Marietta Pilgrimage - aka Tour of Homes 2009

Normally the annual Marietta Pilgrimage post is probably 80 to 90% pictures. This time it is 0% What about that?

Hopefully in a day or so my little difference with Google will be settled and then I will run the pictures...maybe as Marietta Pilgrimage Part 2 or Son of Marietta Pilgrimage.

This year all but two of the houses were on Church Street. The exceptions were a house on Freyer Drive and the Public House on Cherokee Street.

The house on Fryer Drive was built by Morgan J. McNeel, Jr. in 1924. Morgan was the developer of the all the houses in the area which was named Cherokee Heights and is considered the first modern subdivision in Marietta. His father owned McNeel Marble Company, so there were plenty of marble things in the house. That was the house we toured first.

The second place we went was Ivy Grove, which was a public house. On these annual tours a Public House is a place for the public to use their facilities and buy something, like a slice of cake, coffee, tea, etc... and in the case of this house, also arts and crafts were available. The house was built by Edward Denmead. At one time it was a plantation house sitting on 1800 acres, which went almost to downtown Marietta.

It is so close to the present day Kennestone Hospital complex I think the plantation would have engulfed that area too.

Which brings up another thought. I read someplace that the fictional character George "Kingfish" Stevens of The Amos and Andy Show lived near Rose Lane, which would be near Kennestone. In other words, the fictional character Kingfish's ancestors were probably slaves owned by real person Edward Denmead.

By the way, Sherman spared Ivy Grove. He didn't have it torched. Which is saying something, I'm not sure what.

The mansion had been owned by the Georgia-famous Jimmy Carmichael and the president of a ball point pen company, I forgot which one.

Now the huge mansion is unoccupied...and almost empty. The rooms are huge and seemed to be a bathroom in every room.

The other houses were on Church Street. Some were big and some was small. But they all were expertly renovated and just the right furniture and heirlooms were placed just right. And that was the docents' job, to point out the history uniqueness of each item.

At one house, the Granger House, I noticed that the docents would mentioned Woodstock, Georgia, a lot. About the owner's great grandfather, grandfather, and grandmother, all from Woodstock - items came from their house and so on. Finally there was were lady flitting around that seemed to know everything - I asked her was she Mrs. Granger. She said yes. I said my great grandfather William Hunter lived in Woodstock, on Main Street, the same as her husband's grandfather. She was very friendly and one thing led to another and she knew my cousin Hunter Ingram, who was mayor of Woodstock one time, and so was her husband's grandfather and her grandmother was a Dobbs, I forgot her first name, who was Anna's grammar school teacher. Small world!.

At another house the front porch docent and doorkeeper is Rachel, a friend of mine. We developed a friendship when I discovered she bought and renovated the Trammell House on Trammell Street. It was almsot like we were cousins. For a while, we emailed each other back and forth planning to have a big Trammell reunion at her and her husband Doug's house. I ran blog notices and notified all the Trammell descendants I was communicating with and we had only two people that even considered it. One lived in Florida and the other one lived someplace like Missouri. Somehow, we could never get our plan off the ground.

I learned something yesterday: In Muslin art animals and humans images are forbidden. Also, everything is symmetrical. Why not just look at a kaleidoscope?

Hopefully I'll have more about the tour when I am able to put my pictures up again.