What’s In a Name?

A lot of people pass through life without giving much consideration to how the places they live in or pass through got their names. Some are fairly simple, such as Cherokee County being named for the Native American tribe that called northwest Georgia home. Others require a little digging.

Several times over the years during business calls with folks in other parts of the nation, I would be asked the question of whether Cartersville was named for Jimmy Carter. My response has always been the same — thank goodness it’s not!

For the record, Cartersville was named for Colonel Farish Carter of Milledgeville, a prominent Georgia businessman who owned more than 15,000 acres in north Georgia back in the 1800s. The Carters community in Murray County and Carters Lake were both also named for Farish Carter.

While perusing various historical accounts of Carter’s life, one thing stood out. Prior to the War Between the States, Carter owned a huge number of slaves, including more than 400 at his Murray County Plantation alone, with large numbers also at Carters’ other farms. I’ll have more on the slave issue in a moment.

The City of Emerson has been in the news lately as the home of the proposed Dream Parks at LakePoint sports complex. Did you know that Emerson might be one of the few cities actually named for someone’s middle name?

That would be Joseph Emerson Brown, Georgia’s governor during the War Between the States, who also served later as one of Georgia’s U.S. senators.

The interesting thing is that Brown was known as Joseph E. Brown, or Joe Brown, with his middle name almost never being used. The city of Emerson’s forefathers were definitely thinking outside the box when they changed the name of their town from the previous name of Stegall’s Station. Personally, I like the old name better.

Up in the north end of Bartow County we find Adairsville, named for Chief John Adair, who was actually Scottish but had married a Cherokee woman. Curiously, there is also an Adairsville in Kentucky named for a different John Adair of Scottish descent. Maybe they should hook up and be sister cities.

Now let’s take a look at the namesake of Bartow County, Colonel Francis S. Bartow. Previously named Cass County, residents decided to make a change after the War Between the States broke out, as “our” Cass was none other than a Yankee, Gen. Lewis Cass.

Col. Francis S. Bartow had been an early Georgia hero in the war, capturing Fort Pulaski back from federal troops in May of 1861. Bartow had also been one of the most outspoken supporters of secession and as a delegate to Georgia’s Secession Convention, he strongly helped push Georgia to leave the Union.

Bartow was elected to the Confederate Provisional Congress and gained the chairmanship of the Military Committee, where he called for immediate measures to build a military force capable of confronting Union forces.

Interestingly, Bartow and Gov. Joseph Emerson Brown became public adversaries as Brown wanted Bartow and his Oglethorpe Infantry to remain in state to defend Georgia, while Bartow was anxious to lead his troops to join Confederate forces in Virginia. Ironically, just weeks later Bartow became the first Confederate brigade commander killed in action, bravely falling during the battle of First Manassas.

I could go on with more history of cities and communities here in Bartow County, but I have another purpose for this column. The world has changed considerably since our county and its cities were named back in the 1800s.

During that time most elected officials and prominent citizens, those who would most likely be in position of receiving an honor such as having a city named for them, were either slave holders, former slave holders, or had publicly or politically supported slavery.

We’ve seen some cities, and Atlanta is an example, where streets or schools named for former Confederate heroes or political figures are regularly renamed. In light of today’s enlightened view of race relations, it’s easy to see why some feel the need to take these types of actions. Every generation likes to put its stamp on public properties, but by these actions are we erasing our past and demeaning the other contributions of those who lived in different times?

Many of our nation’s Founding Fathers — presidents, businessmen and prominent citizens from the first several decades of our nation’s history — were slaveholders. Even those who didn’t like it understood that it was just a part of how the world was at that time. It wasn’t just whites owning blacks, but there were also some Native American and black slaveholders. As evidenced in the Bible, slavery has existed since antiquity. Thankfully, today we’ve moved to a new chapter in the history of the world, where slavery is rightfully condemned.

The reason I raise this issue is next month is the 150th anniversary of the official start of the War Between the States, or as some Southerners prefer, the War of Yankee Aggression. For the next four years we will be exposed to a retelling of that history, and needless to say, historians and tourism officials are struggling to present the history of that time in an honest but sensitive manner.

In researching my own family history, about half of my ancestors from the early 1600s to the start of the war in 1861 were slaveholders and the other half were not. I had 12 direct ancestors who fought for the Confederacy, with three being killed in action and two others being captured. However, one of the more interesting stories involved my gr-gr-gr-gr-grandfather Benjamin Green of Cherokee County.

Benjamin did not believe in slavery and was opposed to the war. He refused to join the army, though one of his teenage sons did serve as a Confederate scout. As Sherman pressed into Georgia, Benjamin and some of his neighbors who had also chosen to not serve planned a meeting to discuss how they would protect their families from the advancing Union troops.

Someone tipped off a nearby Union cavalry patrol of the meeting, and as the men sat around a table talking, the cavalry unit swept in and captured these men, hauling them off to a prison up north. Benjamin Green died in that prison. Here was a man opposed to slavery who never fired a shot, yet he was a casualty of war. Georgia history is filled with tales of non-combatants who lost everything, including many losing their own lives.

Bartow County played a key role in the war, from the Great Locomotive Chase to the Battle of Allatoona Pass to Sherman’s torching of Cassville and Cartersville. Hopefully, we can honor those who served, while looking anew at that time in our nation’s history, understanding that things before and during the war were not as clear cut as some would like to think they were.

Follow me on Twitter @chuckshiflett and also check out my statewide columns at: The Backroom Report.