Sunday Lecture: The City That Never Was - Early History of Smyrna, Georgia, 1872-1910
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Sunday Lecture: "The City That Never Was: Fact and Fallacy in the Early History of Smyrna, Georgia, 1872-1910"
Sunday, August 3, 2025
3:00 - 4:00 p.m.
Smyrna Public Library, Meeting Room
Light refreshments will be served.
Presenter, Dr. William P. Marchione, author of A Brief History of Smyrna, Georgia (History Press, 2013)
The identity of Smyrna’s mayors and city council members serving in the 1872 to 1900 period has long been a matter of conjecture. The traditional explanation for this informational void holds that a fire destroyed Smyrna’s earliest city records.
This lecture turns to another source for an explanation of the absence of this information---the several hundred of regularly published Smyrna news columns that appeared in the pages of Cobb County’s chief newspaper, the Marietta Journal in those years. A close analysis of these news columns establishes, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Smyrna, though authorized by its Charter of 1872 to establish a functioning municipal government, never did so.
This leads to a host of questions. What forces were behind the 1872 incorporation initiative? What was the role of the powerful W&A Railroad in fostering the incorporation venture? What were the resident sponsors of Smyrna’s 1872 incorporation hoping to achieve? Most importantly, why were the provisions of Smyrna’s 1872 act of incorporation never approved by Smyrna's body politic? And finally, what alterations in the economic and political climate made the establishment of a functioning municipal government feasible 28 years later, in 1900, but in the context of radically reduced municipal boundaries?
The Sunday Lecture series is sponsored by the Friends of Smyrna Library.
Sunday, August 3, 2025
3:00 - 4:00 p.m.
Smyrna Public Library, Meeting Room
Light refreshments will be served.
Presenter, Dr. William P. Marchione, author of A Brief History of Smyrna, Georgia (History Press, 2013)
The identity of Smyrna’s mayors and city council members serving in the 1872 to 1900 period has long been a matter of conjecture. The traditional explanation for this informational void holds that a fire destroyed Smyrna’s earliest city records.
This lecture turns to another source for an explanation of the absence of this information---the several hundred of regularly published Smyrna news columns that appeared in the pages of Cobb County’s chief newspaper, the Marietta Journal in those years. A close analysis of these news columns establishes, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Smyrna, though authorized by its Charter of 1872 to establish a functioning municipal government, never did so.
This leads to a host of questions. What forces were behind the 1872 incorporation initiative? What was the role of the powerful W&A Railroad in fostering the incorporation venture? What were the resident sponsors of Smyrna’s 1872 incorporation hoping to achieve? Most importantly, why were the provisions of Smyrna’s 1872 act of incorporation never approved by Smyrna's body politic? And finally, what alterations in the economic and political climate made the establishment of a functioning municipal government feasible 28 years later, in 1900, but in the context of radically reduced municipal boundaries?
The Sunday Lecture series is sponsored by the Friends of Smyrna Library.
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