Pickens County, in the Appalachian Mountains and one of
Georgia's smallest counties in size and population in 1860,
existed as an isolated wilderness without railroads or rivers,
with limited waterpower. It did have a primitive marble works
and a remarkably cosmopolitan population with persons from
Ireland, France-Holland, England, and Scotland, as well as from
Northern States.
Even within those circumstances, the Atherton brothers from
Manchester, England proved special. They began building textile
factories in their native country around 1831 and later in New
York State and Paterson, New Jersey. William C. Atherton worked
on the famous textile factory at Roswell, Georgia.
In Pickens County in the 1850s, he and his brothers Thomas and James built
at Talking Rock Ford, at the present highway 136 bridge at
Blaine, the Talking Rock Cotton Factory: a sawmill, gristmill,
cotton gins, wool carder, blacksmith shop, flour mill, and
textile factory. A huge ditch is still visible that provided
waterpower for their operations. Severely damaged in guerilla
fighting during the Civil War, a fire destroyed it in 1873 at a
loss estimated at $20,000.
The Harmony Mills at Alice, however, was their most
spectacular accomplishment. First built in 1882, this
combination grist and textile mill had 800 spindles and a
capitol of $25,000. Water flowed through a system of ditches
around a mountain for more than one mile and a half to provide a
drop. A wooden race stood fifty feet in the air and five hundred
feet long. The stone foundations of the wooden race remain
visible. At the beginning of the ditch, near modern highway I-
575/515/5, a small dam channeled water into the race. Any trace
of this dam is now under a modern flood control dam. Much of the
ditch remains visible. As with their other factories, they sold
it (to P. M. Tate) and moved on to other projects. The Harmony
Mills, damaged by flood, finally burned around 1897.
The famous ruins of the rope mill at Woodstock and a cotton factory at
Waleska, both in Cherokee County, were also Atherton projects.
Pickens County Mysteries: A Place Called Alice. North Georgia
Journal 6 (4) (1989): 39-43 (by author)
c. 1 Disastrous Fire, North Georgia Citizen (Dalton, Georgia), April 24, 1873, p. 3
c. 2 Harmony Cotton Mills, Cherokee Advance (Canton, GA), March 13, 1891, p.
3
c. 4 Lucius E. Tate, History of Pickens County (Macon, GA, 1932), 250-51.
Interesting