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Community Corner

Ms. Synthia's Recollections

Today we're shedding light on one New Manchester Mill family.

One year ago when I mentioned to friends I would be writing a local history column, I had a few people who immediately said, “Oh, you are going to write about the mill at Sweetwater, aren’t you?”

It is a foregone conclusion, isn’t it?  

The New Manchester Mill is one of our most historic sites, and there is a bit of mystery concerning the millworkers who were carried off by Union troops, but I quickly answered that since it was such an expected topic, I would wait and choose other bits of history that aren’t so well known. 

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So far, I have stuck to that plan, but today I’m going to mention the mill because I’ve stumbled over an interesting story regarding one of the families who lived at New Manchester and what happened to them after the war.

The mill at New Manchester was built along the banks of Sweetwater Creek in 1846. It was the tallest structure around Atlanta at the time with five stories.   Ninety looms and six thousand spindles were busy making yarn and fabric. The mill’s closest competitor as far as output was a mill located in Roswell, Georgia. 

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many don’t realize there was a town of approximately 500 people who supported the factory, a flour mill, a grist mill and a water-powered saw nearby. The town boasted a company store, inn and post office. There had even been talk of building a rail line into the town, but the Civil War delayed the effort. 

In her book, The Women Wil Howl, Mary Deborah Petite advises William Washington Stewart was the mill boss and lived at New Manchester with his wife, Elizabeth (Lizzie) Russell and their children including their daughter Synthia Catherine Stewart.  

Once the Civil War was underway the mill at New Manchester set about making cloth for Confederate uniforms which would make the mill, the mill workers as well as their children huge targets for the Union as the war drug on. 

A narrative by Synthia Stewart is found at a Stewart family genealogy website here where she states, “All the men, all the old men, you know, went to the army first.”  This included her father who joined the Confederate Army by enlisting at Campbell County on March 4, 1862 with the Salt Springs Guards, Company K, 41st Regiment, Georgia Infantry. He was captured at Vicksburg, Mississippi in 1863 but was released after signing a paper that he would not fight with the Confederate forces again. Basically, he lied, as many soldiers did, and returned to the fighting almost immediately.

By July, 1864 Sherman and his forces had reached the west banks of the Chattahoochee River in their quest to reach Atlanta but first they had orders from Sherman to burn the mill at New Manchester. When the Union commanders balked at burning the mills in Roswell and New Manchester they sent word to Sherman wanting him to re-verify his original orders. Sherman issued a second order which gave his men permission to arrest all people, male and female, connected with those factories, no matter what the clamor, and let them foot it, under guard, to Marietta, whence I will send them by cars (railroad) to the North…The poor women will make a howl.

General Sherman had unleashed total war on the people of the South in an effort to destroy Southern morale. It worked.

Word had already reached those living at New Manchester that the Union soldiers would take or destroy everything of any value. Synthia recalls how they hid things:

“We took a big pitcher and filled it full of silverware, it was a big old water pitcher, and set it down in a hollow stump. We couldn’t put any dishes in it, so we just put the dishes around the edge, and covered them up with trash and went on and left them. Well, they stayed there until after the War was all over with, and when the people got back home, why, then they went and gathered up the things that they had left that way, you know. But they never did get anything that was left in the house. That was all gone.

The next day there came a crowd of northern soldiers. Before they came through, Grandma said, “Well, Lizzie, let’s cook the children one more meal of victuals.” We had lots of chickens, but we had nothing else much though to go with them, so they cooked the chickens and fixed dinner. before we could get through, why, the yard was full of men, looked like. They just come on down, and we children walked to the door, and they said, “Well, we’re just in time.” They didn’t ask if they could or not, they just walked in and sat down at the table and ate up all the dinner we had cooked, so we didn’t have anything more left to cook another day.

And then they set the factory afire and burned that up.”

Union soldiers blasted the dam at New Manchester. The flood destroyed the mill town while they set fire to the mill itself.

Synthia recollects, “The northern men told the women… to get themselves home and get them a little tad of clothes, some for the children and themselves… Not to try to take anything else out of the house, only just what they could carry…”

The book General Sherman and the Georgia Belles: Tales From the Women Left Behind by Cathy Kaemmerlen includes the story and Stewart family lore indicates the one possession Synthia took from her family’s home was the family Bible. 

The assembly point for the mill workers from New Manchester and Roswell were the grounds of the Georgia Military institute. From there the workers would be shipped North by train. Today, the spot where Georgia Military Institute was located is the home to the Marietta Conference Center and Resort on Powder Springs Street. 

At some point along the journey to Marietta the Stewart Family Bible was taken from Synthia by a Union soldier. Once in Marietta she noticed the soldier and pointed him out. Kaemmerlen writes in her book that Synthia caused such a ruckus General Sherman himself came to her to see what was going on. After quizzing the soldier, he immediately had the family Bible returned to the young girl.

The mill prisoners were taken to Louisville, Kentucky and Synthia continues her story – “(We were) turned … loose in a big old hospital house…They called (us) prisoners ....”

Yes, they were prisoners, and Sherman’s orders dictated the mill workers would stay there until they signed an Oath of Allegiance to the Union. Once the oath was signed people were allowed to cross the Ohio River and find work in the local area.   

Day after day stuck in a building with dozens of folks with restless energy–I can only imagine how nerves were frayed and people were at the end of their endurance. However, the story for the Stewart family imprisoned far from home in an old hospital building took a miraculous turn. Synthia recalls the joyous moment:

“We just fooled around, you know, and wanted to get outside and they wouldn’t let us. And we heard a band coming and we wanted to get out then, sure enough! Well, after awhile we begged and cut up so that (the adults) got ashamed of us and let us go out…It was just a whole lot of southern prisoners that they were going to keep until the next morning and send them across the Ohio River. Well, we got out there and the band passed and just as it passed, why, the first man behind the band was PA. We thought he was dead, you know, didn’t know we ever would see him anymore.”

What a coincidence! Synthia’s father, Walter Washington Stewart had been captured again near Atlanta on August 3, 1864. He was being shipped to Camp Chase near Columbus, Ohio, and it was just a strange twist of events that the family members met up under such conditions. 

It was at this point that Synthia’s mother, Lizzie, signed the Oath of Allegiance and found work in Louisville doing accounting work.

Synthia’s story continues:

“We stayed there in Louisville, got us a place, and we children went to school and did the best we could and Ma worked for the government to make her some money. And finally they turned (my father) loose…”

Once the family had enough money saved for the trip they returned to Atlanta, and of course, they made the short trip to New Manchester to see what had become of their home, but they found nothing but ruins. It had become a ghost town.

Synthia advises:

“And when we went back home, why, everything was torn up, there wasn’t anything growing, only just wild, you know, and believe it or not, but the whole fields…in STRAWBERRIES. We had thousands and thousands of strawberries, and we gathered those strawberries and carried them to Atlanta and sold them and made money to live on, with what Pa was making…A lady who didn’t have to refugee, why she had a little handful of peas and she gave Ma the handful of peas. She planted them and we had several messes off of those peas....we never did have any strawberries any more. That was God’s work, you know, He gave us Holy Manna to eat while we didn’t have anything else.”

The Stewart family remained in the Atlanta area during those hard years immediately after the war before moving to Gaylesville, Alabama. It was in Gaylesville where Synthia married David Boyd, a young man from Smyrna, Georgia. Family lore advises 100 guests were present at the wedding and it was recorded in their old Bible.  

The romantic in me hopes it was the same family Bible Synthia saved from destruction, and the same Bible General Sherman personally returned to her.    

Synthia and her husband eventually settled in Sidney, Texas with their nine children. Her family knew her as Granny Boyd and she shared her Civil War experiences with her grandson when she was 92. Her recollection is on a gramophone recording that is on file with the Friends of Sweetwater Creek State Park and The Atlanta History Center. It is that recording that documents the story regarding the Bible Kaemmerlen writes about in her book.

The family genealogy site advises, “Synthia outlived her husband David by many years and died in October, 1951 a few days before her 97th birthday. Her obituary in The Comanche Chief stated, “Through her long and interesting life she was the heart of her home and her family centered closely about her. One of the last gentlewomen of the Old South and its traditions has fallen asleep. The vividness of her life will keep a glow burning in the hearts of her loved ones.”

So often we hear how the millworkers in Roswell and New Manchester were taken away never to be heard from again. I strongly recommend the two books I've linked to here to learn more of the New Manchester Story.

Cathy Kaemmerlen also has a fantastic study guide for the chapter of her book concerning Synthia Stewart Boyd here that I highly recommend to educators teaching the Civil War and Georgia history.  

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