Glo dancers, war reenactors interpret history in Roswell

Hide Out with the Hembrees! Winetasting presented by the Roswell Historical Society, 7-9 p.m. July 12. $30. The Little Green House, 780 Hembree Road, Roswell. Proceeds benefit Historic Hembree Farm. French wines will be served in homage to the unsuccessful attempt by one of the mill workers, a French citizen, to save them from Sherman's wrath by raising the French flag and declaring the premises neutral territory. (The Yankees didn't buy it for une minute.) 770-992-1665, 770-645-6960, jtodd7060@charter.net, www.roswellhistoricalsociety.org.

Mystery of the missing mill workers

After their arrest, the mill workers were sent by wagon to Marietta, where they were held at the Georgia Military Institute for about one week. Then they were loaded onto cattle cars and transported to Louisville, Ky., where most of the women were held in a refugee hospital. Others were sent across the Ohio River to Indiana or to other northern cities. They were never tried for treason, but instead were released without money, food or help getting back to Georgia. Few returned to Roswell, and the fates of most remain a mystery. It’s likely they found jobs or married and started families in their new locations. One mill worker, Adeline Bagley Buice, was pregnant when she was arrested and eventually sent to Chicago. Five years later, she and her young daughter completed their journey back to Roswell on foot. By then, having long been presumed dead, her husband had remarried. Stallings has created a vignette titled “Adeline” that local dancers from studios in and around Roswell will perform as part of the Glo dance installation.

Sources: New Georgia Encyclopedia; Roswell Convention & Visitors Bureau

Download the app

For more information on this and other topics from Roswell’s past, download the app, “The Roswell Mills & Civil War.” It also includes an excellent narrated walking tour of key historical sites in Roswell.

EXTRA GLO

Beginning July 9, Glo will present four other pieces in “unexpected public places” as part of “Gestures that soon will disappear.” Here’s where to see three of them (the fifth location on July 19 and 20, has not yet been announced):

Solo migration #1, 5 p.m. July 9, WestEnd, Atlanta

Migration + installation, 8:30 p.m. July 11 and 12, 98 14th St., Atlanta

Solo migration #2, 5 p.m. July 16, Historic 4th Ward

Their arrival in town turned things upside down.

On July 5, 1864, federal troops began a 12-day occupation of Roswell, home to three mills that were working overtime to produce cloth for Confederate uniforms and other vital military supplies. Much of the citizenry had already fled or was off fighting elsewhere; under orders from Union Gen. William T. Sherman, the mills were burned and some 400 workers, nearly all of them women and children, were arrested, charged with treason and sent away in boxcars to Kentucky and Indiana.

Next weekend, history will repeat itself — albeit in friendlier fashion, and with an artistic twist. Glo, an Atlanta-based contemporary dance group, takes temporary command of the spot where a local historian says "the signature event in Roswell during the Civil War" took place. The performers come in peace, prepared to deploy a very public and occasionally provocative brand of dance to revisit the tragic saga and make it newly relevant to spectators.

“Dance has this fabulous power in public space,”said Glo founder and choreographer Lauri Stallings. “It tends to slow a community down and make it meaningful to pause and listen and experience.”

The city of Roswell is staging its own series of Living History events the same weekend, and many residents appear intrigued by what Glo has to offer. If a tad perplexed.

“It sounds interesting, although I have no idea what it is,” said Bill Browning, special events coordinator for Barrington Hall, an antebellum house museum where Civil War reenactors will camp out on the lawn all weekend. Twice a day, they’ll restage the arrest of the mill workers (played by actors) in the nearby town square.

Indeed, the Glo appearance, which was separately organized and funded by private citizens, is injecting an artistically interpretive approach to civic commemoration into a town more accustomed to honoring the past with strict historical accuracy. The performance is one of several Glo events taking place throughout metro Atlanta for a project called “Gestures That Soon Will Disappear” being filmed for exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Georgia in September.

Started five years ago by Stallings, Glo creates what she calls “physical installations” — energetic and thought-provoking dance pieces that seem to emerge spontaneously in public settings. (They’re actually well rehearsed, while still allowing room for improvisation.) Previous Glo installations have taken place on Peachtree Street at the height of rush hour, in folk artist Howard Finster’s Paradise Garden and at Lenox Square. The Roswell installation, which will be performed July 12-13, is built around the theme of migration. Twenty-five female dancers will appear on the historic town square around 4 p.m both days and proceed — along with spectators — to the Roswell Mill Ruins in Old Mill Park.

They will perform a piece designed to convey a range of emotions — from vulnerability to empowerment — and inspire reflection not only on past events but on future possibilities, on culture and identity and how any of us gets to where we end up going.

What they won't do, is to literally reenact the arrest and forced explusion of the mill workers. That's the city-sponsored event's turf, Stallings said, and Glo has no desire to "bleed into" it.

Besides the reenactments, Roswell's two-day commemoration of the "Sesquicentennial of the Federal Occupation of Roswell" will feature performances of period music and dance; presentations on topics such as 19th century banking and etiquette; food vendors; sutlers (Civil War talk for folks selling stuff); and a photographer employing the "wet plate" technique of the period. The event is jointly organized by Barrington Hall and the Roswell Convention and Visitors Bureau.

A press conference held at the Visitors Center last week was conducted by two reenactors clad in Union Army blue playing the roles of Gen. George Thomas and his aide.

“I don’t expect a whole lot of trouble coming from Roswell,” Gen. Thomas (aka Eric Peterson) announced. “However, we’re finding a lot of Confederate prisoners who are wearing ‘Roswell gray.’ That means someone is still making uniforms, and we’re going to find out who.”

As for Glo’s participation, Roswell residents Sally Hansell (a freelance writer for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution) and artist Maggie Davis sought the dance troupe’s involvement, hoping it would bring added value to the story of the mill workers and the city.

"Showing what happened 150 years ago, that's Roswell's bread-and-butter," said Hansell. "This is about trying to make it relevant to our lives today, through the issue of migration. And through the issue of what we are as a community and what we want to be as a community."

To avoid potential conflict between the two events, organizers have worked out a schedule whereby Barrington Hall’s 3 p.m. reenactment of the mill workers’ arrest by uniformed Yankee soldiers will be well over by the time Glo’s dancers take to the square. As a result, any early concerns of a symbolic war breaking out between the states of commemoration have largely been dissipated.

Indeed, one city official thinks it’s the best of both worlds.

“It’s great to have both perspectives,” said Dotty Etris, executive director of the Roswell Convention & Visitors Bureau. “It will bring a lot of emotion and feeling to an event that people just witnessed in a historical way.”