Sparta GA Millmore Mill Hwy 16 Bridge Sunset Reflections Hancock County Architectural Art

by Reid Callaway

Title

Sparta GA Millmore Mill Hwy 16 Bridge Sunset Reflections Hancock County Architectural Art

Artist

Reid Callaway

Medium

Photograph - Photography

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Sparta GA Millmore Mill Hwy 16 Bridge....by Reid Callaway
Sunset Reflections Hancock County Architectural Art

This is a 200 year old gristmill located in Hancock County, Georgia on Shoulderbone Creek at the intersection of Highways 16 & 77 between Eatonton and Sparta, Georgia. You will never know this beautiful architectural bridge is even under here unless you stop to look. I went back and forth across this bridge for 20+ years before stopping one day to take a picture of the mill from the bridge and found this awesome architectural bridge under my feet after all this time. Sometimes we don't see what is right in front of our eyes, or under our feet I should say in this case. Enjoy!

Hancock County lies between the Oconee and Ogeechee rivers, in east central Georgia. It was founded December 17, 1793, and was named for John Hancock, signer of the Declaration of Independence. Sparta, established in 1795 and incorporated in 1805, is the county seat.
Hancock is steeped in history, from the early post-Revolutionary period and throughout the nineteenth century. The area attracted Revolutionary War (1775-83) veterans from Virginia, the Carolinas, and New England, who came to take advantage of the 1806 land lottery. These early settlers carved a refined community out of frontier forests. In 1825, on his American tour, the Marquis de Lafayette was hosted in Sparta by former Congressman William Terrell and others. By 1840 Hancock had given Georgia two governors, Nathaniel E. Harris and Charles McDonald, and had become well known for its strong educational institutions and religious affiliations.

In 1806 Georgia Methodists, as part of the South Carolina Conference of the Methodist Church, met in Sparta. Two prominent late-nineteenth-century Methodist bishops were Sparta residents: Bishop George Foster Pierce and his African American counterpart, Bishop Lucius Holsey. Presbyterians, Catholics, and Baptists also contributed to the early religious heritage of the county. Several male academies, at Powelton, Mount Zion, and Sparta, were nationally known; and the Sparta Female Model School attracted wealthy young girls from New England and the mid-Atlantic states. In 1862 Richard Malcolm Johnston's famous boys' school at Rockby set an example as a progressive institute of learning unique for nineteenth-century schools.

Cotton brought prosperity to the county by 1830. Better farming practices were introduced by innovative planters like David Dickson, who designed a plow and began the practice of using bat guano for fertilizer. Dickson, along with other progressive planters, founded the Hancock County Planters Club in 1837 to encourage improved agricultural achievements. It had a statewide influence on planters who witnessed the club's enthusiasm and successful yields, and it helped turn the tide of emigration to western lands after cotton farming had depleted the soil.
In January 1861, when the Georgia Secession Convention convened, the three Hancock County representatives, all staunch Unionists, voted against withdrawal. When Georgia seceded, however, they threw their fortunes in with the Confederacy, and the county supported four years of war by supplying soldiers and turning cotton fields to corn and grain fields to sustain an army. Two Confederate generals were born in Hancock County, and Linton Stephens, the half brother of Alexander Stephens, vice president of the Confederacy, lived in Sparta from 1852 to 1872. The town of Linton (near Sparta) was named for him in 1858.

War came to Hancock County in November 1864, when elements of General William T. Sherman's Union forces left Milledgeville on the infamous March to the Sea. Cavalry under Brigadier General Judson Kilpatrick raided the southern part of Hancock along the Ogeechee River, destroying farms and burning cotton. But the real devastation came in the war's aftermath. Most of the wealthy citizens left Sparta and Hancock County in the years following the war, and the area's prosperity declined considerably during Reconstruction. William J. Northen, who had moved to the county in the 1850s and established a farm there, was elected governor of Georgia in 1890.

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September 30th, 2014

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