Posts

Some History about Chalk Level

Chalk Level “Chalk Level, which is a Summer resort for the wealthy colored people of Newnan, as we learned…” The Newnan herald. (Newnan, Ga.) 1865-1887, Sep. 15, 1881   “Black schools were established after the Civil War. Among the first was a school located near the depot in Newnan in a house belonging to the railroad. By 1881 a black school was established in Chalk Level, one of the wealthier black areas. Apparently, some slave owners had taught or hired teachers to teach slaves reading, writing, and mathematics. Some of those educated slaves were highly skilled craftsmen who were hired out by their owners to builders who constructed some of the fine homes in Newnan and Coweta County. W.B. Pinson’s skilled slave workers helped to build the Atlanta and West Point Railroad. In payment for their work Pinson received railroad stock, which is still held by his descendants.” (History of Coweta County, GA. Chapter XV)   The Chalk Level area is located about three blocks from the Coweta Coun
1 comment
Read more

Newnan Chapel UMC

Image
  Since the 1840's, Newnan Chapel is one of the first established churches in Newnan's oldest African American community of Chalk Level. One of their first preachers W. H. Groves is buried in the Farmer Street Cemetery, Newnan's Historic African American Cemetery. His obituary is found in one of Newnan's historic newspapers- http://www.newnanchapelumc.com/about/ https://times-herald.com/news/2020/03/newnan-chapel-umc-mount-vernon-baptist-oldest-african-american-congregations-in-coweta
Post a Comment
Read more

The McClelland Academy

Image
  The McClelland Academy was Newnan’s first African American private school. The steps are still there today on Richard Allen Drive, across from the public pool. In fact there are two sets of steps! Wouldn’t it be educating to have a historical marker at these steps telling us of what was once here! Benjamin Louis Glenn died in 1904. He is buried in Westview, another historic African American cemetery in Newnan.
Post a Comment
Read more

The Coweta County African American Museum and Research Center AKA The Caswell House

Ruby Caswell and Caswell House Bio The Caswell House, now used as the Coweta County African American Heritage Museum, has a long history in Newnan, Georgia. The house was built in the 1880s to be used in the mill village. The mill village houses were rented to families who worked in mills, and who were often taken advantage of with payment plans that kept the families from ever getting out of debt to the mill. But they were also stepping stones for many families who had left the farm and moved to larger cities. The owner of the house from the late 1940s until it was given to the museum was Ruby Caswell, who was born in Cleburne, Alabama in 1924 on a farm, but moved to Coweta County, Georgia with her family for better opportunities.  Ruby Caswell bought two houses at 163 and 165 East Broad Street, not far from downtown Newnan, for a few hundred dollars in the late 1940s. She may have bought them directly from the mill, whose influence was fading by that time. She was in her early twenti
Post a Comment
Read more

Mt Vernon First Baptist Church

Image
            Located at 5 Pinson Street, Mount Vernon First Baptist Church is one of the oldest churches in Chalk Level, and one of its first deacons was A. R. Burch. He is the father of Charlie Burch, whose 1869 tombstone was found at Farmer Street Cemetery. It is surmised that since Mt Vernon does not have a cemetery on its grounds, its members interred deceased loves ones into Newnan's Colored Cemetery, known as Farmer Street Cemetery today, until the cemetery closed in 1 Dec 1894 and Eastview Cemetery opened.           In 1959, A.D. King, brother to Martin Luther King, Jr came to pastor at Mt Vernon First Baptist and would preach there for 4 years. During that time, on 12 April 1959, Martin Luther King Jr preached a sermon at Mt Vernon. https://times-herald.com/news/2020/03/newnan-chapel-umc-mount-vernon-baptist-oldest-african-american-congregations-in-coweta https://times-herald.com/news/2017/02/mlks-brother-was-pastor-in-newnan https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/k
Post a Comment
Read more

Newnan's Historic Colored Cemetery AKA Farmer Street Cemetery

Image
Brief history:             The Farmer Street Cemetery, historically called “Newnan’s Colored Cemetery” is the burial place of the earliest African Americans of Newnan. It is located in the currently named Cole Town District in the eastern part of the  city of Newnan, situated between Farmer Street and Cole Street,   but this area is also adjacent to the African American community that is historically known as Chalk Level, an early Black community that lay east of Newnan’s corporate limits. In the late 1800s, the cemetery land was referred to as “the colored cemetery” by the local citizens, but was forgotten by them overtime; however, it has been documented throughout Newnan’s city council archives as the “colored cemetery”. In 1999, this area that covered approximately 4.4 acres would be reidentified as an abandoned cemetery based on depressions and probing, finding approximately 249 burials, and being bordered on the east by Farmer Street, it has become more recently known as the Farm
Post a Comment
Read more

Dr. John Henry Jordan

Image
The Jordan Family Dr. John Henry Jordan was the first black Doctor in Newnan.   Dr. Jordan organized the first Medical Aid Organization for black people in Coweta. The organization met bi-monthly and held lectures on sociology, hygiene and various diseases. He built a beautiful home at 61 Pinson Street in the Chalk Level community and did a lot to improve the quality of living. http://thecowetacountymuseum.blogspot.com/2008/08/more-on-dr-john-h-jordan.html
Post a Comment
Read more