Here’s downtown Atlanta today,more than a century after the World War I 1917 scene of Atlantans coming to buy liberty bonds.The view is also from the depot looking north.This space was once known as Caboose Plaza and before that Cow Corner.
At one time,Atlanta seemed as crowded as Dallas. This is a view northward from the train depot looking toward East Hiram on June 5, 1917, when liberty war bonds were being sold.
Martha Dodd’s tombstone in Queen City Cemetery attests as to how Atlanta got its name.
Name of Atlanta
Atlanta’s name originated in Queen City. That’s what our neighbors in Queen City like to tell.
It must be true. Says so in Queen City. There in the Queen City Cemetery resides the tombstone of Martha Caroline James Dodd, 1832-1913.
“Named the town of Atlanta,” the stone says.
Humorists of Queen City, the smaller town, like to say had there been no Queen City, then no Atlanta.
“Atlanta is a town that didn’t know how to get started,” one QC resident says.
It seems that when Granville Dodge began laying track for his Texas & Pacific Railroad from Texarkana to Jefferson and Marshall and on west to Dallas, he first promised it to be laid near the home of the Rev. Jesse Dodd and east of what would be Queen City.
The Rev. Dodd and his wife Martha in 1862 had built their home and started a settlement about two miles northeast of Atlanta’s present business district, according to a history piece written by Atlanta writer, the late Jean Stow.
That settlement was called “Atlanta,” as named by Martha. The Dodds had been from Georgia, so the name fit. The settlement grew into a town with stores, blacksmiths, doctors and even a post office.
Then, circumstances intervened with the promised railroad track. One history says that Capt. Preston Rose Scott, a member of the Scottsville Scotts, who had the ability to make money and see an opportunity, offered the railroad right-of-way through his property.
That property was in the Jane Richey Survey south of the Dodd’s place.
And in 1872, Granville Dodge accepted the building of the line west of the first surveyed site. It would be a new Atlanta, or at least in a different location from the first, old Atlanta.
Stores and people which had been near the Dodd’s house picked up and moved to be near the railroad’s depot. And so, the new Atlanta grew. Atlanta, you see, had two beginnings.
In Queen City, the Dodd house was recently still standing and a reminder.
But Queen City shouldn’t brag too much. It itself didn’t get officially established until 1876 by a stock company of about a dozen people. This was on the J. M. Clements’ Survey and was named by John C. Hutchison, so tells the late historian John D. Hanes.
Thus, Queen City did not get its name until 1876, although there had been people living in and around the un-named area for years before this date. Still, this was after Atlanta had been formed and named, don’t you see?
Some Atlantans say Queen City didn’t know how to become a town either. Atlanta had to help them, wags reminded the royal neighbors.