The Bullochs

Major James Stephens Bulloch was a friend of Roswell King’s, and he built Bulloch Hall in 1839. 

Together with his second wife Martha, Major Bulloch packed up his children and moved from Savannah to the Georgia Frontier.

Major Bulloch, when he was a young man.

Mrs. Bulloch when she was a grandmother.

Major Bulloch was an investor in the Roswell Manufacturing Company, and served on the board. The Bullochs were founding members of the Roswell Presbyterian Church.

Major and Mrs. Bulloch had four children together: Anna, Mittie, Charles, and Irvine. Charles passed away when he was 2 ½, and was one of the first people buried in Roswell.

This is their younger daughter, Mittie.

She got married in Bulloch Hall on December 22, 1853, to Theodore Roosevelt (the elder).

Mittie & Thee (as he was known) had four children, one of whom grew up to be our 26^th President. President Roosevelt visited Roswell in 1905.

Major & Mrs. Bulloch’s youngest child, Irvine, would eventually fight in the Confederate Navy, but as a child in Roswell, he loved to play with the family dogs! Unfortunately we don’t have any pictures of them, but I’m sure they were good-looking, for city dogs.

Until Next Time!

P.S.-Want to learn more about the Bullochs? Visit www.bullochhall.org!

Roswell Manufacturing Company-The Early Years

The Roswell Manufacturing Company was incorporated in 1839 and was located on the banks of Vickery Creek.  Several dams on the creek provided power to the mills.  Barrington King, son of Roswell King, was its first president.

By 1854, two cotton mills built of brick with rock foundations were in operation.  The first mill was only three stories high and measured 88 feet by 48 feet. The second one was much larger: four stories high and measured 140 feet by 53 feet.  Each of the buildings was equipped with machinery for carding cotton, spinning yarn, and weaving cloth.

The mills produced yarn, cotton rope, and cotton cloth.  Orders for the products were shipped to northern markets in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Newark.   Southern markets included Alabama, Tennessee, and the Carolinas.

The Roswell Manufacturing Company purchased local cotton that was hauled to the factory in wagons by area farmers.   The bales of cotton, weighing an average of 500 pounds, were stored in the cotton warehouse. 

There were 300 millworkers employed in the 1850s. It was not uncommon for entire families, including children, to make up the textile labor force. The operatives worked long hours, six days a week.  According to a report in the minutes of the stockholders’ meetings, dated 30 October 1854:

… we began at five o’clock and ended at seven and on Saturday stopping at five o’clock.

That sure sounds like a lot of hard work!

Wages of the mill workers were low and dependent on their skill level.  Work conditions were poor and the mill buildings were not ventilated.  The workers often suffered from lung disease from breathing the lint fibers for long periods of time.

This is the mill around 1900, when I got lost in town. To find out more about my adventure in the city, check out my book, Rucker The Lost Country Dog.

Until next time!

How Roswell Was Founded

Mr. Roswell King lived in a town called Darien, & he worked for the bank there.

This is a picture of Mr. King.

During the gold rush in north Georgia, Mr. King made several trips, and noticed the good waterpower located here, as well as the healthier climate.

Because of this, Mr. King decided to start a summer colony to escape the malaria epidemic on the coast. He brought with him two of his sons, Barrington & Ralph, and several other coastal families.

These families were:

Major & Mrs. James S. Bulloch

Mr. & Mrs. John Dunwody

Dr. & Mrs. Nathaniel Pratt

Mr. & Mrs. Archibald Smith

Mrs. Elizabeth Hand

Together with Mr. & Mrs. Barrington King, these 6 families are called the “Founding Families of Roswell.”

Mr. Roswell King gave land to these families to build their homes, and invited them to invest in his business. 

This map sure would have been helpful when I got lost!

The Roswell Manufacturing Company was incorporated in 1839, and most of the cotton was provided by local farms, including the Hembree family.

This wood-graving of the Roswell Manufacturing Company was done in 1854.

It seems the town of Roswell has never been without dogs; this is a photo of Ralph Browne King and his trusty sidekick!

Until Next Time!

Cherokees

Before my paws were on this earth, before the Roswell was founded by Mr. Roswell King, this was Cherokee land.

In 1833, this is what our area of Georgia looked like:

That little red dot is where Roswell is; it wasn’t on maps yet. As you can see, Roswell was completely in Cherokee territory.

There were 15 Cherokee families that lived in the area that is Roswell now, and they were mostly farmers, like my family was.

In 1828, gold was discovered in North Georgia-the first big gold rush in the country! This made the land in this area very popular; so much so that in 1832, Georgia held a land lottery for the supposed gold-rich land. Now, I have done a lot of digging around and I can assure you, I haven’t found any gold yet.

The Cherokee were told to leave, and in 1835 Georgia signed a treaty that gave the Cherokees land out west. By 1838, any Cherokee families still in the area were forcibly removed.

One of the last families removed from the area, and eventually sent to Oklahoma, was the Proctor family.

<-This is Ezekial (Zeke) Proctor as an adult.

He was 7 years old when his family was removed from his family farm, which was located between the forks of Four Killer Creek & Vickery Creek. Zeke’s father William is listed on a survey map from 1832.

Stay tuned for the next entry-How Roswell Was Founded!

Until next time!