by Larry Felton Johnson
In the March 2, 1899 issue of the Marietta Journal (one of the previous names of the Marietta Daily Journal) a letter appeared from a high school student that seemed very advanced for her age, and highlighted the condition of roads in Cobb County at the turn of the century.
I found the letter during an attempt to find the earliest reference to the automobile in an Atlanta or Cobb County newspaper that also mentions Cobb County, and that has been digitized by the Georgia Historic Newspapers site.
The search returned an earlier use of the word “automobile,” but it referred to a type of torpedo. The student’s letter is the first reference to the word as a motorized vehicle in Cobb County.
Without limiting the search to Cobb County, the first mention of an automobile was in an 1889 issue of the Thomasville Times, where a Captain Henry Metcalf was reported to carry a card explaining that if his automobile frightened horses, he would stop the car and help lead the horses forward. He also predicted that horses would become accustomed to automobiles.
The letter from the student, transcribe below, is a commentary on the state of the road system in Cobb County.
COBB COUNTY ROADS
No one who does not travel over Cobb county roads in all kinds of weather can be a good judge of them. In good weather, no one could desire better roads.
They are almost like asphalt pavement, so hard and smooth.
Many people are seen at all times of the day, riding wheels along the county roads, and at dusk, many, both young and old, are seen taking an evening stroll.
But when the rains set in, no worse roads could possibly exist. Great holes are to be found all along; the mud is hub deep; the poor horses can hardly move the lightest load.
There is a place between town and my home, about two hundred yards long, and as the horses pull through the mud here, they can scarcely go half of their length before they are completely…
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