Odes to Roswell · Track 6 · middle
The 1864 Mill Burning
The Civil War — July 1864, Union General Garrard burns the Roswell Mills and arrests the 400+ mill women workers, deporting them by rail to Indiana. UPBEAT, NOT MOURNFUL — focus on the women who survived, who came home, whose descendants still live in north Fulton. The deportation that became a thread of resilience. Dr.Pope bears witness with respect.
Lyrics
July, 1864. The air thick as wet cotton. Vickery Creek running cool under the heat, waiting. General Kenner Garrard rode down the dust road. Said the looms were feeding the wrong army. Said the thread was a line of treason. Torches met the cotton bales. The brick walls held the heat of the day, and then the heat of the fire. The smoke hung heavy over the water. But a fire is just a moment. A train is just a means. Four hundred names, most lost to the ledger. But the women were not the mill. They were the stubborn thread that would not burn. That would not break on the journey north. From Roswell to the Western & Atlantic line at Marietta. A long walk in the Georgia sun. Theodosia Miller, we know your name. The others, a chorus written in dust. They say you were given army hardtack. The taste of smoke and government flour. The wheels turned north, toward Indiana. But a fire is just a moment. A train is just a means. Four hundred names, most lost to the ledger. But the women were not the mill. They were the stubborn thread that would not burn. That would not break on the journey north. The official record closes the book. A dispatch sent, a page turned. But the archive is incomplete. It doesn't track the walk home. It doesn't count the children born, the gardens planted, the stories told in North Fulton kitchens for a hundred years after. The return is never in the report. The ruins stand by Vickery Creek. The water wheel is gone. But you listen. That's not the sound of looms. It's not the sound of fire. It's the sound of the thread, coming home. The thread, woven back in. Unbroken.