History of Ball Ground

"A place called Ball Ground existed as early as 1750, and may have reached farther back into the mists of antiquity.  It was here that the paths of the various Indian tribes, of the lower Allegheny region, intersected each other, forming a giant spider web with spokes reaching out into Tennessee, Alabama, and the Carolinas.

Due to its basin-like location in the foothills, the place was ideal for the busks--festivals--celebrated each year by the Indians.  After the purification rites of early morning of the busk the feasting and dancing began.  But the highlight of the festival was the ball game.

Each player used two hickory sticks which had a net of leather thongs attached to one end.  A tennis player must keep on his toes every moment; imagine a player with two "racquets" having to fend off deadly missiles aimed in his direction; for the balls were constructed of toughened deer hide sewn over a layer of deer hair which barely cushioned a hard core of stone.  The balls as well as the sticks sometimes proved as effective as the tomahawk and bow and arrow in felling the opposition.

Such was the case when the two most powerful tribes, the Creeks, and the Cherokees, decided to settle a territorial dispute by playing off the odds in a game of stick ball.

The year was 1755; the season was that of the Green Corn Busk.  The Battle of Taliwa, long remembered and handed down through generations of story telling, was to have been played off in the afternoon of the feast day.  But five hundred warriors, whose tribal war paints and exotic plumage covered the seething, hot blood of passion, kept the "play" going for three days and nights.  Torchlight, moonlight, sunlight, and campfires cast light and shadow on the present ball park in Ball Ground, illuminating the earth littered with the wounded and the dead.  Finally the Creeks capitulated, leaving all the territory north and west of the Chattahoochee River in the triumphant hands of the Cherokees.

The ball ground was used as a trading center until it became a township in 1882, with the coming of the Marietta and North Georgia Railroad.  This, of course, took place after the forced exodus of the Cherokees in 1838, and the white man had moved in to grab the land in the Gold Lotteries.

During its development from a small trading village to a thriving incorporated town, Ball Ground had at one time three resident doctos, four marble working companies, three hotels, a cotton gin, a saw mill and lumber year, two livery stables, a cannery, four general stores, a music publishing company, a newspaper -- "The Ball Ground Gazette" -- a mineral springs spa, a brick yard, a bank, a post office, three churches, a good public school system, including a high school, and a number of other privately owned enterprises.

At one time, during its more colorful career, Ball Ground boasted two public saloons, and a "Saturday Night Frolic."  In 1910 as much as six thousand dollars in gold at the time was shipped out from the nearby Creighton Mines through Ball Ground to Charlotte, NC.

The incorporators of the town were: W.A. Hayes, W.J. Boling, Capt. P.H. Lyon, M.G. Bates and J.A. Byers.  The first officers of Ball Ground were: Capt. P.H. Lyon, mayor; Dr. A.M.F. Hawkins, W.A. Hayes, R.J. Boling, and J.H. Kilby councilmen; J.N. Purcell, marshal.

Wars, and a longing for greener pastures lured the youth of Ball Ground away.  As the older residents passed on many of the lovely old houses and better buildings were destroyed by fire, or caved in from negligence.  Businesses move out; industry declined; leaving a small remnant of yesterday's prosperous, happy community.

But it was in that remnant that the spark of hope was nourished, and the Seventies rekindled that spark into a flame.  The cancers of dilapidated buildings, trash piles, weed-choked lots, and unsightly signs are being cleared away, and Ball Ground is putting on a happy face again.  New blood is being pumped in as new people are moving their businesses, and enthusiams into the town.

One of the finest endeavors of Ball Ground is its earnest desire to renew contact with, and give credit to its first inhabitants -- the noble Cherokees.  Two land marks still honor their former occupation of the territory: the ball ground, itself, and Mound Street--the street of the dead--that once traversed the six miles from burial mounds at Gober, Georgia, in Cherokee County to burial mounds near Nelson, in Pickens County.

Those who were born in Cherokee County are fiercely proud of the fact.  And those who have on their shoes the dust of the streets of Ball Ground, have walked on hallowed ground.  One day the Phenix Bird will rise from its ashes to soar again.  That day may be very soon.

 

--Lois Hendrix Bell"