A Street Corner Residents in Mareitta

Above is the Manget plot in the Marietta Citizens Cemetery. Click on the pictures individually so you can read the markers. Interesting.


Yesterday CostCo I ran into an old friend Bobby McEntyre.

It hasn’t been too many years ago that the only place I would run into Bobby was at Ford hotrods and sporty cars meets.

As a hobby, Bobby restored Mustangs and I was looking for a certain part for the old Ford pickup truck I drove around. It needed a certain little part on the clutch. It has been too long ago, I forgot what. I went to junk yards all over north Georgia and finally found what I was looking for at a NAPA auto parts store.

Bobby and I lived roughly in the same neighborhood. I lived on Manget Street. And he lived on East Dixie Avenue one house away from Manget Street That section of Manget Street bordered Larry bell Park on the west side.

Bobby and his family lived across the street from Larry Holcomb and his family. Next door to Bobby, to separate his home from Larry Bell Park, was the Jones family. The Jones lived in a two story house. I heard that the first ones to live in the Jones House was the Manget family.

There was an old barn in the back on the Jones house. I heard that late at night from the barn you could hear Mrs. Manget wail in pain, re-enacting her live time on earth when Mr. Manget whipped her.

I doubt if that is true. I think it was hatched in the minds of young pre-teen boys telling ghost stories. But what do I know?

I do know the Manget family had doctors, missionaries, world travelers in their family. Just look at their tombstones in the Citizens Cemetery in Marietta.

Also, one Manget man who is descended from the Mangets on Manget Street was a high ranking officer in the CIA ten or so years ago. About then I read a letter to the editor of the magazine NORTH GEORGIA JOURNAL from a guy with the surname Manget. He talked about his time at his grandparents home in Marietta, Georgia. The letter was from a town in Virginia. I googled the Manget man found that he was in the CIA and at that time had control of the agency’s spending.



Above - former Jones House and possibly also former Manget House.


Wait! Where was I? Oh yeah, I was giving you a tour of the corner of where East Dixie Avenue bisected Manget Street.

The house next to Larry Holcomb was Larry’s uncle and aunt Cliff and Grace White and their children Harry and June. More about them some other time. Cliff was deputy Cobb County Commissioner under Herbert McCollum. Which probably inspired Larry’s father Eugene Holcomb to become a city councilman and later a state representative.

Next to the Whites was the XXXX family. The XXXXs came from Florida. Their back yard touched our back yard and the Holcomb’s back yard touched our back yard on the north side. Mr. XXXX, I think, loved to build things with wood, like furniture. Many nights I would see his basement light on and hear a saw going.

I heard in time they had two sons. Then Mr. XXXX died. The two sons grew up and more or less lived off their mother and gave her hell. Then one day the boys came home from hanging out at a bar or something and found the front door locked with the locks changed. There was a for sale sign in the front.

What it amounted to was that Mrs. XXXX made arrangements to sell her house and to skip out as soon as there was a lapse of time of a few days of their absence. She left no forwarding address and fixed it that she would be impossible to find.

I heard she went to a retirement community out of state. Does she enjoy a big HAND for abandoning her two worthless sons or not?

Next door to the XXXX was the Baxter lady or family. The only person I knew that lived there was Mrs. Baxter. I did not know it then, but now I know that Mrs. Baxter was a late distant cousin. She, my mother, my sisters, and I are descended from the Jesse Bookout, War of 1812 war hero.

Now, back to the present. The McEntyres moved on. Their house is now a plumbing company. The houses in the area look about the same and not as rundown as one would think. Except the Baxter house that is. It is not there at all.