Northeast Georgia History Center
During the 1970s, James and Francis Mathis started collecting artifacts from the early days of those who settled in Northeast Georgia. A number of items were soon displayed at Gainesville’s Home Federal Savings Bank. As others in the community started to express an interest in remembering the past, a nucleus began to be formed with plans to start a museum.
The City of Gainesville made available to the group a vacant fire station building downtown. Volunteers then began collecting objects that would relate to the history of this area. The Georgia Mountain History Museum was underway. School children, tourists, and home-folks were soon attracted to the museum.
By the early 1990s, it was realized that the future of the museum had to include its own building in a more accessible location. The turning point came in 1995 when Brenau University President John Burd committed a tract of campus property for the History Museum, the White Path Cabin, and a blacksmith shop donated by Hoyt Herrin. Volunteers started soliciting the community for contributions and, after some years of stop and go, architectural plans were finally completed and all stood in readiness for its grand opening, held in May 2004.
Read more about this topic: Brenau University
Famous quotes containing the words georgia, history and/or center:
“Being a Georgia author is a rather specious dignity, on the same order as, for the pig, being a Talmadge ham.”
—Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964)
“In every election in American history both parties have their clichés. The party that has the clichés that ring true wins.”
—Newt Gingrich (b. 1943)
“There is nothing more natural than to consider everything as starting from oneself, chosen as the center of the world; one finds oneself thus capable of condemning the world without even wanting to hear its deceitful chatter.”
—Guy Debord (b. 1931)