From the editors of
Roadside Georgia
Established in 1853; name commonly attributed to honor Robert Fulton,
inventor, experimented with a submarine boat in France, 1801; built the
Clermont, a steamboat, which sailed up the Hudson River, 1807; recent
research tends to indicate that the county was actually named for an
early railroad official, Hamilton Fulton, who acted as surveyor for the
Western and Atlantic Railroad.
Milton County was created on December 18, 1857 from parts of
Cherokee, Forsyth, and Cobb counties. It was named for John Milton,
Georgia's first secretary of state. During the American Revolution,
Milton traveled to Charleston, South Carolina, and New Bern, North
Carolina before moving to Maryland with the official records of the
state while Georgia was occupied by the English.
Campbell and Milton County merged with Fulton on January 1, 1932. At
this time Roswell was ceded from Cobb County.
North of the Chattahoochee River what is now Fulton County is quite
different than Atlanta and its environs. Although rapid growth is
battling history in an oft repeated scenario, the quiet, aged roads of
Milton County sing a song of a different era, when horseless carriages
were preceded by horsedrawn ones and you would see your next door
neighbor every other week. It was a time when grist mills were the
center of a town's social structure.
Thirty years before Stephen Long placed a stake at the 0 mile post of
the Western and Atlantic Railway in the area that today is known as
Underground, whites moved into north Fulton County in the area known as
Crabapple. The small group of buildings is the oldest town in the area,
predating Roswell by some 20 years and Alpharetta by quite a few more.
Birmingham, another small town north of Crabapple was also founded about
the same time. The two towns sat on a north-south trading path used by
the Cherokee. The path followed present-day State Road 372, which runs
on a ridgetop between the two villages.
About 20 years after the first settlers moved into Crabapple, a man
name Roswell King was traveling in the area and purchased a few large
tracts of land. He knew that the abundant waterpower on Vickery Creek
was the perfect place to build a cotton mill. This mill would survive
various fires, war and weather to produce fabric until the 1970's. King,
an overseer at the infamous Butler Plantation, moved west to search for
gold during Georgia's Gold Rush.
About the same time that King was exploring the area that would bear
his first name, Stephen Long marked the terminus of the Western and
Atlantic Railroad on property owned by Hardy Ivy. The area, then
technically part of the town of Whitehall, would first become
"Marthasville," then Atlanta in 1845
Creation of Milton County
|
Milton County
1883 map of the county
Courtesy, Library of Congress |
In 1857 portions of Cherokee, Cobb and Gwinnett County were merged to
create Milton County. The tiny town of New Prospect was chosen as county
seat because of its central location. Before the county was formed, the
city was renamed to Alpharetta, a combination of the Greek words for
first and city.
North Fulton County housed a significant number of Union soldiers
when General William Tecumseh Sherman arrived in here toward the end of
the Atlanta Campaign. Men under the command of General Kenner Garrard
destroyed Roswell Mill and sent the 400 women millworkers north to
Indiana shortly after their arrival in July, 1864. The women and female
children may have been assaulted by the Union soldiers near the mill on
the morning of July 10, 1864, before their transport to Marietta later
in the day.
General Hugh Kirkpatrick, Sherman's "Merchant of Terror" set the
entire town of Atlanta on fire shortly before leaving on "The March to
the Sea" in November, 1864.
After the Civil War, Milton County depended on the rebuilt Roswell
Mills as a major industry, and grew cotton. It was bypassed by the
railroads because of the mountains further north.
In Fulton County, Atlanta grew to become the Gateway City of the
South. In 1913 the nation's eyes were rivoted on Atlanta during the
murder of young Mary Phagan and the prosecution of the man whom
alledgedly killed her, Leo Frank . In the 1920's Fulton County was among
the first in the nation to have an airport.
During the Great Depression the counties of Milton and Campbell
merged with Fulton, in part to save the expense of running a county
government. Land from
Cherokee
Cobb, and
Gwinnett
was incorporated into the deal to create a connected county.
In the late '40's a lake to supply the growing county with water was
planned in the area of Roswell. For political reasons Lake Lanier was
built further north. Prior to the construction of the Interstate Highway
System, high volume roads were being built in Fulton County. Today's
"Downtown Connector" is a remnant of this road-building program. In the
mid-1960's major league sports came to the area and Fulton County growth
continued. In 1977, President Jimmy Carter created the Chattahoocee
National Recreation Area along the river that creates some of the
county's borders.
