By Jennifer Whittaker, Editor

The only remnant of the town’s former glory readily visible along this busy highway is a two-story, stucco covered brick building that served as Crawford County’s courthouse from 1852 until 2001. The town’s historical significance is outlined on markers that flank the stately vernacular building built with Greek Revival influence. There are no traffic lights or stop signs in Knoxville on Hwy. 80, so few motorists pull off the road to discover the area’s colorful past.

Guests attending the Old Knoxville Days Festival Nov. 13-14, 2004, will be able to tour the building that once housed the Knoxville Journal, printed in Crawford County in the late 1800s.

Thanks to the efforts of the Crawford County Historical Society and Historic Crawford Foundation, that’s about to change. During the Old Knoxville Days Festival, to be held Nov. 13-14, the group plans to bring the town’s history to life.

“The purpose of the festival is to explore life as it was in Knoxville and Crawford County and celebrate our ties to Texas,” Mona Lowe, festival chairman, said.

The Georgia Legislature created Crawford County Dec. 23, 1822. Knoxville, named for Revolutionary War General Henry Knox and America’s first secretary of war, was designated the county seat a year later. Through the 1820s, Knoxville was the last frontier town on the federal road. Many early settlers of Texas passed through Knoxville on their way west and many area residents relocated to Texas.

During the festival, re-enactors from the Texian Legacy Association, featured in the History Channel documentary “The Alamo”, will encamp across the street from the courthouse and recreate the presentation of a flag that Knoxville resident Joanna Troutman made to Col. William Ward’s battalion of volunteer soldiers enroute to fight in the Texas War of Independence. The soldiers camped in Knoxville near her father’s inn on Nov. 18, 1835, at the end of their first day’s march from Macon, and the 15-year old Troutman gave the battalion a flag she made. Historians generally agree that the white silk flag had a blue star on both sides with the words “Liberty or Death” embroidered on one side and the words “Where liberty dwells, there is my home” embroidered in Latin on the other. The volunteers raised the flag when they officially organized and mustered into the service of Texas at Velasco in January. The Georgia Battalion joined Commander James Fannin, a former Georgian, at Goliad where he raised Troutman’s flag and the Bloody Arm Flag as the first national flags of Texas.

Texas officials so revered Troutman’s flag that after independence was assured at the Battle of San Jacinto, they presented Joanna with some of the silver serving pieces taken from Mexican General Santa Anna. In 1913,

The 1852 Crawford County Courthouse as it looks today. Originally, the building had four chimneys before the two on the north side of the building were removed. The lower sections of all eight chimneys in the building have been enclosed. Crawford County residents are working with an architectural advisor from the Historic Preservation Division of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources to restore the building and convert it into a museum.

Troutman’s remains were relocated from Crawford County to the Texas State Cemetery in Austin at the request of Texas Gov. Oscar Colquitt, a Georgia native, after he learned of her neglected grave. In 1919, a bronze statue of a girl standing and sewing was erected in the cemetery, the only statue of a woman in the state cemetery. Although Troutman never visited Texas, she is sometimes called the Betsy Ross of Texas, and an artist’s conceptualization of her as a girl in 1835, hangs in the Texas Capitol.

The historical society is striving to make the festival as historically authentic to the time period as possible. Festival guests will park at a baseball field near the courthouse and be transported to the festival site via mule drawn wagons where they will find festival volunteers dressed in fashions of the day. Local civic clubs will sell meals and snacks authentic to the time period. Coke will be sold, but this modern exception is being allowed because Coca-Cola inventor John Stith Pemberton was born in Crawford County in 1831. Festival activities include Sacred Harp singing, old-time games including horseshoe and checkers tournaments, an 1840s murder trial drama and demonstrations of frontier life skills such as syrup making. Vendors selling handmade crafts authentic to the time will also participate.

“I think we’re going to be closer to being more historically accurate than most festival I’ve been to,” Lowe said.

Festival guests may also tour the building that housed the town’s former newspaper, the Knoxville Journal, which displays an old printing press. The town’s Old Jail, built in 1882 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, will be open as well.

Through the festival, the historical society also hopes to draw attention to the county’s other claims to fame. Before Knoxville was founded, naturalist William Bartram passed through the area in 1775 and discovered a previously unknown variety of hydrangea, the oakleaf, on Sweetwater Creek. Benjamin Hawkins, U.S. Indian Agent South of the Ohio River, developed the Creek Agency on the banks of the Flint River, five miles west of Knoxville. Hawkins established the agency along the Lower Creek Trail which would later become the Federal Road.

This watercolor created by Macon artist Clare Golson depicts three aspects of Crawford County’s rich history: the 1852 Court House, the oakleaf hydrangea discovered by William Bartram and the pottery industry that once thrived in the area. The Historic Crawford Foundation is selling 11x 17 prints for $25 as part of its fund raising campaign to restore the Old Crawford County Courthouse.

Revolutionary War hero Marquis de LaFayette is said to have traveled through Knoxville on his tour of America in 1825. Another Frenchman, Alexis de Tocqueville, who wrote Democracy in America based on his travels in the United States during 1831 and 1832, also traveled through Knoxville. In 1998, C-SPAN presented the county a commemorative plaque as it retraced Tocqueville’s famous journey. Georgia Supreme Court Justices Samuel Hall and Hiram Warner practiced law in Knoxville in the early 1800s. Jefferson Franklin Long, born in 1836 near Knoxville, was the first African American from Georgia elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1870.

“For such a little community we have such a rich and diverse history,” said Amy Moncrief, Historic Crawford Foundation board member. “There are some counties that only have one claim to fame.”

This will be the second festival that the community has hosted this year in an effort to raise $500,000 to restore the county’s former courthouse. Through a variety of cultural events, the first festival held in May, spotlighted Benjamin Hawkins and the pottery industry that thrived in Crawford County during the 1800s and early 1900s. The pottery industry flourished in Crawford County because of its location on the fall line where the right types of clay and other needed materials were readily available. Collectors value Crawford County pottery for its variety of forms and glazes. There may be as many as 90 different signatures that can be collected in Crawford pottery, including Averett, Becham, Long, Marshall, Merritt and Yaughn. Many potters never signed their work. A Crawford County pottery exhibit will be on display during the festival in November.