Q: In addition to Clark Howell Highway in Clayton County, there is Howell Mill Road in northwest Atlanta and Hugh Howell Road in Tucker. Were those Howells related?
-- Lance DeLoach, Thomaston
A: How many Howells were there? Let's see if we can get this straight. There were a couple of mills named for Judge Clark Howell, but the original one was on Peachtree Creek, near where Howell Mill Road crosses it. According to David R. Kaufman's book, "Peachtree Creek: A Natural and Unnatural History of Atlanta's Watershed," Howell built a sawmill on Nancy Creek in addition to his sawmill/gristmill on Peachtree Creek in the 1850s. Both mills were untouched by General Sherman -- who went on to make Georgia howl -- but Howell's home, which was near the Atlanta Waterworks, was burned. His brother Evan Howell, to add to the confusion, named his son Clark (born 1863), who I recently wrote about and is the namesake of Clark Howell Highway. Hugh Howell, who was born in 1888, the 23rdchild of a Warren County blacksmith, was no relation to the other Howells, according to a 1936 Time magazine article, but like them, also was involved in politics. He managed FDR's "pre-election junket to Georgia," and then was named chairman of the Democratic State Executive Committee. A portion of Ga. 236 in DeKalb County was named for Hugh Howell. How's that?
Q: There was something about Dade County and the Georgia state quarter on a show on The History Channel. What’s that about?
A: Dade County, in the extreme northwest portion of Georgia, is only a couple of hours from Atlanta, but was the most isolated county in the state for 100 years. Folks had to go through either Alabama or Tennessee to reach the rest of the state until Georgia built a highway to connect the residents with their fellow Georgians. When the Georgia state quarter was released in 1999, the outline of the state didn't include Dade County, cutting off that corner and leading to another interesting tidbit about Dade County. In the 1850s, the people of Dade County were so fervent in their desire to leave the Union, they grew tired of Georgia's delay in seceding. They not only wanted to secede from the "United States, but from Georgia as well," according to the county's website. That led to "The Independent State of Dade," and the county didn't officially rejoin the United States until July 4, 1945, an event that was marked by a festival in 2010. The myth surrounding the quarter is that the coin's artist either made a mistake by not including Dade County or was working from a map that didn't include the State of Dade as part of Georgia.
What do you want to know?
If you're new in town or just have questions about this special place we call home, ask us! E-mail Andy Johnston at q&a@ajc.com.
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