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 twenties when she bought the houses, and later told stories about how several men tried to keep her from buying the property because she was a woman. She fought them and they soon realized she wasn’t going to stop fighting, and let her buy the two shotgun style houses. 

Ruby’s father, George Washington Caswell, had died in 1941, and Ruby was now taking care of her mother, Maggie, who moved into one of the houses on East Broad Street with her.  George’s last words to Ruby were, “take care of your mother,” and she did. Ruby dedicated her life to her mother, and then later to others, and never married.

For years the two identical houses sat on East Broad Street, and were a place for the Caswell family to gather. Ruby’s sister, Dussie Caswell Thompson, moved nearby with her husband, Andrew Jesse Thompson. Life was going well until Jessie Thompson died, and a few years later Ruby’s mother died, and then her older sister, Dussie passed as well. With no one else to take them, Ruby raised her sister’s children. She had never been a mother, but provided a place for the two youngest kids, Jerry Thompson and Wayne Thompson. The two older siblings were now adults.  

Ruby continued to live in the house at 165 East Broad Street with Jerry and Wayne, and rented out the house at 163 East Broad Street to many different people including her own family members such as Wayne Thompson, who rented the house shortly after he was married. This biography’s author, and son of Wayne Thompson, lived in the house at 163 East Broad Street for a few months after birth, three decades before it became the Coweta County African American Heritage Museum. This author remembers playing with different children who lived in the house over the years. Ruby loved children, and always offered treats to my constantly changing friends. Few families stayed in the house for long, as is often the case with low-cost rentals. 

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s the houses fell into disrepair, while fruit trees and vines planted by Maggie and Dussie years before grew around the property. Ruby kept areas of the property clear so she could grow vegetables that she gave away to family and friends. Every August and September the area would flourish with deep purple muscadines that signaled their arrival with sweet smells that sat in the air.  

With so many members of the Caswell and Thompson family displaced or deceased, Ruby Caswell became the family matriarch and the adopted grandmother to the Thompson grandchildren, but she retained the title “Aunt Ruby,” which was a name by which she was called by many who knew her, regardless of family ties. 

In the late 1980s Ruby’s nephew, or adopted son, Wayne Thompson was in a car crash that left him physically and mentally handicapped. The sadness brought on by this caused a decline in her health that would take her mind first as she suffered with dementia, and later her entire body when she passed at 74 years of age on October 25, 1999. 

Aunt Ruby loved people, especially children, and would give anything to anyone who needed it. She would be happy to know that the house she bought so long ago is now doing good things. 

-        Scott Thompson, Great-nephew

June, 2018

 Castle Rock, Colorado

 Directions to the museum and cemetery at 92 Farmer Street, Newnan, GA 30263:

I 85 South to exit 47 (Newnan, Shenandoah) Right onto Highway 34 West 
Follow 34 West to sixth traffic light, just past the blue and white water tower (Farmer Street). Turn left. 
Museum is on the right hill just past the skate park in fourth block. Across from Church. 

https://thecowetacountymuseum.blogspot.com/2004/06/history-of-african-american-alliance.html

https://thecowetacountymuseum.blogspot.com/2004/06/updated-alliance-info-thru-dec-2003.html


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