UPCOMING TOURS
The Stilesboro Academy will be open for tours on May 18, during the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation's Spring Ramble in Cartersville. Tickets can be purchased at www.GeorgiaTrust.org.
Ann Mascia didn’t get Easter dresses.
She got May picnic dresses.
Mascia, now 65, has missed only a few of the annual picnics held the first Saturday of May on the grounds of the old Stilesboro Academy, a former school that sits on Taff Road atop a rise overlooking Ga. 113 in Bartow County, just west of Cartersville.
“It was an amazing event at one time,” said Mascia, a retired caterer and unofficial historian of the Stilesboro Improvement Club, which now owns the property. “Everyone brought a well-filled picnic basket.”
She remembers a table that seemed to stretch forever with foods such as fried chicken, cakes, pies and sweet tea. People played baseball and croquet.
By some accounts, it’s one of the oldest-running picnics in the state. The tradition started in 1859 to celebrate the dedication of the Greek revival-style academy, which drew students from all around, according to Mascia.
But times changed. The academy closed decades ago.
An event that used to draw nearly a thousand people now attracts fewer than 100.
“Everywhere you look, there’s something exciting to do,” Mascia lamented. “Who can compete with Disney World with just a picnic? People think there’s nothing exciting about a picnic. They want something that lights up and makes noise. That’s the way life is. Everything is changing.”
Today the large white building and its grounds are used for family reunions, dances, receptions and the club’s annual fall chrysanthemum show.
Some of the old-timers have gotten too old or frail to attend. Others have died. And younger people have moved away.
Those who stuck around are tied up with errands, work or taking children to various activities.
Jerry Barnette, 67, who is semiretired, hasn’t gone in several years, but remembers he and his friends riding their horses to the picnic and playing baseball. “It was a great, wonderful day. It was like a family reunion. The Southern cooks came to the table, ma’am! Things like that don’t happen anymore and it’s a shame.”
Mascia said she’s not sure whether the picnic was held during and after Gen. William T. Sherman making his famous march through the state in 1864, which would, of course, be understandable.
“We were still recuperating from the little visit we had from our friends in the North,” she said. “With times being tough and that sort of thing, travel was difficult.”
As local legend has it, an inscription written in Latin in the school is credited with saving the academy during the Civil War. As the story goes, the inscription, which reads loosely “For (or To) God and Country” was the same motto used by the United States Military Academy at West Point.
Problem is, that’s not West Point’s motto, which is actually “Duty, Honor, Country.”
That little detail, though, is not likely to squelch the story.
“Maybe he (Sherman) wasn’t good at Latin,” joked Regina Wheeler, deputy director of the Cartersville-Bartow County Convention & Visitors Bureau. “To me, what’s important is that it was saved. You can imagine how vital the Stilesboro Academy was to that community. It’s a historical treasure that needs to be preserved.”
Mascia still likes the tale.
“It’s possible it didn’t happen at all, it’s just a nice story,” she said. “I’m just repeating what was told to me by the generation before me and the one before that.”
In fact, "probably 90 percent of the stories about Sherman saving particular buildings for particular reasons were made up after the war," said Gordon Jones, military historian at the Atlanta History Center. "… Some stories might be true, but most of them are false."
The school was occupied by the Union Army in 1864 and spared by Sherman, according to the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation. It was saved again in the 1930s when the Stilesboro Improvement Club raised money for the Bartow County school board to purchase new lumber for a modern school, rather than tear down the academy for its lumber.
Although it was spared during Sherman's campaign, the academy nearly fell because of maintenance issues. The Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation placed it on the Places in Peril list, where it remains today.
In placing it on the list, the trust said while the Stilesboro Improvement Club remains the caretaker, “with a dwindling membership, the building’s continual maintenance poses a challenge.”
Last year, the club received a $25,000 gift to restore the exterior. Although more work needs to be done, the academy is considered a success.
“In our eyes, what makes it a success is the community support behind it,” said Kate Ryan, director of preservation for the Georgia Trust. “The community uses it for different events and gatherings. It would be ideal if it had a more regular revenue stream and even if it were used more often, but it’s on the path to really being stable.”
Mascia, who plans to bring deviled eggs and pimento cheese sandwiches, said anyone who wants to attend is welcome to bring their favorite dishes and have a good time.
And she hopes the picnic will one day return to its heyday.
But she’s also pragmatic.
“I’d like the picnic to go on forever,” she said. “I would hate it if it did end, but I’m a practical person. Hell, the Roman Empire ended. If that can go, so can a picnic.”
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