Inman and Marsh - The Men behind the Sweetwater Park Hotel

A few investors were behind the magnificent Sweetwater Park Hotel in Lithia Springs, but Edwin W. Marsh and Samuel M. Inman were the primary figures.

I felt it was time that I found out more about them.

Edwin W. Marsh is remembered as an extremely successful dry goods merchant. He was born in North Carolina in 1824 yet spent time for several years as a merchant in Chattanoga, Tennessee. He transferred his business to Atlanta in 1863 when he was 39.

Besides his efforts at the dry goods trade, Marsh also had controlling interest in the newspaper, Southern Confederacy, which relocated to Macon during the Union occupation.  Following the war, Marsh’s dry goods store was the first one to re-open in the city. He developed an extremely prosperous business and invested heavily in real estate.

I could go on and on regarding his accomplishments as there are many…..including the first cotton factory established in North Georgia at Trion.

He was unbelievably wealthy, so it’s no surprise he would invest his time and dollars in resort in Douglas County.

I've scoured the Internet looking for a picture of E.W. Marsh, but have yet to find one. He was laid to rest at Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta. Photos of his ornate mausoleum (below) can be found all over the place.

 

Samuel M. Inman was born in Tennessee to a wealthy planter family. He attended college at Princeton, and fought in the Civil War. Like many, the Inman family was hit hard by the war and found it necessary to relocate. They headed to Georgia where they acted as bank agents, merchants, and a cotton factoring concern with his father called the S.W. Inman & Son Cotton House.

Like many former planters, the Inman family took the changes the New South brought head on and went into business. Eventually, the Inman family became very influential and powerful again. Samuel M. Inman’s brother was John H. Inman, the head of the company Inman, Swann, & Co. of New York and president of the West Point Terminal Company which controlled 11,000 miles of track and $4,000,000 in steamships. Another brother, Hugh T. Inman, owned the  Kimball House Hotel in Atlanta.

Samuel M. Inman entered into a partnership with Joel Hurt in the 1880s to form the East Atlanta Land Company. Their main venture was to develop Inman Park, the beautiful Atlanta neighborhood that still exists today. A second venture included the Atlanta & Edgewood Street Railroad. While today we think of Inman Park as a downtown neighborhood, it was originally outside of town. The railroad provided a way in and out of town for residents, a huge selling point.

By 1889, Inman was involved with the Inman System, a group of nearly all of the railroads across the southeast. He was also involved with the beginnings of the Georgia School of Technology or Georgia Institute of Technology as it is known today. His put up his own money to get the ball rolling plus was able to secure other money donated by investors and the city of Atlanta.

At one point it is thought Inman was worth around $750,000 to $1,000,000. He was on many boards and gave much of his money to charity.

Like Marsh, it’s no wonder that Samuel M. Inman had a few extra dollars to invest in a resort hotel in Lithia Springs.

They didn't even miss the money.

A Sweetwater Park Hotel Advertisement

I was honored Friday to have the opportunity to speak at the weekly Kiwanis lunch about Douglas County history.  I met so many new friends and was amazed how busy the Kiwanis are here in Douglasville. The Sentinel was kind enough to post about my “little talk” here.

This week I’m posting the contents of an ad that appeared in the June 14, 1888 edition of Atlanta’s Constitution newspaper along with some pictures of what some termed “the Saratoga of the South”.   I’m posting some pictures I’ve received from various sources regarding the hotel and springs.

It was an amazing place.

Sweetwater Park Hotel is now open for summer guests and has been since June 1st. Undoubtedly this is one of the finest hotels in the southern states. Everything the heart can desire can be found there. E.W. Marsh & Company, the proprietors, have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars fixing up this grand hotel and chautauqua grounds at Lithia Springs and have made it the summum bonum of summer resorts.

The Chautauqua grounds covered a few acres adjoining the Sweetwater Park Hotel property. I've written about the Piedmont Chautauqua here and here.

Three or four years ago there was nothing at Lithia Springs except the springs. The ground was rugged, the fields barren: today the springs have been beautified, lakes have been built, avenues opened, parks made, making it one of the most beautiful pictures imaginable. The trees have grown to give a heavy deep shade. One is delighted with the cool breezes which invariably come from the southwest.

Hmmm....well, there WAS something at Lithia Springs before the hotel and water company...and the Piedmont Chautauqua. The land was owned by Judge Bowden, and it was all part of his plantation. It was heavily farmed until he leased the springs and sold the land where the hotel was located to E.W. Marsh. I've written about Judge Bowden here. 

The Constitution ad continues....

"The Sweetwater Park, as a hotel," said a gentleman yesterday, "has no equal in Georgia. The fare to be obtained there is all that money and time can produce. Every vegetable grown, every luxury obtained may be found upon the tables. There is nothing too good for the proprietors to serve their guests with. This fact has done a great deal to advertise the hotel and hundreds of people are coming from New Orleans, Montgomery, Mobile, Galveston, Birmingham, and other southern cities to spend the season at this famous hotel. I have been boarding at Sweetwater Park for over a month, and know that it is the most delightful summer resort I have ever visited. My wife is greatly improved in health, and I feel like a young man again."

It was at the bath house (pictured above) where folks could bathe in the medicinal waters at any temperature they desired.

The ad continues:

This is the expression of everyone who has been a guest of this famous hostelry. Major Rider, of the Georgia Pacific railroad has arranged four schedules a day from Atlanta to Lithia Springs. The train runs as follows:

Leave Atlanta at 9:00 a.m., 2:30 p.m., 5:40 p.m. and 10:10 p.m.

Returning to Atlanta, leaving Lithia Springs at 5:29 a.m., 7:40 a.m., 11:25 a.m. and 4:30 p.m.

This is a perfect schedule and suits the people of Atlanta and those passing through Mr. Rider says he will see that these schedules are run to the minute. No road running Atlanta is better managed and has a more perfect system of schedules than the Georgia Pacific. For months its trains have been arriving and departing on the minute and no complaint can be made whatever as to schedules. The road furnished reduced fare for round trip. The trip is made in exactly forty minutes.

Having the cooperation of the Georgia Pacific was very important to the Sweetwater Park Hotel. They depended on folks who came to stay at the hotel, but much of their business came from folks who came out to Lithia Springs for the day on the weekends or for the businessman who could work in the city and join his vacationing family each night and get to the office the next morning.

Folks visiting the hotel or the Chautauqua grounds would reach the depot at Lithia Springs and then get on the dummy line which was a spur railroad that took visitors to the hotel. The dummy line train was dubbed "The Anna" and was named for the wife of James Watson.

The ad continued:

If you were to ask what were the attractions at Lithia Springs for summer guests it could be stated that there were many. In the first place, it is a quiet cool place. It is beautiful with lovely shade trees, placid lakes and flower gardens.

The picture below is the rose mound on the chautauqua grounds where band concerts were often presented.

 

The picture below is the lake on the chautauqua grounds.

The ad continues:

The hotel is as perfect as money can make it. The fare is all that can be described.

 

 
The ad continues:

The drives are wild and beautiful. The conveniences to Atlanta are many. The rates for accommodation are extremely low when compared with what hotels of this character usually charge. It will be remembered that the guests at Sweetwater Park Hotel have free access to the Lithia Springs mineral water.

I've been conducting lots of research regarding the hotel and the Piedmont Chautauqua and have a few more tidbits of history to bring you in the near future regarding the goings on at the Springs....

Thanks for staying tuned.

If you haven't already "LIKED" Every Now and Then on Facebook I try to post at least one picture a day....old and new....on the Facebook page.   

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.  

The Sweetwater Park Hotel: Gaining Some Focus

The website WikiAnswers advises that we spend approximately six months of our entire lifetime waiting at traffic lights. 

Sitting – waiting – bored – even though there are several things you can do to pass the time.  You can return a phone call, check your e-mail, send a text, check your list of things to do, or my personal favorite…..I just sit and think.

More often than not I sit and think about my surroundings and contemplate how those places have changed over time.  It seems natural that you would try to visualize certain areas regarding how they looked fifty to one hundred years ago, and I do try and do that. I guess it’s just a symptom of researching and writing about the history of certain areas.

Some locations are fairly simple.   As I head up Broad Street from Fairburn Road towards the Old Courthouse Museum I can easily visualize the look of the town in 1940 or even back to 1900.   The buildings are basically the same, and several landmarks such as the railroad are still there.  It’s actually very easy to visualize the spires of the once grand courthouse that stood up on the ridge rising up above the various businesses along Broad Street.

Photographs of certain areas help me to visualize as well, but some areas are more difficult.   Some locations are just impossible.

Take this image of Lithia Springs…..

Sweetwater Park Hotel, Lithia Springs, Georgia

This is a well-published image of the Sweetwater Park Hotel that was located in downtown Lithia Springs at the turn of the century.    When  I sit at the red light at Veterans Memorial (Bankhead) and S. Sweetwater Road I try to visualize the hotel and how my surroundings looked back then.  

I try.   It’s hard.   The Sweetwater Park Hotel was located just southwest of the intersection of Veterans Memorial and S. Sweetwater covering many acres where there are now residential areas.   It’s amazing to think such a complex of buildings and beautiful grounds were ever located there, but it did exist.

The Sweetwater Park Hotel was trendy for the times.   It was the place to be and be seen.   Mark Twain, members of the Vanderbilt family, and Presidents Cleveland, Taft, McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt all enjoyed the many amenities of the resort which included rooms with electricity and individuals baths, wide verandahs, excellent meals with European wines, and a train schedule that allowed guests to visit Atlanta for shopping or matinees and be back at the hotel by bedtime.

While the pictures aren’t helpful to me I have found some written descriptions that do lend assistance in allowing me to appreciate the beauty of this long departed landmark for Lithia Springs.   I happened upon a few letters written by Madison J. Cawein while he stayed at the hotel during May, 1902.

Madison J. Cawein was from Louisville, Kentucky.   During his career he published 36 books and wrote over 1500 poems.  His efforts earned him the nickname “the Keats of Kentucky.”   He is touted as having a lyrical way of describing nature and after reading his descriptions of the hotel grounds and surrounding areas I would have to agree.

Madison J. Cawein at his desk

Cawein, like many visitors to the Sweetwater Park Hotel, was in poor health and was hoping the famous Lithia waters would cure him.  Cawein wasn’t alone.   During the late 1800s and into the turn of the century hundreds of people visited the hotel for health reasons as well as for recreation.  

On May 8, 1902 Cawein described the hotel and surrounds in a letter to his friend, Lucien V. Rule.  Rule was an author and Presbyterian minister.   Cawein wrote:

…It is very picturesque and romantic around Lithia Springs, whose waters are doing me a great deal of good, I think.  I am also taking the baths…..

The woods here are overgrown with wild flowers; wild honeysuckle, wild phlox and calcanthus; and ferns! – in masses, sometimes above your waist.

The brook bubbles over beds of crystal, honestly and virtually speaking, - not figuratively, - for everywhere , in the fields, on the roads, in the woods and scattered boulders and pebbles and pieces of sparkling white spar, which is crystal of some sort.  I have seen lots of it and the creeks ripple and babble musically over it.

Near the [Sweetwater Park Hotel] is a place going absolutely to ruin now; in its time it was the Chautauqua, where revivals were held, meetings of all sort, for pleasure, religion and politics.  Vast buildings, built in a forest, ….and of fantastic yet beautiful architecture of the Moorish order, with towers and turrets and loggias; also a large amphitheater capable of seating thousands are slowly moulding to decay here.   What was once an artificial lake, covering several acres, is now merely a frog-pond filled with mud and weeds in whose center an old boat is slowing rotting.

Piedmont Chatauqua Grounds, Lithia Springs, Georgia

….in one spot there is a mound some twenty to thirty feet high up [which all around winds a road].  The road is scarcely discernible now, for the entire mound is overgrown with tame honey-suckle vines, commencing to bloom, and forms a fragrant tombstone for the dead-body of the old place lying mouldering there.  I love to climb to the top of this green and fragrant monument and stand there and watch the sunset in the west, and listen to the wind in the pines that seems mourning something lost and never to be found again – Never! Never!

It is a lovely place, altogether, this hotel, with its charming people and its beautiful grounds filled with flowers and trees, the holly, the roses and fountains, syringe bushes and mountain laurel in full bloom and over it all the blue sky of Georgia vibrating with the melody of birds, the mocking bird and the thrush, whose note is the sweetest I ever heard.

The grand Piedmont Chatauqua was held in 1888, and I wrote about it here.  I find it rather sad that just a few years later the buildings were abandoned as Mr. Cawein reports in his letter.

The next day Cawein wrote Miss Jenny Loring Robbins.  Ms. Robins lived in Louisville at one point she was the guiding force behind Louisville, Kentucky’s Speed Art Museum, a museum begun by her aunt.

Mr. Cawein wrote:

…I am falling more and more in love with the hotel, its grounds, and the people in and around them, to say nothing of the woods and the waters, the latter of which  I am drinking with much gusto and, I hope, benefit.

I have found a number of old mills here – all dilapidated or going to ruin; one a total ruin.   One on Austell Run is supposed to be still in operation, but I have been there twice and neither time have I seen a soul.  On the Sweetwater Creek, six miles from here, I found an old grist-mill, below a rushing and roaring dam.  It is a great gaunt thing of frame, weather-beaten and old, but still in operation.

A half-mile below it, under a wild hill-side, on which the dogwood was blooming in profusion, together with the wild honey-suckle, the other mill, built of rock and brick, towers five stories high.  It was burned by General Sherman during the war and stands a sad relic of that time.  It was a cotton mill, and the workers in it lived on the hillside in their cottages, but their homes were burned also and not a vestige of them is left.

Only the ruin – here is a wilderness of trees, great trees, grown up in its gaunt interior, crowding its crumbling walls, and the wild vines and creepers trailing over and covering its rocks and bricks – stands pathetically looking out upon the tumbling waters beneath and the projecting pines around.

The creek, wooded on both sides, foams and roars past it, over huge rocks and boulders, upon which it stares with its one mighty arch of stone, in which the mill-wheel once rushed and sounded and its empty windows like hollow eyes in the face of death.

An apt description of the New Manchester Mill ruins, don’t you think?

On May 11, 1902 in a letter to James Whitcomb Riley Cawein wrote:

Your note did me lots of good, coming just in the nick of time when Mr. [Robert W.] Geiger was visiting me at Sweetwater.  He and the rest of the literary clan, Harris and Stanton [Evelyn Harris and Frank L Stanton who called on Cawein] want you to come down here.

Well, here I am and delighted am I with the hotel and everybody in it.  But I can’t say that am getting well rapidly….I am not much better for all the water I drink and all the baths I take.  And so, about Friday or Saturday next will find me wending my weary way home again to commence the nauseating round of medicine taking once more.  I don’t know where it’s going to end.  Nothing seems to benefit me.  Things that benefit, that cure, other people don’t have any effect on me.

…will  probably see Joel Harris Wednesday.  He is still ailing, but sends me word he wants to see me.

At this point I think it’s necessary to identify the folks Cawein mentions.   I’m almost certain Geiger is a railroad executive who happened to live in Atlanta at the time.   Evelyn Harris is the son of Joel Chandler Harris who we remember as “Uncle Remus”, and Frank L. Stanton was a columnist for the Atlanta Constitution and was a famous American lyricist. During the 1920s he would serve as Georgia’s poet laureate.

James Whitcomb Riley, who the letter was addressed to, was also a very famous writer and poet and was very popular with children.

James Whitcomb Riley and Joel Chandler Harris

Eight days later on May 19, 1902 Cawein writes again to James Whitcomb Riley saying:

I saw Uncle Remus [in Atlanta] last week and enjoyed an hour-or-so talk with him at his beautiful home in the West End.   Stanton was with me, also Evelyn Harris [son of Joel Chandler Harris].   Joel Chandler Harris looks poorly.  He is still a very sick man.  I am sorry to say.   Mr. Geiger and Stanton were out to see me last Saturday, stayed to supper and we had quite a walk and considerable talk.  I am returning home today.   Shall go to Atlanta as the guest of Mr. Geiger for a day or so, then home once more.

 

My condition is about the same as it was when I came here.  However, I have enjoyed myself greatly wandering around the country and setting on the verandah or under the trees meeting people or watching the roses bloom.

My English volume of “Kentucky Poems”, with an introduction by Edmund Grosse, will be out sometime next month, I think, so look out for a copy; I am going to fire one at your kindly countenance.

Joel Chandler Harris’s “beautiful home in the West End of Atlanta” is of course The Wren's Nest.

Though Madison J. Cawein earned about $100 a month from his writing, a comfortable sum at the turn of the century, poor investments and the Stock Market downturn in 1912 led to most of his savings simply evaporating away.

Over the next five years Cowein’s health worsened, and he died on December 8, 1914.

At the time of his death in 1914, Cawein had been placed on the relief list with the Authors Club of New York City.

I’m grateful his letters survive giving us a little insight into how wonderful the Sweetwater Park Hotel was for folks to visit!

I found Cowein’s letters published in a biography published after his death by Otto Arthur Rothert titled  The Story of Madison Cawein:  His Intimate Life as Revealed by His Letters…found here.

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.