The Courier makes frequent use of the Georgia Historic Newspaper database housed at the University of Georgia for articles on local history.

In browsing around this morning, I decided to do searches on “Acworth” and “electricity” to see what I could find about the electrification of that city, and ran into not only several interesting short articles, but a reference to a gold mining operation (or at least an attempted one) on the edge of the city.

You can browse the results of my search by following this link.

On March 21, 1907, the Cartersville News ran this announcement of the completion of Acworth‘s electrical plant:

Acworth’s Progress: Electric Lights and Waterworks

Acworth has completed its electric light plant and is now moving toward a waterworks system, while Canton is also considering waterworks. You can’t keep a North Georgia town down.

Then later, the Griffin Weekly News and Sun. of January 24, 1908, this announcement about a planned electric street car line between Acworth and Marietta was published:

Acworth, Ga., Jan. 16 — Austyn Granville of New York has petitioned the Acworth council for a franchise to run an electric railway through the streets of Acworth. Mr. Granville and his associates propose to build the line from Acworth to Kennesaw, Noonday, Elizabeth, then to Marietta, and north to connect with Allatoona, Bartow, Hugo, and Emerson to Cartersville. Part of the track has already been laid, and a large amount of the machinery has been ordered. Work will be pushed forward at once.

Further clarification on the short article above, from the January 23, 1908 issue of the News and Farmer reveals an ulterior motive for Granville’s request for an electric railway franchise. He was attempting to mine for gold two miles from Acworth (I don’t know the outcome of the railway yet, but I doubt he found much, if any, gold in Acworth). This news brief must have come from a wire service, because in addition to running in the News and Farmer, it also ran in the Atlanta Georgian and the Danielsville Monitor.

Electric Road Seeks Franchise

Austyn Granville of New York, who is engaged in gold mining two miles from Acworth, has petitioned the Acworth City Council for a franchise to run an electric railway through the streets of Acworth. Mr. Granville and his associates, all New York capitalists, propose to build the electric railway from Acworth to Kennesaw, Lena, Noonday, and Elizabeth, then to Marietta, before continuing north to connect with Allatoona, Bartow, Hugo, and Emerson to Cartersville. Part of the track has already been laid, and a large amount of the machinery has been ordered. Work will be pushed forward at once.

The May 11, 1911 issue of the Atlanta Georgian and News ran the following brief story about the planning for an electrical service line that would run through several north Georgia towns, including Acworth and Kennesaw:

To Furnish Electricity

Acworth, Ga., May 11 — A crew of civil engineers is camped in Acworth and surveying for an electric cable from the Etowah River through Acworth, Cartersville, Kennesaw, Emerson, Allatoona, and intermediate stations to Atlanta. The line will connect with a similar cable from Tallulah Falls to Atlanta, with the goal of supplying electric lighting and motive power for these towns.

By 1914, the Atlanta Georgian announced that 76 Georgia cities had their own power plants, including Acworth and Marietta in Cobb County.

About Georgia Historic Newspapers

Georgia Historic Newspapers is a part of the GALILEO project and is housed at the University of Georgia. It’s an amazing resource for anyone with an interest in the history of Georgia and its regions.

According to the “About” page on its website:

The Georgia Historic Newspapers Archive is a project of the Digital Library of Georgia (DLG), a part of Georgia’s Virtual Library GALILEO and is based at the University of Georgia Libraries. Since 2007, the DLG has partnered with universities, archives, public libraries, historical societies, museums, and other cultural heritage institutions to digitize historical newspapers from around the state. The archive is free and open for public use and includes over two million Georgia newspaper pages between 1763 and 2021.

Newspaper titles are regularly digitized and added to the archive. If you are interested in including a particular title, you can visit our participation page. A majority of the newspapers on this site were digitized from the microfilm produced by the Georgia Newspaper Project (GNP). For more information about the microfilm available through the GNP, please visit their website.