A bit beyond Booger Hollow Road, set back just out of easy view of Chubbtown Road is the 148-year-old church that serves its tiny congregation of the living.
Forever convened in the cemetery on the other side of the one-lane bridge that spans Lake Creek is the gathering of founders. There in the Chubb Brothers graveyard, circa 1864, lie eight of the Chubbs, free blacks who came to this isolated corner of Northwest Georgia and with their parents built from the clay up a community of their own.
Generations have come and gone. Water has risen and ebbed, an early 1900s flood taking out much of the place known as Chubbtown - save the church - and scattering family members here and there. Those few who remain today have their mail come to a Cave Spring address and do much of their commerce in nearby Cedartown.
But one of their number has made the world take notice again of a place and a history that a digital world would not have wasted a byte of memory upon otherwise. This is the place, after all, that gave rise to Nick Chubb, the star Georgia running back and one of those who will be leading the Bulldogs into Monday night’s national championship game against Alabama.
It will be a big-city game played in a billion-dollar dome to a national television audience. It also will be a very intimate and personal experience for a Georgia following that has sailed the flagship university in search of shared glory. Passage has never been determined by actually attending class in Athens. And patience has been the most important provision, for it has been since 1980 that the Bulldogs last ruled college football.
It will be the sons of Georgia who likely will determine the Bulldogs result Monday night. Fifteen of the 22 starters on the Bulldogs depth chart are Georgia born, their birthplaces radiating in all directions from the site of Monday’s game, Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
All precincts of the state are represented by the Bulldogs. From the cool freshman quarterback from Warner Robins to the award-winning linebacker from Montezuma. From east (DT John Atkins, Thomson) to west (WR Terry Godwin, Hogansville). From north (OL Ben Cleveland, Toccoa) to south (DB Malkom Parrish, Quitman). Urban (OL Kendall Baker, Atlanta) to more pocket-sized addresses (DL Trent Thompson, Albany).
As for Chubb, the SEC’s No. 2 all-time career rusher behind another small-town Georgian named Herschel Walker, he is the one Bulldog whose name is imbedded in a little piece of Georgia.
The Chubbs zealously recycle first names. Nick is named for his great-great-great-great-great grandfather. Coming from North Carolina, his forebearers gradually made their way to this part of Georgia prior to the close of the Civil War. Chubbtown resisted the destruction of the war and the rending racial strife that followed, to become a self-sufficient enclave. At its height, there were such enterprises as a gristmill, a sawmill, a firehouse, a blacksmith shop, a cotton gin, a distillery and even a small casket-building business.
Nicholas (Nick to Bulldogs fans) Chubb lived largely in Cedartown with his mother, but also spent a great deal of time with his father Henry working and wandering the Chubbtown land. In fact, Henry Chubb just bought some more acreage nearby where he plans to raise cattle and lure some of the family back to farming. Nick told his father he just might want to return after an expected NFL career to grow hops on the land.
The echoes of such an upbringing and a connection to such a strong family history as this come in handy for a young man considering football for a trade.
“Nick takes it very seriously where he comes from,” Henry Chubb said. “He’s very proud of his history. He knows how it is being a black male in this world, you got to struggle. I tell him whatever you put in is what you get out of it.”
“There was a lot of work that went in here,” Henry said. “You can’t see it now because half of it is gone. Can you only imagine what they had to go through to get everything built up? I know. l’ve been working hard on my own thing.
“I tell (the children), see what they did out here a long time ago, your ancestors. You have to set a goal to get where you want to be. Like my daddy used to tell me: A man without a plan has nothing in his hands.”
The Chubb Chapel United Methodist Church survives today as a site on the National Register of Historic Places. The small white church – board and batten on the outside, simple pews and a plain altar on the inside – holds twice monthly services for about 40 members. It also is a gathering place for the residents of the community – a few new-comers looking for a quiet place to settle along with those with more familiar ties to the Chubbtown legacy.
Michael Brinson, is the chapel’s latest visiting minister, new to the setting, but already well on the way to understanding it. “These people don’t have to do any DNA search, they know where they’re from,” he said.
Because of Nick Chubb’s four seasons at Georgia and the Bulldogs prominence on the national scene, others have come to know where they are from as well. Chubbtown has been the subject of profiles on ESPN and CBS, as well as in numerous regional publications. Bulldogs fans cherish origin stories like this. The occasional street sign that gets snatched is a small price to pay for the notoriety.
Closer to the source, Nick Chubb’s success has, “pulled the family and the community together,” said Clemmie Whatley, a keeper of the Chubbtown history. It’s the younger generation, she said, that has really been drawn back into the fold. Just as the Bulldogs success has pulled together all elements of its family of fans.
“There’s not much here, but you have heard so much about it,” Henry Chubb said. “It’s almost been forgotten about, but then people heard about Nick Chubb. I tell people there’s not much like it used to be, but we’re still here. It’s good that my ancestors haven’t been forgotten, thanks to Nick.
“You think about it: From back in the 1800s and here it is 2018 and we’re still talking about Chubbtown. I never thought any more people would want to come and talk about it.”
Chubbtown lives in the driving legs of its citizen running back. It is one of the many important addresses in the thoroughly Georgia story of one college football quest. Its history is brightly reflected by a team attempting to write its own chapter of lore Monday night.
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