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| Anneewakee Creek |
Anneewakee Creek rises to the south of Douglasville and
runs southeastward to join the Chattahoochee River at a point a little
downstream and opposite the site of the old town of Campbellton.
The name is from the Cherokee language….possibly from a
Cherokee family name. Some researchers
think members of this family might have lived along the creek. However, I need
to point out Anneewakee Creek actually flows through land that was part of the
Creek Nation….not the Cherokee.
A Cherokee name in Creek Country is not so strange
because around 1815 Cherokees were under the impression they would be able to
settle on Creek lands as far south as today’s Heard County. In fact, there was a line of land designated
as no-man’s land that ran from the river up to and across the ridge where Broad
Street is in downtown Douglasville where both tribes hunted. It makes sense there would be some
overlapping and mixture. The boundaries
kept changing as white settlers began moving in and began their plans to seize
Native American lands no matter which tribe claimed the lands.
In 1821, both tribes agreed to yet another boundary line
that began at Buzzard’s Roost Island on the Chattahoochee River where Douglas
and Cobb Counties meet and ran westward to the Coosa River in Alabama. The line passed far above the head of
Anneewakee Creek.
When looking to early industry in Douglas County you have
to zero in on the area along Anneewakee Creek. By the 1830s two important mills
were situated on the creek and shared a property line. I wrote about the Alston Arnold mill here.
Today the spotlight turns on the mills originally
belonging to William Ely Green who came to Georgia via his home state of New
Jersey in 1831. Green brought along his
wife, Mary Stiles Green, and their children.
His first stop was the area of Georgia where Morgan, Oconee, and Walton
Counties converge.
An article by Arden Williams at the New
Georgia Encyclopedia advises “after
the War of 1812 some southern leaders, in an attempt to duplicate the
prosperity of cotton mills in New England, built textile factories in the
South. Many of the earliest
factories were in Morgan and Wilkes County.
The idea faltered a little, but due to an economic depression in 1837
alternative sources of revenue for southern businessmen was needed, and the
mills began to prosper.
William Green and his family were welcomed to Georgia by
a relative….Ephraim Stiles Hopping….Mary Stiles Green’s cousin. Hopping had been living in Georgia since
1825 when after graduating from Princeton he headed south to accept a teaching
job at the University of Georgia. Then
he decided he would build a mill.
The 1840 census shows William Ely Green living in Morgan
County, and by 1846 Hopping’s High Shoals Factory was in full operation and
remained so for years, however, at some point Green and Hopping parted
ways. Perhaps they had a disagreement,
perhaps they had an amicable parting, or perhaps Green wanted to stake a claim
of his own where new unclaimed lands awaited near Campbellton, Georgia
following the Indian Removal.
At any rate Green did purchase a strip of land along
Anneewakee Creek that Fannie Mae Davis describes as “laying off Anneewakee
Road.” It was there William Ely Green
began a couple of mills – one for making cotton cloth and thread and a second
mill for creating rope. My research
indicates the rope mill was the only one at the time in north Georgia. Both mills were fully operational by 1840,
but the process could not have been easy.
The area at that time was a wilderness with few folks in
the area. It was a full thirty years
before Douglas County would exist and at that time the city of Douglasville
wasn’t even a thought. The area where
our old courthouse stands today was merely an intersection of Indian trails
close to an old skint chestnut tree.
Green had to physically clear the land with no modern equipment
other than an ax. Once trees were
cleared those same trunks had to be fashioned to use for building
structures. It was back breaking and time
consuming work. There were no corner
groceries, so the family had to set to planting crops immediately to sustain
them.
Fannie Mae Davis’ information regarding Mr. Green and his
mill explains census records for 1850 and into the Civil War years clearly
shows both mills employed men and women on an equal basis. For the most part women didn’t work outside
the home during antebellum years, but a few women were forced to out of
need. Mrs. Davis names one such woman –
a 65-year old widow named Mary Frails.
She worked in the mill alongside two of her daughters.
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| Site along Anneewakee Creek where the Green-Rice Mill stood http://www.panoramio.com/photo/8255456 |
Besides providing jobs for those in need Mr. Green’s
mills also provided an important market closer to the folks who were raising
cotton along the Chattahoochee River and on the Chapel Hill plantations.
Green then shipped his finished products out to various
towns that existed near and far. He used
ox drawn wagons as his method of transport.
Davis states, “A round trip to Atlanta took the wagons four days….a trip
to Villa Rica would take two days.”
One of Green’s first team drivers was Wylie Preston
Tackett. He began driving a wagon for
the mills in 1848 when he was only ten years old! Driving the wagons was lonely and dangerous
work. The roads weren’t roads that we
know today. They might have followed
some of the same routes but they were more or less Indian trails that were
barely wide enough for wagons let alone people. Wild animals such as wolves and mountain
lions were prevalent.
Some of the towns could be a little scary, too. In 1848, Villa Rica was a rough and rowdy
gold mining town.
Fannie Mae Davis advises her source for the information
regarding Tackett comes from a written account his daughter left behind
following her death in the 1960s. The
daughter advised Tackett held the job driving the wagons until he was 23. At that point he volunteered to serve in the
Confederate army.
The area surrounding Green’s mills became a little
community since he and the neighboring mill Alston Arnold owned provided
housing for many of the workers. A
thriving community store was set up to help those who lived in the
community. Arnold’s property adjoined
Green’s tract of land making the area along the banks of Anneewakee Creek a
thriving community for that time period.
In fact, the area was populated to the point that
Campbell County leaders placed a district courthouse in the area much like our
own mini-courthouses (see my article here)
from the past. The district courthouse
was basically a rough log cabin and when it was not in use for government
purposes it served as a school as well as a religious meeting house. I know that seems strange today with the
constant cry for the separation of church and state, but this was a frontier of
sorts. Necessity was more important than
matters involving how a government building was being used. Since public education didn’t exist at the
time the school would have been a private concern and folks could make a choice
regarding sending their children. There
was also a post office. The Anneewakee
Factory Post Office was a log structure on Green’s property. Fannie Mae Davis states the building stood
until well into the 20th Century.
Of course, the mill provided Green and his growing family
with a nice living. It is reported he
had one of the first fancy buggies in the area. His transport wagons were known to carry
cotton cloth and rope out to customers, but would return with such things as a
fancy cook stove for his wife’s kitchen and a piano for his daughters to play
from such places as Charleston.
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| A millstone from the Green-Rice Mill along Anneewakee Creek http://www.panoramio.com/photo/8255501 |
The Green mills survived the Civil War even though Union
soldiers were aware they existed. Perhaps
Green’s Yankee heritage helped him keep his property intact.
Even so, the Civil War impacted William Ely Green and his
family. His son Henry Martyn Green was
killed in action at the Battle of Fort Stevens near Silver Spring,
Maryland. Green’s first-born, Robert
Edgar Green also served in the Confederate Army. He came home from the war and attended
medical school while overseeing some of the operations at the mill, but he soon
tired of it. Mill work wasn’t for
him. Dr. Green departed for Gainesville
where he would end up making his home.
He actually began the city’s first street car line and served as
Gainesville’s mayor in 1879.
William Ely Green eventually sold his business to his
son-in-law, Major Zechariah A. Rice. Major
Rice served in Cobb’s Legion during the early days of the Civil War, and during
the last months of the war he was an officer with the Fulton County Home
Guard. Fannie Mae Davis quotes the deed
of sale as, “Deed book U, page 504, for 870 acres of land lots 100, 101, 102,
103, 112, 113, 1st District, 5th Section, Douglas County
– Factory House and all machinery appertaining to it.”
Major Rice and his wife Louise lived on the property, but
he maintained his interests in Atlanta as well. Rice was actually returning to a “home place” of sorts. You see, Rice’s mother was a member of the
Bomar family and his grandfather….Armistead or A.R. Bomar built the
Sprayberry-Henley home I wrote about here.
Wylie Preston Tackett returned from the war as a captain
and became Rice’s foreman. Fannie Mae
Davis states Tackett, “operated the factory and rope business almost
single-handedly.” He and his
family….wife Melissa J. Underwood Tackett and his daughter Ella Virginia
(1870-1956) lived in the area. Tackett was also a Mason. He died in 1907 and is buried at New Hope
Baptist in the Chapel Hill area.
While the business did continue after the Civil War it
never operated at the same level as it did before the war. William Ely Green died on April 14, 1867 and
is buried in Atlanta’s historic Oakland Cemetery (see my article here)
in Block 95, Lot 1.
