THROUGH
MOUNTAIN MISTS
Early Settlers of
Their
Descendants...Their Stories...Their Achievements
Lifting the
Mists of History on Their Way of Life
By: Ethelene Dyer Jones
With
double emphases in April on Confederate Memorial and
History Month and National Poetry Month, I addressed this column to
those two
subjects for the past four weeks. We
will continue with some more early post offices that once operated in
Union
County, a series I began earlier.
Let me digress here to thank those who
attended the Souther Mill Site and Historical Marker Dedication service
on
Saturday, April 30. Despite the
inclement weather, we did not have rain at the time of the meeting in
the
afternoon. A large crowd gathered to pay
tribute to Jesse Willliam Souther, Jr. who founded the grist mill and
sawmill. We thank John Paul Souther,
grandson of the mill’s founder, and Theodore Thomas, great, great,
great
grandson, for their hard work in making the program possible and Mr.
Thomas, in
particular, for building the shelter that houses the historical marker
and
pictures at the old mill site. Another
marker has been placed with the display of turbines from the mill at
Union
County Museum Annex, the Butt House. If
you did not attend the program, you are invited to see the markers and
pictures
of the mills.
Today Union County has two post
offices—Blairsville and Suches. With all
the modern means of transporting the mail, it is hard for us to imagine
that in
post office history since Coosa, the first, was founded in 1833, the
year
following Union’s founding, the county has had a total of sixty-four
named post
offices at fifty-nine sites throughout the county.
Oftentimes in pioneer days, the post
office was in a store or in a home. And
both the post office and the store could have been in a room of the
post
master’s home.
Several post offices operated in
Canada District. The first, according to
record, was named Gaddistown to honor early settlers there, a family
named Gaddis. The application was approved
June 15, 1848
with John D. Cavender as first post master.
Mail came to the new post office from Dahlonega.
Gaddistown operated for a total of 107 years
under the same name but moving to locations within a mile-square area
of the
first post office. Several men and women
were in charge of the post office for its more than a century of
operation: John D. Cavender, Newton K.
Williams, A. H. Pitner, Lewis W. Gilreath, Squire E. Jones, John C.
Cavender,
Essie Brookshire, :Lottie Cavender, Arthur Grizzle, Lottie Cavender
(second
time), Mrs. Alma M. McDougald. The
Warren McDougald’s rock dwelling house was the last location of
Gaddistown
postoffice.
Quebec post office was named as a
complement to the name Canada for the district.
Quebec was established August 31, 1881 with Eli P. McGee as
first
postmaster. The next postmaster at
Quebec was Grant Woody. He operated the
post office in his Service Spring Hotel at Miller Gap.
The hotel, more like a boarding house, was
the mountain vacation location of wealthy planters from the south. There in the basement of the hotel was a bar
dispensing mountain moonshine and also an ingenious water trough
reputedly
carrying mineral springs water good for health.
Later when all signs of the hotel were removed, the new owners
of the
land found the mineral water gum log water trough containing old iron
implements over which the “mineral water” had passed, probably to give
the
water its “mineral” or iron content.
Following hotel owner Grant Woody’s term as postmaster, two more
men
served at Quebec as postmasters: John
Holloway and William E. Burnett. On
April 30, 1907, Quebec post office was closed and the mail routed
through the
Suches station.
Quebec had operated almost twenty-six years.
A wholesale grocer of Dahlonega,
Georgia had a good idea for increasing his business and making products
not
grown on the farms of Canada District more available to citizens. John Cannon, Wholesaler, had a line of
groceries,
dry goods and hardware. It was very
likely that John Cannon helped Eli McGee set up the Gaddistown post
office and
establish a store there. Bill Davis had
opened a store and John Cannon persuaded him that he should send
application to
open a post office in his store. Suches
opened March 6, 1886. Suches was the
name of an Indian chieftain who once lived in the valley
near the Bill Davis store site. Interestingly
enough, John Cannon himself was
first postmaster listed with the US Post Office Department. It is very likely that the store owner, Bill
Davis, did the postal work. On July 20,
1887, Bill Davis was officially made the postmaster.
During its one-hundred twenty-one years of
operation, a long list of postmasters have served.
The office moved several times. The
Lunsford Store owners operated the post
office.
The present location near the
intersection of Highways 180 and 60 has a stately brick building near
the Woody
Gap School. Rural routes operate from
Suches to take the mail to families living in the valleys once ruled
over
by Indian Chief Suches.
[Ethelene Dyer
Jones is a retired educator,
freelance writer, poet, and historian. She may be reached at
e-mail edj0513@windstream.net;
phone 478-453-8751; or mail 1708 Cedarwood Road, Milledgeville, GA
31061-2411.]