By Elliott Brack
Editor and Publisher, GwinnettForum
JULY 12, 2022 | A new book from the University of Georgia Press is entitled Gwinnett County, Georgia, and the transformation of the American South, 1818-2018.
The book is edited by two professors, Michael Gagnon of Flowery Branch, who is an associate professor of history at Georgia Gwinnett College, and Matthew Hild of Atlanta, a lecturer at Georgia Tech.
The book is a collection of 15 essays by professors and scholars across the South. Five of the authors who write chapters teach at Georgia Gwinnett College.
It’s not a straight-forward history, but an effort by these scholars at explaining why Gwinnett grew and materialized as it did. These scholars go to great lengths in explaining their views on how this happened in Gwinnett. They create voluminous footnotes to detail their versions. While the book is 247 pages in length in what appears to be small type (seven or eight point; it’s hard to read. Of those pages, fully 47 are in footnotes.
A few of the topics included in the 15 chapters (plus nine page of Introduction and a five page Afterward) are:
- Cherokee and Creek Agency in Gwinnett before Button;
- State and Federal Sovereignty: Cherokee Nationalism;
- Slavery and Cotton in Antebellum Gwinnett;
- Reluctant Confederates, etc. and Civil War;
- Reconstruction and Race;
- Air Line Railroads and Town Building;
- Homey Philosophy: Bill Arp;
- Farmers’ Movement and Populism;
- Life of Edward F. “Buck” Buchanan;
- Cotton Culture;
- Alice Harrell Strickland;
- Segregation and Migration;
- Preservation and Modernization;
- Of Malls and MARTA;
- From Burgs to Pueblo: Mass Integration
Gagnon
An interesting introduction by Bradley Rice notes that Gwinnett lacked a significant central identity (such as Decatur or Marietta), and that there has been little explanatory scholarship about the county. And that it didn’t get its first paved road until 1924, so was not so well-connected with Atlanta. That may be a way of saying since its founding in 1818, until after World War II, there wasn’t much happening in Gwinnett.
It was interesting to understand more about Georgia voting to secede from the Union. The three Gwinnett delegates were dead-set against seceding. The Legislature, meeting in Milledgeville, first voted 166-130 to secede, then took a second vote, and that passed 203-89. A third vote (for “unity”) passed with only 10 voting “NO!”, including the three from Gwinnett.
Three chapters seem less intent in explaining why Gwinnett grew as it did. They all focused on individuals, the author Bill Arp, who was born and raised here but gained fame when writing from Rome and Cartersville; Alice Strickland of Duluth, who was the first woman elected to city mayor’s position, but who held this slot for only one year; and Edward F. Buchanan of Norcross, who made millions on Wall Street, but went broke when his company failed. These chapters stand as interesting history, but give little explanation about how the county developed.
One entirely new story emerges. The two editors, Gagnon and Hill, tell us that the Gwinnett Courthouse was torched on Sept. 12, 1871, to destroy evidence against moonshiners. We had never heard who might have set fire to the courthouse, but they say it was led by a “Boney”Allen and four other men. Later the editors identify him as “Bonaparte Allen.” They cite several newspaper accounts about this courthouse fire.
Well now, that raises a question the book does not bring up. Is that the same Bonaparte Allen who went to Buford in the 1870s and started a tannery, which became super successful, then began manufacturing many leather goods, and made the Allen family immensely wealthy? The professors don’t say.
The book is expected to be available for $34.85 starting July 15.
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
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