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| Dearing, Ga., was named for William Dearing, president of the Georgia Railroad Banking Company. |
Dearing, Ga., was named for William Dearing, president of the Georgia Railroad Banking Company. The town was incorporated in 1910, but has been an active village since the early 1840s. The Railroad boom of the 1800s made cotton king.
Athens, Ga., had sufficient water power for a strong manufacturing base, but lacked port access to ship to the northeast and European fiber markets. The Georgia Railroad was chartered in 1833 and delivered cheap and dependable access for goods to Augusta, Charleston, Savannah and the rest of the world.
The Georgia Railroad was Georgia�s first railway line. William Dearing, Asbury Hull, William Williams and James Camak built the line to service the Princeton Mill on the Middle Oconee River. The first track was laid from Augusta in 1837 and reached Athens by 1841. During this period, Dearing was known as Lombardy, Ga.
Lombardy was established originally as a postal office Feb. 3, 1823, in Columbia County. John H. Wright was appointed the original postmaster. The name of the post office remained Lombardy long after the name of the town was changed to Dearing.
The pre-civil war history of Lombardy is akin to the Wild West. Reminiscence by A.J. Taylor in �History of Dearing,� 1929, gives a picture of a wild rural territory with drinking, fighting, and homicides.
The town of Dearing was incorporated April 1, 1893. Mr. Taylor credits the reformation of Dearing to the organization and building of the Methodist Church in 1899. That same year, Captain Willis Howard dies and his heir, Mrs. C.J. Clark, inherited the bulk of his lands.
She subdivided the property and sold the parcels for home sites. The turn of the 20th century saw a building boom in the little hamlet. The town was incorporated in 1910 and R.P. Morgan became its first mayor.
Murmur Trestle Information and Donations
www.athensclarkecounty.com/new/trestle.htm
Baker, Pearl. A Handbook of History: McDuffie County, Georgia, 1870-1970. Thomson: Progress-News Publishing Company.
Johnson, J. (2002). The Railroad Comes to Georgia. Retrieved Feb. 12, 2006 from Dr. Gagnon�s website: www.arches.uga.edu/~mgagnon/students/Johnson.htm
McCommons, W.C., & Stovall, C. (1988). History of McDuffie County, Georgia. Tignall: Boyd Publishing.
