1823: The Seat of DeKalb

Lyrics

It began with paper and lamp oil.December ninth, eighteen twenty-two.Down in Milledgeville, a signature on a page.Carving a new county from Henry, Gwinnett, Fayette.DeKalb. A name waiting for a heart.The next day, a new task.Five men given a map and a mandate.Benjamin Harris, Charles McCrea.William Treadwell, E.P. Thompson, Matthew Stone.Find the center. Ride out from the capital.Three miles from the middle, no more.Find the place for a courthouse door.This is where the story starts.Eighteen twenty-three.Where the Shallowford Trail met the Sandtown line.A crossing in the pines, a rise in the red clay.They drove a stake in the ground.And called you Decatur.A new name for an old place.They say the air was crisp that year.The scent of pine sap on their hands.They chose this ridge, this intersection.And named you for a man of the sea.Commodore Stephen Decatur, dead from a duel.A hero who never felt this Georgia sun,never walked this ground.A name borrowed from a far-off war.This is where the story starts.Eighteen twenty-three.Where the Shallowford Trail met the Sandtown line.A crossing in the pines, a rise in the red clay.They drove a stake in the ground.And called you Decatur.A new name for an old place.But the trails were here long before the charter.Mvskoke paths, Cherokee whispers in the leaves.Their names aren't on the legislative acts.Their center was not measured by a surveyor's chain.Just two old roads, worn by feet and time.Meeting right here.Waiting for a new story to be told over the old one.Then the sound of the first saw.The sale of the first town lots.A simple cabin of rough-hewn logs.A courthouse. A beginning.Eighteen twenty-three.Your first breath.