Leander Newton Trammell (1830-1900)

Before I got my drivers license and I walked home from high school I would sometimes take a shortcut by cutting through to Trammell Street (Marietta, Ga). On Trammell Street there was one house that was a two story Victorian looking thing that stood out like a sore thumb among the smaller houses surrounding it. It was the Trammell House.

Little did I know at the time the person that had the house, Leander Newton Trammell, built for his family was first cousin to my great-grandfather, William A. Trammell/Hunter.

Many years later when doing family research I began looking at Leander Newton Trammell. He was a newsmaker at the time.

He spent his first adult years in White and Habersham Counties, Georgia, in the same neighborhood as Moses Harshaw, that I talk about in another blog posting. He went to a law school in Tennessee and became a lawyer. During the Civil War he was a supply officer with the Confederacy. Afterwards, he was a state representative and before his career was over he was president of the Georgia Railroad Association. As a law maker, he was part of an infamous (now) group that plotted to make laws to keep the black man in a servitude status. Also, by a technicality, he was Governor of Georgia, for one day, in between Governors. I think the name of that title may be Governor-Protem.

This year I had the opportunity to go inside the house on Trammell Street that he had built and look at the handmade wood work and the handmade stair banisters, and everything else that was managed to stay with the house since he departed it over a hundred years ago.

The same day I got to go inside the house I found ut that Trammell Street was originally the long driveway to their house. Later, the driveway was turned into a street and the Trammell House was put on logs and turned facing a side of the street, instead of Powder Springs Street which the long driveway ran into.

I wonder if he and my great-grandfather William A. Hunter were aware of each other, being first cousins. They lived only about 10 miles from each other

He did not die in Marietta, as one would think, but he and his wife spent his last couple of years in Dalton, Georgia. They are buried at West Hill Cemetery, in that town.

I believe most of Leander's children stayed in Marietta, or at least they are mostly buried here. In an upcoming blog I plan to tell you of his grandson, Niles Trammell, who became president of NBC.