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The Amazing Legacy of Harmony Mills and the ruins of Alice The ruins of a grist mill and former gold mine entrance sit adjacent to Town Creek The Harmony Mills at Alice, was the most spectacular accomplishment of the Atherton brothers. Built in 1882, this combination grist and textile mill had 800 spindles and was funded with capital of $25,000. Water flowed through a system of ditches around a mountain for more than one mile and a half to provide a drop. A wooden race

The weaver school changed locations depending on the map you've looked at. Around 1900 it was located within the area that is now Big Canoe. By the 1910s it was located near the entrance of Cove Lake off of Cove Road on Land Lot 91. Like most schools of its day, there was one teacher, and a small group of about 30 local students who attended. Most of the students stayed until about 8th grade. Most of the students had surnames like Blackwell, Cox, and Padgett - families w

Roads passing through Clayton—Highways 441/23 and 76 and Warwoman Road—are daily reminders of a distant past when the Appalachians in northeastern Georgia were known as the Cherokee Mountains. And in the land that became Rabun County, the major Cherokee trails, which are now our highways and byways, converged at The Dividings in present-day Clayton. Early explorers and settlers classified the Cherokee into three groupings, depending on their location and dialect: Lower, Midd

The Southern Marble Company can be seen in Land Lot 106, of District 4, in the 1903 Pickens County map. In the 1890s the Southern Marble Company (located where the Imerys Corporation is presently at on Hwy 53 in Marble Hill, Georgia, built a combination of a pipeline and channel for a gravity-fed water delivery system from nearly two miles north to their marble plant. The water would pass beneath Hwy 53 and shoot out from a small pipe to power a Pelton Wheel which operated t

The Perseverance Quarry can still be seen on the north side of Cove Road. In the 1850s Summey and Hurlick operated a marble operation there for a few years. Prior to them, the discoverer of Georgia marble, Henry Fitzsimmons had owned the site before being murdered by an unknown assailant. The Cove Mine, a.k.a. The Perseverence Quarry About three decades later, James Harrison of Atlanta, the owner of the Atlanta Printing Company, leased the land near the Perseverance Quarry

Charles Wallace Howard was born in 1811 in Savannah, Georgia. After graduating from college he attended seminary in Princeton, New Jersey. He was ordained a Presbyterian minister and, in 1838 traveled to England to research the colonization records for the State of Georgia. Reverend Charles Howard In the late 1830s Charles Howard moved to Cass County and bought 800 acres of land north of Kingston and along the Connesaga River. During that time the county lines were redraw

Last summer, John Humphrey and his sons Norman and William, found themselves in unfortunate circumstances. Within two weeks of each other, Norman caught fire, suffering third-degree burns over much of his body, and William lost his eye in a separate accident. Neither son had medical insurance, so a GoFundMe campaign was started by Norman’s girlfriend. I visited the property to meet with their father John, the owner of John’s Mill at their 61-acre property in Hinton. J

The summer of 1951 was a little hotter than normal. And that June 10th, Roxie Lee Blackwell Hendrix, her children, and a few others had gone to the private lake of the Roy Roper Yellow Creek Church. They borrowed a motor from a friend to place on their aluminum boat for a ride. The pond in 2024 The Roper Farm on the 1903 Henley Map Lake today, lower right corner The Roper Lake was a spring-fed four-acre lake about 12 to 15 feet deep. It is located roughly a mile west of t

Pickens County, in the Appalachian Mountains and one of Georgia's smallest counties in size and population in 1860, existed as an...

In 1850, Tate, Atkinson, and Company opened a marble quarry near the Georgia Marble Company's present location. Three years later, Pickens County was officially formed. After the Civil War, the Tate family was operating a sawmill on Long Swamp Creek in the section that is colloquially called Pendley Creek. At the time, a main road came north from Tate and bisected the old Dawsonville Jasper Highway (Cove Road) before heading directly to the sawmill. Afterward, the road

In 1890, a small hamlet in south-central Pickens County named Jockey arose near the Cagle Mills on Sharp Mountain Creek. A post office was created in the same building as the local merchandise store, thereby designating Jockey as a ‘post-hamlet.’ An October 11, 1890, Pickens County Herald article detailed the creation. The Postmaster of the newly appointed post office was John Wesley Cagle. He was appointed under the term of President Harrison. According to Alonzo Cagle

John's Mill back in the early 80s. In 1966, John Humphreys moved to the Hinton area of Pickens County. A machinist by trade, he purchased the land of the former Dean Mill to build a new grist mill. He had experience with mills. The part of Tennessee where he was raised had many grist mills nearby. And shortly after High School, the 18-year-old Humphreys bought a broken-down mill - until he was forced by his parents to sell it back. It took John two years to find a salvaged w

Remains of the old Alice grist mill. Nowadays, if you were to drive down Salem Church Road, chances are you would have no idea that you were driving past a once-thriving community. Up until the first decade of the 20th Century, Alice was an active community with a cotton mill, grist mill, sorghum syrup mill, blacksmith shop, one-room school, and houses. The one-room school shortly before it collapsed