1858: Milton County Born

Lyrics

[Intro]
It is written.
On the eighteenth day of December, in the year of our Lord 1857.
The ink was not yet dry on the page.
A new thing was being called out of the old things.

[Verse 1]
A piece of Cherokee.
A sliver of Cobb.
A northern corner of Forsyth.
Land that had known only the river's reason, the hunter's path.
Was summoned to the surveyor's table.
The Georgia General Assembly spoke a line into the clay.
And what was three became four.
A name was chosen for a man who would never see it.
John Milton. A secretary of state.
A name for a county that would live for seventy-four years.

[Chorus]
And it was so.
In 1858, Milton County was born.
And the Assembly said, let the seat be called Alpharetta.
And the first court was called to order.
In 1858, a county was born.

[Verse 2]
Then came the men with the chain and the compass.
Across the frost-hardened ground.
To mark the plot for the courthouse.
The sound of axes in the cold morning air.
Felling the timber for a temporary shelter.
And the plat was drawn, marking one persimmon tree.
Just one.
The northeast boundary marker.
A living cornerstone for a wooden house of law.

[Chorus]
And it was so.
In 1858, Milton County was born.
And the Assembly said, let the seat be called Alpharetta.
And the first court was called to order.
In 1858, a county was born.

[Bridge]
And in a room lit by oil lamps...
the smell of burning whale oil and pine resin...
John M. Thrasher was named Inferior Court Judge.
His name is remembered.
Others are not.
Five commissioners took an oath, their names lost when the records burned.
They are the ghosts inside the ghost county.
The men who lit the first fire on the civic hearth.
Their voices a murmur under the glass towers of today.

[Outro]
December 18, 1857.
A word was spoken.
1858.
A world began.
And it was good, for a time.
It is written.
Amen.