Headlines

By Walter Geiger

Acting on a tip, Lamar deputies raided a meth lab at a trailer on Aldora Street Friday morning. An active meth cook was underway in the trailer and one deputy had to be hospitalized after fumes affected his lungs. [Full Story »] 

By Walter Geiger

A standing room only crowd of some 80 animal lovers was on hand for a July 18 county commission meeting after a draft of a proposed animal control ordinance was circulated and a firestorm of disapproval ignited on social media.

The ordinance was obviously borrowed from another jurisdiction and was chock full of rules and regulations that make no sense here. The crowd seized on that like a chihuahua on the ankle of a mailman new to the route. [Full Story »] 

A crash involving a car and a motorcycle took the life of a Lamar County man Tuesday night. The man was on a motorcycle and was struck by a car driven by his fiancé. [Full Story »] 

By Walter Geiger and Derek Petty

Among the new laws taking effect July 1 was the bill known as the campus carry law. The new guidelines apply on the Gordon campus and all others.

The law was shot down in the waning hours of the legislative session in 2016 but passed this year and was signed into law by Gov. Nathan Deal.

Licensed students and visitors can carry concealed weapons on campus and in campus facilities with some exceptions. However, licensed faculty members cannot carry in their classrooms, offices or administrative areas. [Full Story »] 

Location manager Greg Alpert started scouting Barnesville as a possible set destination for HBO’s ‘Sharp Objects’ last December. Soon after that, he had his first meeting with community development director Niki Sappington who was the city’s official liaison for the project. At that time he asked Sappington if he might get a key to the city if things worked out well.

Alpert got just that July 13 at a city hall celebration in his honor. [Full Story »] 

The annual Prayer Walk for Schools will be held Sunday in anticipation of the upcoming school year.

Participants are urged to meet in front of the school system Fine Arts Center on Burnette Road at 6 p.m. for Christian music, lemonade and instructions. At 6:15 p.m., they will be given a general prayer list and then can pick a school to walk around while praying for students, faculty, staff, administration and others involved in educating the community’s young people. Churches are encouraged to participate.

For more information, contact First Baptist Church 770- 358-2353.

Editor’s note: The current controversy is not the first time the Wadsworth-Clayton Cemetery has been in the news. This Herald Gazette piece was published in December, 1997. Though some accounts and opinions have changed, the key questions that remain include the cemetery’s fate and whether or not victims of the Civil War train wreck are interred there.

By Walter Geiger

The once quiet hilltop cemetery isn’t so quiet anymore. The rattle and hum of nearby industry fills the air.

Indeed, there is little evidence that the cemetery even exists. There are neither headstones nor ornate fencing. Mostly, there is cow dung left by dozens of cows who are free to trample the burial ground as they see fit.

The Wadsworth-Clayton Cemetery does not even garner mention in the definitive 1932 History of Lamar County. But, the cemetery lives on in the hearts of a dedicated few who are determined to spare it from industrial sprawl.

Just down the hill from the graveyard lies the railroad line. About a mile south of the cemetery on the railroad line is the scene of the horrific train crash that on September 1, 1864 sent some 20 odd Confederate soldiers and, perhaps, one of their female nurses to lie in the Wadsworth-Clayton Cemetery for eternity.

In the early fall of 1864 Atlanta was under siege. Sherman’s troops were on the brink of victory in the Battle of Atlanta. General Hood, in command of the Atlanta bastion, ordered the evacuation of the city. He commandeered a passenger train pulled by the engine Dispatch, filled it with wounded from hospitals in Atlanta and ordered it south.

The train was to carry the wounded troops through Barnesville to the relative safety of hospitals in Macon. Unfortunately, in his haste, General Hood disregarded railroad schedules. [Full Story »]