today the land down Baker Drive is dotted with homes. Hundreds of cars travel through the area daily passing Baker Drive. The occupants of the cars driving through heading to work, to school, to run various errands never consider what might have been going on in the area fifty years ago or even a hundred years ago.

Would you ever consider there was a military camp located there?

There was....

I would imagine that when most people think of Douglas County the last thing that comes to mind is the Spanish-American War, but like any American towns that existed in those few weeks during the Spring and Summer of 1898 the events of the war were first and foremost in everyone's mind, and that patch of land located at Baker Drive was very important to some of the troops who were undergoing training for the conflict with Spain. That plot of land might very well have been the ingredient that saved their life.

The state of Georgia played a very important role in training soldiers. Georgia had more camps than any other state with twenty-five different facilities. Some of the camps were located in Albany, Athens and Augusta to name a few. Camp Thomas was one of the more notorious camps. It was located on the Civil War battlefield at Chickamauga and had a population of 7,000 regular soldiers and more than sixty regiments of state troops. Todd Womack's article at New Georgia Encyclopedia correctly advises "overcrowding and poor sanitation led to a serious outbreak of typhoid" during those months. There were more than 752 deaths at Camp Thomas from typhoid.

Douglas County was important in the war effort as well. Typhoid is the key here that brings us to the Douglas County connection. Disease, mainly typhoid, was the number one killer during the Spanish-American War rather than actual warfare. In fact, Vincent J. Girillo advises in his book, Bullets and Bacilli, "for every soldier killed during the Spanish-American War, more than seven died from diseases such as typhoid."

Typhoid was nothing new to Douglas County. Fannie Mae Davis' book, Douglas County, Georgia: From Indian Trial to I-20, advises there were constant outbreaks of typhoid every summer in the 1880s and 1890s leaving doctors and citizens baffled because a cause had not been isolated. Folks called it the 'putrid fever" or "the sickness", and thought the illness was "brought here from other places."

At one point Douglasville doctors pointed to a constant mud puddle that stood at the intersection of Broad and Campbellton as a possible cause of the sickness. It seems the puddle was such a permanent fixture of foul water in town that citizens had given it a name....."Hog Wallow". It was finally filled in and eradicated, but "the sickness" kept coming back.

Finally, doctors across the world finally began to understand typhoid was caused by poor sanitation and close quarters. They began to understand the role flies played in carrying the disease as well. While a vaccination had been created in 1897, it wasn't until the 1930s that typhoid would finally be under control.

Getting back to that plot of land near Veterans Memorial and Baker it seems Fort McPherson created a camp there in 1898 mainly to move soldiers away from an outbreak of typhoid. Fannie Mae Davis as well as other historical sources indicates the land was used as a sub-post for Fort McPherson....

THANK YOU for visiting “Every Now and Then” and reading the first few paragraphs of “Douglas County’s Spanish American War Story“ which is now one of the 140 chapters in my book “Every Now and Then: The Amazing Tales of Douglas County, Volume I”. 

Visit the Amazon link by clicking the book cover below where you can explore the table of contents and read a few pages of the book…plus make a purchase if you choose!

Bankhead Highway - The Military Road

Even with the convenience and ease of using Interstate 20 as a shortcut to travel about Douglasville, at some point in time you will find yourself on US 78/Bankhead Highway -- that stretch of road running parallel to the railway line through the downtown historic district of Douglasville where the road is also known as Broad Street.

Originally, the road was known as the Military Road since it served primarily as a route for soldiers to move back and forth between Fort McPherson and the rifle range at Waco, Georgia, approximately 30 miles west of Douglasville.

A common sight most weekends for Douglasville residents were columns of soldiers marching up the road in formation. They would set out from Fort McPherson early on a Saturday morning and march to Camp Hobson, a sub-post near Lithia Springs, where the soldiers would bivouac. The next morning the soldiers would be on the march again trekking the remaining twenty miles that Bankhead Highway cuts across Douglas County. Later, as the road continued on into Alabama the soldiers would march on to Anniston. 

An actual road was proposed by a Congressional bill in 1905 and was finished in 1915, but the Military Road remained a dirt road until 1931 when it was finally paved. The road brought Atlanta closer to Douglasville. There was limited bus and taxi service in the beginning but eventually the service widened and as more an more people were able to own cars the road began to be traveled extensively. Many Douglasville citizens were able to travel to Atlanta for work and area farmers could reach new markets.

Once the road was connected to Birmingham it received the name Bankhead in honor of Senator John H. Bankhead of Alabama, the sponsor of the Congressional bill known as the Federal Aid Road Act of 1916, the first federal highway funding legislation.

Senator Bankhead was instrumental in the funding legislation. Two of his sons also served in Congress and his granddaughter was Tallulah Bankhead, a famous actress who had a scandalous reputation from the 1920s through the 1950s.

Today Bankhead Highway criss-crosses the lower half of the United States, and it can take you from Washington D.C. to San Diego, California via Douglasville!