JEWELL, GEORGIA
Photos by Scott B. Thompson, Sr.
If you want to take a trip in time back to the 1800s, from Laurens County get in your car, travel through Sandersville and continue on Highway 15, turn right in Warthen and then turn west when you see the sign for the turn to the road to Hamburg State Park. Keep going past the park and just before you reach Georgia Highway 16 between Sparta and Warrenton, you will turn a bend and be transported back to the 1800s in an instant.
The village of Jewell exists around an expansive open green defined by a
few, widely spaced buildings, and along the Warrenton Road (Georgia Highway
16) on both sides of the Ogeechee River. The village lies in two counties,
Warren and Hancock, separated by the Ogeechee River. The site is situated
near an old Indian trail from the east to the west which crossed the river
about a hundred yasds below the present bridge (on Highway 16). There were
many rocks in the river at that point which afforded a crossing over the
river even at flood staged The rocks were blasted out of the river in later
times.
On the West stde of the Ogeechee the town surrounds a green, planted at
one time with elms which later died. Today the green is grassed and defined
by a dirt road
Facing the -green are a small two-story frame school house on a granite foundation. Built
ca. 1871 by Daniel A. Jewell, it has a gable roof with brackets. The principal
facade faces north. The entrance is on the center line of the north elevation;
a box return gable pediment is over the door. On each side is a window
with 6/6 lights. The second story, north elevation, has one window centered
over each of the first-story windows, and a double window in the center
with pointed arch lintels. On the interior there was a classroom downstairs
with meeting hall over the latter reached by winding steps. The benches, the
blackboard, the platform, and old stovepipes are still in place. The present use is as a community house for
the two churches.
Baptist Church: 1871 Norman Gothic style. Faces north. Main
entrance through tower (north) end. Pilasters and pointed windows (some
double like the schoolhouse). Present use: church. Condition: good. ..
Methodist Church: ca. 1841-45. Original location at Rock Mills Community,
moved to Jewel! in 1894. Wooden, Gothic style. Five-side south end.
Square steeple, pointed windows. Present use: church. Condition: good.
Ashley Jewell Residence: Wood, Victorian Queen Anne, Gingerbreadstyle
house. Faces west. Late 19th Century. Two stories and attic. Fishscale
trim. Present use: residence. Condition: good.
Baptist Church, Jewell ca. 1870
Methodist Church, Baptist Church, School
Rosemont Store
Ashley Jewell House
Rock Mill Methodist Church. ca. 1841
School/Meeting Hall
The district of Jewell, Georgia, is significant as, the remains of an early
Georgia mill village. Its architectural features-date from the 1840s to the latter
half of the 19th Century. Nearby are the sites of a textile mill, grist mill, and
an iron,foundry. The town of Jewell is located
on an old Indian trail, which crossed the Ogeechee River a few hundred yards from
the present bridge.
The town of Jewell has been known by various names. In the early days of its
development, it was owned by the Shivers family and tradition has it that it was
called "Shivers." The Shivers family, headed by Jonas Shivers, came to Georgia
from Virginia and lived in Hancock and Warren counties, Georgia, in the late 18th
Century.
Jonas' son, William Shivers (1783-1852), was the proprietor, not only of the
site where Jewell is located, but of Rock Mills, about a mile and a half north, on
the Ogeechee, where the William Shivers home place (known as Rock Mill) still
remains. One site was also known as Shivers,Mills, 1826-1835.
Mr. Shivers had a grist mill at the Rock Mills, and later built a thread
mill, as well as a large store to supply the mill workers and their families, at
Shivers.
After William Shivers' death in 1852, his administrator sold the Rock Mill
Factory (known in public advertisements simply as the "cotton factory") at Shivers
to Thomas Neal of Warren County in November, 1853. This tract included nine
acres surrounding the mill site on the Warren County side of the river. Neal
sold the same to Thomas Windsor on July 15, 1856, and on February 20, 1857, Windsor,
of Baldwin County, sold the site and nine acres jointly to Daniel Ashley
Jewel! (late of Massachusetts and New Hampshire) and Simeon C. Bodfish (late of
Connecticut) for $3,500. In April, 1857, Jewell and Bodfish bought 105 acres
across the Ogeechee in Hancock County to add to their enterprise. A year later,
June 15, 1858, Bodfish sold his half interest in both locations to Jewell, and
the firm was dissolved. Jewell then became sole owner of the Rock Manufacturing
Company.
In 1858, Jewell and Bodfish (and after July 6th, Jewell alone) had advertised
that they had repaired and added new machinery at the mill and that cotton
and wool manufacturing was once again underway. They could supply yarns, wool and cloth.
Under the sole operation of Daniel A. Jewell (1822-1896), the community became
a burgeoning textile center. A two-story school house was built on the green by
Jewell about 1871. During his ownership, homes were built, many on the highlands
on both sides of the river, continuing the standard mill houses, built of heart
pine and mortised-and-pegged construction, which had been built for the mill workers
beginning in the 1840s.
The Walter Dickson house is an example and is one of the
two oldest houses standing in Jewell.
D.A. Jewell, a Massachusetts native, had come at age 25 (ca. 1847) to Milledgeville,
Georgia, the state capitol, and had married there in 1849 Mary Ann
Shea. In the mid-1850s, he operated D.A. Jewell and Company, a wool-manufacturing
firm, and this was his occupation just prior to the purchase of the Rock Factory.
He moved to Jewell (then called Rock Factory) by 1859, for he was living there in
1860.
During the War Between the States, while the town was still known as Rock
Factory, a company known as the "Ogeechee Minute Men," was formed in 1863, with
Jewel! himself, a Northerner, asking the state's adjutant general for weapons.
Tradition has it that federal soldiers came through the town in 1864 after reaching
Shoals on the Ogeechee, a few miles to the south, but did not burn the mills
or the town due to seeing the masonic symbol on the mill's chimney. (This stone
was later salvaged and is now located at Call away Gardens, Pine Mountain, Georgia.)
The William P. Haynes Lodge of the Free and Accepted Masons had been formed
at Rock Factory in 1864 and was chartered in 1865, shortly after the end of the
war. It was dissolved in 1946.
A Baptist church was organized there in 1869 and the brick edifice was built
ca. 1871 on the green, also sponsored by Mr. Jewell. It is the oldest brick church
building in the Washington Baptist Association.
The wooden Methodist church was
built about 1841-1845 at Rock Mills, and was moved to Jewell in 1894. It had been
previously known as the Rock Mills Church. Today it stands on the northwest side
of the green.
The name of the town remained Rock Factory until approximately 1869-1870.
An
act of the legislature in 1872 incorporated the town as Jewell's Mills, and maps
after this date are the first to show the new name. Later, the name became Jewell 's, and later Jewell, as it remains today. The U.S. Post Office at Jewel!'s
was established in 1873 with Mr. Jewell as the postmaster, later to be succeeded by his son.
During the first decade after the Civil War (1866-1876), the mill resumed operations,
as evidenced by the surviving Factory Accounts book for the entire period.
The mill operated six days a week except for holidays (usually Thanksgiving, Christmas,
and sometimes July 4th), or when the water was exceedingly high or low, thus
hampering production.
Changes in equipment also caused several down days during
this decade. Produced during these years were jerseys, jeans, and yarn.
By 1876, jerseys were being made in cotton and wool. In 1876, the mill complex also
included flour and saw mills, and by 1880, there were 3,000 spindles for cotton and
150 for wool, with 50,000 pounds of cotton being processed per month.
D.A. Jewell died in 1896 and was buried in the town that not only bore his name,
but bore the results of his hard work and benevolence. His wife, who died the year
before, is buried there also.
The town of Jewell has been connected with a number of the South's great textile
families. Fuller E. Call away, later president of the Call away Mills of LaGrange,
Georgia, married Jewell's granddaughter, Ida Cason (for whom Callaway Garden was
later named) and eventually helped members of the Jewell family to move to Chickamauga,
Georgia, where their descendants are still involved with the cotton mills.
D.A. Jewell, Sr.'s sole ownership of the mil! continued until 1875, when his
son-in-law, Colonel W.L. Bowen, acquired partnership with him and the name was
changed to Bowen-Jewell Company. Metal "coins" were minted for use by mill workers
during this period.
Eventually, D.A. Jewell, Jr. (1860-1935) became the family
partner with Colonel Bowen. Sales were made in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Jewell,
Jr., built a bag plant there, alternating weeks supervising the plants at Jewell and Chattanooga. Gordon Lee of Chickamauga, Georgia, began developing springs in
his area and sold land to Jewell, Jr., for a mill, where ca. 1902 he built a finishing
plant.
After several decades of dual mills, Jewell, Jr., sold the Georgia
site around 1922 to the Gant Brothers, who ran the Glen Raven Mills of North Carolina.
In 1927 the mills at Jewell were completely destroyed by fire.
Today only the mill's foundation remains on the banks of the Ogeechee.
A
street of mill houses, known as "Smut Row," paralleling the Warrenton Road, were
cleared in the 1960s to make pastureland.
Many of the present-day residents of Jewel! are descendants of the original
mill families. They have carefully preserved the remaining houses and are interested
in seeing that the character of the town remain unchanged.
Historical material from National Register of Historic Places Inventory Form.
