Dr. M. Gagnon
History 4000 research project
March 12, 2003
Introduction:
This
is an inspection of some of the oldest buildings, and structures on campus. The
craftsmen and artisans who led construction on these buildings and structures
could not have done all the work by themselves, so who did the real work?
Information is scarce when searching for concrete answers, however historians
have clearly described the lives of those likely to have been involved in the
real work detail. By 1860 Athens was home to nearly 4,000 people, 1,955 whites,
1,890 slaves, and one free Negro, this made the city the seventh most populated
in the state.[1] But when
construction of the campus began in 1801, there were only several hundred. So,
did slaves do most of the work? Were there foreign-born migrants around to do
the any of the construction? Or did free white craftsmen and artisans handle
the detail of erecting the campus’s most historic and treasured structures.
This study will discuss several important names that are involved with the
construction of these buildings, provide reason, and attempt to describe the
lives of those who may have done the work.
History of campus buildings,
and the craftsmen that are associated with them:
The oldest building on the
University campus is Old College. The building’s construction began in 1801,
and was completed in 1805. When Dr. Josiah Meigs, the first President of the
University, arrived in Athens he had the plans of Connecticut Hall on the Yale
University campus in his pocket at a cost of $1,500. Dr. Meigs superintended
the construction of the buildings and found that getting nails and lime, needed
for the preparation of concrete, was virtually impossible. He contracted with
the nearby Cherokee Indians for permission to bring the needed material through
their territory so that the work could be completed.[2]
Materials were sent mainly from Augusta. Lime cost $10 a cask and the nails
used were quite expensive. Both had to hauled from Augusta on wagons.[3]
The Building is a
three-story structure of Colonial architecture, and made of red clay brick. The
contract was given to Captain John Billups of Clarke County to furnish three
hundred thousand red clay bricks at $7.50 per thousand, and another $4.00 to
lay them.[4]
The building was built in a virtual wilderness, and initially housed 30
students.[5]
If any other contracts were made out for work on the building it must have been
done through Captain Billups.[6]
The cost of construction the Old College building is believed to be in the
neighborhood of twenty-five thousand dollars.[7]
Old College was originally
named Franklin College, in honor of Benjamin Franklin, because the University
Trustees hoped the college would become an institute like Oxford University.
The building is dedicated to Abraham Baldwin, founder of the University.[8]
The walls of Old College have housed such names as, Nathaniel Crawford, and
John Henry Forsyth. Also there is a plaque on the second floor that reads: “In this
room Alexander H. Stephens, and Crawford W. Long, discoverer of anesthesia,
were roommates while studying at Georgia.”[9]
These two men now represent Georgia in Statuary Hall in the National Capitol. A
bronze plaque commemorating their achievements is inserted in the wall of Old
College and is easily visible from the walk through the campus.[10]
During parts of the war Old College was used as a hospital.
The New
College building has a long and storied past. The original foundation for the
third oldest building on campus was laid in 1822. University President Rev.
Moses Waddel was responsible for the building of New College.[11]
Rev. Waddel was able to fund the building project by appropriation of the
legislature. “It was stipulated that the building should be one hundred and
twenty feet long, forty-five feet wide, and four stories high. The contractors
were John Golding, Thomas Mours, and Zachariah Sims, and the cost was to be
twenty-four thousand, nine hundred and eighty dollars. The building was turned
over to the trustees in September 1823, after several alterations.”[12]
By 1831 New College housed a library, mathematical and astronomical apparatus
as well as classroom facilities and dormitory rooms.[13]
In the fall of 1831 a fire completely destroyed the building, no
one was hurt, but news of the fire reached all the way to New York.
“Destruction of a College by fire. The Georgia papers announce that the new
edifice called Franklin College, at Athens in that state was destroyed by
fire.”[14]
The article reported that most of the furniture was saved, but the College
Library, described as “a most valuable collection” was entirely lost. The
library and learning apparatus that were lost in the fire were valued at
$6,000.[15]
In April of 1831 a contract
to erect a new building was authorized.[16]
An agreement was made with two men new to Athens, James Carlton and Ross Crane.[17]
These two men settled in Athens and were very successful. In 1855 Crane built
the Presbyterian Church at a cost of $10,000, and in 1860 Carlton built the
Baptist church.[18] The new
building was a three-story structure, a reduction by one from the previous
building, this was possibly a cost reducing necessity.[19]
The new building cost $12,349, just less than half that of the original. The
contractors were required to correct several deficiencies before full payment
was received, but the building was ready by August 1832.[20]
The
University Chapel building is one of the most cherished sites in the “classic
city” of Athens. The current chapel is
the second chapel building, built over 170 years ago in 1832, on the same site
as the previous chapel. The first chapel was a gift from Reverend Hope Hull,
and was completed in 1808 for less than $1,000. By the 1820’s the building was
too small and needed to be re-built.[21]
The new chapel contract was awarded to James Carlton and Benjamin Towns for
$15,000.[22]
The cathedral itself is 710 feet long, 167 feet high and 450 feet across the
transepts. The huge dome has a diameter of 195 and one half feet.[23]
“A beautiful and well proportioned building, it was one of the first Greek
Revival structures in Athens and undoubtedly influenced the planters and
merchants who were soon building homes in this style.[24]
The great painting above the
rostrum is of special interest to all who visit Athens and the chapel. The painting is a picture depicting an
interior view of St. Peter’s Cathedral at Rome, and dominates the chapel. The
painting is the largest mounted painting in the world.[25]
The painting was given to the University by successful craftsman and friend of
the Chancellor Andrew Lipscomb, Daniel Pratt in 1867.[26]
To have the painting installed the rear of the building was removed and then
re-built.
Daniel Pratt was a native of
Temple, New Hampshire and was educated in the schools of his section. When he
was about sixteen years old he was apprenticed to a man named Putnam, a
carpenter, to learn the carpenter’s trade.[27]
Pratt attended the University during his early twenties, and studied
architecture. He designed and built a large number of neoclassical dwellings
Georgia.[28]
In 1833 Pratt moved to Alabama were he settled Prattville, a town he developed
about 12 miles northwest of Montgomery. He then improved Eli Whitney’s cotton
gin and built an empire and fortune founded on the manufacture of the improved
cotton machine, plus interests in the iron and coal industry.[29]
In all probability Daniel Pratt would have considered himself a builder, or
carpenter, not an architect.[30]
There is documented evidence that a thirteen-year old boy named Charles was purchased
by Daniel Pratt from a man named Griswold in Georgia, for seven hundred dollars
in 1843.[31]
The Pratt’s treated Charles very well and even purchased a wife for him.
Charles went on to become a “most enterprising man” after purchasing his legal
freedom, living in Prattville, acquiring stock in the railroad and leaving a
legacy of his own as the forefather of black history in Prattville.[32]
“Pratt was an early 19th century reformer. Like other Southern
industrialist, he was trying to free the south of economic bondage to the
manufacturing North.”[33]
George Cooke painted the
painting that Pratt presented to the University. Pratt and Cooke met in 1844 in
New Orleans where Cooke was working, and Pratt was building a new warehouse for
his improved cotton gins. Pratt enjoyed and had a strong interest in art. He
purchased many paintings from Cooke, and built a gallery at his home to house
them, his collection included the 17’ x 23’ depiction of the nave of
Christendom’s largest church.[34]
Cooke never had a home of his own but he and his wife, Maria Heath, had hoped
to settle in a small town in Georgia that they had visited and fell in love
with, Athens.[35] Pratt was
the executor of Cooke’s estate and also had strong feelings for the University,
the town, and the state that had given him his start. Pratt presented the University with the painting in 1867. The
Cooke painting is lovingly referred to as “the painting” by Athenians.[36]
Even as late as 1951 there
was a debate as to when the historic University Arch was built. This landmark
has served as a gateway to the campus since being built in 1858.[37]
The arch and fence are made of wrought iron that was cast at the Athens
Foundry, by a man named Thomas Bailey. Mr. Bailey was a young prominent citizen
of Athens, he also helped erect the fencing.[38]
The cost of the construction of the arch and fence was $1,000. This money came
from sale of the land where the university’s original botanical garden had been
located.[39]
In 1951 the arch’s history
still had not been uncovered. The Red and Black queried the arch as a “marker
that students see daily, but is it history?” The paper consulted several campus
historians, but no one could give an answer.[40]
This article states that a sketch of the university campus made in 1830 does
not show the arch and that the Red and Black surmised that the structure was
built some time between 1830 and the present.[41]
Demosthenian Hall is a
two-story cement covered brick structure of post- colonial type architecture
that cost $4,000 when built in 1824.[42]
It was built to house the Demosthenian Literary Society, which was organized in
1803. The building sports a plain exterior enhanced by fan windows and
sidelights framing the doorway, also a palladain window that overlooks the
entrance.[43]
Demosthenian Hall stands as a valiant and admirable exponent of the dignity of
early American construction. The outside is highlighted with the symmetry of
the windows and chimneys. The walls are approximately two feet thick, and the
deep-set windows are each made of eighteen small panes, and the chimneys
breaking the straight lines at the sides of the building. The inside of the
house is noted for elliptical arched doorway and carved mantles, moldings,
double doors of the classic design on the upper floor, and the deeply carved ceiling
in the meeting room.[44]
The people who could have
done the work:
In most cases in and around
the south it is very likely that slaves were used to do much of the
construction work on the campus buildings. The names of the craftsmen who
received contracts to build for the university do not include details of who
did the work, so we are left to speculate. The Antebellum census gives no
occupational designations for slaves, this omission has fueled erroneous
speculation about the kind of work that slave actually did.[45]
Historians have maintained that native born white workingmen left the slave
states when they could. Those who remained protested slave competition but had
very little success against the combination of slaves, who monopolized skilled
labor, and maters, who reaped a handsome profit from having slaves do the work.[46]
Immigrant workers that
arrived in the south brought with them the ideas and traditions about the
meaning of work and the relation to liberty.[47]
Aside from the Irish the majority of immigrant workingmen practiced artisanal
trades, and immigrant artisans composed a disproportionate share of the skilled
work force. In Richmond, for example, nine out of ten British and German
workingmen practiced skilled trade.[48]
Irish immigrants generally dominated the urban unskilled free en throughout the
South.[49]
Immigrants usually dominated the free male working population and made up a
large part of the whole male working population, free and slave. For this
reason, foreign settlers helped shape the social relations in the South and had
a huge influence on class and racial relations throughout the South.[50]
Lastly, the make-up of the work force in the South raises some questions about
the immigrants who made up such a large portion of free workers in Southern
cities.[51]
It appears as though these workers had the skills to do the necessary
construction work on buildings like the ones on campus. It is also apparent
that immigrant workers were prevalent in the South during the antebellum
period, so it is possible that immigrant workers did some of the work.
The growing market also
affected the lives of artisans and craftsmen. In the young republic, the urban
artisan, especially the master craftsman ranked very high as an ideal citizen.[52]
Southern-born white men held a distinctive place in the ranks of the urban
artisan class. These artisans tended to congregate in a few occupations, most
notably in the building trades and in crafts like piloting and printing. Over
half of the Southern born white artisans worked as printers and pilots and in
the building trades.[53]
Employed artisans were respected as property owners, possessing their own
tools, materials and shops.[54]
A large number of artisans and master craftsmen found ways to prosper by hiring
or renting slaves. Evidence about antebellum income is incomplete, but it does
suggest that in trades like skilled construction, wages went up between
1820-1850.[55] Both slaves
and their masters found slave hiring a profitable venture. It provided slaves
an added measure of control over their lives and also provided the slave owner
a steady income.[56] Slave
hiring did not enlarge artisan employment of slaves in most places. When looked
at from the view of employment rather than ownership, artisan control of slaves
increased slightly.[57]
It was not an unusual sight to see blacks and whites working together, doing
the same type of work. Throughout the South the most racially integrated
worksites were jobs like construction sites, and jobs that required a flexible
labor system from one season to the next.[58]
In conclusion:
The workers who built the buildings on campus could be any one of
these groups. Craftsman such as Ross Crane or James Carlton were assigned a
contract to build. These men did not build these buildings by themselves, there
had to be some form of skilled labor involved. The likelihood that this work
was done by slaves is very good, although skilled immigrant artisans, or
workers may have been present also. So, who did the real work on these
wonderful structures from our history? This answer will remain a mystery, but
the workers who built these structures will remain as much a part of the future
of this campus as it is the in the past.
[1] Kenneth Coleman, Confederate Athens (University of Georgia Press, 1967), 1.
[2] Old College, 1.
[3] Augustus Longstreet Hull, Annals of Athens (Banner Job Office, 1906), 22.
[4] Hull, 109.
[5] UGA Bulletin, 1940 v. XL, 2b.
[6] Thomas Walter Reed, History of the University of Georgia (University of Georgia, 1949), 94.
[7] Reed, 95.
[8] Linda Cullom, “Looking Back,” The Red and Black, 2 February 1961, 1.
[9]Cullom, 1.
[10] Old College, 1-2.
[11] “New College built in 1822,” The Red and Black, 19 January 1965, p. 5.
[12] Reed, 160
[13]“New College…1822”, The Red and Black, 5.
[14] New York Standard and Statesman, 9 November 1830, c. 3, p. 3.
[15] New York Standard and Statesman, 9 November 1830, c. 3, p. 3.
[16] Reed, 300.
[17] Hull, 109.
[18] Hull, 166.
[19] Reed, 200.
[20] Reed, 200.
[21] James Read, Athens a Pictorial History (the Donning Company, 1985), 21.
[22] Reed, 301.
[23] Leila Mize, “St. Peter’s Cathedral,” Alumni Records 1946.
[24] Read, 21.
[25] Gene Harper, Athens Banner Herald, 14 June 1972.
[26] Gene Harper, Athens Banner Herald, 14 June 1972.
[27] Merrill Pratt, Daniel Pratt, 10.
[28] Beth Abney, This Month in Athens, April 1977, 14-15, 31.
[29] Abney, 14.
[30] William Banks, The world of Daniel Pratt (Black Belt Press, 1999), 95.
[31] Vergie Johnson, The world of Daniel Pratt (Black Belt press, 1999), 70.
[32] Johnson, 72-73.
[33] Wayne Flint, The world of Daniel Pratt (Black Belt Press, 1999), 61.
[34] Abney, 14.
[35] Abney, 15.
[36] Abney, 15.
[37] Mildred Schierman, “ The Arch,” Athens Banner-Herald and Athens Daily News, September 1983, 1.
[38] Reed, 626.
[39] Schierman, 1.
[40] Mike Edwards, “$64 Question at University,” Atlanta Journal, 12 December 1951, 38.
[41] Edwards, 38.
[42]Demosthenian minutes, 17 March 1947.
[43] American Guide Series, 1939.
[44] Despo Vacalis, The Red and Black, 5 March 1953, 1.
[45] Ira Berlin and Herbert Guttman, Natives and immigrants, Free Men and Slaves: Urban Workingmen In
The Antebellum American South, 2001, 1182.
[46] Berlin and Gutman, 1179.
[47] Berlin and Gutman, 1195.
[48] Berlin and Gutman, 1186.
[49] Berlin and Gutman, 1187.
[50] Berlin and Gutman, 1189.
[51] Berlin and Gutman, 1194.
[52] Jacqueline Jones, A social History of the Laboring Classes (Brandeis University Blackwell Publishing,
1999), 242.
[53] Berlin and Gutman, 1187-1188.
[54] Jones, 243.
[55] Jones, 244.
[56] Berlin and Gutman, 1185.
[57] Berlin and Gutman, 1185.
[58] Herbert Gutman, Who Built America (American Social History Productions, 1601-1877), 78.
The following links may be of interest:
Documentary History of the Construction of the
Buildings at the University of Virginia, 1817-1828.
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/jefferson/grizzard/ch09note.html
Antebellum Atlanta
http://www.cr.nps.gov/nr/travel/atlanta/antebellum.htm
Slavery in antebellum Southern Industries
http://www.lexisnexis.com/academic/2upa/Aaas/Ante-BellumSouthernIndustries.asp
The history of UGA
http://www.uga.edu/uga/history.html