Historic Kennesaw

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HISTORIC KENNESAW 

1887-2012: Celebrating 125 Years 

by Robert C. Jones 

Commissioned by the Kennesaw Historic Preservation Commission 

HPNbooks 

A division of Lammert Incorporated 

San Antonio, Texas

CONTENTS 

3 INTRODUCTION 

4 CHAPTER ONE p r e C i v i l Wa r 

7 CHAPTER TWO B i g S h a n t y a n d t h e C i v i l Wa r 

11 CHAPTER THREE 1 8 7 0 - 1 9 0 0 

18 CHAPTER FOUR 1 9 0 0 - 1 9 5 0 

28 CHAPTER FIVE 1 9 5 0 - 2 0 0 0 

39 CHAPTER SIX t h e t w e n t y - f i r s t c e n t u r y 

45 SOURCES 

46 APPENDIX 

Second Edition 

Copyright © 2014 HPNbooks 

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, without permission in writing 

from the publisher. All inquiries should be addressed to HPNbooks, 11535 Galm Road, Suite 101, San Antonio, Texas, 78254, (800) 749-9790, wwwhpnbooks.com. 

ISBN: 9781939300492 

Library of Congress Card Catalog Number: 2012939450 

Historic Kennesaw, 1887-2012: Celebrating 125 Years 

author: Robert C. Jones 

editing: Kennesaw Historic Preservation Commission 

cover artist: Dominique Champonot 

contributing writer for sharing the heritage: Violet Caren 

HPNbooks 

president: Ron Lammert 

project manager: Violet Caren 

administration: Donna M. Mata, Melissa G. Quinn 

book sales: Dee Steidle 

production: Colin Hart, Evelyn Hart, Glenda Tarazon Krouse, 

Tony Quinn, Katy Lammert, Tim Lippard 

2 ✦ H I S T O R I C K E N N E S A W

INTRODUCTION 

This book celebrates the 125th anniversary of the City of Kennesaw including the most defining 

years and events leading up to its incorporation in 1887. Before becoming the City of Kennesaw, the 

town of Big Shanty was perceived to be nothing more than a sleepy railroad town, that served as a 

refueling and rest stop on the Western & Atlantic Railroad. It is this perception as a sleepy southern 

town that would set the stage for one of the Civil War’s proudest moments—or one of the most 

embarrassing depending our your allegiance—that would propel the town into history and define the 

town until this very day. 

Andrew’s Raid, also known as the Great Locomotive Chase, would bring attention and fame to 

the town during the civil war and particularly in the 20th century—but first the town had to recover 

from the destruction left behind following Sherman’s March to the Sea. Determined to rebuild and 

with a focus on agriculture, most notably cotton, the town and surrounding area began to emerge 

from the devastation of war by the 1880s. The rebuilding of the W&A Railroad provided a 

springboard for prosperity not only for those who worked for the railroad, but also for the 

local farmers. 

As the recovery progressed into the 20th century, the African-American community began to 

emerge from the constraints of slavery as more black farmers became landowners though not as 

prolifically as their white counterparts. Also, the African-American churches, most notably Sardis 

Missionary Baptist Church and Mt. Zion AME church, provided schools and introduced some 

degree of wealth into the African-American community. The city’s prosperity continued into the 

1930s until the infestation of the boll weevil followed by the Great Depression crippled the region 

for several decades. 

It wasn’t until the second half of the 20th century that several seemingly unrelated events would 

transpire to pull the city from the grip of the Depression. In the 1950s, Disney created and released 

its version of the Great Locomotive Chase starring Fess Parker, resulting in a renewed interest in the 

city and the locomotive General. In 1962, Kennesaw would make national and international news 

with the return of the General to Kennesaw after a court battle that reached the U.S. Supreme Court. 

In 1982 the city passed a law requiring all heads of households to own an operating firearm and 

ammunition. The gun law is thirty years old and the international impact of its passage is still 

reverberating today. German Public Television, the Financial Times, Reuters, Russia Today, Japanese 

newspapers, and others have featured stories on Kennesaw’s gun law. Today, the City of Kennesaw 

has one of the lowest crime rates in the Unites States. Coincidence? 

Though several other books have been written about the City of Kennesaw, none have 

approached the history as comprehensively as this one. We have collected and are retelling the 

colorful histories of several of our Founding Families, both black and white. We are introducing 

more than 50 unpublished photos, some of which reveal Hollywood’s interest in the city. 

(Yes, Hollywood!). We also feature several businesses in our community that, without their 

contribution, the opportunity to present an updated perspective on Kennesaw would not be 

possible. Like most small, southern towns, Kennesaw is rich and diverse in its history and there is 

so much more to uncover. We hope that you will enjoy this book and join us in celebrating our 

hometown, the City of Kennesaw. 

-- The Kennesaw Historic Preservation Commission 

I n t r o d u c t i o n ✦ 3

CHAPTER ONE 

P R E C I V I L W A R 

❖ 

Left: General Winfield Scott, c. 1863. 

Responsible for overseeing the 

removal of the Cherokee Nation 

from Georgia. 

COURTESY OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Right: Cherokee Chief John Ross, 

defender of the Cherokee 

Nation, 1858. 

“JOHN ROSS.” ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA. 

ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA ONLINE. 

ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA INC., 2012. WEB. 

Prior to the 1800s the northwest area of Georgia was just a small piece of the region serving as the 

long time home of the Cherokee Nation, who had been present even before DeSoto explored the 

Americas. In the 1830s, the State of Georgia and its residents took this native homeland away from 

the Cherokee, and so began the development and settlement of North Georgia by the “white man”. 

One of the cities that developed in this region would become known as Kennesaw. 

C H E R O K E E 

I N D I A N S 

In the early 1800s northwestern Georgia was home to over twenty-thousand Cherokee Indians. 

Unlike other tribes, the Cherokees made a significant effort to adopt the ways of the white man. As a 

result they created a form of government based on the U.S. Constitution, and in 1825 established a 

capital city in New Echota, near Calhoun in Gordon County, Georgia. In addition they created a written 

language with their own Cherokee alphabet, and published their own newspaper. Unlike other regions 

in the country, Christian missionaries were welcomed in the Cherokee territory. 

Although the territorial rights of the Cherokees were upheld by two Supreme Court decisions in 

1831-32, events prior to that conspired against them. Gold was discovered in the North Georgia 

mountains in 1828, and Georgia slowly passed laws denying the land rights of the Cherokees, in part 

to access the gold. In 1828 the state passed an act placing the Georgia portion of the Cherokee Nation 


under Georgia law. Then in 1831, in preparation 

for the raffling off of the Cherokee Nation’s land 

in a land lottery, Georgia began surveying their 

land and dividing it into 40-acre lots in the “gold 

region” and 160-acre lots in the remaining areas. 

In 1835, a self-appointed political faction of the 

Cherokee Nation, referred to as the Treaty Party 

and who represented a minority of about 100 

members, negotiated territorial rights with the 

United States Government, and the Treaty of New 

Echota was signed. In the treaty the Cherokee 

surrendered claim to their eastern homeland in 

exchange for $5 million and 7 million acres of land 

in Oklahoma. As part of the treaty they agreed to 

relocate within two years. The treaty, never signed 

by an elected representative of the Cherokee 

Nation or the Cherokee National Council, was 

challenged by Principal Chief John Ross, the 

elected leader, and the vast majority of the 

Cherokee Nation. Ultimately the United States 

government chose to recognize the disputed treaty 

thereby forcing the Cherokee to leave. In 1838, 

under the watchful eye of seven thousand U.S. 

troops commanded by General Winfield Scott, the 

removal of the Cherokees from Georgia and their 

other homeland areas began. In this now infamous 

“Trail of Tears” at least twenty thousand Cherokee 

Indians were forced to leave their eastern 

homelands. Because of the hardships of this march 

as many as four thousand tribal members died. 

Survey maps made in the 1830s for the land 

lottery show that there were some Cherokee 

structures located approximately at the 

intersection of U.S. Highway 41 and Highway 293 

(Old U.S. Hwy 41) in modern-day Kennesaw. The 

Cherokees were undoubtedly attracted to the 

more than twelve springs in the Kennesaw area. 

The largest of these, Equa Ganuga Gr Ama, 

meaning “The Big Spring of Water”, is located 

behind City Hall. Parts of modern day Main 

Street/Old U.S. Hwy 41 were built on top of the 

Cherokee Peachtree Trail. This historic trail led 

from the heart of the Cherokee Nation to Standing 

Peachtree, a Creek village just south of the 

Chattahoochee River. 

E A R L Y 

C H U R C H E S 

By the mid-1830s churches were starting to be 

built in the greater Kennesaw area. Shiloh United 

Methodist Church was founded in 1832 and 

Noonday Baptist church in 1835. Mars Hill 

Presbyterian Church was founded in 1837. 

Mount Zion African Methodist Episcopalian 

Church (A.M.E.), now located on Wade Green 

Road, was founded in 1834-35. 

According to church historian Alfred 

Jackson, Mt. Zion became a church when a 

blacksmith named Willis McMullen allowed his 

blacksmith shop to be used for Sunday services. 

The current site became the home of Mount 

Zion when Isom Gresham purchased the land in 

the 1840s and donated an acre to the church. 

Mr. Jackson tells us that: 

After the Civil War the A.M.E. church could 

come into the South. The South Carolina A.M.E. 

conference included all the A.M.E. churches in 

North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia. In 

1866 the conference sent Rev. Henry McNeal 

Turner to North Georgia. He came to Big Shanty 

(Kennesaw) and made this his home. 

Turner was appointed by President Abraham 

Lincoln to be the chaplain to one of the first 

regiments of black troops in the Union army. 

After the war, Lincoln’s successor, Andrew 

Johnson, appointed Turner to be on the 

Freedman’s Bureau during Reconstruction. He 

was elected to the Georgia legislature in 1868. 

Thanks to Bishop Turner, “Mt. Zion A.M.E. 

Church is the mother of African Methodism in 

North Georgia” (Alfred Jackson). 

T H E C O M I N G O F T H E 

W E S T E R N A N D 

A T L A N T I C R A I L R O A D 

On December 21, 1836, the Georgia legislature 

authorized the building of the Western & Atlantic 

Railroad that would eventually stretch from mile 

marker zero in Atlanta to Chattanooga, Tennessee. 

The Western & Atlantic was one of several Georgia 

railroads built in the mid 1800s, including the 

Rome Railroad, the Georgia Railroad, the Macon & 

Western Railroad, and the Montgomery & West 

Point Railroad. However the Western & Atlantic 

(W&A) was somewhat unique, as it was owned 

and operated by the State of Georgia, which still 

owns the right of way today. Interestingly, some 

Union Civil War dispatches actually refer to the 

W&A as the “Georgia State Railroad”. 

C h a p t e r O n e ✦ 5

❖ 

Two railroad shanties built around 

1870. The shanties were destroyed 

in 1994. 

PHOTO BY ROBERT C. JONES. 

After the route was surveyed in 1837 by Chief 

Engineer of the Western and Atlantic Railroad 

of Georgia, S. H. Long, construction started in 

1838. Small towns, including Vinings, Smyrna, 

Big Shanty, and Acworth, sprang up along the 

Western & Atlantic right-of-way as track laying 

progressed north from Atlanta. Big Shanty sat 

at the highest point of the line between the 

Chattahoochee and Etowah Rivers. A collection 

of railroad shanties built near a spring by the 

laborers on the W&A Railroad expanded at this 

spot. As the story goes, the site became known 

as Big Shanty at the Top of the Grade, later 

shortened to Big Shanty. However, according to 

the postmaster list of the National Archives, it is 

possible that Big Shanty was actually the third 

name given to the settlement: Kennesaw (1853), 

Moons (1854), and Big Shanty (1859). Either 

way, it can be said that the settlement was named 

Big Shanty at the time of the Civil War. 

T H E 1 8 6 0 C O B B C O U N T Y 

C E N S U S F O R B I G S H A N T Y 

The Cobb County census of 1860 gives us an 

interesting view of Big Shanty on the eve of the 

Civil War. Big Shanty was never an incorporated 

town, but rather it described an area that was 

probably larger than the 1887 incorporated City 

of Kennesaw. The census indicates that there were 

718 people living in Big Shanty in 1860. Of that 

group, 66 were attending school, and 600, or 

83.5 percent, were literate. An examination of 

professions in 1860 shows a largely agrarian 

society, with over 63 percent of the Heads of 

Household holding farm related jobs. The railroad 

was the second largest employer, employing 12.3 

percent of the Heads of Household. The census 

also reveals that 70 percent of the residents were 

born in Georgia, 25 percent were from South 

Carolina, and the resident who was born the 

farthest away from Georgia was John Clark who 

was born in England. 

The wealthiest people in 1860 Big Shanty 

were farmers. This list included Willis Roberts, 

John Roberts, George Roberts, A. A. Winn, and 

William Gresham. Lemuel Kendrick, a railroad 

contractor, was also listed as one of the 

wealthiest residents. Kendrick was noted as 

having the largest land holdings in Big Shanty 

prior to the Civil War. He also served as the 

Big Shanty postmaster from 1856 to 1865 and 

played a key role in notifying Confederate forces 

of Andrew’s Raid. 


CHAPTER TWO 

B I G S H A N T Y A N D T H E C I V I L W A R 

At the start of the Civil War Big Shanty was a small farming and railroad town with several 

dwellings, a small warehouse and depot, stables, and a hotel called the Big Shanty Hotel. As the war 

developed, Camp McDonald, a training camp for Georgia volunteers, was created and documented 

on an 1861 map. The map which was not actually produced until 1917, identifies the layout of the 

training camp, roads, structures and natural features of Big Shanty at the start of the war. 

The Lacy Hotel, made famous as the starting point of the Great Locomotive Chase, is identified on 

the 1861 Camp McDonald Map as the Big Shanty Hotel; however, it was known by the locals as the 

Lacy Hotel and still is today. The map also identifies a structure belonging to Dr. Holland which 

suggests that medical care was available. Many of the small streams and springs may still be found 

today. In addition to serving as the training grounds to confederate Georgia volunteers and site of the 

famous Lacy Hotel, the city was the site of several skirmishes during Sherman’s Atlanta Campaign 

and was the location of a field hospital for the Union Army. 

❖ 

A 1917 map of Camp McDonald, as 

it would have appeared in 1861. 


C A M P M C D O N A L D / P H I L L I P S L E G I O N 

On June 11, 1861, Governor Joseph E. Brown established a training camp in Big Shanty for 

Georgia volunteers that was named Camp McDonald after former Governor and Marietta resident 

Charles C. McDonald. The Camp, which included sixty acres of land west of the W&A Railroad, was 

commanded by Georgia Militia Brigadier General and Confederate Army Colonel William Phillips. 

Young Cadets from the Georgia Military Institute in nearby Marietta served as instructors. 

The greatest moment in the history of Camp McDonald occurred on July 31, 1861, when a Grand 

Review was held. Sources indicate as many as twenty-five hundred men passed in review before 

Governor Brown. Within the next several days, most of these troops had marched off to Virginia. 

Members of Camp McDonald’s “Phillips Legion” fought in many battles against Lt. General Ulysses S. 

Grant’s Overland Campaign including Bull Run, Fredericksburg, the Wilderness, Spotsylvania Court 

C h a p t e r T w o ✦ 7

❖ 

A sketch of the Lacy Hotel. 

COURTESY OF THE SOUTHERN MUSEUM OF CIVIL 

WAR AND LOCOMOTIVE HISTORY. 

I N T E R E S T I N G 

F A C T 

Big Shanty was a thriving town during 

the time of Camp McDonald’s existence. The 

Lacy Hotel prospered with large patronage as 

visitors came to watch drills or visit relatives. 

The town had never before seen so many 

people within its borders. 

THE FIRST HUNDRED YEARS: A SHORT HISTORY OF COBB COUNTY, IN GEORGIA, BY 

SARAH BLACKWELL GABER TEMPLE, C. 1997, COBB LANDMARKS. 

House, and Cold Harbor. After the war, when the 

land that was once their training camp had been 

returned to agricultural use, the alumni of Camp 

McDonald returned for several reunions gathering 

at the spring behind our modern day City Hall. 

There are no visible signs of Camp McDonald 

today. Seven and a half acres have been 

preserved as green space behind City Hall. In 

2009, Cobb County purchased the land, for a 

future passive use park, with funds generated 

through the 2006 Parks Bond. The organization, 

Friends of Camp McDonald Park, is currently 

working to raise funds for park development. 

T H E L A C Y H O T E L 

The Lacy Hotel figured prominently in Civil 

War era events in Big Shanty. It was the site 

where the Great Locomotive Chase started, it 

was a popular breakfast stop on the W&A 

passenger train runs from Atlanta, it served the 

recruits of Camp McDonald, and it served as a 

headquarters and hospital during Sherman’s 

occupation in 1864. Local historian and writer, 

Mark Smith described its creation in his 

publication, History of Kennesaw: 

In the late 1850s the W&A Railroad acquired 

from Gaspard Carrie and Lemuel Kendrick a plot of 

land on the east side of the [Big Shanty] tracks ‘for 

the purpose of erecting a depot and an eating house 

for the convenience of the traveling public’. The 

deed also contained a clause that no spirituous 

liquors would be sold on the premises. This eating 

place became the famous Lacy House (or Hotel), 

and was operated by Mr. and Mrs. George Lacy. 

The Lacy Hotel is also mentioned in letters 

from soldiers. A letter from a Union soldier, 

dated June 12, 1864, from Big Shanty, Georgia, 

describes what is assumedly the Lacy Hotel: 

We left Cartersville this morning at 7 o’clock, 

came down two miles to the new bridge across 

the Etowah River [where we waited for the rain 

to stop. When the rain cleared off ] we came 

through here safe. We were expecting to have to 

put up tents but were happily disappointed 

when we found one large House close to the RR 

track that was convenient for us. It was used as 

a railroad eating house. 

When our men first came here some of the reb 

officers were dining. Our men strayed a shell and it 

went in at one side of the house and out of the 

other so the Johnies got up and left. There is one 

room that was furnished with sofa-bottomed 

chairs, a sofa and a splendid Piano and wardrobe… 

COURTESY OF THE SOUTHERN MUSEUM OF CIVIL WAR AND LOCOMOTIVE HISTORY. 

The Hotel was burned to the ground by 

Sherman’s troops on November 14, 1864. Its 

exact location has been lost, but Dr. Betty Smith 

of Kennesaw State University conducted an 

archaeological survey of the general site in the 

late 1990s, and surmised that the hotel was 

located under the present-day parking lot of the 

Big Shanty Depot. 

T H E G R E A T 

L O C O M O T I V E C H A S E 

One of the most famous events of the Civil War 

began within a hundred yards of the modern day 


Southern Museum. On April 12, 1862, twenty-two 

Union spies, led by civilian James J. Andrews seized 

a Confederate locomotive named the General. The 

General arrived in Big Shanty at approximately 6:00 

a.m. Most of the passengers and all of the crew 

disembarked the train and headed to the Lacy 

Hotel for breakfast. It was at this moment that 

Andrews and his raiders struck. After uncoupling 

the passenger cars from the rest of the train, the 

three raider locomotive engineers and Andrews 

jumped in the cab while the rest of the raiders piled 

into the boxcars still coupled to the train. The 

General headed north, under the hand of Engineer 

William J. Knight. Within seconds, Fuller, Murphy, 

and engineer Jeff Cain realized the train had been 

stolen and began the chase on foot. 

The objective of the raid was to steam the train 

to Chattanooga, burning bridges, tearing up 

track, and cutting telegraph wires along the way. 

The raid entered into legend because the 

conductor of the train, William A. Fuller, and 

Western & Atlantic Railroad Superintendent of 

Motive Power, Anthony Murphy, pursued the 

stolen train for 87 miles, by foot, hand car, and 

three different locomotives, until the train was 

finally recovered where it had been abandoned 

two miles north of Ringgold, Georgia. 

All of the raiders were eventually captured, 

with the following results: 

• 8 were hung, including James J. Andrews 

• 8 escaped, and made it back to Union lines 

• 6 were involved in a prisoner exchange 

Twenty of the 22 raiders received the 

Congressional Medal of Honor. As a civilian, 

Andrews was not eligible for the award. 

The Great Locomotive Chase has been 

commemorated in numerous books, and in two 

major Hollywood movies, including the 1926 

silent movie The General, starring Buster Keaton, 

and the 1956 Walt Disney movie, The Great 

Locomotive Chase, starring Fess Parker. 

Many questions still surround the Chase, but 

many have been answered including what part did 

Big Shanty play in the Chase, and why was it 

chosen as the starting point? Big Shanty was chosen 

for two main reasons. First, the northbound train 

typically stopped in Big Shanty for a twenty-minute 

breakfast stop. Second, there was no telegraph 

service at Big Shanty which would prevent anyone 

from broadcasting the news of the raid to points 

north of the raiders. The General was only in Big 

Shanty for perhaps ten minutes, but it was long 

enough to enshrine the town in history! 

S H E R M A N ’ S A T L A N T A 

C A M P A I G N 

On May 6, 1864, an army of more than one 

hundred thousand men marched south out of 

Ringgold, Georgia, under the command of William 

Tecumseh Sherman. His goal was to capture or 

destroy Atlanta, the supply and railroad hub of the 

deep South. As Sherman made his way south, 

generally following the route of the W&A, Big 

Shanty was directly in his path. Over the coming 

weeks, Acworth and Big Shanty would eventually 

fall to Sherman’s forces in a prelude to the much 

larger Battle at Kennesaw Mountain. 

Sherman’s troops had advanced into the Big 

Shanty/Acworth area by the beginning of June 

1864. Colonel E. M. McCook later reported that 

he had taken Acworth on June 4, and “drove a 

small party of fifteen rebels from the town”. On 

June 6, Captain Albert J. Morley, Fourth Indiana 

Cavalry reported that they had taken Big Shanty, 

and “[we] drove out a force of rebels, captured a 

small amount of forage, of which we were greatly 

in need, our horses having been on very short 

allowance for many days.” 

Although Big Shanty fell to Union troops on 

June 6, skirmishes would continue in the area 

❖ 

Top, left: The Kurtz Map of the Great 

Locomotive Chase from “The General 

and the Texas.” 

COURTESY OF COLONEL JAMES G. BOGLE. 

Above: (From top to bottom) William 

Fuller, conductor of The General; 

Jefferson Cain, engineer on The 

General; and Anthony Murphy, 

W&A foreman of Motive Power 

and Machinery. 

C h a p t e r T w o ✦ 9

❖ 

Above: William Tecumseh Sherman. 


Below: Mother (Mary Ann) 

Bickerdyke was Chief of Nursing 

under General Ulysses S. Grant at 

the Battle of Shiloh, Corinth, and 

Vicksburg, and then served with 

Sherman on his March to the Sea, 

including a stay at Big Shanty. Legend 

tells that she once argued with 

Sherman refusing to leave the 

battlefield. Sherman is said to have 

turned to another officer and 

exclaimed, “She outranks me, I can’t 

do a thing in the world.” 

Source: Nina Brown Baker, Cyclone 

in Calico: The Story of Mary Ann 

Bickerdyke, 1952. 

COURTESY OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

until the great battle at Kennesaw Mountain on 

June 27, 1864. Kennesaw Mountain was the last 

major Confederate defense before the battles for 

Atlanta. Sherman decided to attack uphill 

against entrenched Confederate positions on 

Little Kennesaw Mountain and Pigeon Hill, and 

was soundly defeated. Casualties amounted to 

3,000 Union and as many as 1,000 Confederate 

dead. Sherman eventually outflanked the 

Confederate position on the mountain, and the 

Confederates retreated. 

Another battle occurred at Big Shanty in 

October 1864, after the fall of Atlanta, when 

Confederate General John Bell Hood decided to 

raise havoc with Sherman’s supply line. Hood 

reported that “Lieutenant General Stewart with 

corps struck the Western and Atlantic Railroad at 

Big Shanty on the evening of October 3 and 

effectually destroyed ten miles [of rail]. He 

captured 350 prisoners at Acworth and Big 

Shanty. Major General French began moving to 

attack Allatoona.” 

A report from the headquarters of Stewart's 

Corps mentions that the defending Union troops 

took refuge in the depot, which was loopholed 

(riddled with bullet holes) during the battle. 

S U P P L Y B A S E A N D H O S P I T A L 

During June of 1864, Big Shanty served as both 

a supply base and a hospital for the Union Army. 

The hospital was described by Surgeon George E. 

Cooper, U.S. Army medical director, as “a large 

field hospital, consisting of 100 tents, with all the 

appurtenances.” Wounded soldiers from hospitals 

in Big Shanty and Acworth were later transported 

to Chattanooga by train. 

An order issued by Sherman on June 12, 

1864, stated that Big Shanty would be a key 

supply center for the Union Army. His report 

indicated that, “During the temporary stay of 

the army at or near its present locality, the Army 

of the Tennessee will draw their supplies from 

the Big Shanty depot; the Army of the 

Cumberland from Acworth, and the Army of the 

Ohio from Allatoona.” 

In a very specific description of supplies 

shipped by U.S. Army Medical Director, 

Surgeon John Moore, a soldier reported that 

“2,500 shirts and drawers” were delivered to Big 

Shanty for distribution to the troops. 

U N I O N A R M Y H E A D Q U A R T E R S 

Sherman used Big Shanty as his headquarters 

from mid-June until the Battle of Kennesaw 

Mountain. Many dispatches bearing his name were 

issued from “In the Field, Big Shanty”. In one 

dispatch to Governor Andrew Johnson in Nashville 

dated June 13, Sherman stated, “my 

congratulations on your nomination [as Vice- 

President].” In another dispatch dated June 21, 

Sherman describes the weather conditions to Major 

General Halleck in Washington D.C., and notes 

that there had been nineteen straight days of rain. 

In his memoirs, Sherman refers to his Big 

Shanty headquarters, indicating that he occupied 

an abandoned house as his headquarters, adding 

“in a cotton-field back of that house was our 

signal station, on the roof of an old gin house.” 

D E S T R U C T I O N A N D 

A F T E R M A T H 

On November 9, 1864, as Sherman began his 

March to the Sea, he issued orders to destroy the 

W&A from Big Shanty to the Chattahoochee, 

indicating that “the destruction will be most 

complete, the ties burned, rails twisted, etc., as 

[has] been done heretofore”. As part of this 

destruction, the Lacy Hotel was burned to the 

ground on November 14, 1864. 

According to the letters of Boston Daily Evening 

Traveller correspondent Russell H. Conwell, the 

only structure left standing was the blacksmith’s 

shop. He also reported that there were “some tent 

pins and the hewn tree under which so many dead 

were laid before burial”, and mentions that Mary 

Ann Bickerdyke, affectionately known as Mother 

Bickerdyke by the Union Soldiers, had served in 

Sherman’s hospital in Big Shanty. 


F A C T 

In 1862, Andrew Johnson was appointed 

military governor of Tennessee by President 

Abraham Lincoln. In 1864, he ran as the 

vice presidential candidate with Abraham 

Lincoln. They were elected, and on April 15, 

1865, when Lincoln was assassinated, 

Andrew Johnson became president. 

1 0 ✦ H I S T O R I C K E N N E S A W

CHAPTER THREE 

1 8 7 0 - 1 9 0 0 

By the 1870s, Big Shanty was recovering from the ravages of the Civil War. Agriculture and its 

processing was the primary means of economic support with crops that included cotton, corn, and 

various grains. The rebuilt W&A Railroad continued to be an important transportation artery for the 

town, and the whole northwestern Georgia area. 

The 1880 Sholes Georgia State Gazetteer reports that Kennesaw had a population of about two 

hundred, with both a Baptist and Methodist Church, a grist mill and steam operated cotton gin. It 

also stated that the Kennesaw Spring supplied water to the railroad station, that there was a Western 

Union Telegraph office, and daily mail service in both directions. It was seven years later, in 1887, 

that the city of Kennesaw was incorporated. 

❖ 

Lost Treasure: The McRea House, 

c. 1890, once stood on North Main 

Street where the First Baptist Church 

parking lot is now. 

COURTESY OF BRENDA SHELTON. 

F I R S T B A P T I S T C H U R C H 

The Kennesaw First Baptist Church was organized in August 1877, with fourteen charter 

members, and had its first meeting in the upstairs portion of the old Ben Hill Store, now the location 

of Eaton Chiropractic at J. O. Stephenson and Main Street. Brother G. N. Johnson, a deacon 

from an Atlanta church, was the founder, Reverend J. A. McMurray was the first pastor, and 

Brother W. A. Booth, father of the Reverend E. T. Booth, was the first clerk. Charter 

members included familiar Kennesaw family names: Butler, Adams, Whitfield, and Cox. The 

first church building was built on Cherokee Street the following year and dedicated in June 

1878. In November 1902, a new church building on North Main Street was opened with a dedicatory 

sermon preached by the Reverend H. Y. Jamerson. This North Main Street location is still in 

use today. 

C h a p t e r T h r e e ✦ 1 1


F A C T 

The sole City income during this era was 

from the “street tax”—fifty cents from the 

head of every household. 

M E T H O D I S T 

C H U R C H 

❖ 

Top: The old First Baptist 

Church sanctuary. 

COURTESY OF THE KENNESAW FIRST 

BAPTIST CHURCH. 

Middle: An early photo of Sardis 

Baptist Church. 

COURTESY OF JUANITA DANIELS BYRD. 

Bottom: Downtown Kennesaw, 

c. the 1890s. 

The Kennesaw Methodist church was 

organized in February 1877 by A. G. Dempsey, 

L. P. (Local Pastor) Acworth Circuit. Charter 

members included many of Kennesaw’s familiar 

family names: Carrie, Chalker, Davis, Gramling, 

Gulliver, Kendrick, Harris, Mayfield, Roberts, 

Taylor, and Brinkley. 

Like the First Baptist Church it is said that 

early services were held in the upstairs of a 

Kennesaw store. In April 1881, Gasper and Jane 

Carrie gave the church its first deed for a site on 

Cherokee Street and, in 1877, the first building 

was erected with the combined help of members 

of the Kennesaw Methodist and Baptist Churches. 

The second building was completed in 1902 and 

used until 1981 when the congregation moved to 

its new building on Ben King Road. 

S A R D I S B A P T I S T C H U R C H 

Sardis Baptist Church was founded by former 

slaves in 1880, less than a generation after the 

end of the Civil War. The current facility can 

be found on South Main Street adjacent to the 

railroad at the Sardis Street intersection. 

I N C O R P O R A T I O N 

K E N N E S A W 

O F 

By 1887, Kennesaw was prosperous enough 

for the citizens to request incorporation. The 

Articles of Incorporation were approved by the 

General Assembly of the State of Georgia on 

September 21, 1887, and indicated that "the 

corporate limits of said town shall extend one half 

mile, north, south, east, west from the depot of 

the Atlantic & Western Railroad." This is a good 

indication of how important the W&A continued 

to be to Kennesaw in the late nineteenth century, 

since the town boundaries were defined with the 

W&A depot being in the center. 


The Acts of Incorporation called for the 

election of a mayor and four councilmen “within 

six months after the passage of this Act, or so soon 

thereafter as practicable”. The first Kennesaw 

mayor, J. S. Reynolds, was elected in 1891. 

At the time of the incorporation, downtown 

Kennesaw was comprised mostly of wooden 

structures. The Ben Hill store, although now the 

brick Eaton Chiropractic building, was originally 

a wooden structure. There was also a cotton gin 

operated by J. T. Hardage, and a small store 

owned by a Mr. Gatlin was probably present as 

early as 1887. 

During the 1890s the city faced hardships. City 

records, indicate limited financial means during 

this period. In 1891, the City Council showed a 

balance of $3.69 in the city coffers. The 1890s 

also produced at least two epidemics, scarlet fever 

and smallpox. In this time period epidemics were 

devastating to communities and families as there 

were no effective means of battling the diseases. 

People would simply be quarantined in their 

homes. The house would be marked with a red 

flannel flag, which meant “stay away”, and then 

the family and community would simply wait to 

see if they recovered or died. 

T H E B U R T F A M I L Y 

Frank Burt, Sr., son of Francis Burt, the first 

territorial governor of Nebraska, moved to the 

outer edge of Kennesaw near Marietta before 

1906. He married Minnie Nutting and they had 

two sons, Ferber and Frank, Jr. When the boys 

were young, their mother died and Frank, Sr., 

married a widow who also had two sons. Ferber 

went to live with relatives in Atlanta and later 

attended West Point. Frank, Jr., went to live with 

his aunt, Joanna Burt Roberts, of the Roberts 

Family. She owned a large tract of land on the 

portion of Big Shanty Road that merged with 

Chastain Road near Interstate 75 when Chastain 

Road was constructed. Frank, Jr., inherited the 

land after his Aunt Joanna passed away. 

Frank, Sr., and his second wife had three 

children: George, Georgia, and Paul. They were 

all members of Kennesaw Methodist Church. It 

is believed that this family lived on property to 

the east side of Joanna Burt Roberts land. All 

three children married and moved to Atlanta. 

Frank, Jr., stayed in Kennesaw, worked for 

the post office and served in the military. He 

married Helen Carrie, daughter of Benjamin and 

Lula Carrie, in 1918. The Burts lived in the 

house next to the Methodist church. In 1920, 

they had a son, Frank III, but when their son 

was only eighteen months old, Frank, Jr., 

developed a staph infection and died. Helen 

never remarried and remained in the house 

where she raised their son. Frank III graduated 

from college, served in the Navy, moved to 

Atlanta and graduated from law school. 

❖ 

This post-Civil War photograph shows 

the old railroad house in Kennesaw. 

The man with cane is Judge Gaspard 

T. Carrie, manager. 

COURTESY OF GAYLE CROFT. 


In 1948, Frank III moved his mother to 

Atlanta to be near him. Her house was sold to the 

Methodist church to be used as a parsonage. In 

1967, Frank III moved his wife, Rosaline 

Gilmore, and their daughters, Rosaline, Joanna, 

and Ellen, home to Kennesaw. He and his family 

were active in the community and the Methodist 

church. The farm land that he inherited from his 

father was used for raising livestock and as a 

weekend getaway while they lived in Atlanta. 

Unfortunately, one of the pastures was in the path 

of I-75 construction and the land was sold in 

1974. His mother, Helen, returned to Kennesaw 

in her later years and passed away a few weeks 

before her eighty-sixth birthday. After a divorce, 

Frank married Joanna Powell Adams. Frank 

passed away 11 years later at the age of 73. 

Joanna and his daughters remain active in the 

area and the church. 

The Burt Family has records dating back to 

the 1600s, when Richard Burt left England to 

come to America. Several generations passed 

and Matthew Burt moved to South Carolina. He 

and his wife, Ann Harwood, had 18 children, 15 

of whom lived to adulthood. Seven of their 12 

sons fought in the Revolutionary War. One of 

the sons, Francis, born in 1779, began a line of 

sons named Francis. Several generations later, in 

1854, Francis was appointed by President 

Franklin Pierce as an auditor of the Treasury 

Department. The next year, he was appointed as 

the first territorial governor of Nebraska. 

Francis traveled with one of his sons, Armistead, 

to Nebraska. He took the oath for governor after 

arriving in 1854, but died two days later at the 

age of forty-seven. Nebraska established Burt 

County in his honor. It is his son Frank, who 

was the first to arrive in Georgia. 

T H E C A R R I E F A M I L Y 

The Carrie family was one of the pioneer 

families of the North Cobb area, having arrived 

while the community was called Big Shanty. 

In 1852, Patriarch Gaspard Carrie, born 1820, 

in South Carolina, came to Cobb County from 

Greene County, Georgia, where he had been an 

apprentice printer with the Christian Index. The 

story has been passed down through the family 

that Gaspard came to Big Shanty seeking a wife, 

after learning of a settler with five unmarried 


F A C T 

The Christian Index, founded in 

Washington, D.C., in 1822 by Baptist 

leader Luther Rice, is the nation’s 

oldest continuously published religious 

newspaper. In 1833 it was moved to 

Georgia where it moved around over the 

years until 1865 when it settled in Atlanta. 

After several changes in ownership it is 

now the official newspaper of the Georgia 

Baptist Convention. 

daughters. This seems plausible as at the time he 

was a widower with a young son and three 

younger daughters. In 1853, he married the 

eldest of the sisters, Jane E. Harris, and 

purchased a tract of land that stretched east 

along Big Shanty Road from Cherokee Street to 

McCollum Parkway from his father-in-law. They 

had four children, two of whom died in 

childhood: Benjamin, Julian, Martha and Mary. 

The land on Cherokee Street, where the 

first two Kennesaw Methodist Churches 

were built, was donated by Gaspard and 

Jane Carrie. Members of the Carrie family were 

among the charter members of the Kennesaw 

Methodist Church when it was established in 

February 1877. 

Gaspard and his son, Ben, were both justices 

of the peace in the community. Gaspard was 

postmaster from December 1865 to March 

1868, during which time he and other leading 

citizens were instrumental in changing the 

official post office name to Kennesaw. He later 

owned and operated, with the aid of his family, 

the railroad hotel that was successor to the Lacy 

Hotel of Civil War fame. 

Gaspard’s oldest son, John T. Carrie, served 

honorably in the Civil War, receiving the 

Confederate States of America’s Cross of Honor. 

Later, he was a railroader and then a merchant. 

An interesting footnote in John’s railroading 

days is that he survived a train wreck in the 

1880s when the train he was on derailed and 

plunged into a washout just south of Kennesaw 

killing many people on board. The caboose that 

John was in and one other railcar were the only 

railcars to remain on the tracks. 


Benjamin, son of Gaspard and Jane, and Lula 

Brintle Carrie lived in the third house from the 

corner on Cherokee Street. Since the Methodist 

preacher rotated Sundays within the circuit he 

stayed with them when he was in town. Ben 

worked for the postal service, served as mayor 

(1896-1897), and was an active member of 

Kennesaw Methodist Church and the 

Meyerhardt Masons. His obituary in the Mason 

newspaper stated that he was a member of the 

Acworth Lodge since 1890 and that in 1898 he 

began thirty-seven years of continuous service 

as secretary until his death in 1936. They had 

two daughters, Jennie and Helen. Lula passed 

away while their daughters were young. Jennie 

married and moved to Atlanta. and Helen 

moved to the house across the street, next to the 

church, after marrying Frank Burt. After Frank 

died she remained in the house until 1948 when 

her son moved her to Atlanta. In 1967, her son 

returned to Kennesaw and she returned in the 

early 1970s. 

There have been Carries and their descendants 

living continuously in Kennesaw since 1852. 

Through the years family occupations have 

included railroader, livery stable owner, printer, 

merchant, telegraph operator, minister, school 

teacher, homemaker, clerk, secretary, accountant, 

postal service, and other federal positions. 

T H E C H A S T A I N F A M I L Y 

The origins of the Chastain family in 

Kennesaw can be traced back to a French 

Huguenot physician named Pierre Chastain, 

who emigrated to the United States in 1700. 

Whitten Chastain was born in Kennesaw in 

1858, and married Katie Winn in 1880. They 

had nine children, including Troy Green 

Chastain, William “Bill” Dean Chastain, Sr, and 

Emory W. Chastain. 

Troy Chastain served as a Fulton County 

Commissioner from 1938 to 1942, and was 

instrumental in creating a new park originally 

called North Fulton Park. In 1944 Troy, then 

Supervisor of Public Buildings for Fulton 

County, unveiled a new amphitheater in the 

park. When Troy died in 1945 the park, now a 

well-known concert venue in the Atlanta, was 

renamed Chastain Memorial Park in his honor. 

Bill Chastain started a dairy farm near 

Kennesaw c. 1912. In time, the 300-plus-acre 

farm would spread from (modern) Chastain 

Road to Barrett Parkway to Kennesaw State 

University. In addition to running 40 milking 

cows (1924), he also grew most of his own feed, 

including corn. Later, cotton was also grown on 

the Chastain farm. 

Kennesaw resident E. W. Chastain, son of 

Emory W. Chastain, remembers working on the 

farm as a teenager during the Depression. He 

learned to plough behind an “old mule”. He’d 

drive a two-mule wagon from the farm to the 

cotton gin in Kennesaw (where the Southern 

Museum is located now). Each load would 

❖ 

Left: Emory W. Chastain milking a 

cow (“Old Pit”) on the Chastain farm 

in the 1930s. 

COURTESY OF E. W. CHASTAIN. 

Right: Emory Chastain (left) and 

“Uncle Bud” Chastain, 1930s. Emory 

Chastain farmed the Chastain farm 

property during the Depression. 

COURTESY OF E. W. CHASTAIN. 


contain 1,300 pounds of cotton. He remembers 

one time going down a steep hill, and the wagon 

hit the back of the mules, and the mules were 

spooked and started running. “My two brothers 

jumped, but I hung on”, says E. W. “Back in 

those days, the only brakes on those wagons 

were wooden brakes that provided friction on 

the back wheels. I hung on until we got to the 

bottom of the hill, pulling on the brake the 

whole time. I was lucky to have survived!” 

Over the years, parts of the farm were sold 

off, the last acres being sold in the early 1990s. 

“Chastain Road” is a modern-day reminder of 

the old farm. 

T H E K E N D R I C K A N D 

H A R R I S F A M I L I E S 

Robert Kendrick was the son of Abel 

Kendrick, a revolutionary soldier from South 

Carolina. Abel eventually moved to Hall County, 

Georgia, where he died in 1836. Robert followed 

his son Lemuel Kendrick, and daughter, Sophie 

Elizabeth Kendrick, wife of William David 

Harris, to Cobb County. Robert is not listed in 

the 1850 census but we know he was living in 

Cobb County in 1852 because he made his 

affidavit in Marietta stating that his father, a 

revolutionary pensioner, had died in 1836. 

Lemuel Kendrick moved to Big Shanty sometime 

in the 1840s. Sophie and William Harris moved 

to Cobb County in the 1840s but lived in an area 

of Marietta as shown on the 1850 census. They 

moved to Big Shanty sometime before the 1860 

census, where they are shown living next door to 

Lemuel’s family, which also included his parents, 

Robert and Elizabeth. 

Lemuel was a railroad contractor and at one 

time was the largest landowner in Big Shanty. He 

held the original lease for the Lacy Hotel and was 

the postmaster during the Civil War. After the war 

he lost much of his land and moved to Mitchell 

(now Carroll) County. He was married to Anne 

Stanley and the father of nine children: Isaiah, 

George, Thomas, Mary, John, Mariah, James, 

Ernest, and Almon. Many of his descendants 

remained in Cobb County. He died in 1889 and 

is buried in the Whitesburg Cemetery in 

Whitesburg, Carroll County, Georgia. 

Sophie Elizabeth Kendrick married William 

David Harris who was a farmer and worked for 

the railroad. He owned land near Kennesaw 

❖ 

Lemuel Kendrick and his wife are 

shown in this 1860s tintype 

photograph.When the General was 

stolen he rode his horse to Marietta in 

an to attempt to send a warning 

telegraph, but the wires had been cut 

north of Big Shanty. 

THE ED KENDRICK COLLECTION, COURTESY OF 

THE SOUTHERN MUSEUM OF CIVIL WAR AND 

LOCOMOTIVE HISTORY ARCHIVES AND LIBRARY. 


Mountain which he sold to William Root in 1863. 

The 1850 census shows them living in Marietta 

but they returned to Big Shanty by 1860. In July 

of 1861, Lemuel Kendrick deeded to his son, 

Isaiah, a tract of land containing 240 acres except 

for the acre containing the cemetery. This would 

be Morgan Hill Cemetery on Old Highway 41 just 

north of Swift-Cantrell Park. This land is deeded 

to him in trust for Sophie E. Harris, wife of 

William D. Harris. In May of 1875 a total of fifty 

acres of this land was sold to Elizabeth Harris 

McRea, daughter of Sophie and William Harris. 

She was the wife of William Lewis McRea. 

William David Harris, who was born in 

Wilkes County, served in the Civil War in 

Company C of the Phillips Legion Regiment 

where he enlisted at Camp McDonald on June 

11, 1861. He served until July 25, 1864, when 

he was discharged because he had reached the 

age of forty-five. Sophie Elizabeth and William 

D. Harris had five children: Elizabeth, David, 

Mary (Molly), Teressa, and Thomas M., Lemuel 

C. William died in August 1868 and Elizabeth 

died in 1889. Among their descendants today 

are members of the Scroggs and Shelton families 

of Kennesaw and surrounding areas. 

❖ 

Top, left: Alexander Fitzhugh Scroggs 

was the son of John Andrew Scroggs 

and Millie Beck, both of whom are 

buried in the Mars Hill Cemetery in 

Acworth. Alexander was born in 1858 

and died in 1957. 


Top, right: This late 19th century or 

early 20th century photo shows 

Margaret Elizabeth McRea Scroggs. 

She was the daughter of William 

Lewis McRea and Elizabeth David 

Harris. Margaret and Alexander 

Fitzhugh Scroggs are the grandparents 

of Rachel Shelton and the great 

grandparents of Steve Shelton, and his 

brothers, Michael E. Shelton and Wm. 

David Shelton. Margaret Elizabeth 

McRea was born in 1875 and died 

in 1945. 

COURTESY OF BRENDA SHELTON.. 

Left: This house stands at 2976 

North Main Street. It was built by 

the grandparents of Steve Shelton 

in 1904. 



CHAPTER FOUR 

1 9 0 0 - 1 9 5 0 

❖ 

This photo, taken around 1908, 

shows (from left to right) a store, 

the Nashville Chattanooga & 

St. Louis water tower, a nineteenthcentury 

railroad shanty, and the 

modern-day depot. 

Kennesaw prospered during the early part of the twentieth century, spurred on by cotton revenue, 

and Kennesaw’s importance as a shipping center. Many of the prominent buildings in town were 

constructed during this period, including the three-story Masonic Hall and dry goods store built by 

Mayor James Lewis (c. 1902), the Kennesaw State Bank building (c. 1905), and the W&A depot 

(1908). The Kennesaw State Bank was chartered about 1910, and capitalized for $25,000. 

However, despite a period of growth and prosperity, Kennesaw, like all towns, still experienced the 

darker side of human emotion. A murder occurred in 1904 that was described in a letter to Frank Burt 

from Troy G. Chastain dated November 20, 1904. Mr. Chastain writes: 

There was something [that] happened at Kennesaw [that] had never happened before in the history of 

Kennesaw. There was a young man (Butler) and a young woman (Green), also another woman (Wilcock). 

[Tonight] they were all returning in a carriage and as they were coming along the back of Ben Hill’s store, 

Mr. Butler pulled out his pistol and shot Miss Green through the head and then shot himself. She was dead, 

and he was dying. The cause of [this tragedy] is not known, but they put up at Will Roberts a few days ago 

as married. They were from Atlanta. 

Kennesaw continued to boom through the Teens and Twenties, but much of its wealth was wiped 

out by the boll weevil and the Depression of the 1930s. This period was difficult for the residents of 

Kennesaw. Many acknowledged their plight and took each day in stride. As one local saying of the time 

goes, “We were poor before the Depression, we were poor during the Depression, and we were poor 

after the Depression.” 

In spite of hard economic times, improvements continued to be made in the area. In 1932, the 

Shiloh Methodist Church built a new sanctuary that is still in use today. At the time it was a simple 


structure without a steeple or entranceway. 

These features were added later. In 1933, the 

nearby Kennesaw battlefield became part of 

Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park, 

providing the first tourist revenue for the City of 

Kennesaw. Then in 1936, with assistance from 

the Works Progress Administration, Kennesaw 

built a new jail at a total cost of $1,247. The 

structure, built of concrete and brick, consisted 

of two cells and a council chamber. 

S C H O O L S 

The 1908 Kennesaw School, which was built 

next to the City Cemetery, was an impressive 

school for a small rural community. It replaced 

an earlier wooden school that was in existence 

prior to 1903. The 1908 structure had four 

classrooms and an auditorium. Heat was 

provided by wood or coal burning stoves. There 

was no indoor plumbing, only outhouses. 

Electricity was not available until the early 

1920s. Some students who attended Kennesaw 

School lived downtown, walked to school, and 

went home for lunch. Students who lived in the 

country were bused in, and would bring their 

lunch with them. 

In 1932 the school was renamed Kennesaw 

Consolidated School, as the one room schools 

serving the outlying areas were being closed 

and merged with the larger consolidated 

schools. Black children continued to attend 

separate schools, often only one room, well into 

the 1960s. 

Tragedy struck on March 1, 1938, when the 

school burned to the ground, and a newspaper 

report of the time stated, “The fire was believed 

to have started as the result of a faulty flue in 

one of the ground floor class rooms of the twostory 

structure.” At the time of the fire, the 

school housed first through eighth grades with 

an enrollment of 384 students and employed 11 

teachers. It is reported that the students finished 

the school year at various locations around 

Kennesaw including local stores, a barber shop, 

and even the jailhouse. 

❖ 

Top, left: Undated photo of Shiloh 

Methodist Church, without a steeple 

or entranceway. 

COURTESY OF MARK SMITH. 

Top, right: A 2011 photo of Shiloh 

Methodist Church. 

COURTESY OF DAVID ERMUTLU AND 

GEORGEANN GRATTON. 

Below: A 1969 photo of the old 

Kennesaw jail built in 1936 as taken 

from what is now J. O. Stephenson 

Avenue. City Hall now occupies 

this location. 

COURTESY OF JOE BOZEMAN. 


F A C T 

Around 1905, the City Council 

authorized a “street boss” to make a trough 

and have it placed at the public pump for 

watering stock. 

C h a p t e r F o u r ✦ 1 9


F A C T 

On September 27, 1933, Kennesaw 

participated in the Cobb County Centennial 

Celebration in Marietta. A float representing 

1861, titled “Training for War at Camp 

McDonald” was entered by the Town of 

Kennesaw. Another representing 1862, 

titled “Behind the Lines at Home” was 

entered by the Kennesaw Chapter of the 

United Daughters of the Confederacy. 

THE FIRST HUNDRED YEARS A SHORT HISTORY OF COBB COUNTY, IN GEORGIA, 

BY SARAH BLACKWELL GABER TEMPLE, C. 1997, COBB LANDMARKS. 

❖ 

Top: A 1918 photo of the 

Kennesaw School. 

COURTESY OF GEORGIA ARCHIVES. 

Middle: Joe Bozeman, 

Horace Adams, Bob Bozeman, and 

Paul Skelton. 


Schools were segregated until the late 1960s, 

and most of Kennesaw’s African-American 

children attended school in local churches. 

Mrs. Juanita Byrd, wife of Reverend Hugh Byrd, 

remembers going to school in a one-room 

school house near Sardis and Main Streets, 

in the 1940s, and stated that “It was the first 

colored school in Kennesaw.” She recalls that 

Mr. Sardis was the person who started the 

school with Professor Graves as principal. 

A G R I C U L T U R E A N D 

K I N G C O T T O N 

Bottom: This undated photo shows the 

original wooden version of the 

Kennesaw School. 

COURTESY OF LIN CASON. 

With assistance from a WPA program grant 

a new school, still in use today by the Cobb 

County school system, was opened in March 

1939. During World War II, the school 

expanded to include High School students. In 

1946, a lunchroom was added to the school. 

During the first half of the twentieth 

century the main cash crop in Kennesaw was 

cotton with corn being a distant second. Cotton 

was taken to the cotton gin near Cherokee and 

Main Streets for processing, and then shipped 

from the Depot on the Nashville, Chattanooga 

and St. Louis Railroad (NC&StL RR). 

Around 1928, a cotton gin was built on 

the site of the present-day Southern Museum. 

The gin burned down during World War II, 

and was rebuilt. A 1992 interview with 

Maidie Knight, conducted by Genie Lee, 

discusses the fire and how goods were shipped 

on the railroad: 

In the fall of 1944 Dewey Knight was working 

for Mr. Lewis when the gin burned, and he had 

to keep Mr. Lewis from going back in the fire 

after things. Dewey Knight worked for Mr. Lewis 

for several years. Mr. Lewis got his hand cut off 

working in the cotton gin. 


Mr. Lewis also sold coal. It was delivered by 

train, backed on a spur track and unloaded right 

by the tracks where the Big Shanty Museum now 

stands. Mr. Lewis had a saw mill [in] back of and 

between his cotton gin and mill for grinding corn 

into meal. The mill was where Mr. Fry’s Cabinet 

shop now stands, next door to the Big Shanty 

Museum. (Note: The cabinet shop was torn down 

when the Southern Museum was built.) 

The typical business model for farming 

cotton and corn, especially in the African- 

American community, was sharecropping. 

Alfred Jackson, whose father was a Kennesaw 

sharecropper in the 1930s and 1940s describes 

the practice, telling us that the sharecropper 

(farmer) would rent farmland from the property 

owner. The farmer would then raise the crops. 

When the crops were harvested the farmer and 

the owner shared the food grown on the farm. 

After the fertilizer and other expenses were paid, 

the owner got half of the crop and the farmer 

got half. The sharecropper did all the work, the 

owner provided the land and the two shared the 

crop, thus the term sharecropping. 

During the Depression, farmers were better off 

than other people, because they could eat what 

they grew. Alfred Jackson described it this way: 

If you lived in the rural areas, you had plenty to 

eat, because you raised it yourself, but you didn’t 

have any money. You could earn maybe 50 cents a 

day for working from sun up to sun down. You 

could pick up a little change working as a cottonpicker. 

There wasn’t that much to buy. You raised 

your own meat, your milk, your butter, chickens. 

Most of what you bought was something like 

kerosene for lamps, and things that you needed to 

cook with, because you more than likely grew your 

own wheat, and you had your flour and your corn 

meal, and you raised your hogs and your chickens. 

So, you had plenty of food, but no money! 

Mrs. Byrd tells that, 

On the farm I learned to do everything but 

plough. I could never keep a straight line with a 

plough. I learned how to crosscut saw and how to 

cut wood. I used to milk the cow and I churned the 

butter. In our garden, we grew our own vegetables. 

She also remembers picking cotton on the 

Ellison farm, where McCollum Airport is today, 

...those rows used to be so long, you couldn’t 

even see the end of it. 

❖ 

Above: Sardis School, date unknown. 


Below: This 1923 photo shows 

the original brick school in 

the background. 

COURTESY OF VIVIAN CHANDLER LEE. 

Reverend Hugh Byrd, of Sardis Baptist Church, 

and his wife Juanita, describe farming and cotton 

growing in Kennesaw during the mid-part of the 

twentieth century. Reverend Byrd recalls, 

...the whole world was white with 

cotton…until 1946 or so, there was cotton 

everywhere in Kennesaw. 


❖ 

This 1930s photo was taken on Big 

Shanty Road. It shows (left to right) 

Frank Johnson, Fred Jackson, and 

Ed Johnson. 

COURTESY OF ALFRED JACKSON. 

Reverend Byrd tells us that, 

After 1946-1947, they stopped planting cotton 

in Kennesaw. After World War II, everything 

changing drastically. 

He went on to say, 

Many factors led to the downfall of cotton as 

a cash crop in Kennesaw, including the ability 

to make a profit from the crop: lower profit 

margins, increased urbanization, and competing 

industries, but the biggest reason was probably 

the boll weevil. ...A lot of farms were just wiped 

out by the boll weevil. 

According to Mrs. Byrd, 

The boll weevil would get in a cotton boll 

before it opened, and...nourish itself off that 

cotton boll. It never would open…they’d just rot. 

T R A N S P O R T A T I O N 

At the turn of the century, the primary mode 

of transportation in the still-rural community 

was by horse, and horse drawn wagons. 

Automobiles slowly started appearing, and in 

1911, the city council established an eightmiles-per-hour 

speed limit. 

In the 1920s, Main Street was reconfigured and 

paved, as it became part of the Dixie Highway, 

which was the first major road connecting the 

North to the South from Michigan to Florida. With 

its completion, at the end of WWI, the local East 

and West routes of the Dixie Highway joined in 

Cartersville, and comprised one route through 

Acworth, Kennesaw, Marietta, and Atlanta, where 

the highway again split. All who travelled the 

Dixie Highway through this part of Georgia passed 

through downtown Kennesaw bringing tourism 

and a need for gas stations and auto repair shops. 

The railroad remained a vital part of the community 

for both passengers and freight. Known 

as the Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis 

Railroad (NC&StL RR) during this time, trains 

brought dry goods, groceries and other supplies 

to town. Cotton and milk were common items 

shipped from Kennesaw. Passengers could travel 

to or from Atlanta for work or shopping by way 

of the railroad. There were three trains from 

Kennesaw to Atlanta in the morning and two 

trains from Atlanta to Kennesaw in the afternoon. 

Commuter ticket books cost $3.00 a week. 

T E C H N O L O G Y 

In addition to the automobile, other forms of 

technology were starting to have an impact on 

Kennesaw in the early part of the twentieth 

century. In 1917 the former mayor, James Lewis, 

set up an electrical generator in the basement of his 

warehouse, which was located near the railroad 

tracks where the Southern Museum of Civil War 

and Locomotive History is located today. The 

generators ran until 9:00 p.m. when the power 

would switch over to batteries. At the same time 

the city paid Lewis to install street lights for 

the downtown area. Eventually, the electrical 

equipment was turned over to Georgia Power. 

Another form of technology which came 

upon the scene in the 1910s was the telephone. 

Southern Bell Telephone Company began 

erecting poles and stringing lines, and soon 

made it possible for telephone communication 

between Kennesaw and Acworth. 

G O V E R N M E N T 

During the first half of the twentieth century, 

family names still familiar to Kennesaw citizens 

today can be found in the list of mayors and 

councilmen, including Carrie, Pritchard, Lewis, 

Skelton, Hildebrand, Chalker and Bozeman. The 

government in those days was very much focused 

on the adage “the less government, the better.” 

A preferred approach by many even today. Also, 


as in today’s world, funding for the city was a 

constant problem. City leaders struggled with 

how to raise funds for operations. It was not 

until the second half of the century that the 

leaders learned how to administer taxes to fund 

government However, taxation did exist as early 

as the 1900s. In 1911 the city began charging 

the NC&StL railroad $100 a year for using water 

based on a twenty cents per thousand valuation. 

T H E B Y R D F A M I L Y 

Reverend Hugh Byrd moved to Kennesaw in 

the early 1950s, but he remembers coming here 

in the 1940s to play baseball at Adams Park. 

At the time he lived in the Liberty Hill area of 

Canton and recalls one particular game: 

Reverend Byrd joined the army in 1952, and 

served in Korea. He married Juanita Daniels, 

a Kennesaw resident, in 1954. In 1955 he got 

out of the army and began looking for a job. 

Reverend Byrd remembers that times were 

tough. The country was in a recession then just 

like it is now and you “couldn’t buy a job”. He 

tells that, “The City of Kennesaw had a flat bed 

[stake] garbage truck. We called it a cattle truck. 

So I got a job as a garbage man in Kennesaw.” 

In the early 1970s, Reverend Byrd was called 

to the ministry at Sardis Baptist Church, first as 

a deacon, and then as a minister. 

Juanita Byrd was the daughter of one of the 

Tanner girls. The Tanner girls were the nine 

daughters of A. J. Tanner and Emma Kilgore 

❖ 

Top, left: George W. Prichard, 

mayor of Kennesaw in 1898, 

1919, and 1920. 

COURTESY OF THE CITY OF KENNESAW. 

Top, right: Reverend Hugh and 

Juanita Byrd at the 2011 Kennesaw 

Founding Family Luncheon. 



Below: In this photo taken around 

World War I, Emma Tanner (center), 

grandmother of Juanita Daniels Byrd, 

is pictured. 


We had a little baseball team up in Canton. A 

man named Buster Young had a pickup truck. It 

was summertime, and he’d load all of us young 

kids in the truck, and we’d go play ball some place. 

Once, we had a game planned at Acworth. When 

we got to Acworth, there had been some kind of 

miscommunication, and Acworth was playing in 

Cartersville…. They managed to get a call down 

to the team in Kennesaw…and so we came down 

to Kennesaw, and played baseball at Adams Park. 

I think I struck out all three times I was at bat. 


Tanner. Mrs. Lucille Tanner McAfee, a midwife, 

is famous in local lore for delivering more 

than four hundred babies in Cobb County over 

the span of her career. Juanita Daniels’ father, 

D. Daniels, was the first person to install a street 

light in Kennesaw. 

Juanita thinks back fondly on her time 

in Kennesaw: 

People in Kennesaw have always been very 

good to me. We had a great time growing up, and 

then I met this old man over here [Reverend 

Byrd]. He was a handsome rascal. I thought he 

was the best looking man around…. I’ve always 

said that Kennesaw was the best place to live. 

T H E J A C K S O N F A M I L Y 

❖ 

Above: Alfred Jackson in the Navy. 

COURTESY OF ALFRED JACKSON. 

Below: Alfred Jackson with Jenelle 

Johnson at the 2011 Kennesaw 

Founding Families Luncheon. 



Fred and Eros Jackson moved to the 

Kennesaw area in 1930, from Milwaukee, 

Wisconsin. Their son, Alfred Jackson, was about 

four years old at the time. Fred Jackson worked 

as a sharecropper in the 1930s and 1940s. 

Alfred went to church at Mount Zion A.M.E. 

Church, where he also attended school. According 

to Alfred, “all the activity in the community 

centered around the church.” The Mt Zion School 

was grades 1-7 and at the time, there was only one 

black high school in Cobb County, located in 

Marietta. There were no buses, everyone was on 

their own to get to and from school and Mr. 

Jackson notes that “regarding the High School…in 

terms of accreditation, it wouldn’t have passed.” 

In 1944, Alfred was drafted into the navy and 

was eventually assigned to the heavy cruiser 

USS Portland, which saw action all over the South 

Pacific, including the Philippines, Corregidor, 

and off the coast of China. He was present on the 

USS Portland during the Japanese surrender 

ceremony at Truk Atoll. Japanese Lieutenant 

General Shunzaburo Mugikura surrendered the 

Caroline Islands to Vice Admiral George D. 

Murray on September 2, 1945, and he notes 

that if the surrender hadn’t occurred when it did, 

“the next morning, we were going to Tokyo” for 

shelling operations. 

After the war, Alfred returned to Kennesaw, 

and worked as a farmer with his father. He later 

worked at both Dobbins Air Force Base and 

Lockheed. Jackson reflects on the sense of 

community growing up in Kennesaw in the 1930s: 

If a person got sick, and they were out there 

farming, ...if it was a woman, maybe [one] woman 

would go today, cook, and clean up for her. 

Maybe the next day, another one would go and do 

the washing. The next day, another would go and 

do the ironing. If it was a man, the men would go 

there, and work his crop out, one would go today, 

one would go tomorrow. If somebody died, 

everyone in the community would go and dig 

the grave. 


My family never had any problems. Most of 

our neighbors were white until we moved up 

on Bells Ferry. We never had any problems in 

the community. Neighbors shared, black and 

white…and my parents and grandparents were 

well respected…I’ve been halfway around the 

world, and if I had to make a choice, I’d choose 

Kennesaw every time. 

1957, and Donald’s son, Randy, lived in the 

house between Elma and Laura from 1957 until 

1962 when he moved to the corner of Big 

Shanty Road and Carrie Drive. 

T H E L E O N A R D F A M I L Y 

Donald Leonard moved to Kennesaw, as a 

young boy, from Cherokee County in the mid to 

late 1930s. He and his family were area farmers 

until WWII when his mother, a widow, went 

to work at the Bell Bomber Plant in Marietta. 

Donald, the youngest of eight children, has 

remained in Kennesaw and as an adult became 

active in the community for many years. In the 

late 1940s, he was batboy for the Kennesaw 

baseball team, and then in the 1950s, he was a 

pitcher for Kennesaw’s semi-pro baseball team. 

He served on the Board of Directors for the 

Kennesaw Volunteer Fire Department until it 

was taken over by the Cobb County Fire 

Department in 1971. He was one of the leaders 

in establishing the girls softball league at Adams 

Park and was President of the league for several 

years. His wife, Dorothy Chandler Leonard, was 

also active in the community, participating in 

the PTA, the girls softball league, and running 

for City Council around 1965. 

The Leonard family has lived on Old 41 

Highway across the road from the Willy Cantrell 

Farm, now Swift-Cantrell Park, for many years. 

Laura Leonard lived there from the 1950s until 

her death in 1973. Her daughter, Elma Leonard 

Wilbur, still lives on Old 41 Highway in the 

house she and her husband Oliver built around 

T H E E L L I S O N F A M I L Y 

The Ellison family immigrated to America 

from Great Britain in 1744. They settled in 

Baltimore, Maryland, but later moved to 

Virginia. They fought in the Revolutionary War. 

In 1806 the family moved to South Carolina 

and eventually moved westward to Cherokee 

County, Georgia. It was there that Tom Daniel 

Ellison was born in 1879. He married Belle 

Duncan in 1903 and rented a big, two-story 

farmhouse on the Roberts property on Roberts 

Road near the Dixie Highway in Kennesaw. 

Seven of their nine children were born at this 

location. In 1919, Tom bought 104 acres with a 

big two-story white frame house and several 

outbuildings for a sum of $7,500. Oil lamps 

were used for light because electricity did not 

come into the area until 1935. Two more sons 

were born after the move. The house was built 

in 1812 by Thomas F. Summers and the main 

structure was put together with wood pegs. The 

house was used as a hospital during the Civil 

War. This property was sold to Cobb County in 

1962 for the McCollum Airport. 

The family of five boys and four girls all 

worked on the farm. They raised cotton, corn, 

sweet potatoes, fruit trees, cows and pigs. Tom 

❖ 

Left: The Late 1940s Kennesaw 

baseball team with Donald Leonard, 

bat boy, sitting in front row. 


Right: A 1959 photo taken at 

Kennesaw Mountain Battlefield Park. 

Shown in the photo are Dot Chandler 

Leonard, Carole Leonard Nunn, 

Donald Leonard, and Randy Leonard. 

COURTESY OF RANDY LEONARD. 


❖ 

Above: A 1930s photo of the 

Summers/Ellison house. 


Below: T. D. Ellison homestead about 

1920. It was used as a hospital during 

Civil War. Located on the current site 

of McCollum airport near the western 

edge of the runway 

COURTESY OF THE GEORGIA ARCHIVES. 

Ellison was very prominent in the Kennesaw 

area and Cobb County. He was so well thought 

of, that it was not unusual for people to come to 

him, to discuss politics and ask for advice on 

which candidate to vote for. Four of his sons 

remained in the Kennesaw area where they 

farmed. Three of them were also dairymen. 

His son, Jack Ellison, married Edith Knox in 

1928. They had a farm and dairy just two miles 

south of the old home place on the Dixie 

Highway. He farmed 420 acres while raising 4 

four girls and 1 one boy. This property was later 

sold to the Kennesaw Shopping Center and 

Cowboys now sits where the farm house and 

dairy barn were located. Their children are 

Betty, Nell, Dot, Robert, and Helen. All of their 

children worked on the farm, working in pairs 

until they were big enough to work by themselves. 

Robert remembers getting up at 4:00 

a.m. to milk the cows, eat breakfast, catch the 

bus to school, return home in the afternoon to 

work on the farm, milk again and then still have 

homework to finish before bed. 

Jack Ellison was also a prominent citizen in 

the Kennesaw area. He served on the Board of 

Education and was a Trustee at Kennesaw United 

Methodist Church. His son remembers a story 

about his father and the Kennesaw School. The 

principal of the school came and told him that 

they were going to have to close the school 

because they could not get any coal to keep the 

school warm. Jack told the principal to keep the 

doors open and he would see that enough wood 

would be cut and brought to the school to keep 

the school warm. He kept cutting wood and 

hauling it to the school until coal could be found. 

Three of Jack Ellison’s five children—Nell 

Hughes, Dot Russell, and Robert Ellison—still 

live in the Kennesaw area. His eldest, Betty Jean 

Ragsdale, is deceased and Helen Harrison lives in 

Atlanta. Robert has a business, Ellison & Ellison 

Co., Inc., on Moon Station Road in Kennesaw. 

T H E F R E Y F A M I L Y 

The Frey family arrived in America at 

Charleston, South Carolina, in 1753, and then settled 

in Lexington, South Carolina. A century later 

the Frey family relocated to Cobb County, Georgia. 

John Henry Frey, who married Martha Jane 

Beasley, owned a syrup mill and woodyard in 

Marietta, Georgia. He also ran a farm on Roswell 


Road where they produced wheat, corn, sugarcane 

and cotton. John Henry and Martha Jane 

had seven children, one of whom was John 

Steve Frey, Sr., Steve married Lena Bentley and 

they had three children: John Steve, Jr., Emma 

Jane, and Ralph Andrew. Both boys served in 

World War II. John as a Army Air Corp pilot and 

Ralph in the U.S. Coast Guard. 

Steve, Sr., ran a grocery store on the Marietta 

Square from 1923 to 1943. During the 

Depression he continued to fill grocery orders 

for those in extreme financial difficulties. Later, 

as jobs and money became available, their 

grocery bills were paid. In 1945, Steve Frey 

sold his grocery store and bought a 321 acre 

farm in Kennesaw located at the current site 

of Kennesaw State University. In 1946, Lena 

Bentley Frey bought the property known as 

100 North Fourlane Highway with her family 

inheritance. It is now the site of the Big Chicken 

and is leased by Kentucky Fried Chicken from 

the family of Steve and Lena Frey. 

In 1946 the family moved from Marietta to 

the farm in Kennesaw. They planted corn, peas, 

wheat, and cotton, and, with the help of tenant 

farmers who also lived on the farm, raised cattle. 

Steve Frey bought the cotton gin and warehouse 

in downtown Kennesaw from the Lewis 

family and for many years Steve, John, and 

Ralph ginned cotton, sold coal, feed, seed and 

fertilizer. During ginning season many farmers 

would bring their cotton in by mule, wagon and 

trucks. Since the farmers would spend the day 

at the cotton gin, the Frey’s would provide them 

with sandwiches and drinks. 

After the collapse of the cotton market in 

1958, the cotton gin building was used as an 

office by John and Ralph Frey in their real estate 

and construction business. The warehouse was 

converted to the Old Mill Cabinet Company. 

The cotton gin was later donated by the Frey 

family to the City of Kennesaw to serve as a 

home for the General. This site later became the 

location of the new Southern Museum of Civil 

War and Locomotive History, and is still home 

to the General. 

In 1959 the Frey family donated Frey Lake 

and some surrounding property to Cobb County 

for the golf course which is now owned by 

Pinetree Country Club. 

In the 1970s Mr. Frey, along with sons 

John and Ralph, sold the family farm to the 

developers Moor and Draper. They later sold the 

property to the Board of Regents for Kennesaw 

Junior College, now known as Kennesaw State 

University. Frey Road, that runs along the 

campus edge, is a reminder and tribute to the 

Frey Family and the farm that is no more. 

Steve Frey later served twenty years as 

deputy sheriff for Cobb County. John Frey went 

on to build the Bentley Rare Book Room at 

Kennesaw State University. He also served 

eight years on the Cobb County School Board 

and Frey Elementary School is named in his 

honor. John’s wife, Nina, served on the board 

of Kennesaw State University for nearly 

two decades, during which time she was 

active in fundraising for the college. In 1984 

the John and Nina Frey Scholarship Fund 

was established for students who plan to 

become teachers. 

The Frey family still lives in Cobb County 

and has been active in both commercial and 

residential construction for over fifty years. 

❖ 

A photo of the Frey cotton gin in 

Kennesaw. The photo was taken 

around 1940. The gin occupied the 

site of the current museum. 

COURTESY OF THE SOUTHERN MUSEUM OF THE 

CIVIL WAR AND LOCOMOTIVE HISTORY 

ARCHIVES & LIBRARY. 


CHAPTER FIVE 

1 9 5 0 - 2 0 0 0 

❖ 

The Kennesaw Police Department 

sponsored a summer series of gun 

safety classes for the public following 

the enactment of the gun law. 

Residents of all ages participated in 

the classes. As of June 13, 1983, 

more than four hundred people had 

participated in the classes. 

COURTESY OF MIKE AND APRIL SAINE. THE 

PICTURE AND ARTICLE WERE PUBLISHED BY 

THE MARIETTA DAILY JOURNAL ON MONDAY, 

JUNE 13, 1983. 

Starting in the late 1950s, this small and still rural town would become nationally and 

internationally prominent. In 1957, Disney released the movie, The Great Locomotive Chase, starring 

Fess Parker, reeducating the nation about the events that had occurred here in 1862. On April 14, 

1962, the General retraced its run from Kennesaw (Big Shanty) to Chattanooga, under its own 

steam, garnering worldwide attention. Then, on February 19, 1972, after a prolonged court battle 

with the City of Chattanooga, the General was placed on permanent display in the soon to open 

Big Shanty Museum, now the Southern Museum of Civil War and Locomotive History. Finally, on 

May 1, 1982, the Kennesaw City Council unanimously passed a gun law that stated: 

Every head of household residing in the City Limits of the City of Kennesaw is required to maintain a 

fire arm, together with ammunition therefor. 

The early 1950s brought mostly bad news for the City of Kennesaw. The last cotton gin closed, 

the Kennesaw State Bank closed its doors in 1952, and Highway 41 by-passed the city center. 

The population of Kennesaw in 1950 was 564, a mere sixty-four people more than the 1908 

city census. 

In contrast, during this same time period, there were some signs of economic development in 

Kennesaw. The Vulcan Materials Company opened its Kennesaw operation in 1953. McCollum 

Airport opened in 1960, named after Hurbert McCollum, a Cobb County Commissioner in 1950s 

and 1960s. Many people in the Kennesaw area commuted to Lockheed or Dobbins Air Force Base 

in Marietta on a daily basis. 

During the 1960s-1970s, Kennesaw still didn’t experience a great surge in population or 

economic growth. However, significant events occurred which would be indicative of future 

growth. These included the return of the General to Kennesaw and the opening of nearby Kennesaw 

State University. 


A new post office was dedicated on March 

28, 1964. The bulletin for the event noted: 

A post office known as Kennesaw was 

established August 8, 1853, and the name was 

changed to “Moon’s” on June 6, 1854. Again on 

April 30, 1859, the name was changed, this time 

to “Big Shanty,” but on January, 25, 1869, the 

original name of “Kennesaw” was restored to 

the office. 

In the 1980s-1990s, Kennesaw’s population 

began to increase rapidly and the city began to 

thrive economically as Town Center Mall 

opened near the city limits in 1986. Kennesaw 

continued its transformation from a sleepy rural 

town to a key part of the growing Atlanta 

Metropolitan area as evidenced by population 

growth from 5,095 in 1980 to 21,675 in 2000. 

T H E 1 9 6 2 C E N T E N N I A L R U N 

O F T H E G E N E R A L 

On April 14, 1962, thanks to the efforts of the 

Louisville & Nashville Railroad, the reconditioned 

General ran under its own steam from Tilford Yard 

in Atlanta to Chattanooga. This special one-time 

run was in commemoration of the hundredth 

anniversary of the Andrew’s Raid on April 12, 

1862. The trip from Atlanta to Chattanooga took 

❖ 

Top: Postmaster Helen Odom receives 

the American flag at the dedication of 

the new post office on March 28, 

1964. Helen used to push a small cart 

over to the railroad depot daily to 

pick up mail from incoming trains. 

Ms. Odom has the distinguished honor 

of being the first female postmaster in 

the United States. 

COURTESY OF HELEN ODOM. 

Middle: Joe Bozeman (center) 

entertains Helen Odum and grandson, 

Jay Bland, at the 2011 Founding 

Families luncheon. 



Bottom: Students chat with the 

fire chief in 1965. The former fire 

station was located on Cherokee Street 

at the site of the city’s water tower. 

The water tower still exists and the 

former station is now the Bobby 

Grant police annex. City fire services 

were transferred to Cobb County 

in 1976. 


C h a p t e r F i v e ✦ 2 9

❖ 

Top: “Then….” A truck stuck on the 

railroad crossing. Note the old City 

Hall right center. 

COURTESY OF DENT MYERS. 

Middle: “…And Now.” A truck 

stuck on the railroad crossing on 

July 8, 2010, minutes before the 

ribbon-cutting ceremony for the 

pedestrian underpass. Stuck trucks 

are a common occurrence at this 

crossing. In most instances the 

engineers are able to bring the trains 

to a safe stop without incident. 

COURTESY OF RON HUFFMAN. 

Bottom: This undated photo shows 

Mark Smith (standing) and Bobby 

Grant, local businessman, (seated, 

middle). Mark Smith was the author 

of a serialized history of Kennesaw 

that appeared in the Kennesaw 

Gazette in 1979-80s. 

COURTESY OF MARK SMITH. 


❖ 

Top: A 1993 photo of the “new” city 

hall, before the brick sign was 

installed, and before the City Hall 

expansion occurred. Note the two 

maintenance workers posing for the 

picture on the roof. 


Middle: This photo of the 1962 

centennial run of the General shows 

part of the crowd gathered to see the 

General as it pulled up to the depot in 

Kennesaw. The photo was taken by 

C. Norman Beasley, L&N Railroad. 

COURTESY OF THE SOUTHERN MUSEUM OF CIVIL 

WAR AND LOCOMOTIVE HISTORY. 

Bottom: “The Last Run. “ A 1963 

photo of the General under its own 

steam in Kennesaw. 

COURTESY OF RANDY LEONARD. 


❖ 

Below: The construction at Sardis 

Baptist Church in 1974, with 

Reverend Hugh Byrd in the doorway. 

COURTESY OF THE REVEREND HUGH BYRD. 

Bottom: The historic Kennesaw 

Methodist Church located on 

Cherokee Street near the 

museum, 2011. 



about eight hours, and the General is reported to 

have reached a top speed of fifty miles per hour 

between Ringgold and Chattanooga. 

The July 1962 issue of Trains magazine 

estimated that one hundred thousand people 

viewed the centennial run of the General. This 

included crowds of 10,000 in Kennesaw where 

the 1862 train was originally stolen, and 12,000 

in Ringgold where the chase ended. Kennesaw 

went so far as to erect false storefronts on the 

west side of Main Street to give the town a fuller 

and more “old time” feeling. 

The General retraced its route one more time, 

but appeared to much smaller crowds. That run, 

in 1963, would be the last time that the General 

traveled from Atlanta to Chattanooga under its 

own steam. 

K E N N E S A W S T A T E 

U N I V E R S I T Y 

Having been chartered by the State of 

Georgia in October 1963, the Kennesaw Junior 

College opened its doors for 1,014 students in 

September 1966. Classes were initially held at 

Southern Technical Institute and at the Marietta 

Housing Authority in Marietta. Then in early 

1967 the college officially moved to the current 

campus site on Chastain Road near I-75. Nine 

years later, in 1976, the college became a fouryear 

institution, and was renamed Kennesaw 

College in 1977. Today it has reached university 

status and is known as Kennesaw State 

University and ranks 3rd in the state in size. 

Although the university is not within the city 

limits, its creation has had a significant impact 

on the city. 

E X P A N S I O N O F C H U R C H E S 

As Kennesaw continued to grow, prominent 

churches in the area grew along with the town. 

On October 26, 1969, the First Baptist Church, 

located on North Main Street, dedicated its 

new sanctuary that seats six hundred people. 

In March 1974, the Sardis Missionary Baptist 

Church completed its new sanctuary on 

South Main Street. Finally in 1981, the 

Kennesaw United Methodist Church moved 

from Cherokee Street to Ben King Road where 

its new sanctuary was completed in 1982. 

The church is currently undergoing its third 

building expansion. Project completion is 

expected in Spring 2012. 

R E T U R N O F T H E 

G E N E R A L T O K E N N E S A W 

After the centennial run of the General in 

1962, it was returned to Chattanooga for 

display in Union Station. In February 1967, 

the L&N Railroad announced its intentions to 

give the General to the State of Georgia. This 

kicked off a three-year court battle between 

Chattanooga and the L&N Railroad which 

went all of the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. 

In November 1970 the Supreme Court refused 

to overturn a lower court ruling granting 

ownership of the General to the L&N Railroad. 


On February 18, 1972, the General was 

presented to the State of Georgia by the L&N 

Railroad. Later that day, it was moved to 

Kennesaw on a railroad flatcar, transferred to 

the back of a truck, and by the next day, was 

eased into the back of the Big Shanty Museum. 

On April 12, 1972, the Big Shanty Museum 

(now Southern Museum of Civil War and 

Locomotive History) opened to the public in 

the old Frey cotton gin. The General had come 

home to Kennesaw! 

W I L D M A N ’ S C I V I L W A R 

S U R P L U S S H O P 

In 1971, Dent Myers opened Wildman’s Civil 

War Surplus Shop in the old historic Kennesaw 

State Bank building on Main Street. Known 

for his confederate disposition and limited 

government stance on issues, the pistol toting 

Dent is probably the most well-known business 

owner in the City of Kennesaw. He is frequently 

sought out as a source of information on the 

Kennesaw Gun Law, the Civil War, and the 

General. In the 1960s and 1970s, Dent was a 

tireless advocate of returning the General to 

Kennesaw. In this same time period he was 

instrumental in organizing and participating in 

numerous Civil War reenactments in the area. 

The store sells Civil War artifacts, as well as 

books on history and politics. Dent has provided 

technical advice, uniforms and other Civil War 

equipment for a number of big screen and 

television movies. He tells us some of these 

include Red Runs the River; The Martha Berry Story; 

Gold Is Where You Find It; Stonewall Jackson’s Way; 

Riding the Rails with Johnny Cash; The Loyal & The 

Lost; The Ordeal of Dr. Mudd with Dennis Weaver; 

Million Dollar Dixie Deliverance; The Last Stop with 

Troy Donahue; North/South, Part 2; Dove & the 

Jackel; Dances With Wolves; Son of the Morning Star; 

Ironclads; Death Knell Atlanta; Andersonville; and 

The Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All. 

❖ 

Top: The General at the depot in 

Kennesaw, 1972. 

COURTESY OF COLONEL JAMES BOGLE. 

Middle: This 1970s photo of the Big 

Shanty Museum shows Richard 

Burger and his son Will Burger posing 

by the cannon that used to sit out 

front of the Museum. 

COURTESY OF CHERYL BURGER. 

Bottom: Dent Myers in front of his 

store, date unknown. 



F A C T 

The General was displayed in Union 

Station, Chattanooga, Tennessee, from 

1901 to 1961. 


success. The Police department sponsored a 

food booth with a fish fry, chicken, and 

coleslaw. Money made from this activity was 

used to help needy families at Christmas, with 

Chief Ruble dressing up as Santa to deliver 

presents on Christmas Eve. 

S C H O O L S 

❖ 

Top: General Dent Myers and soldiers 

take a break while preparing 

fortifications in anticipation of a 

Yankee offensive during Trade Days. 


Above: Governor Lester Maddox 

outside of Wildman’s Civil War 

Surplus Shop. 


Right: Wild West Shootout Actors 

played by Kennesaw police officers. 

COURTESY OF MIKE AND APRIL SAINE. 

T R A D E 

D A Y S 

Trade Days started in 1975 as a way to promote 

businesses in downtown Kennesaw. The 

early Trade Days would include a parade, local 

business booths, a wild west style shoot out performed 

by the Kennesaw Police Department, 

Civil War reenactments, food booths and other 

hometown activities, including performances by 

the Little General Cloggers. It was a huge success 

and continued for several years with the 

Police Department Shootouts near the Depot 

and Museum and Dent Myers’ Civil War reenactments 

in a field near Old Highway 41 and 

Cobb Parkway-where Electric Cowboys and 

Hooter’s sit today. It was a hometown event and 

everyone in the community worked to make it a 

In 1959, North Cobb High School opened its 

doors, serving students from the Kennesaw and 

Acworth areas. Awtrey Middle School opened in 

1965, leaving the old Kennesaw Consolidated 

School. The old school was renamed Kennesaw 

Elementary School serving students in Grades 1 

to 5, it would later include Kindergarten. Big 

Shanty opened its doors in the fall of 1968, 

serving students in Grades 1 thru 6. In the Fall 

of 1979, Pine Mountain Middle School opened 

and Baker Elementary School opened its doors 

in the Fall of 1990. 

As the area continued to grow, Kennesaw 

Elementary School on Jiles Road was opened in 

1991, and the old Kennesaw Elementary 

School, on Keene Street, was converted to 

other educational needs of the Cobb 

County system as the Martha Moore Education 

Center now housing the county’s Home 

Study Program. As the high school population 

was continuing to grow a second high 

school, Kennesaw Mountain High School, 

opened in the Fall of 2000. 

By 2003, there had been such phenomenal 

growth in the Kennesaw area that a redistricting 

plan took place resulting in the creation of 

separate Primary and Intermediate schools. 

The kindergarten, first and second grades 

from Kennesaw Elementary and Big Shanty 

were combined and began attending school 


at the Kennesaw Elementary (Primary) site 

on Jiles Road; and third, fourth and fifth 

grades started attending classes at Big 

Shanty Elementary (Intermediate) site on Ben 

King Road. 

T H E G U N L A W 

Kennesaw rocked the world on May 1, 1982, 

when the Kennesaw City Council unanimously 

passed a law requiring all heads of households 

to maintain a firearm and ammunition. The law 

was passed partly in response to a 1981 law 

passed in Morton Grove, Illinois, banning 

private possession of handguns. Since passage 

of the “gun” law, the burglary rate in Kennesaw 


F A C T 

The Little General Cloggers group was 

formed in March of 1972 by Kenneth and 

Olivia Smathers to help celebrate the return 

of the General to Kennesaw. Thirty-nine 

years later the group continues performing 

the traditional mountain routines we know 

as “clogging.” They are dedicated to the 

perpetuation of the American mountain 

heritage using dance and have performed 

all over the world. In their 39 years they 

have performed at the Grand Ole Opry for 

32 years, the Macy’s Parade, the 1996 

Olympics, the White House three times, 

and numerous TV shows and festivals. 

has gone down significantly, while the rate in 

Morton Grove has gone up. 

In 1981, Kennesaw had 55 burglaries, while 

in 1982-1984 the burglary rate fell to an average 

of twenty. 

As of 2000, the burglary rate in Kennesaw 

was even lower making it one of the safest 

cities of its size in the United States. This is 

even more astonishing given that Kennesaw 

has quadrupled in size since passage of the 

gun law. Former Mayor J. O. Stephenson, a 

city councilman when the gun law passed, has 

said that, “With the fast growth of the 

population, and the location of the city… 

all indications are that the crime rate should 

have gone up. Instead it has gone down a 

tremendous amount.” 

L A C Y H O T E L 

A R C H A E O L O G I C A L 

D I G S 

The Lacy Hotel was the starting point of the 

1862 Andrews Raid, and was burned to the 

ground by Sherman’s forces in November 1864. 

There have been four archaeological digs in an 

attempt to find its foundations. Three of these 

digs were led by Dr. Betty Smith of Kennesaw 

State University. The first occurred in 1978, and 

involved students from South Cobb High 

School. The second and third, occurring in 

1997 and 1998, were conducted by Dr. Smith 

from KSU. 

❖ 

Left: Olivia Smathers, one of the 

founders of the Little General 

Cloggers, participates in the Big 

Shanty Festival parade in 1993. The 

Little General Cloggers have appeared 

at the Grand Old Opry for 32 years, 

at the White House three times, in 

numerous TV shows, in the 1996 

Olympics in Atlanta, and much more. 


Right: Bruce Erion, former and famed 

helicopter pilot for 11 Alive News, 

visits with Kennesaw Elementary 

School students in September 1988. 

COURTESY OF KENNESAW ELEMENTARY 

SCHOOL PTA. 


O R D I N A N C E - C I T Y O F K E N N E S A W 

The City of Kennesaw does hereby adopt an ordinance amending the Code of Ordinances, and particularly Chapter 8, Civil 

Defense, and Disaster Relief, by adding a new section to be numbered "Section 8-10", as follows: 

Section 8-10. In order to provide for the civil defense of the City of Kennesaw, and further in order to provide for and protect 

the safety, security and general welfare of the City and its inhabitants, pursuant to the Charter of the City of Kennesaw, the 

following ordinance is adopted, to wit: 

(1) Every head of household residing in the City Limits of the City of Kennesaw is required to maintain a fire arm, together with 

ammunition therefor. 

(2) Exempt from the effect of said ordinance are those heads of households who suffer a physical disability which would prohibit 

them from using such a fire arm. Further exempt from the effect of said ordinance are those heads of households who 

conscientiously oppose fire arms as a result of religious doctrine or belief, or persons convicted of a felony. 

(3) This ordinance shall become effective ten (10) days from the date of adoption. 

Darvin R. Purdy, Mayor 

March 15, 1982 

A M E N D M E N T T O F I R E A R M S O R D I N A N C E 

The Mayor and City council of the City of Kennesaw in a special called meeting, does hereby adopt an amendment to Section 

8-10 by striking section (2) thereof and inserting in lieu thereof the following: 

(2) Exempt from the effect of said ordinance are those heads of household who suffer a physical or mental disability which would 

prohibit them from using such a fire arm. Further exempt from the effect of said ordinance are those heads of household who 

are paupers or who conscientiously oppose maintaining fire arms as a result of belief or religious doctrine, or persons 

convicted of a felony. 

Darvin R. Purdy, Mayor 

May 29, 1982 

❖ 

This 1985 photo of the Kennesaw City 

Council shows many of the key figures 

in the passage of the gun law, 

including Mayor Darvin Purdy 

(seated, center), Fred Bentley, Sr., 

(seated, left), and J. O. Stephenson 

(standing, second from left). 


Among the interesting comments in Dr. 

Smith’s 1997-98 report is the statement that, 

"Scattered over the area are small shards of plain 

or embossed whiteware typical of the 1860s." It 

is interesting to note that this whiteware was not 

manufactured after 1860 and that some of the 

fragments show signs of fire damage. Her report 

further states that, “Small quantities of other 



F A C T 

U.S. Highway 41 was built using 

materials from an asphalt plant built for 

the project, and closed after the highway 

was completed. The abandoned quarry for 

the plant is still in existence, and is located 

at Castle Lake Mobile Home Park at the 

corner of US 41 and Vaughn Road. For a 

time in the late 1940s and early 1950s, 

the abandoned quarry was known as 

“The Pit”, and was used by local youth as a 

swimming hole. 

ceramics…blue shell edge, transfer print, 

banded ware, and spatterware…all also 

appropriate for the 1860s have also been 

found.” Military presence is also referenced 

in her report saying, “Civil War military 

presence at the site is represented by a few 

dropped lead bullets (unfired) and a few 

uniform buttons.” 

Dr. Smith’s final report discusses the possible 

location of the Lacy Hotel: 

Based upon the archaeological research… 

and the historic documents pertaining to the 

site which have been found to date, I think that 

the hotel lies to the east of our excavations, 

within the triangular plot of land that GT Carrie 

sold to the state of Georgia in 1858…. The 

Big Shanty eating house/hotel existed only 

five or six years, that is an awfully short 

time span, archaeologically speaking, and so 

finding physical evidence of the site may be 

difficult. The problem is compounded by the 

continued use of the property since the end 

of the war. It may be that any structural 

remains of the main building and outbuildings 

are buried beneath several feet of fill and 

at least part of the complex is most likely 

beneath the paved parking lot [next to the 

RR Depot]. 

R I D I N ’ T H E R A I L S : 

T H E G R E A T A M E R I C A N 

T R A I N S T O R Y 

In addition to the two movies that have 

been made about the Great Locomotive Chase, 

Kennesaw has also been host to two other 

movies and their stars. The first movie, Ridin’ 

the Rails: The Great American Train Story, starring 

the “Man in Black,” Johnny Cash, features a 

segment filmed at the Depot. Filmed about 

1973, the film features Johnny Cash riding 

trains all over the country and adding his style 

of acoustical music to tell the story of the role 

that railroads played in developing this nation 

and thereby providing a glimpse into Cash’s 

personal love of the railroads. This movie, 

released in 1974, is classic Johnny Cash. 

❖ 

Above: Dr. Betty Smith holds a 

railroad link found during the 1997- 

98 archaeological dig in Kennesaw. 


Below: Students from Kennesaw State 

University working on the Lacy Hotel 

Dig in 1997. 


A fourth dig was conducted in 2010 by 

Melissa Scharffenberg, a graduate student at 

Georgia State University, concentrating slightly 

south of where previous digs had occurred. No 

significant finds were reported. 


S I X 

P A C K 

❖ 

Above and right: Johnny Cash at 

the Depot. 

COURTESY OF DENT MEYERS. 

Below: The Windsor Hotel of 

Kennesaw was transformed into the 

Ocean View Motel of Biloxi, 

Mississippi, for the Kenny Rogers film 

Six Pack. The R. J. Patel family, 

owners of the motel, can be seen in 

the background behind Rogers. 

COURTESY OF R. J. PATEL AND FAMILY. 

In 1982, the Windsor Hotel, owned by the 

R. J. Patel family, was converted into the Ocean 

View Motel of Biloxi, Mississippi, for the 

movie Six Pack featuring Kenny Rogers. The 

Windsor Hotel hosted the film crew for one 

month. The storyline for the movie is that 

a struggling race car driver, Brewster Baker, 

played by Kenny Rogers, finds that his stock car 

has been stripped. He chases down the 

criminals who turn out to be six orphaned 

children. The corrupt local sheriff demands 

bribes from the children from their criminal 

proceeds or the children face being sent to an 

orphanage. Upon discovering this arrangement, 

the elder Baker, takes the children under his 

wing and on the racing circuit, where they must 

deal with racing success and a vengeful sheriff. 

The Windsor Hotel was razed and replaced 

by a retail storefront development, the 

Windsor, in 2009. The Windsor is still owned 

by the Patel family. 


CHAPTER SIX 

T H E T W E N T Y - F I R S T C E N T U R Y 

The 21st century has been an exciting time of growth and development for Kennesaw. Early in the 

decade, the city focused on its facilities. In 2000, the City of Kennesaw and the Historic Preservation 

Commission completed restoration of the historic Depot’s interior. In 2003, the Big Shanty Museum 

re-opened as the Museum of Civil War and Locomotive History after undergoing an extensive 

expansion project in order to create a library and archives and to house and display the Glover 

Machine Works Locomotive Collection. In 2007, the Jolley Education Wing was also constructed. 

In 2003, City Hall underwent an extensive expansion. 

In addition to building facilities, recreation plays an important role in Kennesaw. In 2004, the city 

was designated as a Preserve America City and during the same period the city acquired the Smith 

Gilbert Gardens on Pine Mountain Road, a 13 acre oasis, featuring the historic Hiram-Butler House, 

garden sculptures, and over 3,000 species of plants. In 2006, the city completed the first of four 

phases of the 2 mile long community recreation trail which is located just west of and parallel to 

Moon Station Road. A second phase has been completed and the remaining two phases are nearing 

construction as of 2011. In 2007, the city began construction on the 43 acre Swift-Cantrell Park and, 

in July 2007, the city was identified as “One of the 10 Best Towns for Families” by Family Circle 

magazine. With the completion of the pedestrian underpass, plaza, new electronic gateway signage, 

and landscaping in 2010 and various road improvements underway, the city has much to be proud of. 

T H E 

D E P O T 

The Depot, constructed in 1908 by the Nashville, Chattanooga, and St. Louis Railroad, was 

originally used as a freight and passenger Depot. In the early 1920s, two passenger waiting rooms 

were added to the North end of the Depot. This restoration and preservation was significant and 

important to the city as the Depot, and its surrounding area, is the heart of Kennesaw. In 1886 it was 

established as the center of town when Kennesaw was defined as radiating out one half mile in all 

directions from the depot. In 2000, an interior restoration was completed. Today, in 2011, the Depot 

is the beating heart of Kennesaw as it is the site were residents gather to celebrate holidays and attend 

concerts. It continues to house history exhibits where city residents and visitors have a place to learn 

the history of the community. 

K E N N E S A W 

C E M E T E R Y 

The Kennesaw Cemetery lies on the property of Camp McDonald. Many of the city's founding 

fathers are buried in the Kennesaw Cemetery. The exact date that the Kennesaw Cemetery was 

established is not known but the earliest burial, in 1863, was for the infant Lucius B. Summers. 

The Shumway family is said to have donated a one-acre tract to the town for burial purposes 

before 1891, but records prior to that date do not exist. 

C h a p t e r S i x ✦ 3 9

❖ 

Top, left: The historic Depot in 2011. 



Top, right: Kennesaw Cemetery. 

The Chalker family is a Founding 

Family of Kennesaw. 

PHOTO BY DAVID HARDEGREE. 

Bottom, left: The Southern Museum of 

Civil War and Locomotive History. 

COURTESY OF BRUCE JENKINS. 

Bottom, right: A restored Glover 

steam locomotive 


In December 1900, the town purchased an 

additional four and a half acre tract. This new 

portion was divided into 32-foot square lots 

which were sold for $6 in 1901, and raised to 

$10 in 1913. In 1934, Luther C. Chalker bought 

an additional one and a quarter acre tract of land 

adjacent to the city cemetery that was divided 

into lots and sold for burial purposes. The 

Chalker family managed this portion of the of 

the cemetery until it was sold to the city in the 

mid-1950s. 

S O U T H E R N M U S E U M O F 

C I V I L W A R A N D 

L O C O M O T I V E H I S T O R Y 

In 2001 the Big Shanty Museum became a 

member of the Smithsonian Affiliations program 

and the old museum began the journey to 

become the modern Southern Museum of Civil 

War and Locomotive History, which opened in 

March of 2003. This world-class museum 

houses displays covering the Civil War 

(especially, Civil War railroading), the Glover 

Steam Locomotive Works, and the Great 

Locomotive Chase. 

The Glover Machine Works, once located in 

Marietta, manufactured steam locomotives from 

the late nineteenth century until 1930, making 

it the last of the Southern locomotive builders. 

In the mid-1990s, the Glover family of Marietta 

decided to sell the land that the Glover Machine 

Works was located on, and donate the bulk of 

the collection to the City of Kennesaw. 

The Southern Museum, a popular tourist 

attraction, is a further reminder of the area's 

historic past and a defining structure in 

downtown Kennesaw. 

S M I T H - G I L B E R T G A R D E N S 

A N D H I R A M B U T L E R H O U S E 

In 2005, the City of Kennesaw acquired The 

Smith-Gilbert Gardens and historic Hiram 

Butler House on Pine Mountain Road. In 2007, 

it opened to the public offering residents and 

visitors a serene walk with the beauty of nature. 

At the center of Smith-Gilbert Gardens is the 

historic Hiram Butler House, dating back 

over 150 years. The house was once owned 

by Mr. Butler, a Confederate railroad man, 

who worked the lines most of his life and was 

present during the “Great Locomotive Chase.” 

The house is the oldest known brick house in 

the area. 


3 acres, the Smith-Gilbert Gardens now consists 

of a total of 16 acres of serenity. 

S W I F T- C A N T R E L L 

P A R K 

In 2006, the city completed the development 

of Swift-Cantrell Park. It is a forty-two-acre 

passive use park that has been developed into 

the area’s premier recreation and relaxation 

park. It’s gentle rolling hills and open areas 

are a great reminder of our agrarian history as 

the land’s previous primary use was farming 

and pasture land. One local retired teacher 

recalls that, “When the neighboring Jiles Road 

Kennesaw Elementary School opened in 1990, 

there were still cows in the pasture. It was not 

uncommon for some of the children to be lined 

up along the fence wondering if they dared 

venture into the field of cows to retrieve their 

lost ball”. 

❖ 

From top to bottom: 

The historic Hiram Butler House at 

the Smith-Gilbert Gardens. 


The waterfall is a focal point 

from the Rock Garden at 

Smith-Gilbert Gardens. 


Swift-Cantrell Park. 



Evening at the Pedestrian Underpass. 



D O W N T O W N P E D E S T R I A N 

U N D E R P A S S A N D P L A Z A 

In 1970, Mr. Richard Smith and Dr. Robert 

Gilbert bought the house and surrounding 

thirteen acres. Over the following thirty-five 

years, they realized their dream of developing 

the house and grounds, primarily to attract 

birds. With the acquisition of an additional 

In 2010, after fourteen years of planning and 

one year of construction, the city opened the 

pedestrian underpass which allows safe passage 

from Main Street under the CSX rail line to the 

Depot and Southern Museum. The underpass is 

a 115-foot-long, 13-foot-diameter tunnel that 

was hand mined in just ten days by crews that 

worked around the clock. During the tunneling 

period, ground monitoring equipment measured 

settlement and reported the data in real time every 

sixty seconds. Trains ran continuously during 

construction without incident. Construction 

included the excavation and removal of 1,000 

loads of dirt, the addition of 20,000 square 

feet of custom, precast wall panels, and 5,000 

square feet of concrete and brick walkway. The 

walkway meanders through the site guiding 

users through the story of the Great Locomotive 

Chase complemented by regional history artwork 

by Wilbur G. Kurtz and an actual push car 

similar to the one first used by William Fuller as 

he chased Andrews Raiders from Moon Station. 

For engineering achievements and incorporation 

of local history, the tunnel project received 

a 2011 Engineering Excellence Award from 

the Georgia chapter of the American Council of 

Engineering Companies. 


C A M P M C D O N A L D P A R K 

❖ 

Right: The future site of Camp 

McDonald Park. 

COURTESY OF THE FRIENDS OF CAMP 

MCDONALD PARK. 

Below: The Crowd gathers for the 

Big Shanty Festival. 


In 2009 Cobb County and the City of 

Kennesaw worked together to acquire the land 

that is home to the future Camp McDonald 

Park. The park’s significance to Kennesaw and 

Cobb County was as a confederate training 

camp during the Civil War. This historic site has 

a varied history having been used as both a 

regional meeting point for Indian tribes and 

later serving as Camp McDonald. The center of 

the camp was generally located in the same area 

as its many springs and streams surrounded by 

an arrangement of tents, training areas and 

parade grounds. 

B I G S H A N T Y F E S T I V A L 

Bottom: A cannon fire demonstration 

at the Big Shanty Festival. 



The Big Shanty Festival, a major annual event 

in Kennesaw, celebrated its thirty-sixth anniversary 

in 2011. Originally called Trade Days, the 

Festival has grown to one of the largest arts and 

crafts shows in north Georgia featuring over 250 

exhibitors with crowds of 60,000 people. The 

2-day event begins with a hometown parade 

including floats, marching bands, and many 

young participants. After the parade there are 

many activities to fill the day including a Civil 

War Encampment with demonstrations at the 

city park near the Depot. With stages at both City 

Hall and the Depot live entertainment abounds 

throughout the days with the children of the 

area providing Karate demonstrations, dance 

performances, the traditional appearance by the 

Little General Cloggers, and much more. The festival 

is held annually in April and is hosted and 

organized by the Kennesaw Business Association. 

K E N N E S A W : A F A M I L Y T O W N 

In August 2007, Family Circle magazine recognized 

Kennesaw as one of the “10 Best Towns for 

Families” citing that these communities embody 

what Americans look for in a place to live 

We have all the mentioned benefits and 

much more, but it would be difficult to list all 

that Kennesaw has to offer as the diversity and 

number of events are wide ranging. There is 

an abundance of sports leagues for both adults 

and children, a Summer Concert Series, which 

includes a spectacular “Fourth on the Third” 

fireworks display, a Summer Movie Series at 

Swift-Cantrell Park, numerous year round events 

and exhibits at the Southern Museum, and a 


Kennesaw Grand Prix Series of road races, 

supporting a variety of community foundations. 

The list goes on with amazing parks that 

have everything for the outdoor enthusiast, a 

community center providing activities for all 

ages, a seasonal Farmers Market from May to 

October, and numerous festival events. One 

such event is the annual “Pigs and Peaches BBQ 

Festival,” which includes a Georgia State 

Championship Barbecue Cook Off sanctioned 

by the Kansas City Barbecue Society, and great 

barbecued meats and festival treats. Another 

great event, “A Taste of Kennesaw,” promotes a 

day of family fun kicked off by the Great 

Locomotive Chase with 5K and 1 Mile Fun 

runs. As with the many other community festivals 

there is live entertainment, a Kid Zone for 

the children to enjoy, and families can meander 

thru the numerous vendors and exhibits at their 

own pace. 

Thanks to the Kennesaw Business Association, 

the Kennesaw Parks and Recreation Department, 

and the City there is never a lack of things to do 

in Kennesaw. 

K E N N E S A W C H A R T E R 

S C I E N C E A N D 

M A T H A C A D E M Y 

Established in 2003 as Kennesaw Charter 

School with an enrollment of approximately three 

hundred students in grades K-5, KCS was Cobb 

County’s first start-up charter school. Enrollment 

at the school grew consistently with as many as 

650 students in recent years. In 2009, the school 

began the process of renewing its charter with the 

Cobb County School District to become a science 

and math centric school. The new charter along 

with a name change to Kennesaw Charter Science 

and Math Academy was approved in 2010. 

Following the approval the school sought out a 

new facility in which to grow. KCSMA became the 

first charter school in the state of Georgia to 

secure municipal bond financing for new facility 

development. Once financing was obtained, thirty-seven 

acres were purchased and the property 

was annexed into the city. Construction began on 

the new 100,000-square-foot facility in 2011 at 

3010 Cobb Parkway and will open in 2012. At 

full capacity, the school can accommodate 920 

students in grades K-6. 

❖ 

From top to bottom: 

Kennesaw police officers participate 

in the Torch Run for Special 

Olympics. When not in uniform you 

can still find our officers being active 

in the community. 


Marching Bands are a crowd favorite 

at the Big Shanty Festival parade. 



The Pigs and Peaches BBQ Festival 

has grown into a nationally 

recognized event. With just 7 teams in 

2001 selling food to concert-goers at 

the Depot for 4 hours, the festival now 

attracts over 60 BBQ competition 

teams and 50,000 people for the twoday 

affair that features live music, 

arts and crafts, and the best BBQ and 

festival fare in North Georgia. 


It is not uncommon for the mayor to 

be pictured with a championship 

sports team. The Parks and 

Recreation staff and dedicated parent 

coaches know how to develop 

tomorrow’s leaders. 



❖ 

Kennesaw Charter Science and Math 

Academy at the Nina Bostic Campus. 

COURTESY OF KENNESAW CHARTER SCIENCE 

AND MATH ACADEMY. 

L O O K I N G 

F O R W A R D 

Looking beyond the city limits, the 

surrounding areas such as the Barrett Parkway 

corridor and Town Center Mall continue to 

prosper and support the area with goods and 

services. The completion of the Noonday Creek 

Trail provides a recreational component within 

this commercialized area. Kennesaw State 

University is now the 3rd largest university in 

the state in student enrollment. As higher 

education demands continue to rise, KSU is not 

likely to lose ground on its Top 3 ranking 

Within the city limits, the city will continue 

to evolve and prosper. Originally defined as a 

town with a radius of one half mile from the 

depot, the second decade of this century finds 

Kennesaw continuing to grow, encompassing 

over 9 square miles. Kennesaw’s population has 

grown from approximately 240 at its founding 

in 1887, to over 32,000 residents in 2011. It is, 

statistically, one of the safest cities in America, a 

characteristic that will continue to be attractive 

to families. Our city leaders, authorities and 

commissions recognize that proper planning 

and management of the expected growth is vital 

to the success of the city. Plans are in place 

to develop and improve the downtown core. 

The pedestrian tunnel was completed in 2010. 

The Trackside Grill Restaurant expansion, 

the Main Street Plaza and the Community 

House relocation were completed in 2011. 

Progress continues to be made with funding 

for development of the Depot Park and 

amphitheater. Another museum expansion is 

also being planned. 

Outside of downtown, a significant portion 

of the widening of Jiles Road will be completed 

in 2012 in addition to the Kennesaw 

Community Trail. Plans are underway for a 

world-class skate park to be constructed at 

Swift-Cantrell Park. The Smith-Gilbert Gardens 

are expanding to include an event facility to 

accommodate indoor weddings and corporate 

events. A student housing project on Shiloh 

Road is under construction and a second project 

is being planned on Cherokee Street at 

McCollum Drive. 

So what does the next 5...10...25...50...100 

years hold for Kennesaw? No one knows for 

sure. But one thing is for certain, this is not the 

sleepy, little town it was in 1887. This historic 

city is growing and with all of the attributes that 

make it desirable to visit and to live in. From its 

civil war and railroad history to its schools, 

businesses, recreation, festivals and proximity to 

all metro-Atlanta has to offer, there are just too 

many reasons to count to Celebrate Kennesaw. 


SOURCES 

Archaeology of the Lacy Hotel Site, Betty A. Smith, Kennesaw State University, June 1998. 

Cherokee History: Part Two, Lee Sultzman. 

City of Kennesaw Police Department Yearly Statistics, 1981-1993. 

Cobb County Census, 1860. 

Daring & Suffering: A History of the Andrews Railroad Raid, Third Edition, by William Pittenger (The War Publishing Co., 1887; 

republished by Cumberland House, 1999). 

Georgia: The WPA Guide to Its Towns and Countryside, reprinted by the University of South Carolina Press in 1990. 

History of Kennesaw, by Mark H. Smith (Kennesaw Gazette, 1980/1981). 

History of Kennesaw, by Mark H. Smith (Kennesaw Gazette, 1980/1981). 

History of Kennesaw: 1900-1930, by Mark H. Smith, unpublished. 

Images of America: Kennesaw, by Joe Bozeman, Robert Jones, Sallie Loy (Arcadia, 2006). 

Interview with Mayor J. O. Stephenson and Police Chief Dwaine Wilson, November 4, 1993, at Kennesaw City Hall, conducted by 

Robert Jones and Carolyn TeBeest. 

Kennesaw (Big Shanty) in the 19th Century, Robert Jones, Kennesaw Historical Society, 2000. 

Magnolia Journey: A Union Veteran Revisits the Former Confederate States, Joseph Carter, University of Alabama Press, 1974. 

Memoirs of General William T. Sherman, 1875; reprinted by Da Capo Press, 1984. 

The Great Locomotive Chase or, The Andrews Raid, by James G. Bogle (Blue & Gray Magazine, Blue & Gray Enterprises, July, 1987). 

The Law Heard ‘Round the World: An Examination of the Kennesaw Gun Law and its Effect on the Community, Robert Jones, Kennesaw 

Historical Society, 1994. 

Trains, July 1962, Kalmbach Publishing Co. 

War of the Rebellion: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1891 (CD-ROM Edition 

H-Bar Enterprises, 1994). 

F O U N D I N G F A M I L Y C O N T R I B U T I O N S C O U R T E S Y O F 

Burt Family: Lin Cason 

Carrie Family: Lin Cason, Gayle Croft 

Chastain Family: Genealogy of William Chastain, April 2008, compiled by Genie Frances (Gardner) Lee-Cherry, and an interview with 

E. W. Chastain, 2010, Robert C. Jones 

Kendrick Harris Family: Brenda Shelton 

Byrd Family: Robert C. Jones 

Ellison Family: Robert Ellison 

Frey Family: Nina Frey using sources at K.S.U. Bentley Rare Book Room; Cobb Central Library 

Georgia Room; the Book of Cobb County, Georgia: A Twentieth Century History by Thomas Allen Scott, Cobb Landmarks and 

Historical Society, Inc. 

Jackson Family: Interview with Alfred Jackson, 2010, Robert C. Jones 

Leonard Family: Randy Leonard 

L I B R A R Y O F C O N G R E S S P H O T O S 

http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.gmd/g3924k.cw0149000 (Map of Camp McDonald) 

http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/cwp2003003502/PP/ (William T. Sherman) 

S o u r c e s ✦ 4 5

APPENDIX 

T H E M A Y O R S O F K E N N E S A W 

1891 J. S. Reynolds 

1892 A. B. Smith 

1893 C. N. Price 

1894 J. S. Reynolds 

1895 T. J. Hardage 

1896 – 1897 B. H. Carrie 

1898 George W. Prichard 

1899 – 1900 D. B. Irby 

1901 – 1904 J. W. Bennett 

1905 – 1906 T. J. Hardage 

1907 – 1910 James G. Lewis 

1911 – 1912 E. G. Hill 

1913 W. E. McClure 

1914 E. G. Hill 

1915 James G. Lewis 

1916 J. W. Bennett 

1916 – 1917 Dr. J. W. Ellis 

1918 E. G. Carrie 

1919 – 1920 George W. Pritchard 

1921 J. S. Parker 

1922 E. M. Skelton 

1923 – 1924 Dr. J. W. Ellis 

1924 R. N. Hildebrand 

1925 A. J. Cox 

1926 – 1929 James G. Lewis 

1930 L. P. Mathis 

1931 – 1945 L. C. Chalker 

1946 (no record) 

1947 J. D. Hildebrand 

1948 – 1949 (no record) 

1950 – 1952 J. D. Hildebrand 

1953 – 1956 Frank L. Dobbs 

1957 – 1961 Louis E. Watts 

1962 Hugh F. Brinkley 

1963 – 1968 James (Johnnie) Adams 

1969 – 1972 Louis Watts 

1973 Ralph Coolidge 

1974 – 1977 Johnny Adams 

1978 – 1979 Clyde McDonald 

1980 – 1985 Darvin Purdy 

1986 – 1995 J. O. Stephenson 

1996 – 1999 John Haynie 

2000 – 2007 Leonard L. Church 

2008 – 2010 Mark Mathews 

Thanks to Debra Taylor, CMC, Kennesaw city clerk for her meticulously maintained Chronological Listing of City Officials–City 

of Kennesaw. 

❖ 

Kennesaw, c. 1906. 



SHARING THE HERITAGE 

H i s t o r i c p r o f i l e s o f b u s i n e s s e s , 

o r g a n i z a t i o n s , a n d f a m i l i e s t h a t h a v e 

c o n t r i b u t e d t o t h e d e v e l o p m e n t a n d 

e c o n o m i c b a s e o f K e n n e s a w 

SPECIAL 

THANKS TO 

Burrell Enterprises, Inc. ..................................................................4 8 

OrthoSport Physical Therapy ............................................................5 2 

Beaumont Products, Inc. ..................................................................5 4 

Hitachi Maxco, Ltd. ........................................................................5 6 

Atlanta Bonded Warehouse Corporation ..............................................5 8 

Henssler Financial ..........................................................................6 0 

Vulcan Materials Company ...............................................................6 2 

Kennesaw State University ...............................................................6 3 

Bentley, Bentley & Bentley ...............................................................6 4 

Engineered Specialty Products, Inc. ...................................................6 5 

Pike Plumbing ................................................................................6 6 

Bullfrogz Restaurant Bar and Lounge .................................................6 7 

City of Kennesaw 

Preservation Commission 

S h a r i n g t h e H e r i t a g e ✦ 4 7

❖ 

BURRELL 

ENTERPRISES, 

INC. 

Top: Dale Burrell brought the first 

manufacturing business to 

Kennesaw. He is pictured here in his 

early forties. 

Middle: Dale’s grandparents Jim and 

Estelle Burrell. 

Bottom: Young Dale serving in the 

U.S. Army. 

A N A M E R I C A N S U C C E S S 

The President and CEO of Burrell Enterprises, 

Dale F. Burrell is the epitome of the American 

success story. 

T H E B U R R E L L F A M I L Y 

H I S T O R Y 

Son of John Burrell and Dale’s grandfather, 

James “Jim” Festus Burrell was called to serve God 

at an early age and became a preacher in Athens, 

Georgia. There he met his bride, Sarah Estelle 

Barnette. Jim earned a college degree by selling 

Bibles to supplement his income. He traveled 

through North Carolina, South Carolina, and 

Georgia finally settling in Kennesaw on the old 

Greer’s Farm in the 1930s. 

Dale was born February 13, 1940, in his 

maternal grandparents’ home place in Canton, 

North Carolina. His mother left Georgia to 

provide a better environment for the childbirth. 

Eight months later, she returned to Georgia with 

her child and Kennesaw became the place that 

Dale called home. 

Grandpa Burrell found a suitable place in 

downtown Kennesaw in the early 1940s. He managed 

to purchase it and he and his wife remained 

there for the duration. The house still stands today. 

T H E Y O U N G E R Y E A R S 

Growing up, industrious Dale held jobs from 

making ice cream sundaes to bagging groceries 

and was interested in racing, sports and 

engineering. At age seventeen, Dale was a high 

school drop-out and enlisted in the military with 

hopes of becoming a helicopter pilot. After serving 

The Burrell family history goes back to the 

1800s when the United States government hired 

Dale’s great-grandfather, John Burrell, to escort a 

tribe of Cherokee Indians to their reservation in 

Oklahoma. The route they traveled and the journey 

itself became known as “The Trail of Tears.” The 

pay consisted of $300 in gold, and a homestead in 

the mountains around Hayesville, North Carolina. 


our country for three years, Dale was honorably 

discharged from the Army in 1960 taking with 

him the knowledge and experience that motivated 

him to one day own his own business. 

After the Army, Dale returned to Kennesaw 

and worked for Scientific Atlanta for several 

years. As time passed, the desire to start his own 

business consumed him. The dream became a 

reality in 1966. 

T H E B I R T H O F B U R R E L L C O 

As Burrellco grew, Dale emerged as a 

Kennesaw business leader respected by local 

business owners. Striving for more success, Dale 

branched out into other markets and facilitated a 

host of business ventures. Once the business was 

established, Dale started doing things that he 

could enjoy that were not related to the business. 

P E R S O N A L I N T E R E S T S 

A N D E N D E A V O R S 

❖ 

Above: An aerial view of Burrellco in 

the early 1970s. 

Below: Dale racing his Mercury 

Stabber at Dixie Speedway. 

With a $200 loan from a friend, Dale bought a 

belt sander and a drill press. Dale spent many long 

hours in the basement of his home trying to transform 

his ideas into products for his own business. 

The long basement hours soon paid off and what 

started out as a part-time job for extra money 

turned into a full time job with several employees. 

A true visionary, Dale brought the first manufacturing 

plant to Kennesaw and created several 

hundred new jobs for the then-rural area. His 

pioneering spirit forged the way for Kennesaw 

to become a modern thriving hub for business. 

Burrellco was created, and in 1968 it 

acquired its first major defense contract. With 

the business growing at such a rapid pace, Dale 

decided to design and build a new building 

from the ground up. A 10,000-square-foot 

facility was constructed, and later expanded into 

a 25,000-square-foot, free standing building. 

T H E R A C I N G L E G E N D 

In 1970, one week after attending a race at 

Dixie Speedway with his son, Dale began a 

career in stockcar racing. He bought his first 

racecar, a 1956 Ford, from a friend and began 

racing at tracks in the North Georgia area. Dale 

became a popular figure in the racing 


❖ 

Above: Dr. Frank Boone and Dale 

Burrell bring in the bicentennial 

plaque, just in time. 

community. Track promoters often headlined 

Dale and other star drivers in advertisements to 

draw crowds for big racing events. Racing 

highlights include numerous wins, notably a 

“Limited Sportsman Track Championship” 

victory at Dixie Speedway in 1973, and 

invitations to special event races at Atlanta 

Motor Speedway. 

In the summer of 2010, Dale was invited 

into the Georgia Automobile Racing Hall of 

Fame Association (GARHOFA) in honor of 

his contribution to Georgia racing history. 

GARHOFA is an organization built to preserve 

the history of automobile racing in Georgia. 

F I N A L L Y A P I L O T 

In 1975, Dale chose to put his racing 

passions aside and take up a new sport of 

learning how to fly airplanes. Being a Veteran 

and having a rather creative personality, Dale 

used his G.I. Bill to pay for his flying 

certification training. He purchased a single 

engine Piper Arrow soon after starting his pilot 

training. By 1977, Dale had earned his multiengine 

commercial pilot license and bought his 

second plane, a Twin Engine Piper Seneca II. 

As a routine act of community service, Dale 

found a way to put his piloting to good use. Dr. 

Frank Boone solicited Dale’s help with a local 

project that had been in the works for quite 

some time. 

Always up for an adventure, Dale and Frank 

flew to Ohio to pick up a large plaque that without 

their help would not be delivered in time for an 

upcoming ceremony. On the wings of Dale’s plane, 

the plaque arrived on time for the ribbon cutting 

to commemorate the bicentennial birthday of the 

Big Shanty Spring. 

S U M M A R Y 

By 1980, Burrellco had become a national 

leader in Aerospace Fuel Cell Fittings, and in 

1984 was one of the largest contract machine 

shops in Cobb County. The part-time business 

Dale started in his basement had grown to over 

100 employees, four companies, and nearly $5 


million in annual revenue. It became very clear 

that the decision to start his own business was 

what Dale was meant to do with his life. 

Dale has been directly responsible for the creation 

or revitalization of more than fifteen businesses 

in the immediate Kennesaw area: Burrellco 

Manufacturing, Master Bend Systems, Design 

Graphics, Burrellco Plating, Kennesaw Inn 

Restaurant, Big Shanty Florist, Shanty House 

Restaurant, Spartan Productions, and Burrell 

House to name a few. With the success of such a 

phenomenal career, Dale decided to retire, and 

made the decision to sell Burrellco and all its subsidiaries 

in 1988. 

T H E N E W B E G I N N I N G 

After nearly twelve years, Dale and his wife 

Judi decided retirement was not quite the 

challenge that they had become accustomed 

to, and wanted to establish and build one 

more business. 

In early 2000, Dale and Judi forged ahead 

with what is now known as Burrell Enterprises, 

Inc. Once again starting from scratch, they 

managed to grow Burrell Enterprises into a 

multi-million dollar business. He realized 

that “Integrity and Pride” are a solid 

foundation for any business and that 

“being considerate of customers, vendors, 

employees, and community needs are a 

pivotal decision for long term growth.” 

Through active leadership in both civic 

and business organizations, Burrell has 

shown his unwavering support for his 

community. By dynamic encouragement of 

development and growth Burrell has 

played a significant role in the economic 

advancement of the Kennesaw area. 

In recognition for his exceptional 

accomplishments Burrell received the 

Cobb County Chamber of Commerce 

1984 Small Business Person of the Year, 

Outstanding Service Award, Outstanding 

Participation Award, Who’s Who in 

Georgia Award, U.S. Small Business 

Administration 2009 Administrator’s 

Award for Excellence, and numerous 

other awards and accolades. 

On December 14, 2010, the Kennesaw 

Business Association hosted its annual 

“Business of the Year” luncheon. Dale was 

invited as the Guest of Honor and to his 

surprise the KBA acknowledged his many years 

of hard work and dedication to the growth of 

Kennesaw. In honor of Dale, the award will be 

known as the “Kennesaw Business Association 

Dale Burrell Business of the Year Award.” 

The Dale Burrell Legacy is etched in the 

business philosophy that the company operates 

by on a daily basis. A philosophy that will 

continue even after he is gone, and one that will 

forge new paths for the opportunities that lie 

ahead in the dreams and goals he has envisioned. 

An entrepreneur in the very finest sense 

of the term, Dale unselfishly shares his 

knowledge with the younger generations of 

schools, colleges, and vocational/technical 

institutes. His success is based on an unshakable 

belief in the American work ethic, sound 

management, and the unified efforts of a 

talented group of employees. 

More information about Dale and Burrell 

Enterprises, Inc. is available at the company 

website www.teamburrell.com. 

❖ 

Judi and Dale Burrell in 2010. 


ORTHOSPORT 

PHYSICAL 

THERAPY 

Dr. Kim Chastain, B.S., PT, D.P.T., OCS 

founder and CEO of OrthoSport Physical 

Therapy, contributes her success to her parents 

and their family values that have guided her 

through life. Kim’s father nurtured her 

inquisitive mind and love of learning, 

cheerfully answering her every question. He 

taught her to see the glass half full and to have 

faith that even in the worst of times better days 

lie ahead. Her mother, the quintessential 

caregiver, always put the needs of the family 

before her own and regularly performed 

miracles with a meager budget. “I was never 

afraid of hard work and long hours because of 

her. She taught me the importance of 

perseverance and caring for others which are 

qualities very necessary in treating patients in 

pain.” Dr. Chastain says. 

At fifteen, a young Kim began balancing 

work and academics simultaneously; something 

she continued to do through college. “Frankly, 

my family having financial struggles and 

working since I was fifteen taught me 

responsibility and enjoyment in being selfreliant. 

Without those skills, I don’t think I 

would be in private practice today,” Dr. 

Chastain says. 

It was a high school career fair, followed 

by a hospital rehab center internship, that 

illuminated Kim’s passion for Physical Therapy. 

Kim entered college focused knowing what 

she would pursue professionally. After college 

graduation, Kim was driven to succeed. 

She worked several jobs at a time including 

prestigious teaching positions teaching at 

two Long Island Universities in the Physical 

Therapy schools. 

Job opportunities brought Dr. Chastain to 

Atlanta. As Director of Rehab of West Paces 

Medical Center and the Sports Medicine 

Center: Greater Atlanta Sports Medicine, she 

found much more than professional success. 

“My husband was my first patient as director. 

On his discharge day, he brought me homemade 

fudge and asked me on a date to the Fox 

Theater,” reflecting on her seventeen year 

marriage to Steve. 

Kim and Steve were married in 1985 and 

built their dream home. Even with resources 

depleted from building their home, Kim was 

eager to open her own private practice. 

Even though Steve is very fiscally conservative, 

he supported Kim’s dream. Terrified and 

excited, Kim quit her job, secured an SBA 

loan with their home as collateral. Eventually, 

Steve left his sixteen year Research Electrical 

Engineer position on the Georgia Tech 

University faculty to bring his talent for 

logistics to OrthoSport. “Without him, we 

could not have expanded. He brings order 

to chaos and he brings me peace of mind. 

All of my team is invaluable, including the 

managers of the clinics and my chief of 

operations,” says Dr. Chastain. 


All three OrthoSport locations, Kennesaw, 

Marietta, and Woodstock, provide a happy 

comfortable family friendly environment for 

patients and the OrthoSport team. “We only 

hire people that have a natural personality for 

excellence and empathy. Our staff thrives on 

people getting better and returning to a life free 

of pain and able to enjoy their families again. 

Most patients, upon discharge, feel better than 

they have been in years,” says Dr. Chastain. 

OrthoSport is proud to be the only local 

practice with onsite aquatic therapy at every 

location. Aquatic therapy allows patients who 

cannot tolerate traditional physical therapy 

methods due to pain or after surgery, to begin 

their recovery journey sooner. 

Years of OrthoSport surveys reveal that the level 

of care, speed of recovery, and overall experience 

continue to exceed patient expectations. Many 

patients are sorry to be discharged because they 

enjoy therapy and will miss the staff. “These are 

the things that keep us going and reinforce 

whether we are delivering to our community what 

we promise.” Dr. Chastain continues, “We want 

patients to know they can count on us to help.” 

Lead by Dr. Chastain, OrthoSport has been getting 

results for over a decade. For more about the highly 

skilled staff and state-of-the-art facilities visit 

www.ospthome.com, call 770-974-7494, or email 

Dr. Chastain directly at kim@orthosportpt.org. 


❖ 

BEAUMONT 

PRODUCTS, 

INC. 

Left to right: Beaumont Products, Inc., 

founders: James Hamilton, CPA and 

board member, Marietta, Georgia; 

Hank Picken, founder and CEO, 

Kennesaw, Georgia; Debbie Webb, 

human resources director, Kennesaw, 

Georgia; Mike Bishop, blending/ 

maintenance manager, Cartersville, 

Georgia; Jill Pries, shipping 

administrator, Acworth, Georgia; 

Steve Barker, vice president of sales 

and marketing, Taylorsville, Georgia; 

and G. Boone Smith, attorney for 

Beaumont Products, Inc., 

Macon, Georgia. 

Since 1991 Beaumont Products, Inc., has been 

manufacturing and selling all natural consumer 

products. The year 2011 marked the twentieth 

anniversary for the Kennesaw, Georgia corporation. 

During that time the company pioneered the all 

natural spray air-freshener business; developed the 

citrus-based household cleaning business; created a 

new consumer product category—fruit and 

vegetable wash, and revolutionized the solid air 

freshener business. Beaumont Products has 

enjoyed double digit growth almost every year as a 

result of innovative, niche product marketing and 

strategic acquisitions. 

The company focuses on product efficacy, 

fragrance and uses safe, natural, effective 

ingredients wherever possible. Among the 

firm’s leading products are Citrus Magic 

Natural Air Fresheners in both spray and solid 

forms; Clearly Natural Glycerine Soaps and 

Body Care products; Veggie Wash, the number 

one selling natural fruit and vegetable wash in 

the country, the Trewax Floor Care line-up 

and Citrus II Hospital Strength Germicidal 

Deodorizing Cleaner. 

Manufacturing, distribution and the corporate 

headquarters are located in a four-building, 

80,000 square foot campus about a mile east of 

the Kennesaw Historic District. Beaumont occupied 

“phase I” of Building One of the complex in 

1993, and has stayed and grown at that location 

ever since. 

In its twenty-year history, Beaumont has 

acquired six consumer products businesses. 

The most recent addition was Dermatone, a 

leader in skin care products for the outdoor 

sports enthusiast. 

Citrus Magic, Clearly Natural, Veggie Wash, 

Trewax and Dermatone are all nationally 

advertised brands; reaching millions with 

multimedia campaigns on cable television, in 

print in magazines like Good Housekeeping and 

Vegetarian Times and on National Syndicated 

Radio programs like Delilah and The Money Pit. 

In the past, several brands have been featured 

on both QVC and The Home Shopping 

Network. Many Beaumont brands have become 

household names through this advertising and 

national distribution in retailers including 

Walmart, Target, Kroger, Safeway, Publix, 

Walgreens, ACE Hardware, True Value, Do-it- 

Best and Whole Foods and as such touch 

millions of lives around the world every day 

with high-quality natural products that work. 

In 1995, Beaumont participated in a Small 

Corporate Offering Registration (SCOR) which 

enabled the company, on a local basis, to raise 

Equity Capital. As a result the company has about 

fifty shareholders, half of whom are employees. 


Beaumont Products employs 95 local residents 

full time and supplements its dedicated 

cadre with 20 to 30 temporary employees 

depending upon workload/sales demand. Many 

members of the Beaumont Team have been with 

the company fifteen years or more and six have 

been part of Beaumont Products from the start 

in 1991. 

The combination of company ownership 

by many employees, longevity and dedication 

among the company workforce along with 

Beaumont’s outstanding product line has been a 

major contributor to Beaumont’s success. 

Beaumont’s management team has also been 

actively involved in Kennesaw State University’s 

Marketing and Sales educational programs and 

the company has benefited from an internship 

program with nearby KSU. 

Practicing the tried and true business 

philosophy of “Work-Hard and Play Hard,” 

it has been a twenty year company tradition 

to shut the business down one day per year 

to enjoy a “Business-Persons’” Atlanta Braves 

Baseball Game at Turner Field. 

Beaumont Products has found a home in 

Kennesaw, Georgia, and we intend to stay in 

Kennesaw and continue to grow here. In fact, 

as of June 1, 2011, we acquired another soap/ 

cosmetics company—Sonoma Soap—as we 

continue to look to the future. 

❖ 

Beaumont employees before the 2011 

“Business-Persons’” Atlanta Braves 

Baseball Game at Turner Field. 


HITACHI 

MAXCO, 

LTD. 

❖ 

Above: Corporate headquarters 

located in Kennesaw. 

Below: Engineering chain for 

wastewater treatment. 

Hitachi is one of the largest, most diversified 

manufacturers in the world with annual sales of 

approximately $110 billion. A time-tested 

industry pioneer, Hitachi cast its first malleable 

iron chain in 1910 and has become one of 

the world’s largest chain manufacturers. From 

inception, Hitachi has acted from a corporate 

philosophy of contributing to society through 

technology. Over a century has passed bringing 

unbelievable changes; through it all Hitachi has 

maintained its pioneering spirit, based on the 

principles of harmony and sincerity. 

Now global change happens quickly and is 

ever more dynamic. Hitachi is dedicated to 

boldly facing the new challenges of these historic 

times and is committed to inspiring future 

generations with the latest products, systems 

and services. 

Today, Hitachi Maxco supplies the highestrated 

standard roller chains in the world. 

Located in Kennesaw, Georgia since 1984, the 

Hitachi Maxco North American sales operations 

sell through manufacturer’s representatives 

located throughout the United States, Canada, 

South America, and Europe—supported with 

sales managers, and engineering, technical and 

marketing services. Hitachi Maxco maintains 

full service warehouse centers in Kennesaw, 

Georgia, and Portland, Oregon, as well as 

regional stocking distributor locations in Los 

Angeles, California; Germantown, Wisconsin; 

and Winnipeg, MB Canada. 

Technological breakthroughs marked 1987; 

Hitachi Maxco introduced the first premium 

line of solid bushing/solid roller (SBR ® ) industrial 

chain products to the North American 

marketplace. Cold forged steel parts replaced 

traditional curled components increasing chain 

strength and extending chain life. A decade 

later, Hitachi improved its SBR ® chain products 

applying a special coating to pins and bushings 

and overhauling the connecting link design. 

These innovations increased wear life five to ten 

percent and positioned Hitachi roller chains 

among the best in the world. 

Today, Hitachi continues to invest heavily in 

developing groundbreaking patent pending 

production technology. Pioneering improvements 

in chain strength, wear performance, 

corrosion protection and maintenance free 

operation solve problems for Hitachi customers 

and partners every day. With patent pending 

Hi-Energy Mechanical Process, Stainless Steel 

Blast, SEAL GUARD, and Perfect Coat Plus, 


Hitachi has singlehandedly raised quality and 

performance expectations for roller chain. 

Hitachi patent pending Hi-Energy Mechanical 

Process’ new SBR chain series exhibits horsepower 

ratings as well as work load capacities that 

are the highest worldwide. Dual function link 

plate design is what makes Hitachi Stainless 

Steel MEGA CHAIN as strong as even the best 

of the premium carbon steel brands, which 

dramatically increases strength and creates a 

labyrinth seal for lubrication and increasing wear 

performance by thirty-five to fifty percent. 

Hitachi’s incredibly strong Stainless Steel 

MEGA CHAIN rivals the strength of the top 

premium carbon steel brands. It is the dual 

function link plate design that creates this 

dramatic transformation. The advanced design 

increases strength and forms a labyrinth seal 

for lubrication increasing wear performance by 

thirty-five to fifty percent. 

Newly developed, patent pending SEAL 

GUARD roller chain uses stainless steel contact 

seals, which retain a high quality bearing grease 

inside the chain joint. The result is superior 

lubrication minimizing elongation from wear. 

Perfect Coat Plus is another patent pending 

advance designed by Hitachi, which has a dual 

coating mechanical rust prevention system 

resulting in thirty times more corrosion protection 

than traditional nickel-plated products. 

Perfect Coat Plus chain is more economical than 

stainless steel and with strength and work load 

ratings that match that of carbon steel. 

Perfect Coat Plus is a remarkable patent 

pending corrosion protection advance from 

Hitachi. This dual coating mechanical rust prevention 

system shields against corrosion thirty 

times better than traditional nickel-plated 

products. Durable Hitachi Perfect Coat Plus 

chain is more economical than stainless steel 

and its strength and work load ratings match 

that of carbon steel. 

Hitachi Maxco strives to achieve unsurpassed 

excellence and reliability in supplying worldclass, 

high quality industrial products and 

services to our customers, clients, and partners. 

With a variety of attachments for general and 

heavy duty jobs and special materials and 

plating or coatings to operate in extreme 

temperature and corrosive conditions, and 

specialty chain for power transmission, 

assembly line, and conveyor applications, 

Hitachi delivers customized solutions to the 

automotive, meat and dairy, water and 

wastewater, food and beverage, forest products, 

mining, pharmaceutical, oil, and high-speed 

printing industries, as well as many others. 

Continuous improvement, clear 

accountability, and clear measurability, ongoing 

quality enhancement, and the latest in 

technology, engineering and application are all 

part of the Hitachi Maxco commitment to 

quality. Whether for power transmission or 

conveying, Hitachi leads through innovation. 

❖ 

Above: Attachment chains used in a 

variety of applications. 

Below: Cutting and attachment 

operation in Kennesaw warehouse. 


ATLANTA 

BONDED 

WAREHOUSE 

CORPORATION 

Atlanta Bonded Warehouse Corporation 

(ABW) is a family-owned asset-based logistics 

company that provides refrigerated service to 

the food industry. The company began in 1948 

as Acme Bonded Warehouse when a Peter Paul 

candy broker decided to provide refrigerated 

storage and distribution to the confectionary 

industry. Prior to this, the distribution of candy, 

especially chocolate, was almost impossible in 

the South during the warm weather months. 

The current company name, Atlanta Bonded 

Warehouse, was adopted in 1981. 

adjacent leased building increased ABW’s footprint 

in Kennesaw to 1.5 million square feet of 

ultramodern, secure, high-cube refrigerated 

storage, equipped with 211 truck/rail doors. 

ABW has received numerous facility-related 

awards for innovative industrial design and 

quality construction. The American Concrete 

Institute (ACI) honored ABW with First 

Place awards for its productivity and safetyenhancing 

Light Reflective Flooring and 

landmark Shrinkage-Compensating Concrete 

(SCC) Paving. 

❖ 

Atlanta Bonded Warehouse 

Corporation in Kennesaw, Georgia, 

has 1.5 million square feet of 

ultramodern, high-cube refrigerated 

storage, equipped with 

211 truck/rail doors. 

The original Acme facility was expanded 

twice and reached 42,500 square feet of 

refrigerated space with most of the building 

limited to a storage height of ten feet. In 1981 

and 1982 nearby buildings of 75,000 square 

feet and 43,500 square feet were leased and 

converted to coolers. 

Atlanta Bonded Warehouse began its move 

to Kennesaw in July 1985 and opened a contract 

distribution center on Cobb International 

Boulevard for a major candy manufacturer. 

This contract facility was expanded in 1986, 

1989, and 2000 bringing the total size to 

660,000 square feet, all of it high cube with the 

ability to store palletized product up to fortyfive 

feet high. 

To support ABW’s third-party logistics and 

transportation operations, another refrigerated 

facility along with a truck and trailer maintenance 

shop was constructed in 1991. Three 

years later, expansion added more high-cube 

cooler storage to this building, and an adjacent 

pharmaceutical storage and distribution building 

was purchased in 1999. The build-out of an 

The ABW campus totals ninety-five contiguous 

acres providing ample space for a robust 

drop-and-hook trailer pool operation, and it 

is served by two rail spurs off of one of the 

Southeast’s most active rail lines. In 2009, 

ABW expanded further, adding food grade 

warehouses in South Carolina and Mississippi. 

The ABW award-winning facilities, superb 

location, and exceptional services combine to 

satisfy the most stringent risk management and 

service demands of its customers. All storage 

space is food-grade, temperature/humidity 

controlled, 100 percent racked with enhanced 

lighting. Well-lit warehouse space incorporates 

natural light through strategically placed 

skylights to improve light quality, allow limited 

operations during power outages, and enhance 

worker productivity and motivation. All of the 

roofs and most of the walls are heavily insulated. 

Most of ABW’s facilities and the products 

stored within are protected against fire by a 

redundant ESFR sprinkler system with 450,000 

gallons of on-site water storage. Since 1986, 

ABW has used post-tensioning in construction 


of warehouse floors. This technique eliminates 

most floor joints, thus providing a great deal of 

savings in floor and equipment maintenance. 

Most ABW facilities continue to service the 

confectionary industry, as they have from inception, 

providing public and contract food-grade, 

temperature-controlled storage. The fenced 

property perimeter and guarded entrances and 

exits maintain a high level of security. The incredibly 

low employee turnover rate minimizes 

operational disruptions. The computerized warehouse 

management system is supported by a 

staff of trained information technology associates 

and a significant portion of the operation is 

configured to function in a paperless manner. 

ABW’s in-house transportation arm, Colonial 

Cartage, provides refrigerated and non-refrigerated 

service to the Southeast for orders of all 

sizes. This transportation service, when combined 

with ABW’s interline partners, crossdocking 

and freight consolidation capabilities, 

creates a one-stop environment for overseas or 

domestic freight destined for the Southeast. 

❖ 

Left and below: Award-winning 

ABW facilities embody a number of 

attributes designed to provide top 

quality storage, distribution, and 

transportation management. 

PHOTOGRAPH ON LEFT REPRINTED WITH 

PERMISSION BY HANLEY WOOD, LLC, 

COPYRIGHT 2010. 


HENSSLER 

FINANCIAL 

Soon after Gene Henssler, Ph.D., accepted a 

Professor of Finance position at Kennesaw 

State University, he launched his now famous 

Money Talks radio show in 1986. His fact-based, 

no nonsense investing approach excited 

listeners, and demand erupted for his advice 

beyond the airwaves. 

On January 26, 1987, Dr. Gene opened a 

one-man consulting operation in his partially 

finished home basement, fondly referred to as 

“Lower Level, Suite B.” Dr. Gene’s lovely wife 

Pat pulled double duty—working both at a 

C.P.A. firm and assisting him; the Henssler 

dogs, Klaus and Gus, provided security. 

Clients huddled in the cramped space to pay 

Dr. Gene on a fee-only basis, strictly for 

financial advice. 

Clients who followed the plans he developed 

were on target. Within five years, Dr. Gene was 

asked to actively manage a client’s portfolio. 

Nowadays, in addition to financial planning, 

asset management, retirement planning, 

insurance planning, and employee benefit 

services, the firm offers tax preparation and 

consulting, accounting and bookkeeping, 

business valuations, due diligence, and review 

and compilation engagements. Nearly twentyfive 

years later, with unwavering integrity and a 

steadfast investment philosophy, Henssler 

Financial has preserved their investment 

philosophy through market highs and lows. 

Henssler’s Ten-Year Rule is a simple, yet 

comprehensive financial planning strategy. 

Specifically, any money needed within ten years 

should be invested in fixed-income securities, 

and money not needed within ten years should 

be invested in high-quality, individual common 

stocks or mutual funds that invest in common 

stocks. By integrating individualized projections, 

financial planning and asset management 

with strict investment criteria, clients should 

have adequate income for ten years without 

having to liquidate assets in a down market. 

April 2004 marked the groundbreaking of 

the firm’s current 23,000 square foot, threestory 

location. The Henssler Financial building 

offers superior technology surrounded in 

opulence, bolstering a positive company 

culture and strengthening client satisfaction. 

A satellite uplink television studio allows 

Henssler experts to connect to national 

broadcast networks in real time. Additionally, 

the building houses the radio studio for 

Money Talks, Atlanta’s longest running and most 

respected money show on radio. 


“Our biggest asset is our reputation,” noted 

Dr. Gene proudly. Ten associates, along with Dr. 

Gene, appeared on the 2010 FIVE STAR Wealth 

Managers list in an Atlanta magazine. This 

marks the third year Henssler Associates have 

been nominated by clients to the list. “The staff’s 

commitment to clients—to continuously earn 

and maintain their confidence—has led to many 

successful client relationships,” Dr. Gene said. 

As a gifted teacher and mentor, Dr. Gene has 

dedicated decades to education, wealth management 

and sound investment advice. Dr. Gene’s 

firm maintains a longstanding tradition of giving 

back to Kennesaw State University, where he 

holds the title professor emeritus. Henssler 

Financial helped establish the University’s 

student-managed investment fund, allowing 

finance majors to invest real dollars in the market, 

putting theory into practice. The firm also 

created the Henssler Financial Annual Finance 

Scholarship, which is awarded to assist single 

mothers attending Kennesaw who are academically 

strong finance majors with financial need. 

In 2010 the University honored two 

principals of Henssler Financial. The firm’s 

director of investments, Theodore L. Parrish, 

CFA, was named to the Kennesaw State 

University Foundation’s Board of Trustees in 

October 2010. Parrish manages all research and 

trading activities for the firm. Managing Director 

William G. Lako, Jr., CFP ® , was honored as a 

2010 recipient of the Kennesaw State University 

Alumni Association Distinguished Alumni 

award. Since joining the firm his responsibilities 

include managing client assets, as well as overall 

company management. 

“I’m very proud of all that we have 

accomplished,” said Dr. Gene. “We are committed 

to deepening our relationships with 

clients, while consistently bringing added 

value to them and the community at 

every opportunity.” 

An extensive library of articles on many 

financial topics along with more about Henssler 

Financial is available on the firm’s website, 

www.henssler.com. 


VULCAN 

MATERIALS 

COMPANY 

❖ 

Headquartered in Birmingham, 

Alabama, Vulcan is the nation’s 

largest producer of construction 

aggregates. It is also a major producer 

of asphalt and concrete and leading 

producer of cement in Florida. It is a 

publicly traded company listed on the 

NYSE and a member of the S&P 500. 

For more information, please visit 

www.vulcanmaterials.com. 

The Kennesaw Quarry has been in operation 

for approximately sixty years, since about 1952. 

Located in what was then a very rural and 

sparsely populated area, the Kennesaw Quarry 

has provided crushed stone material for much of 

the phenomenal growth in the area. Kennesaw 

stone has been used in construction of 

Kennestone Hospital, McCollum Airport, Town 

Center Mall, Kennesaw State 

University and countless other 

projects including thousands of 

homes, schools and churches 

in Northwest Metro Atlanta. 

Kennesaw Quarry employs 

approximately forty-nine fulltime 

employees and indirectly 

employs hundreds of others 

that provide services and 

deliver Vulcan crushed stone 

product to the community. 

Vulcan Materials Company 

is committed to being a good 

neighbor and giving back. 

Kennesaw Quarry is wellknown 

for its “rock quarry 

tour” educational program. 

Annually over eight thousand 

students and teachers from 

local and out of state schools 

take the tour to learn about mining and geology. 

The Kennesaw Quarry is the longest active 

Corporate Big Shanty Festival Sponsor and 

loyally supports numerous local charities and 

community activities as a major contributor 

to the Southern Museum of Civil War and 

Locomotive History and major sponsor of the 

Tellus Museum. 


In 1963, Kennesaw Junior College opened 

with 1,000 students. In 1976 the college 

became a four-year institution and in 1977 

adopted a new name, Kennesaw College. The 

college’s first president, Horace W. Sturgis, 

charted an ambitious course and tripled enrollment 

before retiring in 1980. 

In 1981, Dr. Betty L. Siegel became president 

and the first woman to lead an institution 

in the University System of Georgia. Kennesaw 

College became Kennesaw State College in 

1988, with another name change in 1996 to 

Kennesaw State University. During Siegel’s 

quarter-century tenure, KSU would grow to 

18,000 students and offer fifty-five baccalaureate 

and graduate degree programs. 

Dr. Daniel S. Papp was appointed president 

in February 2006, and KSU’s national reputation 

continues to grow. U.S. News & World 

Report’s America’s Best Colleges issues hailed 

KSU as an “up-and-coming” university in 2008 

and 2009. 

Under Papp’s leadership and with the KSU 

Foundation’s assistance, The Commons–Student 

Culinary Center, Owl’s Nest, KSU Soccer Stadium, 

plus more dormitories and parking have been 

added. KSU also has become an NCAA Division I 

School and with the help of the Foundation is 

raising funds for a football program. 

In 2010, KSU dedicated Prillaman Hall. The 

$56 million health sciences building houses 

the USG’s largest nursing program. Also, KSU’s 

College of Education remains the second largest 

preparer of teachers in Georgia; and KSU’s 

Executive M.B.A. program in the Coles College 

of Business is the second largest program of its 

kind in the country touted among the best in 

the world by CEO Magazine in 2009. 

Today, more than 23,400 students from 142 

countries study on Kennesaw State’s 384-acre 

campus, now Georgia’s third largest university. 

A member of the thirty-five unit University 

System of Georgia, KSU is accredited by 

the Southern Association of Colleges and 

Schools. KSU offers over seventy graduate and 

undergraduate degrees, including doctorates in 

education, business and nursing, and a Ph.D. 

in International Conflict Management. 

For additional information on Kennesaw 

State University, visit www.kennesaw.edu. 

KENNESAW 

STATE 

UNIVERSITY 


BENTLEY, 

BENTLEY & 

BENTLEY 

❖ 

Left to right: Fred D. Bentley, Jr., 

Fred D. Bentley, Sr., and 

R. Randall Bentley, Sr. 

Marietta-based law firm Bentley, Bentley & 

Bentley, has represented the city of Kennesaw 

for over forty years. Fred D. Bentley, Sr., 

patriarch of the firm, and his sons, Fred D. 

Bentley, Jr., and R. Randall Bentley, Sr., have 

all represented the city. R. Randall Bentley, Sr., 

holds the position currently. 

Bentley, Bentley & Bentley has played a 

significant role in the transformation of 

Kennesaw from small community of 3,500 

residents to one of the top ten best places 

to raise a family in the nation. Kennesaw 

successfully balances big-city opportunities 

with suburban charm and offers, quality jobs, 

award-winning and pristine green space to over 

thirty-five thousand residents. 

The population boom began after the city 

unanimously passed the now famous Gun Law 

requiring “every head of household to maintain 

a firearm together with ammunition.” Mayor 

Darvin Purdy asked city attorney Fred D. 

Bentley, Sr., to author the ordinance. Fred D. 

Bentley, Sr., originally had reservations about 

drafting the law. “I didn’t think it could be 

written in a constitutional fashion,” he said. 

“Obviously, it was constitutional, because the 

American Civil Liberties Union challenged it in 

court and we won.” After passage of the law, the 

burglary rate in Kennesaw declined and the city 

has maintained the lowest crime rate in Cobb 

County with crime rates less than half of the 

United States averages. 

News of the Gun Law spread internationally 

and cemented Kennesaw as a safe conservative 

city. Fred D. Bentley, Sr., credits the law in 

part for attracting big business. “Kennesaw 

is home to more manufacturing businesses 

than any other Cobb city,” he said. “Companies 

have said they want to be located in 

conservative areas.” 

More than any other city in Georgia, 

Kennesaw has preserved its small town charm 

and year after year, building on the past, has 

improved quality of life with the finest parks, 

schools, cultural destinations, business 

districts, and community events. Green spaces 

Swift-Cantrell Park, Adams Park, Kennesaw 

State University, Smithsonian Affiliated 

Museum of Civil War and Locomotive History, 

stunning botanical Smith-Gilbert Gardens, and 

lively annual festivals supply family-friendly 

activities year-round. Bentley, Bentley & 

Bentley are proud of the city’s progress and are 

looking forward to Kennesaw’s future. 


In 1983, Don and Carol Wise began 

Engineered Specialty Products, Inc., in the 

basement of their East Cobb home. E.S.P. is 

now a national wholesaler of pressure and 

temperature instruments and an exemplary 

American entrepreneurial success. 

The business quickly outgrew the basement 

and moved into an office/warehouse space 

with newly hired employees. Within two years, 

E.S.P. demanded more space. A new facility 

was built in Marietta to accommodate the 

growth. The business continued to expand and, 

in 1992, Don and Carol purchased property 

in Kennesaw, Georgia, and built the current 

location, an office/warehouse complex designed 

to sustain future growth. Expansion proved 

necessary and a second warehouse was added 

in 2006 doubling the facility space. 

E.S.P. has an unending commitment to 

providing top quality products and customer 

service. To ensure quality, all E.S.P. products are 

designed in-house, branded, and outsourced 

for production that meets E.S.P. specifications 

and meets or exceeds industry standards. With 

an enormous in-stock inventory, large mix of 

products, and an expert staff, E.S.P. delivers a 

better product at a better price as promised. 

Sales have doubled dramatically from $7.7 

million in 2003 to $14.2 million in 2010 with 

an in-stock inventory valued at $8 million. 

In 2007 and 2009, Inc. Magazine recognized 

this success and included E.S.P. on the Inc. 

5000 annual ranking of the fastest growing 

private companies in America. As an Inc. 5000 

honoree, Inc. recognized the creativity, dedication, 

and hard work behind Engineered 

Specialty Products. In addition, E.S.P. was 

recognized as one of the top twenty-five 

privately held small businesses in Cobb County 

in 2007. 

Currently, E.S.P. has more than forty full 

time employees. The success E.S.P has experienced 

is due in part to these competent people 

and their dedication to customer satisfaction. 

Future visions of expansion for E.S.P. include 

doubling the sales force and overall sales 

within the next five years. 

ENGINEERED 

SPECIALTY 

PRODUCTS, 

INC. 


PIKE PLUMBING 

❖ 

Kenny and Sherri Pike. 

Family business Pike Plumbing is deeply 

rooted in Kennesaw’s history. In the early 1950s 

Kenny Pike’s parents, Sonny and Dolly Pike, 

moved their family to Kennesaw from Alabama 

to work at Bell Bomber, now Lockheed Martin. 

For over fifty years, they have remained in 

Kennesaw living in the original family home. 

Sherri, Kenny’s wife, is a descendant of the 

Chastain family. Her grandmother, Katherine 

Chastain Baird, was the eldest child and only 

daughter of Cassie Wingo Chastain. 

Kenny and Sherri met while attending Autrey 

Junior High and graduated from North Cobb 

High School in 1976. Shortly after they were 

married by Preacher Hollingshed and Kenny 

began working for Haskins Plumbing. During 

the nine years with Haskins, he acquired the 

experience necessary to obtain his masters 

plumbing license. They started a family several 

years later and Kenny decided to start his own 

business. With the purchase of some tools, a 

truck and great hopes for the future, Pike 

Plumbing was born in 1984. 

The first year Kenny established relationships 

with builders in the construction industry. With 

the business growing, his twin brother, Keith, left 

James Anderson Carpet and joined Pike 

Plumbing. The dedicated employees, Lloyd 

Donald and Glenn Gray, also Georgia natives, 

joined the team soon after. They all have been 

with Pike for over twenty-five years through thick 

and thin and have all obtained their masters 

license. The Pike children, Amanda, Zachary, 

Quinton, and Devin, have also helped with the 

family business throughout the years. 

For over twenty-seven years, Pike Plumbing 

has provided honest reliable service to North 

Metro Atlanta. Now, with over 100 years of 

combined experience, the Pike Plumbing 

Team is supplying quality service at reasonable 

prices to home owners and builders. For any 

plumbing questions or a tip, call Kenny at Pike 

Plumbing or visit www.pikeplumbing.com. 


Mother of four fabulous girls Danielle, 

Skylar, Shalie, and Shelby, Robyn Smith is 

building a multi-platform brand around 

“Hoppin’ Good Food and Fun” similar to 

personalities like Martha Stewart, Wolfgang 

Puck and Rachael Ray. Robyn, owner, 

bombshell, and powerhouse behind Bullfrogz 

Restaurant Bar and Lounge in Kennesaw, 

Georgia, aims to share her charming hospitality 

with the world. Her goal is to franchise 

Bullfrogz nationwide. Perfecting the “Tiki Hut” 

décor and new Bullfrogz Girls uniforms is part 

of the franchising process, according to Robyn. 

A reality show is in the works following Robyn, 

her family, and Bullfrogz along the way. 

plan to revitalize Laseter’s Tavern, her then 

workplace, put the Bullfrogz wheels in motion. 

Longtime friend and Tavern owner, Ted Laseter, 

made an offer Robyn and her husband, Jamal, 

could not refuse and Bullfrogz was born.The 

Smiths work together with Robyn as CEO and 

Jamal as CFO. 

Bullfrogz bridges the gap between 

neighborhood spot, high-energy dance-club, 

and elegant lounge with an award winning 

menu and show stopping events. The freshly 

prepared homemade cuisine delights and 

can be special ordered gluten-free. Demand 

is skyrocketing for Bullfrogz’s 11 a.m.-3 a.m. 

delivery and event catering. World renowned 

DJs, live bands, and wine tastings, 

along with crowd favorites such as 

Karaoke, Corn Hole Tournaments, 

Texas Hold ‘Em, and of course 

beautiful Georgia Peaches keep 

everybody Hoppin’ at Bullfrogz. 

BULLFROGZ 

RESTAURANT 

BAR AND 

LOUNGE 

Only four years ago, Robyn was pregnant 

and daydreaming about her upcoming days as 

a stay-at-home-mom. Her innovative business 

Tireless advocates dedicated to 

giving back, the Smiths donate time, 

goods, and services to local Veterans, 

Kennesaw Business Association, the 

Optimist Club, and Kennesaw State 

University Hockey and Cheerleading 

programs. In memory of Robyn’s 

brother, the Smiths established the 

Michael Edwin Lips, II Memorial 

Endowed Scholarship supporting 

KSU and University of Texas at Austin 

students in the College of the Arts. 

Thinking green, all used cooking oil is 

turned into Biofuel. 

Call 678-292-FROG. Catch the 

Night Owl shuttle bus. Click www.bullfrogz.com 

and come on by Bullfrogz for “Hoppin’ Good 

Food and Fun.” 

❖ 

Left: Selections from the Bullfrogz 

menu are made to order Surf and 

Turf, World Famous Signature 

Cocktails and Bullfrogz 

Club Sandwich. 

Right: Jessica Lake, Danielle Lips, 

Jamal Smith, Robyn Smith, and 

Chandee Cotton. Front row: 

Shalie Smith, Skylar Smith, and 

Shelby Smith. 


ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

Robert C. Jones grew up in the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania area. In 1981, he moved to the Atlanta, Georgia, 

area, where he received a B.S. in Computer Science at DeVry Institute of Technology. From 1984 to 2009, Robert worked for Hewlett- 

Packard as a computer consultant. He now works as an independent computer support and video services consultant. 

Robert is an ordained elder in the Presbyterian Church. He has written and taught numerous adult Sunday School courses. He has 

also been active in choir ministries over the years, and has taught the Disciples Bible Study six times. He is the author of A Brief 

History of Protestantism in the United States, A Brief History of the Sacraments: Baptism and Communion, Heaven and Hell: In the 

Bible, the Apocrypha and the Dead Sea Scrolls, and Meet the Apostles: Biblical and Legendary Accounts. 

Robert is President of the Kennesaw Historical Society, for whom he has written several books, including The Law Heard 'Round 

the World - An Examination of the Kennesaw Gun Law and Its Effects on the Community, Retracing the Route of the General - 

Following in the Footsteps of the Andrews Raid, and Images of America: Kennesaw. 

Robert has also written several books on ghost towns in the Southwest, including in Death Valley, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, 

and Mojave National Preserve. 

In 2005, Robert co-authored a business-oriented book entitled Working Virtually: The Challenges of Virtual Teams. 

His interests include the Civil War, medieval monasteries, American railroads, ghost towns, hiking in Death Valley and the Mojave, 

and Biblical archaeology. 

ABOUT THE COVER 

Dominique Chaponot comes from a family that loves all forms of artistic expression. Her father was a saxophonist, her grandparents 

were award winning waltz dancers, her cousin is a jazz singer in Paris and her aunt is a painter in Cannes. Dominique's passion 

for the arts was further cultivated when she entered and won a drawing contest at the Arts Et Metiers in Paris. 

As a young art student, she visited the Louvre every month and was inspired by the paintings she saw there. She began taking 

photos at age 15 becoming more serious about photography in her thirties. Her passion for photography and her love of paintings 

inspired her to create the unique composite photos that she creates today. 

Dominique is an award-winning photographer who resides in Douglasville, Georgia 

For more about Dominique and her work, please visit http://dominiquechaponot.mosaicglobe.com. 


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