Our History: The Forgotten Town of Campbellton

Last year around this time we had been to family gathering all day and were on our way home. Our way home was lit by huge full moon.

Big, bright and beautiful!

I swear we could have turned off the headlights and still could have made our way home.

We headed back into Douglas County along State Route 92, and as we approached the four way crossing at Charlie’s Market I couldn’t help but notice how bright the remaining features of the town of Campbellton were…the Methodist Church on my left with its old graves, the old Baptist Church cemetery up on the hill on my right along with Campbellton Lodge No. 76 F & AM which dates to 1848.

I made a silent wish I could look up on that hill and see the old Campbell County Courthouse with the moonlight bouncing off the window panes, but no matter how hard we wish sometimes…our wishes can’t come true. The old courthouse was torn down many years ago.

As we zoomed across the river I turned back towards Campbellton and noticed how the moonbeams lit up the river making a path right through the middle of the water. I was overcome with sadness at that moment…mourning the town that had been along the banks of the Chattahoochee River, and I recalled a description Atlanta’s esteemed historian Franklin Garrett had penned in his book Atlanta and Its Environs.

Garrett said, Old Campbellton, upon its eminence overlooking the Chattahoochee with its brick courthouse, masonic hall, academy, and ante-bellum homes gleaming through the avenues of magnolia, myrtle, or cedar were doomed. Most of the old families drifted off to other places, including the newer railroad towns of Fairburn and Palmetto. Weeds rioted and choked neglected flower gardens. Rows of comfortable homes, once housing a population of some 1200, fell into decay. The Masonic Lodge Hall was deserted. For two decades the red brick courthouse stood dark and silent the habitation of owls, bats, and ghostly memories of better days, until it was mercifully dismantled. The names upon mossy tombstones in the Methodist churchyard and the old Baptist cemetery are the only remainder of the once flourishing and beautiful town, the site of which, since 1932, has been in Fulton County.

So, how did Campbellton basically become a ghost town, of sorts?

Campbell County was named for Colonel Duncan G. Campbell. Part of Campbell’s claim to fame is he helped to negotiate the Treaty of Indian Springs – the treaty where the Creek Nation ceded a portion of their land including the land that would become Campbell County.

If an initial settler in the area – Judge Walter T. Colquitt – had gotten his way the county seat for Campbell County would have been established on his property at Pumpkintown eight miles south down the river, but an online publication by the Chattahoochee Hills Historical Society states another judge – Francis Irwin – offered his eight acres of undeveloped land [along the river] with an added incentive for free lots for prospective builders and inhabitants.

By 1829, establishment of the county government began in earnest with the creation of a judicial system and the appointment of James Black, Jesse Harris, Robert O. Beavers, Thomas Moore, and Littleberry Watts as electoral commissioners and county organizers. By 1835, streets and lots in Campbellton were surveyed and [ready for construction].

Eventually, the town would have a courthouse, doctor’s office and pharmacy, academy, hotel, blacksmith, stores, lodge hall, post office and many homes.

The home I’ve included in the pictures is the Latham Home and Jeff Champion, a Chattahoochee area historian, it was built in the 1830s. You might remember it. I know I do. You could see it from Charlie’s Market. Built in the 1830s, it faced Old Campbellton-Fairburn Road which crossed the Chattahoochee via the ferry. Around 1958 the old road was closed and a new road was cut behind the home going to the new Chattahoochee Bridge that we cross today.

In his book The Courthouse and the Depot: The Architecture of Hope in an Age of Despair, Wilbur W. Caldwell discusses a Coweta County account that relates in 1830, Samuel Keller moved from Newnan to Campbellton ‘lured by expectations’ of steamboats on the Chattahoochee River.

Yes! Steamboats!

Can you imagine?

Chattahoochee Hills History mentions there were high hopes for the rich loamy soil [which did make area successful agriculturally, but] there were also high hopes for the Chattahoochee to become a major transportation and shipping channel in the region, but the river proved to be shallow and difficult to navigate.

Caldwell also mentions something from a Troup County history source that recalls in 1831 Colonel Rueben Thompson brought a load of goods upriver from West Point to Campbellton, but just the one trip can be confirmed. The dream of Chattahoochee navigable all the way up to Atlanta persisted well into the second half of the twentieth century, but it was never to be.

The death sentence for the town of Campbellton came about per most sources when the Atlanta & West Point Railroad failed to be built through Campbellton. The line went through Fairburn, Georgia instead. Many local sources state the citizens of Campbellton refused the railroad, but Caldwell states a quick look at the terrain on the banks of the Chattahoochee reveals some pretty rough country for railroad building while the natural ridge at Fairburn is flat and inviting. Thus it seems unlikely that the opinions of the citizens of Campbellton had much influence on the survey of the Atlanta and West Point Railroad.

Even so, the loss of the railroad meant a slow death for Campbellton over the next several years beginning in 1870 when as Caldwell reports the citizens of Campbellton moved to Fairburn in droves. One local account relates Campbellton residents were dismantling their homes and moving them as well. The town had close to 1200 citizens at its peak, but by 1860, only 239 white citizens still remained.

The original courthouse in Campbellton was wooden, but was eventually replaced with a brick structure. A local man named Robert Cook bought the building and dismantled it. He used the materials to build a barn on his property along Cedar Grove Road.

All that remains of old Campbellton today is Campbellton United Methodist Church and even though the Baptist church building is not original to the town the cemetery is original. The Baptist church faces what once was the town square where the courthouse stood. Both Union and Confederate soldiers rest in the cemeteries. Close to the Baptist church stands the Beaver home – a Greek style farmhouse which was taken over by Union soldiers when they crossed the river at Campbellton during the Civil War. The house sits across from where the original Campbell County Courthouse stood.

You might be asking yourself why I’m discussing a dead town that lies on the Fulton County side of the river today, but back in 1828 Campbell County extended beyond the river into what is today Douglas County. In fact, Douglas County was created from Campbell County in 1870. You can read more about that here.

Many of our county’s forefathers were citizens of Campbell County long before they were citizens of Douglas County.

The long forgotten town of Campbellton IS important to Douglas County history – it is our beginning.