It was 1844, and the newly chartered town of Marthasville, Georgia, per its official charter, had appointed five commissioners to handle the town’s business. Their first act was to levy a tax on the community for the purpose of building new streets. Clearly, the citizenry of Marthasville had not embraced the concept of a commission-led town as they promptly refused to pay the tax, suggesting that, if the commissioners wanted new streets, they should build the roads themselves. As Marthasville had no police to enforce laws, the commissioners were reduced to being leaders in name only.
Marthasville, in the early 1840s was still very much a rough and tumble, frontier town, but, as word began to spread about the opportunities to be had in the budding railroad community, the town’s character was beginning to change. The mid-1840s were a particularly notable period in the growth of Marthasville as many of the town’s new arrivals began to take leadership roles in the community. One of those new arrivals was a man named Richard Peters.
He was on his way from Covington to Newnan via a 2-horse coach when Richard Peters first laid eyes on the young city of Marthasville. It was 1844 and Peters, an engineer for the Georgia Railroad, was part of the team building a rail line that would connect Augusta to Marthasville. As he passed through the community that was more forest than city, Peters probably had no clue that in just 2-years he would move to what would become Atlanta and stay there for the rest of his life. The impact that Richard Peters left on the community helped to shape Atlanta into the city that it is today. We welcome Mr. Peters to the community in this week’s Stories of Atlanta.
