Local Historians Uncover Roswell’s Hidden Past

publication date: Jul 31, 2008

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author/source: Jonathan Copsey / STAFF

By Jonathan Copsey / STAFF

Michael Hitt took Bulloch Hall docents on a tour of Roswell’s unknown past. Here he stands at Garrard Landing in front of construction while giving details of the ferry that used to be there.

What would it have been like to walk in the footsteps of the original founding families of Roswell? A select few docents of Bulloch Hall had the privilege of seeing how their honored ancestors came to the small mill village, but none of it was as they had expected.

Former Roswell Police Officer Michael Hitt, who has been a voracious researcher of Roswell’s history, had organized the tour in order to clear up grey areas and common misconceptions in Roswell’s history.

How they got here
The first aspect of Roswell’s history that Hitt addressed was just how the founding families came to Roswell.

“Most people assume it was at the foot of the hill down here,” said Hitt to the van-full of tourists, indicating where Highway 9 crosses the Chattahoochee River.  “Boy, you’re really close to the river, so that must be where they crossed, right? No. We’re starting where Holcomb Bridge Road crossed the Chattahoochee.”

The bridge that used to be where Highway 9 crosses the Chattahoochee is the commonly believed crossing, simply because that was the primary crossing in the 19th and early 20th centuries. It was destroyed during the Civil War and rebuilt. Hitt stressed that when Roswell King and his family and friends first came to the area in the 1830s, it was part of the Cherokee Nation. So there were no bridges, only small ferries.

And the first site visited by the tour was Garrard Landing Park, on Holcomb Bridge Road just before it crosses into Gwinnett County. The actual boat landing at Garrard landing Park was built over one end of the original ferry crossing that Roswell King would have taken to get into North Georgia.

But how can Hitt be sure it was there? Because the Alabama Road, which was the main East/West road for the area, leading out to Alabama, cut through just north of that ferry. Once on the Alabama Road, King traveled to about where the current intersection of Warsaw and Holcomb Bridge currently is and turned onto the main road North. And, for those who know their Roswell history, where was King headed when he first came through the area that eventually would bear his name? Near Dahlonega, where the Georgia gold rush was happening at the time.

There are two interesting facts about his trip, as laid out by Hitt. The first: King would have passed over Vickery Creek where Old Roswell Road currently passes over it.

“You are at Lebanon, Georgia,” Hitt pronounced to his tour. Situated there was the main town in the area – it had a post office and general store, both of which would be used by the founders while their houses were being built, and – more importantly – it had a mill. Hitt theorizes that it was this mill, which would eventually become a part of the Roswell manufacturing Company, that planted the seed of King one day having his own mill in the area.

The second, but no less important, aspect of the Kings’ first trip is that the town of Roswell sits atop the Hill County Gold Belt. This belt was the spark of the Georgia gold rush and many of Roswell’s residents took part in mining for gold. Traveling along Holcomb Bridge, Hitt pointed out several road cuts around the Martin’s Landing area that were made by miners. The subdivision of Barrington Farms is apparently full of old mine shafts.

One of the founding families of Roswell, the Bulloch’s even took part in the mining by at least panning for gold. Hitt pointed out the location of Bulloch’s log cabin that the family stayed in while waiting for their mansion to be built. It was an abandoned Cherokee house that sat in Martin’s Landing at the corner of Truhendge Terrace and Sun Moss Court. How did Hitt know this? Firstly from the land lot, which had the same numbers then as today. And secondly, there are accounts of Major Bulloch panning for gold on his property, which would put him square in the middle of Martin’s Landing.

Where was Holcomb’s Bridge?
“You would assume where it would cross a body of water,” said Hitt, “but in fact there was never a Holcomb’s Bridge.”

In 1834, when the small town of Roswell was just established, as well as a general population surge into the former Cherokee lands, a toll bridge was erected where Holcomb Bridge Road crosses the river. This bridge was called Macaffee’s Bridge and was in operation until it was burned down in the Civil War. The Holcomb family bought the bridge remains and, instead of rebuilding it, opened up the old Garrard ferry crossing instead. It was not until 1906, long after Holcomb had died, that the state rebuilt the bridge.

“There’s your bridge,” said Hitt, “but Holcomb has nothing to do with it. The correct name should be Holcomb’s Ferry Road or Macaffee Bridge Road. Holcomb had nothing to do with it.”

Such misnomers can be found in other roads. Take Eaves Road, for example. Eaves Road was originally Jet Ferry Road, leading from the Alabama Road (current Holcomb Bridge Road) to the Jet Ferry on the river.

“The streets were first named when this area joined Fulton County,” said Hitt. Roswell joined Fulton in the Great Depression. “It was then named Reaves Road. But the family who lived on it was related to the Jets and they thought it should be called Jet Ferry Road. So why was it named Reaves? It was named for the bus driver who lived on the first house on the street, named Reaves.”

So the Reaves Road street sign disappeared one day. Eventually the county came back out to put back up the sign and whoever came out either misheard or misread the name and stenciled in “Eaves” instead of “Reaves.”

An Informative Trip
It seemed that those on the tour enjoyed themselves. “I love learning about all the history,” said Pat Stone, a docent at Bulloch hall who took part in the trip. “You just don’t think about all this stuff. When you’re giving tours to people there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t learn something new. Until two weeks ago I thought that everybody that came to Roswell came across that bridge down by Highway 9. It wasn’t even there then, so they couldn’t.”

If there was anything to be taken from Hitt’s quick, two hour tour of early Roswell, it could be that Roswell’s history is full of people living their lives and, like we all do, making mistakes along the way. History is never a stable, one-dimensional tale, but rather a series of poorly understood events all happening at the same time. And it is the job of the historical interpreters to make a tale out of them.