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Section IV THE EIGHTEEN-THIRTIES More Pioneers. Railroad Building Begins A Future City Starts Modestly as "TheTerminus33 CHAPTER 8 1830 EWS of the successful demonstration of steam motive power on the Liverpool and Manchester was not long in reaching the United States. It served as a priming charge to set off a veritable deluge of railroad building projects in this country. Indeed the decade of the 1830's is best remembered for the tremendous changes wrought upon the land by the laying of iron rails. Even so, it was not until 1837 that the trees and soil of De Kalb County were disturbed by the railroad builders, though steps were taken during the earlier years of the decade to insure their disturbance. Meanwhile, during 1830, the Petersburg Railroad, in Virginia, the Pontchartrain Railroad in Louisiana, the Lexington (Ky.) and Ohio, the Camden and Amboy, in New Jersey, the Delaware and Raritan and the Boston and Lowell railroads were chartered; the Baltimore and Ohio operated its first train a distance of thirteen miles on May 24,1 and, in December, the Best Friend, first locomotive built for actual service in America, made a passenger carrying trip out of Charleston over the South Carolina Railroad, now part of the Southern Railway system.2 The efficiency of the steam railroad was being demonstrated close to home. During the same year James Camack, William Williams, William Dearing and others erected the Princeton Factory near Athens. Machinery for the factory was purchased in New England; shipped from there to Savannah by water, and thence up the Savannah River to Augusta. There it was loaded on wagons, each drawn by six mules, for the overland trip to Athens. The caravan set forth during the winter months when rains and snows had changed the roads to rivers of mud. Near what is now Union Point in Greene County the heavy vehicles bogged down hub deep in the quagmire. There they remained until spring weather made it possible to dig them out. The exasperated factory owners then and there decided to build a railroad to Athens with private capital. This decision led, three years later, to the chartering of the Georgia Railroad Company ,3 the line of which was to reach De Kalb County during the middle of the next decade. De Kalb acquired its first printing office and newspaper in 1830 when Samuel Wright Miner moved to Decatur from McDonough and inaugurated the De Kalb Gazette. In McDonough he had published the Jacksonian and claimed that he was the first man to mention Andrew Jackson for president . Miner set up shop on a street leading from the academy to the cemetery. The former stood on the corner of what is now East Ponce de Leon Avenue N 80 ATLANTA AND ITS ENVIRONS and the northern extension of North Candler Street. The boys who attended the academy treated Editor Miner in a way that he did not like, so he soon pulled up stakes and left Decatur, never to return. The next local newspaper was the Decatur Watchman, published by a man named Riley and edited by George K. Smith, Esq.4 The following Inferior Court order, dated November 15, 1830, presaged De Kalb County's first legal execution: (Photographed August, 1950 by J. Hixon Kinsclla, Atlanta; One of the very few remaining plantation houses from the decade of the 1830''s in the Atlanta Area. Built about 1835 by Robert H. Smith (1802-1875) and still in the family. Now (1950) owned and occupied by his great-granddaughter, Miss Tullie Smith. Located at 2890 North Druid Hills Road, between Buford Highway and Briarclifi Road, Decatur District, De Kalb County. When the house was built, the road was a segment of the DecaturPowers ferry Road. Later it became Roxboro Road, and finally North Druid Hills "Ordered that the County Treasurer of De Kalb County pay Thomas Kennedy the sum of $13.50 for holding an inquest over the body of James Crowder and Elizabeth Crowder there being no Coroner at that time."5 An article in the Atlanta Constitution of September 22, 1883, entitled "Only 3 Men Have Been Hung in the History of De Kalb County," described the Crowder case as follows: "The first hanging in De Kalb occurred in 18296 when a white man by the name of Crowder paid the death penalty. He had murdered his wife and then set fire to his dwelling consuming the body of his murdered wife and his [18.189...

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