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NGE >> Cities and Counties >> Cities and Towns >> Athens |
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Athens Athens, home of the University of Georgia (UGA), is located along the north Oconee River in Clarke County, in the rolling Piedmont of northeast Georgia. Athens and Clarke County combined to form a unified government in 1990. According to the 2000 U.S. census, Athens–Clarke County had a population of 101,489, making it Georgia's sixth-largest metropolitan statistical area. Chosen in 1801 as the site for the first chartered state university in the nation,
Early History Athens was founded by a committee. In 1785 the state legislature made a bold step to endow a "college or seminary of learning," thereby initiating the concept of state-supported higher education.
Milledge purchased 633 wilderness
By the 1820s Athens had become a center in the South for textile manufacture, powered by the Oconee River and supplied by the vast cotton plantations nearby. Prominent residents included not only mill owners, merchants, and college professors but also the aristocrats and planters who came to Athens to educate their sons at the university and to enjoy the culture and society the college encouraged. Many of the houses built by these antebellum Athenians still survive. For example, Ross Crane, a contractor who built the university's Greek revival–style chapel (1832), constructed a mansion just west of the downtown area;
Civil War Era No major battles took place in Athens during the Civil War (1861-65). The only altercations were brief skirmishes at Barber's Creek just south of town on August 2, 1864, when the Home Guard defended the town against fragments of Stoneman's raiders, a Union cavalry force from East Tennessee that moved into the area as an extension of the Atlanta campaign. Athens was, however, the wartime home of the Cook and Brother Armory, a converted textile factory.
By 1860 slaves made up nearly half the population of Clarke County. At the start of the war 1,892 slaves and one free black lived in Athens. Their numbers increased during the war as plantation owners allowed their slaves to "hire out" to earn wages in town for the master gone to battle. The armory often hired skilled slaves during the war. Athens was a major gathering point for Confederate enlistees and a haven for refugees from active theaters of war. Athens textile industries produced great quantities of Confederate uniforms, many put together by the Ladies Aid Society. When the war began university enrollment stood at 113, but in 1863, with students and faculty needed in the army, the university closed and remained so until after the war. The Confederacy requisitioned all campus buildings to house soldiers and refugees. The chapel became an army hospital and in 1864 a prison for 431 Northern soldiers taken nearby. In the war Clarke County lost more than 300 men and boys (out of a total white male population of 2,660), and more than 100 university students and alumni perished. The most distinguished Athenian who lost his life in battle was Brigadier General T.R.R. Cobb, who wrote the Confederate constitution. Cobb's brother Howell, who survived the war, was president of the Provisional Confederate Congress and rose to the rank of major general. Active in national politics before the war, he had been Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and secretary of the treasury. Late Nineteenth Century After the surrender at Appomattox, Virginia, Union troops occupied Athens from May 1865 until early 1866.
Athens native Lucius Holsey, a young slave with "an insatiable craving for some knowledge of books," learned to read in slavery. After emancipation he became a delegate to the first organizational meeting of the Colored Methodist
During the war some prosperous Athenians placed their money in northern and European banks. Their capital, combined with wartime profits from the production of armaments and Confederate uniforms and a stockpile of cotton accumulated behind Union lines, allowed Athens to recover rather quickly from the economic hardships of war. Manufacturing and trade flourished. In January 1866 the university reopened, and by 1868 returning veterans swelled enrollment to 299, the highest level yet. Federal dollars first came to Athens when the university became a land-grant institution in 1872, enabling the creation of the College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts. As the university began to grow from a small, classical college for the elite into a larger, more varied institution serving the entire state, the town grew as well. Athens became Clarke's county seat in 1872. Passenger streetcars introduced in Athens in the 1880s led to the development of the town's first streetcar suburbs, and the city's population grew from 6,099 in 1880 to 10,245 in 1900.
Monroe B. "Pink" Morton,
Twelve Athens women founded America's first garden club in 1891 in the Cobbham home of Mrs. E. K. Lumpkin. Today the Founders' Memorial Garden on North Campus, designed by the late Hubert Owens, founder of the UGA's School of Environmental Design, commemorates these women. Rapid Growth in the Twentieth Century The early twentieth century was a prosperous era for Athenians. Merchants and bankers built new establishments downtown, and electric lights and water service spread across the townscape. When the first automobile appeared in Athens in 1899, the race for greater mobility began.
Philanthropist George Foster Peabody endowed a new city library and generously contributed to a fund to build a World War I memorial (Memorial Hall) on campus in 1925. The prestigious Peabody Awards, honoring excellence in broadcasting, is named for him and administered by UGA. The Athens area grew rapidly during and after World War II (1941-45), and by 1980 the population of Athens and its suburbs was 62,896. From 1951 through the 1970s outside industry moved in. Dairy Pak, Gold Kist, General Time, and Westinghouse built manufacturing plants and brought executives to Athens as Beechwood and other suburban neighborhoods emerged.
Recent Developments In 1980 Athens became a Main Street City, one of the first in the state to embrace a program for downtown revitalization through the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
Following consolidation of the city and county governments in 1990, preservationists won a long battle to save and incorporate an old firehall into the $27.3 million Classic Center. The facility combines convention space and a theater for the performing arts. At the entrance a statue of Athena, the Greek goddess of war and the personification of wisdom, commemorates the 1996 Olympics, when Athens hosted women's soccer, rhythmic gymnastics, and volleyball competitions. Georgia's Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (SPLOST) is proving a useful tool to Athens–Clarke County, funding restorations, schools, a new library, bike paths,
R.E.M. and the B-52's put Athens on the map in the 1980s as a lively venue for rock music and helped spawn a plethora of bands and the clubs where they perform. The B-52's left Athens, but R.E.M. stayed to make their mark as historic homeowners, preservationists, and friends of the environment as well. Athens has its own symphony, opera company, band, choral societies, gospel groups, folk, jazz, blues, and more. Blue Sky Concerts brighten downtown in May and October. The annual Human Rights Festival brings together political activists, musicians, and craftsmen. The annual Twilight Criterium in the spring remains one of the country's largest cycling events. On autumn weekends the town swells as football fans flock to watch the University of Georgia Bulldogs. UGA is the largest employer in Athens–Clarke County, and its presence is still the largest single factor in the city's increasingly diversified economy. Major industries in Athens–Clarke County include poultry and timber. Suggested Reading Kenneth Coleman, Confederate Athens (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1967). Conoly Hester and Al Hester, Athens, Georgia: Celebrating 200 Years at the Millennium (Montgomery, Ala.: Community Communications, 1999). Ernest Hynds, Antebellum Athens and Clarke County, Georgia (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1974). Augustus Longstreet Hull, Annals of Athens, Georgia, 1801-1901 (1906; reprint, with additions by Mary B. Warren, Danielsville, Ga.: Heritage Papers, 1978). James R. Reap, Athens: A Pictorial History (Virginia Beach, Va.: Donning Communications, 1982). Frances Taliaferro Thomas, A Portrait of Historic Athens and Clarke County, 2d ed. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2009). Frances Taliaferro Thomas, Athens Updated 7/17/2009 |
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