The Lost Town of Alice
- Webmaster
- Feb 10, 2023
- 3 min read
Updated: 2 days ago
Nowadays, if you were to drive down Salem Church Road, chances are you would have no idea that you were driving past a once-thriving community. Up until the first decade of the 20th Century, Alice was an active community with a cotton mill, grist mill, sorghum syrup mill, blacksmith shop, one-room school, and houses.
Alice was named after Tom Atherton's wife. Tom and his brothers, William and James moved to from Manchester, England to New Jersey, and then to Roswell, Georgia in 1840. They established the Roswell Cotton Mills, and in 1847, moved to Pickens County. In the 1860s he and his brothers built the Talking Rock Cotton Factory. The Athertons opened a yarn factory named the Shoal Creek Mill, in Waleska, in Cherokee County, and finally in 1882 opened Harmony Mills in Alice.
The grist mill in Alice was on the eastern side of Town Creek, north of the waterfall. Nearby, within a few hundred yards was an operational goldmine. The brothers, masters of engineering that they were, built a 500-foot-long wooden race to bring water to the mill site off the top of the nearby embankment. The water came from near where Highway 515 where a small dam helped to channel the water.
Sadly, Harmony Mills was damaged by a flood and then destroyed by fire in 1897. By 1909, the post office was closed as most of the workers at the site had moved on.
Where was Alice?
The schoolhouse was located directly north of the Atherton property. Land Lots 58, 87, and 88 form the connected lands of the Atherton family in the shape of an L on Henley’s 1903 Pickens Map.
The Atherton family as seen on the 1880-1887 Tax Digests. Note: They had 15 workers on
their land. Most of the workers made cotton, others were machinists or store clerks.
Who was Alice?
Alice was born in New Hampshire as Alice Nutter on Aug 2nd, 1829. She met Thomas Atherton when he lived in the New Hampshire. Alice was eighteen years old in 1847 when she married Thomas. By 1850, her and Thomas were living in South Carolina with their two-year old son James.
By 1860, she and Thomas had moved to Alabama. And by 1870, she and Thomas were living in North Georgia. In her later years, she she was colloquially referred to as “Aunt Alice” and was known to be a woman of virtue, kindness, and dignity. She was resigned to staying in a chair due to poor health for her last eighteen years, but Alice was not one to complain.
She and Thomas were married 44 years before she died on August 22nd, 1891, only four years after the destruction of Harmony Mills, at the age of sixty-two. She is buried in the Jasper City Cemetery beside her husband Thomas, who died 6 years later. Thomas was listed on his census as a Man of Cotton Yarns - and out of love for his wife, named the village after her.
Why preserve Alice?
The current property, nearly 109 acres, sits on Land Lots 50, 59, 58, 86, and 87. Half of the land in the property belonged to the Atherton family. The grist mill, and mill race ruins are unique in the Southeastern United States and serve as an example of 19th Century ingenuity. Furthermore, the legacy of the Atherton family throughout the United States should be protected. Ruins, however old, serve as a tangible reminder of the past, our ancestors, and their industriousness.
The right person would purchase the property with intention of protecting the remaining
structures and evidence of Alice for future generations to come. We could only be so lucky.
Well researched and one of the ONLY sources for the history of the community. I am a member of the current Salem Church. I have seen several photos of classes of the Salem School (like the one below that belongs to the Hyde family), but this is the only place I have seen a photo of the whole outside of the old Salem School building. My only complaint is that there's not more to read! Thank you for your work.