A Founding Father Arrives

It was competition from the State of South Carolina that finally prompted the Georgia legislature to act on the recommendation that former governor Wilson Lumpkin had made to the state in 1826. Lumpkin and his partner Hamilton Fulton on behalf of the State of Georgia had surveyed the American Indian territories of north Georgia seeking a canal route that could connect Georgia to the Tennessee River and the growing U.S. western frontier. In his report to the state, Lumpkin deemed a canal route not feasible and suggested that the state should turn its attention to constructing a rail line to the Tennessee River.

In 1837, the State of Georgia chartered the Western and Atlanta Railroad, a state-owned rail line that would connect Georgia to the Tennessee River. After extensive surveying, the terminus point for the W&A was fixed at a location just south of the Chattahoochee River. From this point, the Western and Atlantic tracks would be built northward until they reached the Tennessee River. However, in 1842, the new Chief Engineer of the Western and Atlantic Railroad, C.F.M. Garnett (mistakenly identified in the video as W.F.M.) moved the terminus point 1,200 feet southeast to a new location.

With the terminus point finally set, the community officially named and plans for development drawn up, all that was left was to build the town of Marthasville. That effort received a boost when a pioneer citizen arrived to build the one thing the community most needed. We introduce the “Father of Atlanta” on this week’s Stories of Atlanta.