'Of Little Value'

The history of mining in Haralson County pivots on three major operations which were located here: The Tallapoosa (Waldrop) Copper Mine near Draketown, The Reed's Mountain Pyrite Mine near Bremen, and the Tallapoosa Gold Mine just south of that city. A few other minor prospects were scattered throughout the county, but there three were the largest and most important in Haralson County.
Part of what was called "Copper excitement" was started by a discovery made by Elisha Brooks while plowing on property ... on the western edge of Draketown. At that time Draketown was known by the name of Long Leaf Post Office. Brooks turned up some bright yellow granular material which burned when thrown into the fire.
He took a specimen to Villa Rica where prospecting for copper was being done. A sample was later sent to Tennessee. The immediate result was that an influx of prospectors and promoters from the Tennessee Deposits came to Haralson. Hopes of another Ducktown, Tennessee flourished and the name of the little village where the tall, long-leaf pine grew in front of the post office was changed to Draketown.
...The operation was short-lived...
With the discovery of gold in Dahlonega, interest in mining spread. Searches were made for gold in Haralson County, but few good veins were found. The pyrite deposits were explored for containing significant amounts of gold, but they, too, proved of little value.
--from the History of Haralson County, published by the Haralson County Historical Society in 1983, p. 23

'So We Beat On'

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” ― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

Boarding House

'I Have Seen Jesus Face-to-Face'

1932 - January 14, Thursday
The Haralson County Tribune
BUCHANAN, GA

A.B. Latham Ends Own Life

Leaves Note Giving Ill Health As Reason

The body of A.B. Latham, known intimately to the people of this section as "Bije" Latham, Saturday morning was found slumped in the seat of his car with almost his entire head blown from his body. Clutched in his arms was a shotgun with which the deed was committed. The car was in the garage at the Latham home in the Mountain View District.
For some time Mr. Latham and his nephew Hoke Latham had lived together, but the nephew was away from home at the time, on a visit.
Mrs. Gaudie Cansler, who lived nearby, and who helped with the housework, on Saturday morning went to the Latham home to milk the cows. All was quiet around the home. A search of the house failed to reveal the whereabouts of Mr. Latham. Mrs. Cansler's young son, going into the garage, discovered his body in the car. Neighbors were quickly notified and officers summoned. Later Coroner Cole held an inquest, the jury returning a verdict that the deceased came to his death by self-inflicted wounds.
The entire neighborhood was shocked, as were people of this section.
In one of Mr. Latham's pockets was a blood-bespattered letter which was written on both sides of legal cap paper. In this letter, which was not addressed to anyone in particular, Mr. Latham dwelt upon the fact that his health was wrecked and at his age he could not expect to build it back.
"I have seen Jesus face-to-face," he wrote, "and feel he will give me life ever-lasting and I will be happy with my loved ones gone before. It might have been better to go 31 years ago, as I started to do with a .32 pistol, but God told me not to. I feel that I have suffered through bad health to pay all dues ahead and I feel God will pardon me for all sins."
The letter went on at length, showing the hardships entailed in farming the past few years.
A considerable portion of the note dwelt upon the condition of his health, which had been gradually failing him. The deceased's health had not been so good during the past few weeks, and close friends were aware of the fact that he had brooded considerably over recent events.
He is survived by four brothers: J.T. Latham and Edgar Latham of Atlanta, and Victor and Virgil Latham of this county. He has numerous other relatives.
Funeral services and internment at Philadelphia Church were attended by a large crowd of sorrowing relatives and friends.

Death to the King

If Southern industry and commerce were sick, King Cotton also was growing continually sicker, and in the end would fall into worse case than had ever been known in the past, even in the 1890s. As the demand for cotton goods over the earth receded and the mills all around the globe slowed down, the demand for the staple of course gradually declined too -- at a time when Southern production was hanging near peak levels, and when foreign production also was growing greater than it had ever been before. In 1929 the Southern crop totaled nearly 15 million bales, and the foreign crop eleven and a half million -- with the result that the price swooped down from twenty to twelve cents. Next year it came down to eight.
Then, in 1931... the quotation on the New York cotton exchange descended to five cents, and on the local Southern markets it went even lower than that.
It was the conclusive disaster for the South. Immediate disaster for farmer, planter, tenant, and sharecropper...
The banks, already tottering, now found themselves with vast stocks of mortgages which were entirely worthless...
And this growing collapse of the banking system meant, of course, a rapid curtailment of credit over and beyond what had already been made necessary by the depression in general... And planters and labor-employing farmers found themselves either unable to secure credit at all or unable to secure sufficient credit to maintain their old scale of operation. The number of acres planted in cotton in 1932 would be eleven million less than in 1929.
Many of the planters abandoned their lands altogether, or turned them over to their tenants to dig a living out of them if they could...Having always gone essentially hungry for a reasonably good diet, the great body of the sharecroppers, white and black, would begin to go hungry in the full sense of the word ... And hordes of these people who had neither employment, means of subsistence, nor any place to go were wandering along every road from county to county and state to state...
Everybody was either ruined beyond his wildest previous fears or stood in peril of such ruin. And the general psychological reaction? First a universal bewilderment and terror ... Men everywhere walked in a kind of daze. They clustered, at first to assure one another that all would shortly be well ... but in the end they fled before the thought in one another's eyes...
And along with this ... a slow wondering and questioning ... a gradually developing bitterness of desperation... they heard from the pulpit that it was a punishment visited upon the people from the hand of God as the penalty of their sins...
--W.J. Cash, The Mind of the South, pp. 369-371

Moving Day

Cotton Mill Colic