I “
ACCORDING TO THE RAILROAD’S CHIEF ENGINEER, STEPHEN H. LONG, THE SETTLEMENT CALLED TERMINUS WOULD BE GOOD “FOR ONE TAVERN, A BLACKSMITH SHOP, A GROCERY STORE, AND NOTHING ELSE.”
n 1836, the Western and Atlantic Railroad line was trying to connect Chattanooga, Tennessee with Savannah, Georgia. Workers drove a milepost into the ground at what is now Foundry Street and named the settlement “Terminus.” According to the railroad’s chief engineer, Stephen H. Long, Terminus would be good “for one tavern, a blacksmith shop, a grocery store, and nothing else.” A few years later following the building of a small grocery store, the settlement’s name changed to Thrasherville.
By 1842, the town had six buildings and 30 residents and was renamed Marthasville to honor Gov. Wilson Lumpkin’s daughter Martha. Later, John Edgar Thomson, chief engineer of the Georgia Railroad, suggested the town be renamed Atlanta, as a feminine version of the word “Atlantic,” referring to the Western and Atlantic Railroad. The residents approved, and the town was incorporated as Atlanta on Dec. 29, 1847.
During the Civil War, the Union Army invaded Georgia from the north with a plan of capturing Atlanta in order to make it a strategic military hub. On the first of September in 1864, Confederate Gen. John Bell Hood decided to retreat from Atlanta, and he ordered its destruction by burning of all public buildings and possible assets that could be of use to the Union Army. On the next day, Mayor James Calhoun surrendered Atlanta to the Union, and on Sept. 7, the city’s civilian population was ordered to evacuate.
A lot has changed since then. Atlanta now boasts a population of more than 6 million people, and it has become the industrial hub of the Southeast U.S.
rotorpro.com
45
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84
