Michael GagnonGeorgia Gwinnett College

Athens Historical Society Presentation

Georgia Museum of ArtFebruary 10, 20133:00 PM

The Lackawanna Valley in Pennsylvania; Note similarities of presentation to View of Athens from Carr’s Hill

Athens in the Middle 1840s

University of Georgia

Athens Factory

Original Train Station

Commercial Center

Gavin Wright’s Big Questions About Early Southern Industrialization

• What delayed the start of Southern industry and what caused it to start?

• Why didn’t the Southern mill building boom of the 1840s succeed?

• What delayed New South factory building for 15 years after the end of the Civil War?

Overview• Augustin Clayton starts first “Georgia Factory”

for political reasons• Becomes a model for Southern Industry

– Three Factories by 1835, with $100k invested– Starts with slave labor but finds white labor

cheaper– Develops mill villages to accommodate “poor

whites” working in factories• Other Factories develop surrounding Clarke

– Scull Shoals, Mars Hill, High Shoals

Georgia’s Antebellum

Industrial Zone

Athens

Athens Manufacturing Belt

Culture of Improvement

• Culture is how we make sense of our lives• Class divisions/Geographic divisions• Lots of Educational Opportunities• Lots of Entertainment• Growth of Religion/Reform

Generations of Industrialization

• 1820s - 1840s• 1840s - 1860s• 1860s - 1880s

Recurring for a brief moment to past associations and recollections connected with our late honored fellow-citizen, we call to mind his unceasing efforts to advance the interests of Athens, and set it forward on an active career of commercial prosperity, to increase its facilities for trade, to enhance the value of private property, and to render it permanent as a place of business. In calling up and passing in review before us the respected names of the generous foster-fathers of our present prosperity, we can bring to mind few . . . who draws more largely upon our gratitude for past exertions to serve us.

Obituary of William Dearing

Southern Banner, June 9, 1853

• Major Industrialists• Minor Industrialists• Industrial Investors• Clerks• Superintendents• Workers

Different Categories Of People Involved in Industry

Industrialists• 1830s-1840s– Major: Augustin Clayton, William

Dearing, James Camak, and William Williams

– Minor: Alexander B. Linton, John Nisbet, and Thomas W. Baxter

• 1840s-1860s– Major: John White, Dr. John S.

Linton, Albon Chase,– Minor: Thomas N. Hamilton,

William P. Talmage, and William S. Grady

• Beyond 1860s – Robert L. Bloomfield, etc

1st Generation Industrialists• Risk Takers:

James Camak wrote to his friend in Texas in 1844, “You recollect my love of change. Tho’ things are going as well with me here … I am getting tired of my situation; … Suppose I come to Texas …?”

• Prime of Life: started industrial pursuits between ages 39-54, median age: 47.

• Professions: Doctors, Lawyers, Merchants, Bankers• Gentlemen, but not necessarily Planters• Not originally from Athens; generally attached to it.

2nd Generation Industrialists

• Leadership frequently inherited factories from 1st generation

• With general incorporation law in 1847, family groupings come to dominate stockholding in individual factories

• Families with factory stock tend to be connected to other families with factory stock

• Creates a maturing industrial class

Work Force

• Aspiring young men desiring to become merchants clerk in factories, sometimes becoming office professionals

• Superintendents rise out of working class by 1850s

• Work force matures in factory life, with most women seeing factory work as life-stage before child-bearing

Ancillary Industries• Insurance – Southern Mutual• Bobbin Mill• Paper Mill• Gas Works • Foundry• Tend to be run by upwardly mobile

entrepreneurs

Athens Bobbin Mill

Civil War

• General Sherman targeted Southern industry• Factories prospered during war• Factories that survived were poised to take

leading role when war ends

Sherman’s Handiwork at Sweetwater CreekJust West of Modern Atlanta

Conclusions

• Much of what we know about New South factory life was worked out in the Antebellum period

• The “New Men” of the New South had already become part of Athens industrial archetype by the 1850s

• There is no one “right way” to industrialize; each place works out the rules for its own day and place

Questions?