Prominent People
Captain Edward White
by Marvin Sowder
He then devoted himself to active business and to the development of the country. He made two trading visits to Cuban markets, a trip up the Mississippi River and a horse and buggy trip across the tiers of Gulf States. As a representative of a New England investment syndicate his greatest investment in Georgia was the purchase of a large tract of land, perhaps a mile square, at the crossing of the Western & Atlantic Railroad and the Old Hiawassee Railroad near the village of Cross Plains, Ga. Here White laid down his vision for a city with wide streets and large city blocks that rivaled many larger cities. He provided land for parks, churches, schools and other public buildings.
On December 29, 1847, the new city was chartered and given the name "Dalton" to honor his mother whose maiden name was Dalton, a daughter of General Tristram Dalton. Formerly Speaker of the House of Representatives of Massachusetts, Edward White was the first president and promoter of the Selma, Rome and Dalton Railroad, reaching out from his city to the coal and iron fields of Alabama. He built a brick building on the west side of Thornton Ave. to use as a storehouse and office. It was subsequently converted into a dwelling and in 1850, Edward White, wife Mary and Mary D., their five month old daughter were living there.
A hotel was started by Edward White on the southwest corner of Crawford and Hamilton Streets and was to have been completed by General Duff Green as a part of the terms of an injunction White had against Green. After the War broke out in 1861, cartridge boxes and accoutrements were manufactured in a portion of the unfinished hotel. Captain Edward White cast his lot with the South and became busy in 1861 and 1862 procuring tents of all descriptions and delivering them to the Confederate Army at Camp McDonald in Big Shanty(now Kennesaw, Ga.) Many of the hospital tents used at Dalton in 1862 and 1863 were furnished to the Quarter Master Department by Edward White.
In 1862 he and his family moved to Atlanta, Ga. where he continued to furnish tents, rope, grain sacks, ink, coffins and food supplies to the Q.M. Dept. and quantities of terne tin to the Ordinance Dept. there. When Atlanta was threatened he and his family escaped further south until the war's end. They returned to Atlanta where he resided for the next thirty three years until his death January 20, 1898. He was survived by his wife of forty-nine years and four grown children and was buried in the Oakland Cemetery there. Edward White will forever be remembered as the "Founder of Dalton".
Map of Dalton 1846 by Edward White
Ainsworth Emery Blunt
by Joanne Lewis
Following his education in Amherst, Blunt moved to Boston to work in his brother’s store. Here he learned of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, applied for a position, and at age twenty-two was chosen to help educate and Christianize the Cherokees living at Brainerd Mission in Tennessee. In his diary, he writes that he was called by the voice of God to labor among the Cherokees. He did not feel that his parents or his brothers prayed enough. He hoped that becoming a missionary would bring the blessing of God on his family and remove the curse long held against it. The nature of this curse is not known.
Ainsworth Emery Blunt
General Duff Green
Anita Thorton
Duff Green was born August 15, 1791 in Wofford County, Kentucky. He served in the Kentucky Militia during the War of 1812, and led the Missouri Brigade in the Indian Campaign. During his military service, Green earned the rank Brigadier General and nickname of “General”. While living in Missouri, he started his vocation as a school teacher. In 1820, Green was elected to the Missouri State House of Representatives, followed by a term in the State Senate. Thus, he began his career and fascination with politics.
Later, General Green moved to Washington, DC and purchased the “United States Telegraph”. He employed his persuasive editorial powers to help Andrew Jackson win the 1828 Presidential election. Green was an influential member of President’s Jackson’s inner-circle, which was often referred to as Jackson’s Kitchen Cabinet.
Most assumed that Green not only shared Jackson’s pioneering spirit but his political views as well. Actually, Green’s support was purely the art of a political deal. The General’s true loyalties were to Jackson’s Vice President, John C Calhoun. As part of the political deal and alignment, Jackson had pledged to support Calhoun for president following Jackson’s own two terms in office. However, Old Hickory switched horses mid-stream or more accurately, Vice Presidents – Jackson ousted Calhoun and selected Martin Van Buren as his next VP – and the rest is history. This ended Jackson’s and Green’s political relationship, but Green continued his high-ranking influence by serving as an advisor on the Annexation of Texas and a delegate to England.
Railroads and gambling brought Duff Green south to Dalton, Georgia. Above all, Green was an entrepreneur and was willing to take a gamble for a fast dollar on a business deal. Duff came to this area in 1851 to take advantage of the building of the East Tennessee and Virginia Railroad from Knoxville that would connect with the Western and Atlantic Railroad. Knowing the importance of the land surrounding the tracks, he made strategic land purchases. As Dalton grew he profited from his investments. Green donated land for many public projects, including the land that was dedicated for West Hill Cemetery.
Green maintained his friendship with the South Carolinian, John Calhoun. As tensions between the North and South grew and the secessionists pushed for independence, Green is quoted as stating, “The Union is dear to us, but liberty is dearer.” For him, the central issue was not slavery, but State’s rights and a smaller Federal Government. Green supported the Confederacy by organizing three iron manufacturing plants to produce iron, nails, horseshoes, and rails to support the Confederate Army. In 1862, he and his son, Ben, established the Dalton Arms Company.
War raged all around Dalton and many landmarks were completely demolished; however, Green’s beautiful home place, Hopewell, survived. After the war ended, because of his significant financial contributions to the Confederacy, Green had to personally appeal to President Andrew Johnson for a pardon and pay a $20,000 fine. Green’s waning years were occupied with writing and speaking engagement primarily on the economic issues of his day. Green died June 10, 1875 surrounded by his beloved family and was buried in West Hill Cemetery.
General Duff Green
The Legend of Charles Prater
By Judson Manly, Jr.
John Pitner was my ancestor who had settled near Cohutta in 1837 in what is now Whitfield County. He apparently had a special relationship with his slaves whom he called “servants” in his will.
“The Legend of Charles Prater” maintains that Charles was a Cherokee Indian boy whose parents chose to legally stay in Georgia by voluntarily becoming slaves of a white settler who was John Pitner.
Charles must have had two or more siblings, since the 1840 census for John Pitner’s slaves showed one older adult male and one adult female under 25 and three children under ten. Shortly afterwards John received some more slaves. His older brother Elias Pitner had left Sevier County earlier and had been a white planter in Troup County, Georgia in 1830 and Cass County (now Bartow) Georgia in 1834. Presumably the land lottery interfered financially and Elias moved to Bradley County, Tennessee by the 1840 census. I have John Pitner’s 1842 Will showing that John was in poor health, and he instructed the Executors to settle with Elias in some way for the slaves “he got of him.” The number of slaves was not listed and they were probably acquired by John in 1840 or 1841.
The 1850 census showed seven living, at least temporarily, with the Pitner family of four. Some must have been involved in the building of the East Tennessee and Virginia Railroad that ran adjacent or through Pitner land. They included a 24- year -old farmer born in North Carolina, a 30-year-old stonemason and his wife born in New York and Vermont, a 32-year-old engineer and his wife born in Tennessee, a 21-year-old assistant engineer born in New York, and a 24-year-old salesman born in Tennessee. The first track was laid for this railroad about six months later on January 1, 1851. With fifteen slaves the Pitners had twenty-six people living at their farm. The number of “slaves” is misleading since only four males were age twelve or more. The ages of the male slaves were 34, 16, 14, 12, 8, 1, 1 and 2/12 with females 39, 19, 14, 4, 3, and 3.
In 1854 during the last year of John Pitner’s life, he financed and collaborated with his new son-in-law Ben Prater in a family project to build what is now Prater’s Mill. John’s slaves were used to build the mill. Charles should have been the sixteen-year-old in the 1850 census. Charles married the African slave Rebecca and they were willed to Ben Prater. After the Civil War, Ben gave land to his former slaves. They chose the name Prater and have been valued citizens. Mr. Billie Prater, who is descended from the original slave child, Charles and his wife Rebecca, still lives here.
As a descendant of John Pitner, I was recently able to publicly convey my thanks to him in 2010 for his Prater Mill volunteer efforts to preserve the mill “OUR” ancestors built. The fascinating story of the three Prater families inspired Richard Kent Streeter to write the song “The Legend of Charles Prater”. After Sonja Hall heard the story, she wrote a play also called “The Legend of Charles Prater” that is performed at the Prater’s Mill Country Fair each fall.
By Marvin Sowder
Tilton, Georgia, was a thriving little town in the early 1860's and was situated along the Western & Atlantic Railroad in southern Whitfield County. Several essential services were provided there to the surrounding farming community. There were two resident physicians, two school teachers, three ministers, a brick mason, stone mason, carpenter, miller, wheelwright, dry goods and grocery store merchants, two gunsmiths and five blacksmiths. While the community was comprised mostly of farmers, still many others worked for the railroad in varying capacities.
One of the blacksmith shops was owned and operated by Joseph John (J.J.) Martin (1813 - 1884). In 1854 J.J. Martin, his wife Jane Thurman Martin and their four children moved from Atlanta and eventually to a farm in Whitfield County located in the bend of the Conasauga River above Tilton. He sold this farm in 1858 and purchased a home in Tilton and another farm directly across the river from Tilton in Murray County Georgia. The home in Tilton faced east on the newly completed railroad and was operated by the Martins as an inn and "eating house" where the crews and passengers from the trains stopped to rest and dine.
On August 12,1862, the Confederate Government paid J.J.Martin $24.30 for boarding three men from Company A, 9th Georgia Battalion for eight days. They had been ordered there by General Braxton Bragg to guard the railroad bridge across Swamp Creek.
J.J.Martin was a blacksmith and a proficient gunsmith. His shop was a short distance northwest of his home facing the Spring Place Road. It was here that he trained his two older sons, Micajah David Martin (1841 - 1909) and William Henry Martin (1842 - 1895) in the trade.
A reference is made in the Cyclopedic History of Georgia about an armory located at Tilton, Georgia. "The armory at Tilton turned out a large number of swords and sabers for the Confederate services." This statement is supported by granddaughter Eulalie Martin Lewis in her chronology of the Martin family history. She adds, "The armory was in my grandfather's blacksmith shop. He, with the assistance of a few other men who were too old for military service, manufactured these weapons."
On February 20,1862, Governor Joseph Brown of Georgia issued an executive letter addressed to the mechanics of Georgia with a patriotic appeal to the artisans of the state (e.g. machine shops and blacksmiths) to make ten thousand Georgia Pikes with a six foot staff and an accompanying steel knife with an eighteen inch blade weighing about three pounds. These were to be used to arm his Georgia Troops when no firearms were available. In a Confederate Ordnance Letter Book for Georgia 1862, J.J.Martin is shown to have sold to the state of Georgia at least twelve pikes as part of the governor's plea.
At other times in his nearby gun shop, handmade guns, though not for military use, were made by J.J.Martin and his son William Henry Martin. There is in the Virginia Historical Society collection a rare example of a Tilton Rifle. It appears to be made from old parts. It has an unmilitary type lockplate marked, “Tilton, Ga. 1861.” It has a walnut stock with a shotgun trigger guard and buttplate made of brass, two barrel bands and front sight also of brass. It is a model 1841, .58 caliber with an overall length of forty eight and three quarter inches. It is uncertain how many Tilton Rifles were produced but one or two others are still around.
On April 20,1861, Micajah D. Martin, the eldest son of J.J.Martin, enlisted in Company D, 2nd Battalion Georgia Infantry at Griffin Georgia. He was promoted to First Sergeant in 1863 and was captured at Gettysburg on July 2,1863, and sent to Fort Delaware, then transferred to Fortress Monroe, Virginia, March 2,1864, and three days later he was forwarded to New York and released on his oath. After the war he settled in Monroe County, Arkansas.
On March 10,1862, William Henry Martin, second son of J.J.Martin, enlisted in Company B,39th Georgia Volunteer Infantry at Dalton. He was wounded at Vicksburg and later captured at Franklin, Tennessee, December 17,1864. He was released from Camp Chase, Ohio, on his oath May 16,1865 and returned home to Tilton.
On August 1,1863, J.J. Martin enlisted as a Tilton Volunteer in Company B, 1st Georgia Volunteer Infantry, State Guards for six months. He did this duty up till October 11,1863 at which time he was detailed as Post Master at Tilton. Company B mustered out of service January 31,1864.
The Martin family then packed their belongings and removed to Randolph County, Georgia, until after the war. There are many stories to be told about the war and its effects on the citizens of the Tilton community.
Joseph Emerson Brown
by Dr. John Fowler
Brown was born in Pickens County, South Carolina, in 1821, but his family moved to Union County in North Georgia in 1840. Brown returned to his native state of South Carolina to attend school but returned to Canton, Georgia, afterward to accept a position as a headmaster. Ambitious and eager for advancement, he decided to seek a law degree from Yale in the late 1840s, again returning to North Georgia upon graduation to practice law, marry, and rear a family. Brown’s passion for politics blossomed shortly thereafter.
He was elected to the state senate in 1849 and quickly emerged as a leader in the Democratic Party. He won elections first as a state circuit court judge in 1855 and then as governor in 1857. As governor, he committed himself to the plight of the common people, which heralded his popularity among the middle and lower classes. By championing the causes of ordinary whites, Brown easily won a second term in 1859. The growing divide between the North and South, however, soon clouded his agenda.
The secession of South Carolina precipitated a contentious debate among Georgia politicians as to which course the state should follow. Governor Brown advocated secession strongly and worked tirelessly to sever Georgia’s ties to the Union. After much debate, delegates to a state convention approved an ordinance of secession by a final vote of 208-89 on January 19, 1861. Georgia left the old Union, following South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida.
Anxious to protect Georgia from possible federal attack, Brown sought and received funds from the state legislature to equip a military force and issued orders to seize Fort Pulaski at the mouth of the Savannah River, the federal mint at Dahlonega, and the arsenal at Augusta. Brown’s ardent belief in states’ rights drove him to support secession. His fear of centralized authority, however, meant that he would also resist the Confederate government’s efforts to consolidate power even during the national emergency of war.
Brown loathed Jefferson Davis, going so far as to denounce him as a tyrant. The first disputes over controlling and equipping Georgia forces escalated in April 1862 when Brown directly and openly challenged the new Confederate draft. Despite a lack of support by the state supreme court and the legislature, Governor Brown continually worked to create a state military force exempted from the ever-expanding draft. He also opposed the army's impressment of goods and slave laborers. In essence, even though Brown vehemently supported secession, his stance on states’ rights showed no bias to the Confederate government. Throughout the war, he continued to frustrate Confederate efforts to seize the Western and Atlantic Railroad and to impose occasional martial law, to bitterly criticize Confederate tax and blockade-running policies, and to vigorously denounce the Confederacy's belated plan to arm slaves in exchange for their freedom. Brown’s obstinance to the Confederate government was balanced by his benevolence to the citizens of Georgia.
Under Brown, the state established a welfare system that supplied necessities such as salt for meat curing to needy families. This support paid off when Georgians and their families reelected him in 1861 and again in 1863. Yet, his strong affinity for his state inevitably hurt the Confederate war effort time and again, especially his calls for peace. Following the war, Federal authorities imprisoned Brown briefly in Washington, D.C. Upon his release, he lost no time in rebuilding his career and amassing a fortune. He served as chief justice of the Supreme Court of Georgia from 1865 to 1870, resigning to take over as president of the Western and Atlantic Railroad. He began investing in stocks and bonds and engaging in real estate development across the state. He supported President Andrew Johnson's Reconstruction policy, even becoming a Republican "scalawag" for a time.
After Reconstruction, he returned to the Democratic Party and dominated Georgia politics for decades by joining fellow Atlantans Alfred H. Colquitt and John B. Gordon in what was known as the “Bourbon Triumvirate.” This group, like other “Bourbons or Redeemers” across the South, sought to reestablish the power and influence of former Confederates in state politics. After serving two terms in the U.S. Senate in 1880 and 1885, Brown finally retired from public office in 1891 due to poor health. He died in 1894 in Atlanta and was buried in Oakland Cemetery. His son, Joseph Mackey Brown, followed in his father’s footsteps and served as a two-term governor of Georgia.
A consummate politician with a gift for expediency, Brown managed his career and business interests with a savvy that few could equal.
Joseph Emerson Brown
John Brown and The Rest of the Story
by Robert Jenkins
For Dalton shopkeeper Kathy Jenkins, who owns and operates the Toys in the Attic stores in Dalton, the name John Brown sparks a wide range of emotions.
The name of John Brown, the famous or infamous Abolitionist who is largely credited for igniting the fires which led to the Civil War, still sparks today intense feelings among Americans both pro and con. Whether he is remembered as a martyr or a murderer depends upon your point of view. History has mostly remembered the name John Brown as a man ahead of his time – one who understood that it would take much bloodshed to rid the nation of the evils of slavery – and history proved him right. Even the founding father and our third President, Thomas Jefferson, understood that “the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants,” written a half-century before the struggle which would become America’s greatest test.
Perhaps Jefferson understood that the issue of slavery could never be resolved without bloody conflict. Perhaps Jefferson could never reconcile with his own inner conflict, for while he lived in the luxury provided by the institution of slavery – and maintained a life-long love affair and fathered several children with one of his slaves – he also wrote of the horrors of the “institution,” a polite term used to hide the ugliness of the means for his Southern agrarian society. But whether Jefferson ever imagined that a civil war over the institution of slavery would tear apart the very nation that he and so many others risked it all to create, John Brown certainly did – he longed for it – and when it would not come quickly enough for him, he set about to start the war one way or another.
One way John Brown tried to ignite a national war was to initiate bloodshed in “Bleeding Kansas,” a term which he helped create though his actions. After the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces from the North and South poured into the territories to try and tip the balance of power for their side. While Nebraska was never really seriously considered open to slavery – it being too far North and too populated by free-soil Northerners already – Kansas was a different story. Kansas was located west of the slave state Missouri, and it seemed to be ripe for pro-Southern expansion which would include the use of slavery. For many in the North who abhorred the idea that slavery would expand any further than in the area it now covered, expansion of slavery was unthinkable. A smaller, but much more vocal group in the North, did not believe that slavery in any form, or in any place in the country, should be allowed to continue for even one more day. These people were called Abolitionists, and their mission was to abolish slavery whenever and wherever it could be done.
For decades, the fledgling nation had tip-toed around the questions of expansion of slavery and keeping a balance of power among the Southern and Northern states by reaching compromise after compromise, such as the Missouri Compromise of 1820 which enabled the slave state of Missouri to be admitted into the Union at the same time that the free state of Maine joined the Country. In 1850, the Nation again avoided secession and war with the Compromise of 1850 which was designed to put an end once and for all to the question of the expansion of slavery in the Western Territories, but it only raised more questions than answers, and was the catalyst to the race for Kansas by both sides to determine its “popular sovereignty.” Then, in 1854 came the Kansas-Nebraska Act, where the future of Kansas was up for grabs. Enter John Brown.
As more and more settlers from both sides arrived in the Kansas Territory in the fall of 1855 and spring of 1856, tensions increased and several threats and demonstrations of force by both sides led to the sacking of Lawrence, a free-soil community, and to the killing of a free-soil man, Thomas Barber. John Brown decided that his side had waited long enough and that it was time to act and retaliate.
So, on the night of Saturday, May 24, 1856, Brown and a group of anti-slavery militia which he termed the “Northern Army,” knocked on the door of the little cabin of James Pleasant Doyle, an Irish-American, who had come to Kansas the year before from Walker County, Georgia, near Chattanooga, following the dream of a new home and farm. While Doyle and his family were Southerners, and they had traveled westward with a wagon train of pro-slavery settlers from Tennessee and were associated with some of the pro-slavery leaders who had been stirring up things in the territory, neither Doyle nor any of his family or neighbors owned any slaves and they were too poor to ever likely own any. However, they felt just as threatened that their way of life – one of self-determination and local government without foreign intervention – was threatened by Northerners much the way that the Scottish and Irish had felt threatened by the British in “the old country.” This thought pervaded among most Southerners and helped to provide reason far beyond the issue of slavery for Southerners to be wary of Northerners. Doyle’s grandfather had come to America in the 1700's and had fought for the American Colonies against England during the Revolution. Doyle, a native of Knox County, Tennessee, had moved his family to Walker County, Georgia, below Chattanooga before migrating west to the Kansas Territory. He never owned a slave, and none of his Doyle relatives ever owned a slave, but he was Pro-Southern.
A little after 10:00 P.M., Brown and his little army, which included two of his sons, called into the Doyle cabin, inquiring if one of the Southern leaders named Wilkerson was there or where his place was located. When it was obvious that only the Doyle family was there and that they had all been asleep, Brown demanded that all of the men come out of the cabin. James Pleasant Doyle and his three sons, William age 22, Drury age 20, and John C. age 17 all came outside. James’ wife Mahala, with a little girl draped around her feet then begged John Brown to spare her youngest son, saying that “he’s all I’ve got.” Brown agreed to her request and allowed the boy to return to the cabin and his mother. The next morning, Mrs. Doyle and her younger children found the slain bodies of James and William about a hundred yards from the cabin along the road where they had been butchered with swords and scythes. Young Drury had tried to run, and his body was not found until the next day when the odor of his remains took the family to the ravine where he, too, was struck down. Additionally, during the night of the killings, Brown and his group subsequently went to two other cabins and killed two more men making the death toll five in what was to become known as the Pottawatomie Massacre.
Kathy Jenkins, who is half Irish-American and half Cherokee Indian Native American, is tied to the Doyle family. Her full name is Kathleen Doyle Jenkins, her Doyle family having descended from the line of Doyles who were massacred at Pottawatomie Creek. Actually, the Doyle cabin and the cabins of the other two men who were slain was located along the banks of the little Mosquito Creek, a tributary which flows into the Pottawatomie a little west of the village of Lane, Kansas. After the massacre, the surviving Doyle family returned to the South and settled in the Tennessee Valley in Walker County, Georgia, below Chattanooga. Mrs. Doyle was pregnant at the time of the massacre and gave birth to Miss May Doyle in Cass County, Missouri, on their journey back to Georgia. “Miss May” later became Mrs. May Doyle Saunders of Chattanooga and the worst thing she would ever say was “I’ll be John Brown,” a popular expression shared by many Southerners over the years when expressing their dissatisfaction over someone or something.
A few years later, Mahala Doyle and her son, John, received an invitation from Governor Henry Wise of Virginia to attend the hanging of John Brown at Charles Town, Virginia (now West Virginia), and for John Doyle, who was now 20, to pull the pin to drop the gallows on Brown. John Brown had just been captured after his attack on the United States’ Arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia where Brown had hoped to start a slave revolt. The citizens of Chattanooga raised the fare for Doyle’s train ticket and John was on his way, but a landslide between Morristown and Bristol prevented him from making it to the hanging. Two years later, when the Civil War broke out, John Doyle, now 22, joined the 2nd Tennessee Cavalry in June 1861, and he served with distinction with Wheeler’s Cavalry until the end of the war when he surrendered with his unit in May 1865 in North Carolina at the age of 26.
John C. Doyle returned to Walker County, Georgia, and resumed farming, married, and raised a family. A year before he died, he answered a questionnaire from the Tennessee Civil War Veteran’s Project. In it, John explained that he had been a stage coach driver and farmer prior to the war, and that during the war his mother lived in Chattanooga until 1863 when the town was shelled. She then moved south to Chickamauga where Rosecran’s Yankee Army took all of her family’s food and destroyed everything they had on their retreat. John also explained that “my father never owned a Negro and never expected to. Brown simply murdered them (his father and brothers) because they were from the South.” Ironically, had he and his family been left alone in Kansas, they probably would have either fought for the North or sat out the war. He died on December 29, 1922 at the age of 84, and is buried in the Confederate Cemetery in Chattanooga. And now you know, in the words of the famous columnist Paul Harvey, the rest of the story!
John Brown
John C. Doyle
Varina Howell Davis, First Lady of the Confederacy
By Kathryn Sellers
Varina Howell Davis, wife of Confederate President, Jefferson Davis, was a well-educated, refined woman from her home plantation, The Briers, near Natchez, Mississippi. She was very cultured for the day, speaking French, playing the piano and becoming fascinated with politics and current affairs. After their first meeting at his older brother’s plantation, the Hurricane, Davis was taken by Varina’s beauty and intelligence and only two months later she and Davis were engaged. Jefferson Davis was 18 years her senior and a widower, and her family was resistant to the marriage although they knew the two were very much in love.
Jefferson intended to live the life of a planter, but shortly after their marriage in 1845, entered politics, serving in the U.S. House of Representatives, and later as senator and secretary of war. Varina executed her social duties beautifully as hostess to dignitaries, even helping him write his speeches and letters. Although she believed strongly in the Whig party, she gave up those beliefs for the Democratic views of her husband.
As the Civil War approached, Jefferson Davis resigned his seat in the Senate. Mrs. Davis was deeply alarmed by the secession crisis, and by the summer of 1860, she was aware that Jefferson was being considered as a possible head of the seceded states. Of secession, she told a friend that “the whole thing is bound to be a failure.” She was both pro-Union and pro-slavery, so if she had had the right to vote, she probably would have voted for the pro-Union Southerner John Bell in the presidential election of 1860.
Shortly after returning to their Mississippi plantation, Davis became the President of the Confederate States of America. Varina proved to have immeasurable inner fortitude as Jefferson had not wanted the presidency and she thought he didn’t have the right temperament for the job. Their lives changed as they moved first to Montgomery, Alabama, the temporary capital, and then to Richmond, Virginia, the permanent capital. In June 1861, she confided to her mother that the South did not have the resources to win the war, but she had to do her duty; when it was all over, she said, she would “run with the rest.”
Her new role as first lady in Richmond was at first comfortable as the Confederacy was enjoying much public support and adulation. Because she knew that trials of his office would affect his “super-sensitive temperament,” she cared for their children, one of whom tragically fell to his death from their balcony. She also constantly tended to her sickly husband and helped manage many of his official affairs. Her influence over her husband was such that some commanders and cabinet ministers “took pains to cultivate her good will.”
During the second year of the war, as living conditions deteriorated and commodities became scarce, people began to speak out and criticize the President and the first lady. While acknowledging her intelligence, critics claimed she put on airs, and that she wasn’t as well-read as she claimed. She was accused of being uncouth and domineering, having far too much influence over the President. Some accused her of entertaining too lavishly in such trying times, more in the style of the Yankee capital of Washington, while others thought she was too skimpy and accused her of hoarding the President’s salary. Some even questioned her loyalty to the Confederacy. Her cordial remarks about her Northern friends and relatives made her unpopular, as did the rumor that she corresponded with them – a charge that was, in fact, true.
All during this war time, she supported Jefferson, cared for the children, and did what she thought was her duty for the Confederacy and her husband. She endured the criticism and continued to support the troops. She knitted countless articles of clothing for soldiers, donated rugs for blankets and made shoes of the scraps. She spent hours visiting both Northern and Southern wounded soldiers in the hospitals although she did not serve as a volunteer nurse as her husband requested.
Following Jefferson Davis’s arrest at the end of the Civil War, Varina and the children were sent to Savannah and were placed under house arrest and forbidden to leave the city. She rarely ventured out, but allowed her children out until they were treated cruelly by Union supporters. She sent them to Canada with her mother and then set about tirelessly petitioning to gain her beloved husband’s release from prison as she worried for his health. For a while she was allowed to join him in prison because he was emaciated from poor prison conditions. He was finally released in May 1867 and they returned to Mississippi to, Beauvoir, an estate that was inherited from a friend. The Davises struggled for a few years as Jefferson unsuccessfully tried to establish himself as a businessman. After her husband’s death in 1889, Varina wrote her memoir, Jefferson Davis: A Memoir. In doing so, she reiterated her love for him and her constant concern for his worry about the country. She also said that her husband’s temperament was not suited for political office as he was so determined to do the right thing and did not have the ability to compromise.
Varina sold most of the property of Beauvoir to the Mississippi division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and stipulated in her agreement that Beauvoir be used as a home for Confederate veterans and widows and be preserved as “a perpetual memorial sacred to the memory of Jefferson Davis” and the Confederate cause. It houses the Jefferson Davis library and memorabilia of Civil War times. She later moved to New York, where she supported herself as a writer until her death in 1905.
Varina Howell Davis, First Lady of the Confederacy
Beauvoir, the last home of the President and Varina Davis, near Biloxi on the Gulf coast, is on the US National Register of Historic Places and a US National Historic Landmark, and is still open to the public. It sustained severe damage in Hurricane Katrina and has been partially restored.
The Reverend Clisby Austin Sr. of Tunnel Hill, Georgia
By Marvin Sowder
In 1848, several important events took place in Northwest Georgia. The new town of Dalton was chartered and the Western & Atlantic Railroad tracks were completed as far as Dalton. Work began on a railroad tunnel through Chetoogeta Mountain and a small village sprang up at the western end of the proposed project. Work crews and supporting infrastructure including mechanics, merchants, blacksmiths, tavern keepers and railroad bosses all moved in. Later that year, the little village was incorporated as Tunnelsville, Georgia, and remained so for the next eight years. During this era of change and development the forty-six year old Reverend Clisby Austin, a farmer and business man from east Tennessee, appeared on the scene.
Who was Clisby Austin? He was born in Morristown, Tennessee, the son of Archibald and Rebecca Austin, in January 1802. Twenty years later he married Sarah Robertson and moved to Hawkins County, Tennessee. Sarah died in 1842, leaving twelve children behind. In a few months, Austin married Jane Ann Hammond, and they moved to Murray County, Georgia, which included the land which is now Whitfield County. He purchased one hundred and sixty acres and established himself as a farmer. By 1850, Austin opened a store in Tunnelsville and his eighteen year old son, James C. Austin, clerked there. In May of 1850 the first train passed through the tunnel and the town was on the move. The new County of Whitfield was created and Dalton became the county seat. By this time, Tunnelsville had added a new depot, hotel, several mercantile stores, and a school, and in 1856 it was chartered as Tunnel Hill, Georgia. Austin now owned three hundred and twenty acres and a nice new two story brick home he called "Meadowlawn." It is still standing today and known as the Austin House.
In the summer, people from the coast of Georgia known as “low landers” would visit Tunnel Hill and stay for weeks at a time, often at the Austin House. A board walk ran from the depot platform to the steps of the Austin House for easy access. Austin also served as Post Master for a while. In a letter to his daughter he wrote, " I surely am the best situated that I ever was in my life. I feel thankful to the Good Lord. I see nothing on earth as yet to make me think I shall ever move from this place.” Austin added, "We have a splendid Sunday School of over one hundred scholars." In 1858, the Tunnel Hill Methodist Church was organized and a two story brick building was erected with funds supplied by Reverend Clisby Austin. The Tunnel Hill Masonic Lodge #202 occupied the second floor.
The hotel he built was run by his daughter and son in law, Rebecca and George Lacy. In 1860 he had three sons at home, Frederick 14 years, Clisby Jr.13 years, and Henry 11 years old. He hoped that Frederick would run his store when he became of age. When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Austin's desire to remain in the Union was well known in the community. He had prospered in the South, however, and owned two adult couples as slaves and their two children. His son James C. was a member of the Tunnel Guards and he had seven sons-in-law serving the South.
Rev. Austin witnessed the chase of the General as it rushed by his home in April of 1862. Soon thereafter at his hotel, he boarded five men of Company A 9th Georgia Battalion for eight days while they guarded the railroad tunnel. On July 13, 1862, Austin sold his farm and all his holdings in Tunnel Hill and began the process of moving back to Hawkins County, Tennessee, leaving his older children and grand-children behind.
Why did Austin feel compelled to leave Tunnel Hill soon after the Andrews Raid? Could it have been to remove his three young sons out of harm’s way? In the May 2nd 1861 session of Whitfield County Superior Court, the Grand Jury entered a True Bill of the State v. Clisby Austin on a charge of Assault and Battery. This charge was so out of character for the Reverend Clisby Austin. Perhaps a threat was made against his home or family which could have provoked him to such an end? For whatever reason, Austin left Tunnel Hill in the summer of 1862 and never returned. There are records from east Tennessee where C. Austin supplied bacon and flour to the Confederate Commissary Department and thousands of wooden shoe pegs to the Quarter Master Department from September 1863 through June of 1864. From the business district to the Methodist Church to the Masonic Hall to the Clisby Austin House, his legacy lives on today in Tunnel Hill, Georgia.
The Clisby Austin House
Rev. Clisby Austin
William P. Chester
By Marvin Sowder
William P. Chester and his family moved to Cross Plains, now Dalton in the mid 1840's from Spring Place, Georgia, and purchased the northeast corner lot on Hamilton and King Street. Here he erected a large three story brick hotel and named it the "Chester House" where he continued in the hotel business, one in which he had begun with the Chester Inn during the 1830’s at Spring Place. The Chester House was well known for its good food and many patrons dined there regularly. Mr. Chester was very active in community affairs and served as Trustee of the Dalton Academy in 1851. He served as Judge of the Inferior Court and as Alderman on the Dalton City Council for a number of years.
Mr. Chester was appointed Post Master of Dalton on January 12, 1858 and ran the Post Office from the hotel. Thus, you could have breakfast and pick up your mail with one visit. After Georgia seceded from the Union, Mr. Chester continued to serve as Post Master. After the war he spoke of his service in the following manner. "I discharged the duties of Post Master in good faith so long as the state remained in the Union. Immediately before the state seceded I wrote to the Department giving my opinion that the state would secede and asked for instructions but received no answer. When Georgia seceded I was continued in office under the United States government and was instructed to pay over all moneys of the office to mail contractors. I done [did] so and continued to pay over to the same being instructed by the Confederate authorities. I feel I acted in good faith to the powers as they instructed. Situated as I was I naturally went with my state."
On October 16, 1861 the Confederate Government issued its first postage stamp. It was a green colored five cent stamp containing the portrait of President Jefferson Davis. This made him the first living American to appear on a postage stamp. Shortly after, they were being issued from the Chester House. Many startling events were to be witnessed from the Chester House during the next four years.
On August 30, 1863 Mr. Chester enlisted in Company H, 1st Regiment, Georgia State Guards, an independent company formed by Edward Harden for the defense of Dalton which was known as the Whitfield Defenders. It never left Dalton and was active at least to May of 1864.
The Confederate Army of Tennessee evacuated Dalton in May of 1864 and many of the citizens of Dalton who were able to do so moved south as well. It is thought the Chester family left about this time.
On June 21, 1865 William P. Chester sought a pardon and amnesty from his home in Palmetto, Georgia. In a letter to President Andrew Johnson he wrote, "I am and always have been a constitutional old line democrat. I believe in the Monroe Doctrine, my interests and feelings were with the South. I do not deny my position, I am now and ever expect to be a loyal constitutional citizen of the United States and proud of our institutions and government." In asking for a pardon he stated, "I am sixty five years old and the fates of war have reduced me to almost penury and want. I have four widowed daughters and families to care for. I wish to have a clear record and if I can do something for my family, to do so." He was given a full pardon on August 31, 1865 in Atlanta, Georgia. The Chester family returned to Dalton began to rebuild their lives.
Mrs. Chester died in 1877 and Mr. Chester passed away in 1886 in his eighty-fifth year. Both are buried in West Hill Cemetery, Dalton, Georgia.
William P. Chester, 1801-1866
