150 ATLANTA
As part of his chronicling of early Atlanta, T.R.A. Willis stirred up a hornets’ nest with his article entitled, “The Razing of Lanark and the Founding of Queen City vs. Atlanta.” This story details the premise on which Queen City was founded to take business away from the Atlanta merchants. Printing this article resulted in multiple apologies being written by both Willis and Journal publisher John Fletcher.
“After two or three years of trial, Lanark people decided they were too near to one side of the territory, too near to Sulphur River and that they could not see the ends to sustain themselves. At the same time, a number of prominent businessmen from around Douglassville wanted to come to the railroad and also some from Bright Star and Linden. So, a joint stock townsite company was started for the purpose of buying the tract of land where Queen City now stands from a Widow Robbins. This new townsite company took advantage of the fact that Lanark two and a half miles north and Atlanta two and a half miles south put a quietus on her selling the property for a townsite and bought the whole tract, 320 acres.”
“This new company was organized in the winter of 1875-76. The property was bought in the spring or early summer of 1876. At once they began to plat the entire tract for a town, and on the Fourth of July, 1876 they gave a big barbecue and advertised they would sell lots to the highest bidder. They secured J.A.H. Hassack of Jefferson, the finest auctioneer ever in Texas, to do the selling. They had a big crowd and sold lots like hot cakes.
“At once the saw and hammer were in evidence and houses were built as by magic. Mr. A. Pace, who had moved from Bright Star to Lanark, was the first one to build and open business. He moved there from Lanark. A.C. Smith was next, followed by old Capt. Powell, Ed Story of Linden, Mathews and Hood from Jefferson, B.F. Ellington and his brother, Jim Hutchison and John Hutchison who had moved his drug store from Linden to Lanark and thence to Queen City. Henry Stuckey moved his business from Bright Star, and Boney from Jefferson opened a drug store, and so on - too numerous to mention here. By October there were six or eight stores in Queen City with new, large stocks of goods. The largest of these was A.C. Smith’s. The trouble was they had no side track, depot or agent and the railroad refused to build either for them.
“A petition was gotten up to the railroad company to abolish the Atlanta station and make Queen City the town for this section, setting forth in the petition that Atlanta was low and swampy and inaccessible on account of hills. The petition failed, but the railroad company agreed to lay the steel for a side track and give them an agent if the city would grade a side track, furnish the ties and build a depot. This all was then done.
“Atlanta merchants, all of them small, had been selling goods on credit to make crops and all accounts were honor accounts, no mortgages or security. They had sold largely north, east and northeast of Queen City. Many customers then took their cotton to Queen City, no doubt many of them fully intending to sell and pay their Atlanta friends who had helped them. But alas, when many of them got through with the bargains offered in the Queen City stores (who had no accounts out to lose on), they came to Atlanta with a tale of short crops and shortage of wild hogs in Sulphur Bottom, etc. They just had to have shoes and clothing for their families; therefore, their Atlanta friends would have to wait on them another year.
“All who lived in the section mentioned did not fail or refuse to meet their obligations; many did meet them, but enough did not to cripple the small merchants in Atlanta. The result was that in 1877-87 every dealer in Atlanta failed, with one or two exceptions, and they barely weathered it through by having sold but little on credit.
“Queen City was soon shipping much the more cotton and the outlook for Atlanta was dark.
“However, the Atlantans began to come together as one chain, and work together. So, after looking after the roads and bridges coming into Atlanta they set to work to get a good school. In 1878-79 they managed to buy and beg enough material to build the largest school building in Cass County, 60x90 feet. They hired three or four carpenters, and with the help of the citizens they soon had quite a well-arranged school building up and ready for use. All the doctors, merchants, clerks, lawyers and loafers put in good time on the building free of charge, only to secure a good school as a drawing card.