Milton and Mane
Welcome to Milton and Mane, the City of Milton, Georgia's official podcast—a dynamic space where community connection meets insightful conversation. Whether you're a resident, local business owner, neighboring government official, or a curious listener from afar, this podcast is your gateway to understanding Milton on every level.
Each episode is designed to bring you closer to the heart of our city, offering behind-the-scenes stories that humanize the people who keep Milton running. You'll gain valuable insights into local government operations, discover new opportunities, and hear from the voices that shape our community. Expect to learn about our rich history, stay updated on future developments, and explore the vibrant arts, culture, and sustainability initiatives that make Milton unique.
Join us as we celebrate our community, encourage civic engagement, and share inspiring stories that resonate beyond our city limits. Subscribe today and be part of the conversation that's building a better Milton, one episode at a time.
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Milton and Mane
Building Milton: Vision, Conflict, and Change (Part 1/3)
Step into the fascinating history of Milton, Georgia, as we explore the layers of its rich narrative—from its unique founding as a safe haven for debtors to the transformative events that shaped its development. Host Christy Weeks dives deep into discussions with local historians Jeff Dufresne and Lynn Tinley, uncovering the stories behind Georgia’s past and the challenges faced by early settlers. Together, they dissect the vision of James Oglethorpe, who established a sanctuary for the underprivileged, and how this vision transitioned into a plantation economy that contradicted its original principles.
Discover how the land lottery system altered settlement patterns and engaged Revolutionary War veterans while also addressing the harsh realities faced by Native American tribes as they navigated relationships with encroaching settlers. From the profound yet tragic impact of the Dahlonega Gold Rush to the crushing legacy of the Trail of Tears, this episode discusses the complexity of history that many may overlook.
Milton today is steeped in these legacies, and listeners will gain deeper insights into the importance of preserving these stories through initiatives like the Milton Historical Society. Engaging in this dialogue allows us to appreciate our historical roots and recognize how they influence our community’s identity today. To learn more about our past and be part of our ongoing journey, subscribe to Milton and Mane and visit our website and social channels for updates and additional resources. Don't miss out on the opportunity to connect with Milton's rich history!
Learn more about the Milton Historical Society:
https://www.miltonhistoricalsociety-georgia.org/
With the community in mind, this podcast explores the stories, people, and initiatives that make our community unique. Each episode offers insights into local government, highlights Milton's history and future developments, and showcases the vibrant arts, culture, and sustainability efforts shaping our city. Join the conversation, celebrate our community, and discover how we're building a better Milton together.
Do you have an idea for an episode or would like to request a specific topic to be covered? Email Christy Weeks, christy.weeks@miltonga.gov
Learn more about the City of Milton at www.miltonga.gov.
Welcome to Milton and Maine, the official podcast for the city of Milton. We want to bring you closer to the heart of our community through stories that inform, inspire and connect. Each episode offers a behind-the-scenes look at the people, projects and priorities shaping Milton, covering everything from local government and future development to arts, culture, sustainability and public safety. Whether you're a resident, a local business owner or just curious about our city, this is your front row seat to what makes Milton special. I'm Christy Weeks, the communications manager for the City of Milton, and today we have a fascinating episode lined up. Joining us is Jeff Dufresne and Lynn Tinley from the Milton Historical Society, passionate historians with deep knowledge of our region's past. Jeff Lynn, thank you so much for being here. Thank you, thank you. So there's a lot of history to cover and we're going to go way back. We're going to start at the very beginning Georgia's admission as the last of the original 13 colonies in 1752. We're going to go there. What were the main reasons? Georgia was founded later than the other colonies?
Speaker 2:I'll take that the colony was established actually in 1733, with james oglethorpe as a colony. It was the um 13th state to be entered, okay, during the revolutionary era. We were founded later, mainly because we were further south, if you will. You know, the main settlement started in the north, northeast and came south, and the area that particularly the coast of Georgia would you know, the coast was always settled first was really a buffer between, at that point in time, carolina and other Carolinas at the time and Florida. Florida was Spanish, okay, so there was kind of dangerous territory, if you will, and it hadn't been claimed at any point yet.
Speaker 1:So you mentioned James Oglethorpe and keep in mind I am new to Georgia. I've only been in Georgia seven and a half years, so if you can kind of describe his role and how his vision for Georgia differed from the other colonies, yeah, that's a really interesting question.
Speaker 2:So James Oglethorpe was English and he was popular, I think, and successful politician, and his initial vision was to create a colony that back up a little bit. He worked with a lot of the prisons and so his vision was that he could create a colony where debtors, there were debtors' prisons, where debtors would be incurred, and he would bring them here, free them from their encumbrance, if you will, and create a colony. So that was the initial mission.
Speaker 1:I do have a question. I have a question. I love it.
Speaker 2:Debtors you're talking about, yeah, you would get thrown into jail because you owed money and couldn't pay it. Oh, man which is strange to us, because how are you going to pay it If you're sitting in jail.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, makes zero sense.
Speaker 2:And Oglethorpe, to his credit, you know felt like that was not the right way to do it. So he thought let me bring some of those people here to this new world, create a colony, and it's a whole new vision from what it had been before. Now Georgia. So he got a charger from King George, hence the state of Georgia.
Speaker 1:I did not know that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and while it was a really lovely idea, it was kind of not really well thought out because this land hadn't been settled yet and it was kind of dangerous to begin with. So they thought that they might be able to A not have a plantation slash slavery economy and, b they would produce silk. So they kind of had this idea that they could do all this stuff together. But they first of all had to protect the colony from the Spanish and from the Native Americans and create a whole infrastructure. And so very quickly they brought some debtors over, if you will, but very quickly. Second, sons and beyond of the wealthy of England started coming and people from the Carolinas to create another rice and indigo economy.
Speaker 1:Wow, wow, I did not know that. So you're kind of blending in some of the challenges that we faced. If want to expand on those, what were some of the biggest ones that Georgia faced in the early years?
Speaker 2:it would be climate and because it was hot. You know, if you've ever been to England, you know the climate's very different it's very rainy, cloudy yeah and in the low country it's hot and humid so they were, and initially, a lot of people wore wool, if you imagine that. So there's a huge shift in terms of what you're wearing, realizing you really couldn't wear wool around here, particularly on the coast, at any point.
Speaker 2:It makes me sweat just thinking about it Just rampant and the colony had initially been and this is probably one of the biggest reasons when I look at as a kind of a social historian they had the land that could be used in agriculture. They didn't have the people who knew how to do it. So very quickly there was a lot of pressure from the Carolinas and the wealthy plantation owners in the Carolinas to bring that economy here, and so if you're going to run a colony you have to have income and organization and all that other stuff. And so, and relatively quickly, oglethorpe left, oglethorpe left, and so those who were left behind had to deal with. They had to deal with and the South Carolinas really pretty much came in and said I think we should create. They had created the colony to not have slavery, so by the 1750s did not have slavery.
Speaker 1:So by the 1750s, by 1751, they ultimately gave and admitted slavery to the colony.
Speaker 2:Wow, and was that pressure from the Carolinas?
Speaker 1:They came in and said this is the plan. Wow, Really fascinating study. It really is. And so you also mentioned the Native American tribes and the Spanish influence. So how did Georgia's relationship with that affect the development? How did they navigate those relationships?
Speaker 2:There were forts Physically, if you think about it, they had to create forts and they had to be prepared mainly for the Spanish. Be prepared to defend them or to invade if you will, if need be. Same thing with the Native Americans, although from what I can tell and I'm not an expert in this to a lesser degree with the Native Americans, because initially they really were trade partners. They tried to be trade partners. You know, I probably would describe it as not like a close family With the Spanish. It was definitely.
Speaker 1:It's like coming to my house at thanksgiving.
Speaker 2:Perhaps I'm sorry about that, but yeah. So with the spanish it was not, it was very adversarial, yeah. But with the native americans, I mean there were there, there's, uh, is it jenkins year war? I mean, don't quote me on that one, but sure, sure there were wars. But the colony created early on what they called Indian agents. So they recognized early on that the best relationship would be one that was co-possessive between them as much as it could be so they tried to navigate that difficulty.
Speaker 1:I love that. Now we're going to move ahead into the 19th century and Georgia had implemented a land lottery system. Can you tell us how this system worked and why it was created?
Speaker 2:Okay, I want to say that is a leap to go from. No, it's okay, I can make it short, but it's a leap, because what you have to remember is that initially the colony of Georgia and if you look at maps of it was really only along the coast and gradually people started to settle. You know, further north, further west, gradually, further north, further west, and think of initially going up the Savannah River, so Augusta is the furthest north on that river that you can navigate, so that kind of area was settled first. Then gradually people want more land up the savannah river. So augusta is the furthest north on that river that you can navigate, so that kind of area was settled first. Then gradually people want more land then they start moving north and west.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's more people. They're not just coming from the coast of georgia, we're also having people coming in from the carolinas and virginia. So, just gradually, through the 18th century, p and 19 century, which is where the land letteries come into effect, people are pushing the boundaries further and further and further, continually, mostly to make a living and actually some pressure, governmental pressures as well, as you can imagine. And what do you mean by that?
Speaker 1:Pressure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the governmental pressures.
Speaker 1:What are we looking at?
Speaker 2:Well, it's almost like I mean today I'm not sure if this will be dated or not with what's going on, but it's like hey, we're a country, we want more land.
Speaker 1:We want to claim it's a land grab. I mean, it's a land grab to some degree, absolutely.
Speaker 2:And what had happened? And this is a whole different study which I can tell you. But the relationships between the settlers and the Native Americans became more tense as time went on and the Native Americans tried to become more anglicized, which meant there was a trade imbalance, if you will, between the Native Americans and the Europeans. So you know, when they owed more, if you will, will.
Speaker 2:well, we'll give you some of our land, because they didn't value the land as well as the same way that the english did so right so, ultimately, when it comes to this area, in beginning, in 1805, georgia had eight land lotteries and they would segment out an area of land and it was literally a lottery If you were eligible to put your name in the hat, if you will. For the lottery, your name would go on a card, it'd go in a tub and they would just pull the names out and the acreage depended upon when and where. Most anything actually, and I've seen upwards of 400 acres to 40 acres, which is what this area was 40 acres and, generally speaking, you paid a fee for that right to buy it. Today, we would say, when buying the land, for example, in this area, the fee was $10 to have the right to get that. Put your name in the hat.
Speaker 1:So is that what the eligibility was, or was that in addition to the eligibility?
Speaker 2:That was in addition.
Speaker 1:And what made you eligible.
Speaker 3:Primarily Revolutionary War veterans, and they could be anywhere from a private to a commanding officer. It was pretty much allowed that they would get their 40 acres. Now, just jumping ahead a little bit, there was the Dahlonega Gold Rush shortly thereafter, where gold was found in Dahlonega long before the California Gold Rush. So the name changed from land lots to gold lots and a gold lottery. It had something to do. It was more semantics, but it was a fact.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so you could be a widow as well, so it just didn't have to be a revolutionary work here. I mean, if you're kind of related to one, you could be and you could pay that. I know of the 1832 land lottery that we had up here in Milton was the only gold lottery. Everything else was land lottery.
Speaker 2:And it was the smallest acreage mainly because it was, you know felt that they could make more money off of it. And so they the state felt like they could make more money off of the fees because they could make more money off of the land.
Speaker 1:Sure, smaller lots, more fees, absolutely, absolutely. So as you mentioned, you mentioned, the Revolutionary War veterans were granted 40 acre lots through this lottery. How did this impact settlement patterns in North Georgia, you know, including what is now Milton? I mean you just briefly started to touch on that, but how did that really affect this area?
Speaker 2:More people. More people on the same amount of land that the Cherokee had had before. So more people wanting that land and specific to the 40-acre lots in this area, the state realizing that there was ultimate chaos about what was going on People were just coming in and grabbing land and taking ownership and the banks were coming in and it was unregulated. Taking ownership and the banks were coming in and it was unregulated. And so, as opposed to letting that kind of run its own course, the state decided here to divide them up into 40 acre lots, sell them for that fee and really start to organize what was going on a little bit more control more control and more money, because the state realized all this was happening and they had no stake in any of it.
Speaker 2:You know the people were coming in.
Speaker 1:You know the people were coming and mining gold and the banks were coming and banking of gold, if you will and the state just didn't have any income from it, and then an entire economic industry starts to develop and the state is not as involved as they would like to be, as they would like.
Speaker 2:It's like the land that they would like to be. One of the interesting things I like to say about that is that the gold was initially discovered in Dahlonega. There's a little town called Auroria, which is in Lumpkin County. It's now a ghost town, but that was like the center of the activity and today that's a ghost town.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's crazy. My son went to school up there. I'm not kidding, yeah.
Speaker 2:It was. So, yeah, it was a beautiful area. Yeah, yeah, love driving up there.
Speaker 1:It's beautiful and it was new land unclaimed, you know, and people just were flooding in. Wow, so crazy. So let's ask this we're talking about the way things started to evolve. Was this considered fair, or or was there a lot of controversy around the distribution of this land?
Speaker 2:So it kind of depends upon who you are. If you are a Cherokee who believes it's your land, yeah, you have a bit of a problem with it. It was almost like for the non-Cherokee. It was almost like the wild wild west, but in Georgia, yeah, but in Georgia, grab what you can. But in Georgia, yeah, but in Georgia, grab what you can, yeah. So I've never read anything that indicated that people who were flooding the air, if you will, were considered about fairness. Yeah, it really seems like it was.
Speaker 3:Would you agree it boiled down to people's perception of land.
Speaker 2:The.
Speaker 3:Indians thought the land was for everybody. You know I didn't own a piece of land. The Indians thought the land was for everybody. You know I didn't own a piece of land. Andrew Jackson, with his manifest destiny, said it is our land and we're going to take it and if there's something in the way, we will deal with it, whether it's clearing out a village or moving people to Oklahoma in the Trail of Tears. So a fundamental disconnect in the way they perceive the value of the land.
Speaker 1:Absolutely so, Jeff. Thank you for mentioning that, because that's kind of where we'll go from here, because that's considered one of the most tragic chapters in American history is the Trail of Tears. And how did this policy impact Georgia and its indigenous populations? We've all been in history class or at least I remember this very specifically from my childhood and read as much as I could about it as a child. We're not going to talk about when I was born or any of that stuff. We're not going there. But how did this impact Georgia? Because we're talking about taking these indigenous people and moving them all the way over to Oklahoma, not at will.
Speaker 3:Yes, there are some people, some white settlers, that initially traded with the Indians. They married the Indians, they coexisted and survived. But when you have a mandate and the military moves in, they didn't put up a resistance, at least nothing that really impacted anything, and they just allowed it to happen.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they tried to resist legally. Like you say, when you have the federal and the state governments up against you, it tore families apart. Many people died clearly on that trip.
Speaker 3:I think it was about 60,000.
Speaker 2:60,000 were removed.
Speaker 3:Were removed men, women, children over a long, long way in treacherous conditions, and if you didn't keep up you were shot or died.
Speaker 1:So, as we're talking about this piece of history, did the discovery of gold in Dahlonega play any kind of factor in the decision to move, or did that come down federally, federally? So it wasn't really related to anything that was going on here as far as the gold up in Dahlonega, and Georgia came in and said, okay, we've got to remove.
Speaker 1:Not specifically Okay, it just came down from federally mandated laws. Gotcha, how did the local population at the time react to the government's actions? Was there any resistance or blowback on them? I mean, because you just explained that the Cherokee did not, but what about anybody else here? Were they all on board with it? Was there any contention? Was it something that they didn't agree with or they were on board with?
Speaker 3:You have to remember, in the 1830s, 70% of the people were rural. Their diet consisted of molasses and fatback and cornbread. You had your affluent people, people which were few in number, but the majority of the population were just wanted to survive correct and sometimes that just means look the other way they weren't organized.
Speaker 1:Now we're inundated with information. Information was probably not as easily that's how acquired.
Speaker 2:We were very sparsely populated. You know, really, you know, this is basically. This area was basically a crossroads. Alpharetta was a small, small town and people gathered and they knew of things, but they had much more important fish to fry, like feeding their children, keeping the farm going, and some of them were definitely negatively impacted through their families because there was a fair amount of intermarriage.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So bringing it back into today, do we see any lasting cultural or historical influences from the Native American presence in this region? Today, I thought about this.
Speaker 2:I don't really think that there is much, Do you Jeff?
Speaker 3:No, we can, and it's part of the mission of the Milton Historical Society is to recognize and appreciate our past. So we're marking landmarks and creeks and whatever. And Chief Chicken was a popular chief Cherokee chief that has Chicken.
Speaker 1:Creek in his name. I was just getting ready to ask. I didn't want to sound silly, but the first thing that popped in my mind was Chicken Creek.
Speaker 3:Yes, and there is certainly acknowledgement of that past on a very, very small scale. There are collectors. Aubrey Morris, a writer, a 20th century writer, would collect arrowheads and tools and try to celebrate them, but it's never been a groundswell of recognition of this past. He had the Cherokee Indians who moved out, the Creek Indians before that, so it hasn't seemed to capture the imagination of the public as I wish it would, because it's a rich history.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it was kind of obliterated with the Trail of Tears. If you think about the West, they still have Navajo rugs and they have the pottery and all this stuff. In terms of material culture, you can look too, but that pretty much left with the Trail of Tears.
Speaker 1:I was going to say because I used to live in Arizona, pretty much left with the Trilatinos. I was going to say because I used to live in Arizona and a lot of the areas really reflect the Native American influence.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but they were forged out so they aren't here. I will say, as I was sitting here thinking if you think about a lot of the town and river names and creek names. I mean great majority of that when you, particularly when you look at the older maps definitely have jericho lineage as it should, as it should.
Speaker 1:So we're going to kind of jump a little bit and we're going to talk about the creation of milton county. And in 1857 was that 1857, look at.
Speaker 2:Good girl.
Speaker 1:What led to the formation of this county.
Speaker 2:As I said earlier, it was sparsely populated In 99, that's a little high perhaps, I don't know the exact percentage. Agricultural Cotton is a cash crop Feeding themselves, taking anything extra to market and creating families in small small communities and a large part of living has to do with commerce and taking care of business and politics and that kind of a thing. Poor road system let's back up to that terribly poor road system and at the time this particular area was part of Cherokee, forsyth and Fulton County I think yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah it was.
Speaker 2:So it was an encumbrance for people to have to to go to the county seat, which was where you had to go for business. So that was really the energy behind the creation of Fulton County, because at the time Canton was one of the county seats, cumming was the other county seat and Atlanta, I think, was the other county seat. So Milton County was created to ease the burden on the city.
Speaker 1:I was going to say that would have been a lot of traveling in those days and they didn't have time.
Speaker 2:They had to grow crops and make money. Somebody got to do something. There you go, wow.
Speaker 1:So, speaking of the economy, what was it like here in the early years? You've talked about a little bit of the industry and the trades. How did that begin to develop and become? Because we know it was agriculture, so you're looking at cotton, as you mentioned. What else did we have? Brewing.
Speaker 2:Not too much.
Speaker 1:That was it.
Speaker 2:No, it was really. I mean, to the south you have Roswell Manufacturing Company. Of course that's cotton and wool, but basically they were because the gold didn't last very long. That was a short-lived gold, darn it. Yeah, so I mean people, subsistence farming, essentially Many tenant farmers, as Jeff had mentioned, nothing what anyone would normally consider a plantation would be up here. It might be large farms, but nothing that was really a plantation.
Speaker 1:So it was really just growing crops to feed yourselves and your animals and survive.
Speaker 3:Necessity is the mother of invention. So there were some very bright people like Broadwell. There's a street named after Broadwell. He was an inventor, a landowner, and he invented the double bowl cotton seed, which would essentially double your yield, and it was a big deal. You know the cotton gin, but that happened more towards post-Civil War. The Civil War was untimely for the creation of a brand new county. It's interesting to note that there weren't that many slaves here, and when the vote came for representatives to vote whether to secede or not, the two representatives from Milton chose not to.
Speaker 2:And many did in North Georgia. If you really we've taken a look at the votes, most people just didn't support it. They knew it was going to be not their war.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:They would have to fight.
Speaker 3:They were not wealthy, they did not have slaves, they didn't want to go to war, they wanted to till the land and survive and live their life. Live their life exactly they wanted to live their life.
Speaker 1:Wow, milton County eventually mer and live their life. Live their life they wanted to live their life. Wow, milton county eventually merges with fulton county. Yes, um, and that that was during the great depression. So what led to that decision and how does its legacy live on today? Because again, as we get later into the history with additional episodes, we'll talk about how, how Milton became Milton. But that wasn't until much, much, much, much later. But how did we decide to merge with Fulton County? Necessity.
Speaker 3:It was survival. We were about to go bankrupt and coincidentally, campbell County to the south also was merged into Fulton, so Fulton became a county larger than six American states right now. Huge, huge, absolutely huge.
Speaker 2:But long.
Speaker 3:And what's up here is very different from what's down here. What did people think about that? They embraced it because once the deaths settled after the Civil War, you started to have better roads, new schools, better teachers. There are laws that restricted the amount of work that kids the child labor laws. Kids were required to go to school seven months out of the year rather than no school whatsoever. It was embraced, certainly better than it was, and it was a good thing. As you get into the early 20th century, bad things happened and that changed the course, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we'll get there. We do have additional episodes coming up with the two of you, so I want to take this moment to end this section of Georgia's history because there's so much more coming, and I really appreciate Jeff and Lynn. This has been a great discussion, has been super informative for myself. I want to thank you for sharing your knowledge and bringing these key moments in Georgia's history to life. But before we wrap up, can you tell our listeners how they can learn more about the Milton Historical Society?
Speaker 3:Content is king. We deliver a lot of content to our newsletters, to our historical markers, to our monthly programs, to our social events, thanks to you. Through this medium, we try to not only educate it but create events that are social and fun to be at, and we're aiming at the younger generation.
Speaker 1:So how do we find you?
Speaker 3:We have a website we advertise. We're having our Spring Fling, which is an annual event coming up in April. We typically have our programs at the Milton Public Library, which are well advertised. We have our own social media.
Speaker 1:Just start Googling, we'll find you yeah we're certainly not the best, but we're doing the best with volunteers. You guys are dealing with a lot of information. I'm just saying I will be sure to put the link to your website in the show notes so it's easily accessible for everybody. If anybody's curious, they can venture over there and take a look. And that's all for this episode of Milton and Maine.
Speaker 1:And if you enjoyed this conversation, be sure to subscribe and follow us for more stories about Milton's past, present and future. Be sure to subscribe and follow us for more stories about Milton's past, present and future. And if you want to learn more about the city of Milton, head over to our website, miltongagov, and give us a follow on social media. Until next time, take care and stay curious. Thanks for listening to Milton in Maine. We hope this episode gave you fresh insights into what makes our city so special. Stay connected and don't miss an episode by subscribing to this podcast on your favorite platform and following us on social media for all updates. And, of course, if you want to learn more about the city, visit us online at wwwmiltongagov for resources, news and upcoming events. Until next time, thanks for being part of the conversation and we'll see you on the next Milton and Main.