The town of Roswell is haunted by the lingering ghosts of generations long dead. In this historic Georgia town, spirits roam through ruined mills, antebellum mansions and slave cabins, searching for those lost in the battles of the Civil War. From the banks of the Chattahoocheeto the streets of Roswell's historic district, chilling specters remind us of this charming Southern town's shocking past.
Author Dianna Avena blends Roswell's history with tales of the city's most famous haunts —from the slave quarters of Bulloch Hallto the cracked graves in Founder's Cemetery—to send chills down the spines of locals and visitors alike.
The town of Roswell is haunted by the lingering ghosts of generations long dead. In this historic Georgia town, spirits roam through ruined mills, antebellum mansions and slave cabins, searching for those lost in the battles of the Civil War. From the banks of the Chattahoocheeto the streets of Roswell's historic district, chilling specters remind us of this charming Southern town's shocking past.
Author Dianna Avena blends Roswell's history with tales of the city's most famous haunts —from the slave quarters of Bulloch Hallto the cracked graves in Founder's Cemetery—to send chills down the spines of locals and visitors alike.
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Overview
The town of Roswell is haunted by the lingering ghosts of generations long dead. In this historic Georgia town, spirits roam through ruined mills, antebellum mansions and slave cabins, searching for those lost in the battles of the Civil War. From the banks of the Chattahoocheeto the streets of Roswell's historic district, chilling specters remind us of this charming Southern town's shocking past.
Author Dianna Avena blends Roswell's history with tales of the city's most famous haunts —from the slave quarters of Bulloch Hallto the cracked graves in Founder's Cemetery—to send chills down the spines of locals and visitors alike.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781596293083 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Arcadia Publishing SC |
| Publication date: | 09/15/2007 |
| Series: | Haunted America |
| Pages: | 128 |
| Sales rank: | 1,078,958 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.30(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Some Roswell History ... And Why Is Roswell So Haunted?
Originally from Windsor, Connecticut, Roswell King arrived in Georgia in 1788 at the age of twenty-three. He quickly established himself as a commission broker and dealer in cotton, lumber and rice in Darien, Georgia. He was named surveyor of Glynn County in 1793 and married Catherine Barrington in 1792. They went on to have nine children.
Later, in the early 1830s, Roswell King moved farther south on horseback. The discovery of gold in north Georgia had prompted him to investigate this area. He traveled down some Cherokee Indian trails by Vickery Creek leading into the Chattahoochee River (referred to by the Cherokee Indians as "River of the Painted Rock"). The Cherokee inhabited this area north of the Chattahoochee River, an area they once referred to as "Enchanted Land," until 1838, when they were removed to land beyond the Mississippi River. At the time of Roswell King's arrival, the nearby Chattahoochee River served as a boundary between enemy nations — the Cherokee on the north side of the river and the Muskogee on the other side. The white man was forbidden on this land originally, but laws that enforced this proclamation were often ignored and many treaties were broken.
In 1828, Roswell King's intention was to investigate business possibilities for the Bank of Darien. However, he recognized Vickery Creek as being a great natural resource for building a textile mill, so that's what he did. Once the Cherokee Indians were removed, he bought up many acres of land around Vickery Creek from white winners of a land lottery. He brought several other wealthy families with him, all wanting to escape the diseases and heat of coastal Georgia living at the time, and they helped him to establish Roswell. With him, Roswell King brought his sons Barrington and Ralph, and they helped to build the mill complex, although it was mostly built by King's slaves. The mill was incorporated in 1839 as the Roswell Manufacturing Company in Cobb County. Roswell's family members and his family friends (the Bullochs, Dunwodys, Pratts and Smiths) all lived on one side of the main intersection in Roswell in their elegant mansions, and poor millworkers and slaves lived on the other side of the intersection, along what is now referred to as the Historic Mill Village.
Roswell King died in 1844 when he was seventy-eight years old, so he wasn't able to witness the incorporation of the town of Roswell, which didn't occur until February 16, 1854. King's wife died in 1839 and never lived in Roswell herself. Roswell King and his sons planned the little village that grew to become one of the ten largest cities in Georgia. They designed the town with a central square, mill village, church and stores, with architecture and layout influenced by their New England roots. By 1860 the Roswell Manufacturing Company had tripled its capital and doubled the size of the mill complex and its number of employees. It produced tents, cotton cloth, rope and yarn, and was the largest cotton mill in north Georgia at that time. Roswell's son, Barrington King, deserves much credit in the successful operations of the Roswell Manufacturing Company.
Why is Roswell so haunted? There are a few reasons as to why Roswell seems to be particularly active, or "haunted." The gorge that goes down to Vickery Creek is about three hundred feet deep at some points. There has been archaeological evidence within the gorge that proves people have been living in the Roswell area for at least six thousand years. The longer you have people living, loving, working and dying in a particular location, the better chance you'll have of astral debris. Also, there is reportedly a large fault line that runs beneath Roswell, a characteristic which is generally known by paranormal researchers as a large contributor to paranormal activity; when fault lines move they emit a large amount of electromagnetic frequencies. It is also a common theory that more paranormal activity may be witnessed after a thunder and lightning storm. The theory is that a ghost or spirit can pull from that energy in the atmosphere to more easily manifest itself.
In addition, there was a strong emotional imprint in this area, particularly during the Civil War. Many loved ones were ripped apart, unable to find one another in life, and it appears many of them have returned to Roswell to reunite with those loved ones.
Why is any place haunted? Theories abound, and I feel that most of the ones I have heard can all be valid. I don't believe there is any one reason as to why a spirit remains here on earth. There is the theory that a spirit lingers behind to tend to unfinished business with loved ones. Maybe even just to check on loved ones. Another theory poses that a spirit may feel that a loved one cannot function without it, that it is needed by someone too much to be able to go on alone. Another theory relates to those that were killed in a very swift way; therefore they didn't see it coming, and they don't even realize they are dead. Another theory is that a spirit may fear divine retribution. If we have free will in life, do we also have free will in the afterlife? What if we believe in a heaven and a hell and we fear that our place will not be in heaven? Is it possible to avoid greeting our maker, and therefore we can simply choose not to?
Another type of haunting is referred to as a residual haunting. This is not what we'd call an "intelligent" haunting, where the ghost can interact with and be aware of our presence. A residual haunting is where the same apparition is witnessed going through the exact same motion in the same location over and over and over again. It is believed that it is simply an imprint of energy in a location. When all the factors in the atmosphere are just right, the residual energy, or playback, can be witnessed — never changing.
One such example of this occurs right at the Roswell Town Square where we meet and end the Roswell Ghost Tour. Farther south of the square, about three hundred yards toward the Chattahoochee River, there used to sit a small house on the main street in the early 1900s. The house is long gone, and apartment buildings sit there today. There, in that little house, lived a mother and her adult daughter, and they were known around town as Blanche and Little Blanche, each of them named Blanche Lowe. Little Blanche worked at a brassiere factory in downtown Atlanta, but every Saturday night, Little Blanche and her mother would head downtown for a fancy dinner and a movie. They would get all dressed up and stand on the north end of the square, waiting for a taxi to take them downtown.
As mother Blanche got older, she suffered from Alzheimer's disease and Little Blanche worried about her mother leaving the house while she worked in Atlanta. She alleviated her worries by literally tying her mother to a chair when she left for work every day, and she would untie her once she got home at the end of the day. Mother Blanche had plenty of company as they had many dogs in the house, mostly greyhounds, since they both had a big heart and took in every stray that came their way. Unfortunately, one day mother Blanche had a deep scratch on her arm and it began to drip blood. This sent one of the dogs, and then all of the dogs, into a frenzy. Tragically, when Little Blanche arrived home on this day, she found their dogs had mauled her mother to death. It has been reported that on many a Saturday night, Blanche and Little Blanche can be seen in their best 1940s dresses as they wait for the taxi on the north end of Roswell Town Square.
CHAPTER 2Lost Mill Workers of Roswell Monument, the Roswell Mill and Its Forgotten Ruins
The Lost Mill Workers of Roswell Monument was erected in the summer of 2000 and is dedicated to the four hundred women and children who were charged with treason and sent north by Union troops during the Civil War. The Roswell Mills Camp #1547, Sons of Confederate Veterans, wanted to provide the City of Roswell with a monument to honor the memory of her most courageous citizens. It is located on the east side of Old Mill Park on Sloan Street, which is right in the middle of what is currently known as Historic Mill Village. The base is surmounted by a shattered Corinthian column, which symbolizes those lives that were torn apart under tragic circumstances. Each of the four sides of the column tells a bit of the chronology of events that took place during the Civil War. The granite monument stands ten feet high, and its shape was inspired by the monument marking the remains of Roswell's founder, Roswell King, in Founders Cemetery.
In May 1864, General William T. Sherman led three Union armies who began moving south from Chattanooga, Tennessee, to capture Atlanta. There were major battles occurring between opposing forces all the way to Kennesaw Mountain. On July 3, Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston retreated south from Kennesaw to trenches on the Chattahoochee River, known as the river line. Sherman sent four thousand mounted troops twelve miles up the river to outflank the Confederate army. Union General Kenner Garrard was in command of this flanking column. His mission was to capture Roswell's covered bridge, gaining a crossing point to threaten the Confederate position downstream. On July 5, this Union force battled with the Confederate cavalry that was guarding the road to Roswell, an area which is now GA 120. What developed was a three-mile running gun battle toward the bridge. James R. King, who was the grandson of Roswell King, instructed his Confederate soldiers to burn the bridge behind them to slow down the Union troops. Very near that bridge was the woolen mill.
The men who had been running the mill were sent off to fight, so the women remaining in Roswell took over the mill to keep it in operation and to earn money for themselves and their families. General William T. Sherman heard from General Kenner Garrard that the women were making the "Roswell Grey" material used for the Confederate soldiers' uniforms. He had his troops force the remaining Roswell residents out of the South, and the majority of them remained transplanted where they were sent. Then the troops burned down what they could of the mill buildings and many other homes and buildings throughout Roswell.
A French citizen by the name of Theophile Roche, who was a cotton mill employee, tried his best to salvage the mill from the Union's fiery rampage. In an attempt to feign neutrality, he flew a French flag over the mill's main building. Unfortunately, the letters CSA (Confederate States of America) were found on the material being produced by the mill. His tactic saved the mill for two days, but on July 7, once his claim of neutrality was discovered as false, General Sherman charged everyone remaining in the city of Roswell with treason.
This action even shocked people in the North and created a mystery that has endured to this day, for on July 7, 1864, Sherman reported to his superiors in Washington, "I have ordered General Garrard to arrest for treason all owners and employees, foreign and native (of the Roswell Mills), and send them under guard to Marietta, whence I will send them North."
Supposedly, families tried to hide within the mill's walls when the Union troops came through. Today, it isn't uncommon to hear screams coming from the now boarded up old machine shop, and there have been many reports of seeing women and children roaming about inside.
Not all of the women and children survived this exile, which generally led them north of the Ohio River. They were forced on foot to downtown Marietta where they were imprisoned for a short while before being led north in boxcars with just a few days' rations. They were very poor and had no means to return to their homes in Roswell.
Webb Garrison, former associate dean of Emory University and a leading expert on this incident, wrote the book Atlanta and the War. In it, he says, "Incidents of this sort occurred repeatedly throughout the Civil War. Had the usual attitudes prevailed, the destruction of the industrial complex would have ended the matter. That it did not was due to the temperament and inclination of the man [Sherman]."
A Northern newspaper correspondent reported on the deportation, "Only think of it! Four hundred weeping and terrified Ellens, Susans and Maggies transported in springless and seatless army wagons, away from their loves and brothers of the sunny South, and all for the offense of weaving tent-cloth."
On July 19, 1864, General Thomas reported the arrival of four to five hundred mill hands, mostly women, in Marietta. Other documents indicate that an undetermined number of children accompanied their mothers. Webb Garrison writes of the women's arrival in Marietta, "For the military record, that closed the case in which women and children were illegally deported after having been charged with treason ... Had the Roswell incident not been followed immediately by major military developments, it might have made a lasting impact upon opinion. In this century, few analysts have given it the emphasis it deserves. The women and children were never tried for the crime for which they were accused."
The Union troops occupied Roswell for twelve days in July 1864. They took up residence in many of the elegant mansions that had been abandoned when the homes' residents fled the area. It was said for a long time that Sherman's troops didn't burn down those big beautiful mansions simply because that is where they stayed while occupying Roswell, using the homes as headquarters and hospital spaces. But legend has it that General Sherman was a Mason, and these homes had the Mason's symbol atop their front doors, which is the main reason why the homes were left unharmed. Pilfered maybe, but not burned down.
We do know of one exceptional woman who had been working as a mill seamstress. Just days after Adeline Bagley Buice's husband left Roswell to fight in the war, she found out that she was pregnant. She survived the trip to the Chicago area, where she was sent from Marietta, and vowed she would someday get back to Roswell to find out if her husband had survived the war. It took her five years, but she and her daughter did make it back to Roswell to find that her husband had survived the war and he too had made it back to their city. Unfortunately, much to her dismay, he had presumed her dead and had remarried about a year before her arrival. Adeline Bagley Buice was buried in Forsyth County after her death where her grave is tended to by the Sons of Confederate Veterans.
She was very much the exception. The majority of the women did not make it back to Roswell, and if the men in their lives survived the war and had made it back to Roswell, they had no way of finding out where their loved ones were. Their mothers, wives, sisters, daughters had vanished from Roswell due to General Sherman's actions, and most of them never saw these loved ones again in life. Have many of them returned to Roswell to find those lost loved ones?
The mill's ruins may be visited by a short hike along Vickery Creek. Old brick walls, brick walkways, forgotten brick chimneys and large steel gears, wheels and piping may still be seen. The 1853 machine shop is the only extant building of the original 1839 Roswell Manufacturing Company. It is a two-story brick building built in late Georgian style and has a brick cornice ornamenting the roofline.
As I speak of this area, particularly where the old mill's ruins are, I have to wonder if there is a residual haunting there, as opposed to an intelligent haunting. It happens quite often that I will hear stories from Roswell's residents of unexplainable activities, activities that we've already incorporated into our tour because of their frequency. The one story I hear the most is of the sounds heard amongst the mill's ruins.
Many, many times, I've heard from residents or visitors to the area that if they are down amongst the mill's ruins, particularly after dark (which is not permitted), sounds of clanging can be heard. They are the sounds of metal hitting metal, as if someone is in the throes of heavy physical labor. Interspersed with these noises will come bloodcurdling screams, and no natural source for these sounds can be found by those hearing them.
My own husband had this experience. While attending Milton High School, after dark he and some friends were down in the area by Vickery Creek — where the ruins are — and heard exactly the same sounds that have been described by others over the years. He and his friends ran screaming from the area.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Roswell"
by .
Copyright © 2007 Dianna Avena.
Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
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Table of Contents
Foreword,
Acknowledgements,
Introduction,
1. Some Roswell History ... And Why Is Roswell So Haunted?,
2. Lost Mill Workers of Roswell Monument, the Roswell Mill and Its Forgotten Ruins,
3. Bulloch Hall,
4. The Roswell White House,
5. Mimosa Hall,
6. The Intersection's Apparition,
7. Jack's Old Cottage,
8. Barrington Hall,
9. Founders Cemetery,
10. Katherine's Cottage — Fire in the Walls,
11. Old Bricks,
12. Voila Hair Salon,
13. House with the Young Woman Rocking in the Chairs,
14. Flame Tree Glass and Chaplin's,
15. Creepy House and Abandoned Restaurant,
16. Public House and Adjoining Buildings,
17. The Dom House,
Conclusion,
About the Author,