Augusta History Reader

By Robert A. Mullins

As always, it is a thrilling experience to write about Augusta’s history. Our local history is so rich with interesting stories that weave through time. From Augusta’s beginning as the king’s fort to the founding of Augusta by Gen. James Edward Oglethorpe in 1739, Augusta has gone from a capitol city to a winter playground for wealthy northerners. This history and more brought to life herein.

This book is composed of fifty-six chapters or short stories, capitalizing on historic photos that range in time from Augusta’s founding to recent times. It is the intent that these stories are easy and quick reads that will transport the reader through time to vividly experience these historical events.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 25, 2021
• ISBN: 9781669800637

Book preview

THE AUGUSTA CANAL

I n mid-1700, tobacco farming was the major industry in Georgia. However, a young man named Eli Whitney (1765–1825) from Westborough, Massachusetts, would soon change that. After graduating from Yale University, Whitney was hired to tutor children in South Carolina. On his journey south, he met Catharine Littlefield Greene (1775–1814), widow of legendary Revolutionary War general Nathanael Greene (1742–1786). She invited Eli to read law at her Mulberry Grove plantation near Savannah, Georgia. It was here that he perfected his cotton gin, automating the process of separating the seed from the raw cotton. After Eli Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin in 1793, local farmers shifted their emphasis from tobacco to growing cotton. In Georgia, annual cotton production rapidly rose from one thousand bales in 1790 to twenty thousand bales in 1801. Twenty years later, annual cotton production was as high as ninety thousand bales, and would soon reach over five hundred thousand bales. ¹

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Figure 5. Augusta Canal (Library of Congress)

After harvesting the cotton fields, local traders would either ship the cotton to Charleston, South Carolina, via rail or to Savannah, Georgia, via boat. At the time, the Charleston-Hamburg Railroad was the longest railroad in the world, with 136 miles of track. It was also the first railroad in the United States to be powered entirely by steam and provide regularly scheduled passenger service. Alternatively, traders would ship the cotton down the Savannah River to Savannah.

The thriving economy of Augusta, however, stagnated during the economic depression of the early 1840s. Although Augusta remained a significant trade center, Henry Harford Cumming (1799–1866) believed Augusta could duplicate the success of other cities in the United States that had recently made the transition from inland cotton markets to manufacturing centers. The key to transforming Augusta into a manufacturing giant, according to Cumming, would be found through the construction of a canal system, which would provide manufacturing power and enable more efficient transportation of goods and products.

Henry was the sixth of nine children, and came from a powerful and prominent family. His father, Thomas Cumming (1765–1834), was a merchant by trade but was driven by civic service. Thomas was Augusta’s first mayor and president of one of Georgia’s strongest banks, the Bank of Augusta. Henry’s younger brother, Alfred (1802–1873), a former general in the Mexican War, also served as Augusta’s mayor prior to his appointment by President James Buchanan as the first territorial governor of Utah in 1857.

Henry Cumming focused his plans for the canal on those of the city of Lowell, Massachusetts, to gain the conceptualization needed for this bold project. The inception of Lowell’s integrated canal system in the 1820s had facilitated Lowell into a center of textile production, marking the beginning of America’s industrial transformation. Its six-mile canal system powered ten major textile mill complexes and employed over ten thousand workers by the mid-1800.

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Figure 6. John Edgar Thomson, c. 1874 (Library of Congress)

John Edgar Edgar Thomson (1808–1874), a revered transportation authority of his time, was hired in 1844 to survey and design the original canal construction. Initially, Thomson had come to Augusta in 1834 to serve as the chief engineer of the recently chartered Georgia Railroad Company. Thomson, a second-generation civil engineer, followed in his father’s footsteps. His father, John Thomson (1755–1842), had supervised construction of several canals in the northeast, the first railroad in Pennsylvania, and numerous highways.

By 1845, Thomson completed the railroad from Augusta to Marthasville (present-day Atlanta, Georgia), the longest railroad track in the world at the time (173 miles). Using his conservative but technologically advanced administrative skills, Thomson went on to become president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, quickly making it the largest business enterprise in the world. Coincidently, the town of Thomson, Georgia, located approximately thirty-five miles west of Augusta, was named in honor of J. Edgar Thomson.

A young local engineer, William Phillips, Esq. (1804–1877), aided Henry Cumming in convincing cynics that a canal would bring rapid growth and prosperity to Augusta. In the fall of 1844, Thomson and Phillips began trudging through the thickets and briars upriver of Augusta with their compasses and transits to survey the canal’s path.²

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Figure 7. William Phillips and his daughter Belle (Library of Congress)

The next year, work began on the canal with expectations that it would function as a source of power, water, and transportation to fuel Augusta’s transformation. The first level of the canal, approximately seven miles in length, was finished two years later in 1847. Locks were installed seven miles above Augusta at what is now Savannah Rapids Park, diverting water from the Savannah River through the canal to its terminus at a turning basin on Thirteenth Street. The canal was approximately forty feet wide at the channel’s crest, twenty feet wide at the base, and five feet deep.

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Figure 8. Rae’s Creek Falls from the Port Royal and

Western Carolina RY (Library of Congress)

In constructing the canal, one of the numerous impediments faced by engineers was Rae’s Creek. Named after John Rae, an Irish Indian trader who came to the area in 1734, the creek intersected the canal’s path to downtown Augusta. Flowing some twenty-five feet below the bottom of the canal, the creek was the only major hitch in Thompson’s plans. Ultimately, the decision was made to route the canal over the creek, thereby eliminating convergence of the two waterways. Thus, an intricate wooden aqueduct was created, routing the canal over Rae’s Creek. Inevitably, the wooden aqueduct began to decay much more rapidly than Thomson expected. In the 1850s, Italian masons were hired to rebuild the aqueduct. This beautifully constructed stone structure can still be viewed at Aqueduct Park today.

Upon completion, a saw and gristmill as well as a cotton mill, known as the Augusta Factory, were swiftly constructed along the banks. The Augusta Factory exemplified the positive impact of the canal for Augusta. When operating at capacity, the Augusta Factory operated 5,280 spindles and two hundred looms, with an annual production of two million yards of cloth. By 1890, the mill operated thirty thousand spindles and 807 looms, with an annual production of fourteen million yards of cloth. At the height of its production, the mill also employed almost six hundred employees.³

The canal was an instrumental transportation artery. Receiving their name from a now-defunct town in Wilkes County, cigar-shaped boats known as Petersburg boats shipped cotton and cargo from farms upstream of Augusta on the Savannah River and Augusta Canal. The boats or barges, usually piloted by a six-man crew, were some seventy feet long, five to six feet wide, and could carry as many as sixty cotton bales. Guided by poles, the boats would travel down the canal to Thirteenth Street, where cotton was loaded onto wagons, then transported to Augusta’s riverfront.

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Figure 9. Petersburg boat (Library of Congress)

During the Civil War (1861–1865), the canal proved advantageous to the Confederate Army. The massive Confederate Powder Works plant, the only permanent building constructed by the Confederate States, was erected on its banks by Col. George W. Rains (1817–1898). Following the Civil War, twenty years after its construction, however, the canal proved to be an inadequate source of waterpower to support the surrounding businesses. The city of Augusta was threatened with numerous lawsuits by some of these businesses, quickly spawning a movement to enlarge the canal in 1870, with the encouragement of Augusta’s young mayor, Maj. Joseph Vicessimus Henry Allen (1830–1883).

Businessmen and industrialists projected that if the canal was enlarged, at least thirty additional textile mills would locate to Augusta. Alternatively, city engineer and canal chief engineer William Phillips endorsed the enlargement as a means of controlling floods, which had been a recurring problem throughout Augusta’s history.

In March of 1872, after citizens voted by referendum in favor of enlarging the canal, the project began under the direct supervision of Mayor Charles Estes (1837–1917). Estes, a lawyer by profession, was no stranger to canal work. Having worked himself on the Erie Canal, Mayor Estes had fostered many professional connections, which he utilized to benefit Augusta’s plans for further economic expansion. Thus, he hired Charles A. Olmstead (1811–1885), who had worked with Estes as the chief engineer on the 350-mile Erie Canal linking Buffalo, New York, and Lake Erie to the Hudson River.

In 1876, the enlargement of the Augusta Canal was finally finished. The enlarged canal was 150 feet wide and eleven feet deep. Although Charles Olmstead estimated that the enlargement would cost $371,610.56, before the project was said and done, he was proven to be off by at least $600,000, as the final cost of the enlargement project totaled $972,883.

In expanding the canal, Rae’s Creek was again a hindrance. However, as the enlargement project began, Charles Olmstead resolved to dam Rae’s Creek for cost-saving measures. Olmstead hired Italian stonemasons to plug the granite aqueduct through which the canal was routed over Rae’s Creek. In early 1873, after stone was ferried down the canal from local quarries and the aqueduct plugged water from the canal, Rae’s Creek flooded Lake Olmstead’s basin, creating a 113-acre lake surrounded by a wooded basin. Located on the northwestern edge of the city, the lake was named Lake Olmstead in honor of Charles A. Olmstead.

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Figure 10. Lake Olmstead from the Port Royal RY (Library of Congress)

Following the enlargement of the canal, numerous factories such as the Enterprise Mill, Sibley Mill, and John P. King Mill, were constructed on the banks of the canal. The canal was a great success until the early 1900s and the advent of motor carriers.

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Figure 11. Sibley Mill on the Augusta Canal (Library of Congress)

By the mid-twentieth century, the canal had entered a period of neglect. Numerous textile mills along its banks had closed due to economic conditions. It was a polluted eyesore. Sewer lines emptied into the canal and trash was seen floating in the water. At one point, city officials candidly considered draining the canal and using its dry bed for a highway.

Historically there had been numerous proposals to use the canal to generate electricity. In 1966, Georgia Power Company and Augusta’s fiftieth mayor, George Albert Sancken Jr. (1919–2005), announced plans for a $2.5–$3 million, 12,000-kilowatt hydroelectric plant on the canal at Lake Olmstead. The power plant dam, however, would result in a dry canal bed from Lake Olmstead to Thirteenth Street in downtown Augusta. Fortunate for future Augustans, this period coincided with the beginning of an environmentally conscious era and the enactment of the National Environmental Policy Act. Public interest and appreciation of the canal’s value and its adjacent lands began to intensify.

Preservation of the canal found ardent support from Joseph B. Cumming II (1893–1983), the grandson of Henry H. Cumming. At the time, Cumming was chairman of the influential Georgia Historical Commission. It was largely through Cumming’s efforts to preserve the canal that it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971 and was thereafter designated as a National Historic Landmark by the National Park Service. Momentum was growing for the canal.

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Figure 12. Map of the Augusta Canal (Library of Congress)

During the seventies, there were discussions and plans drawn to create a canal state park, but due to numerous reasons, those plans faded. Fortunately, in the late 1980s, community leaders united in an endeavor to conserve the important natural and historical canal resources. Subsequent lobbying efforts led the Georgia legislature to create the Augusta Canal Authority in 1989. Led by the Augusta Canal Authority and other leaders, preservation of the canal would become a reality.

Today, the Augusta Canal is protected as one of forty-nine designated National Heritage Areas nationwide. To receive designation as a National Heritage Area by the United States Congress, an area’s natural, cultural, historic, and recreational resources must combine to form a cohesive, nationally distinctive landscape arising from patterns of human activity shaped by geography. The designation, received in 1996, is an acknowledgment of the outstanding significance of the canal to Augusta.

The Augusta Canal Discovery Center at Enterprise Mill offers visitors an opportunity to encounter the people behind the canal’s development and learn about its history through historical exhibits, film, and interactive demonstrations. Visitors can enjoy the Augusta Canal on foot, by bicycle, by canoe, by kayak, or even on one of the Petersburg boat replicas that travel up and down the canal daily.

RAE’S CREEK

R ae’s Creek is one of the world’s most famous creeks, largely because it meanders through the Augusta National Golf Course. Rae’s Creek twists through the Augusta National at Amen Corner, the eleventh and twelfth greens. Beginning northwest of Augusta, the original length of Rae’s Creek was approximately 10.7 miles, ending at the Savannah River. The creek is named after John Rae (1708–1772), an Irish Indian trader who came to the Augusta area in the late 1730s.

John Rae was born around 1708 in Ballycreen, Ballynahinch, County Down, Ireland. Arriving in the colonies in 1734, Rae was one of the earliest settlers in Georgia. A well-known and prosperous Indian trader, Rae lived just southeast of the creek’s confluence with the Savannah River. His fortress-like home occupied a bluff near the river, from which he also operated a ferry. In 1765, he established a