The
Roswell Women
By Tommie Phillips LavCavera, Historian General for UDC
from the February Program
In 1839, Roswell King moved from Darien, Georgia,
to a site about twenty miles north of Atlanta and founded the town of
Roswell. It was there, on the banks of Vickery's Creek which empties
into the Chattahoochee River, that he and his son Barrington built the Roswell
Manufacturing Company.
After King died in 1844, Barrington expanded the mill.
Four mills were operating in Roswell when the War Between the States
began: The Ivy Woolen Mill, owned by two of Barrington's sons, James and
Thomas King; two cotton mills, owned by Barrington; and The Lebanon Four Mill,
owned by Roswell Manufacturing Company. Each factory employed 300 to 400
people, most of them women and girls. The factories' main production during
the War was woolen cloth for uniforms and tent material. Since the
majority of the men of the area had left to join the fighting, the mills were
staffed primarily by women. Governor Charles
McDaniel and his business partner, Colonel James Rogers, bought property in
Campbell County, about sixteen miles southwest of Marietta at the junction of
Sweetwater Creek and the Chattahoochee River, in 1845 and erected a textile
mill, the New Manchester Manufacturing Company on Sweetwater Creek
In time a town, New Manchester, sprang up around the
mill. The Mill produced thread and a course cotton cloth called
osnauburg. During the War, cloth, thread and patterns were supplied
to women from the surrounding area for making Confederate uniforms. When
the uniforms were finished and returned, the women were paid for their finished
work.
Like Roswell, the mill was staffed mainly by women, old men
and children, with many of the mothers bringing their children with them to
work. These mills became most important to the Confederate Government for
the much needed materials they produced.
During the summer of 1864, the
Union Army under the leadership of General William T. Sherman advanced toward
Atlanta. In the face of superior numbers, General Joseph E. Johnston,
Commander of the Army of Tennessee, had retreated from Chattanooga through
Cassville and Kennesaw. As the Confederates withdrew across the
Chattahoochee River, they burned many of the bridges and prepared to defend
Atlanta.
On July 2, 1864, the defenseless New Manchester mill was
seized without resistance by two regiments of Union cavalry under the command of
Major Thompkins and a large body of infantry commanded by Colonel Silas
Adams. Those in charge of the operations of the mill, as well as residents
for the town of New Manchester, were escorted home where they were kept
under under guard. All were told they would be transported west out
of the path of the armies where they would be safe from harm when transportation
was available.
A few days later, the cavalry traveled to Roswell where they
burned three factories and transported factory workers, mostly women and
children, to Marietta where they were placed under arrest and charged with treason. In Marietta, they were taken to the Georgia Military Institute
where they remained for the next week. On July 7th, General Sherman wrote General
Henry W. Halleck, Army Chief of Staff:
|
I have ordered General Garrard to
arrest for treason |
An eyewitness account of the burning of the Roswell mills was left by Union Captain David P. Conynham in his book Sherman's March Through the South:
|
There were at the time about three
hundred |
Conynham wrote it was probable that their tears were shed not
only because their means of livelihood had been destroyed but also because their
homes had been reduced to ashes.
On July 8th, Major Thompkins and his cavalry returned to
Sweetwater Creek. ON July 9th, about 200 people, women and children and a
handful of men, were told they were to be ready to leave in fifteen minutes and
could only take with them what they could carry in their hands. The people
still thought they were being moved west. They were loaded into wagons and
when the wagons were full, the women were forced to ride double behind the
cavalrymen on their horses.
Before they left, fires were set to each floor of the
factory, the dam was destroyed by a battery of cannons, the company store, the
machine shops, and the homes around the mill were put to the torch. It was
with sad hearts that the people watched the destruction of their town and homes.
Upon their arrival in Marietta, they were placed with the
Roswell women and children in the Georgia Military Institute, the men
having been separated from the women. Thought the women were from New
Manchester, they would be forever referred to in official reports and dispatches
as the "Roswell Women" or the "Factory Hands".
On July 15th, approximately 400 women and their children were
each given nine days' rations, placed on the trains and sent to a distribution
point in Nashville, Tennessee. The Nashville Daily Times announced the
arrival of about 200 operatives from the Sweetwater Factory on July 20th.
The next day, the Louisville Journal reported the evening train from Nashville
had brought 249 men, women, and children, "sent here by oreder of General
Sherman, to be transferred north of the Ohio River." and that
"when these women & children arrived....they were detained there,
advertised to be hired out as servants....".
The atrocities accorded these women were noted in some
newspapers in the North. The New York Tribune, in reporting the
women from Roswell had been loaded into 110 wagons and sent to Marietta, wrote:
| Only think of it! Four hundred weeping and terrified Ellens, Susans, and Maggies transported, in the springless and seat- less army wagons, away from their lovers, and brothers of the sunny south, and all for the offense of weaving tent cloth and spinning stocking yarn. |
The article so moved Major
General Grenville M. Dodge, Commander of Sherman's XVI Corps, that he took
$100.00 from his pocket and instructed his chief surgeon to hire some of the
Roswell girls to help care for his sick and wounded.
General Sherman's deportations caused a furor in the
North as the people were outraged over the treatment the captives were
given.. The Patriot and Union, Pennsylvania
newspaper wrote:
| ...It is hardly conceivable that an officer bearing a United States commission of Major General should have so far forgotten the commonest dictates of decency and humanity...As to drive four hundred penniless girls hundreds of miles away from their homes and friends to seek livelihood amid strange and hostile people. We repeat our earnest hope that further information may redeem the name of General Sherman and our own from this frightful disgrace. |
Just what happened to the women after they reached
Louisville is unclear. Some were sent to Indiana, but Louisville's provost
marshal advertised, "Families wishing seamstresses or servants, can be
suited by applying at the refuge quarters on Broadway, between Ninth and
Tenth." When he wrote his Memoirs, Sherman did not even mention the
incident, and he only made passing reference to Roswell in his official
report. " In his book Charged With Treason, Michael
D. Hitt related that most of the mill workers from the Roswell Factory returned,
and that there was great rejoicing as they rejoined their families.
Monroe W. King wrote in Destruction of New Manchester,
Georgia, that "not one of the New Manchester women ever returned and
only a handful of the men. Most of the man never saw their families
again, most died never knowing the whereabouts of their wives and
children".
Roswell survived the War and continued to thrive, bur on that
one fateful day, the town of New Manchester vanished with its several hundred
inhabitants. Tradition has it that around the turn of the century New
Manchester was occupied by a group of Mennonites who hoped to established religious
community in the area. In the early 1920's the site became known as
"Sweetwater Camp" where city dwellers could rent a cabin and enjoy fishing
and the peace and quiet of the countryside. The state purchased the site
and 2,000 acres on Sweetwater Creek in 1974 and converted it to a state
conservation park. Other than walking trails and a few benches, the area
around the factory ruins have been left in its natural state; the bare walls of
the factory stand as mute evidence to the cruelty inflicted upon theses Southern
women. Today over a million people visit the site annually.
In November 1962, during the Sixty-Ninth-Annual General
Convention, Richmond, Virginia, Colonel Hartwill T. Byrnum presented a paper on
the Rosewll women. He later wrote:
| ...one of the ladies present personally informed the writer (Byrnum) that several members of her family, including her grandmother and her grandmother's sister, had been a part of the Roswell group; enroute to Louisville of causes unknown' that her grandmother's husband, a confederate soldier, had at war's end followed the trail to Louisville where the two were reunited and remained. |
Of special interest to this writer are the women from New Manchester, as family tradition (although she has never been able to document it) is that her great-great-grandmother, Martha Freeman Wright, was one of the women sent to Indiana where she died. Martha's husband Isaac C. Wright, was a prisoner at Fort Delaware at the close of the War. He returned to Georgia and died June 18, 1906 in Carroll County.
Bibliography
Hitt, Michael D. Charged with Treason; Ordeal of 400 mill workers
during military operations in Roswell, Ga., 1864-65, 1992
King, Monroe W. Destruction of New Manchester, Georgia; The Story Behind
the Ruins at Sweetwater Creek State Park, 1982.
General Minutes, Sixty-Ninth Annual Convention, United Daughters of the Confederacy.