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 Scull Shoals began as a frontier settlement in 1782, and after several Indian raids, residents erected a fort in 1796. They began to expand across the Oconee River with the 1802 treaty ceding land from the Creek Indians. White settlers and black slaves quickly opened up the land, and following Eli Whitney's 1793 invention of the cotton gin, began to raise cotton in huge quantities. The village began with a gristmill and sawmill, and soon had a cotton gin. With funds from the Georgia legislature, Zachariah Sims and George Paschal built Georgia's first paper mill at Scull Shoals by 1811. The paper mill lasted only until about 1815, and the property changed hands, but the village continued to expand.
Under its third owner, Dr. Thomas Poullain, Sr.,there were flourishing mills, boarding houses, stores, a warehouse, distillery, a toll bridge, and other enterprises. In 1854, for example, he had 2000 spindles and looms, consuming 4,000 bales of cotton, valued at $200,000. Caroline Hunt's 1979 history of the village provided us with much of the data in these pages.
Dr. Lindsey Durham was an early community leader. He had a large herb garden and developed patented medicines that he and his medical family used to treat their patients. Durham's 600-bed hospital was in cabins scattered around his home. It was a major facility for the time (Hunt 1979). The village was also home to Georgia Governor Peter Early. During Dr. Poullain's 41- year leadership, a devastating fire burned the wooden buildings in 1845. He supported his people as they rebuilt three- and four-story brick buildings of Fontenoy Mills, where later more than 600 workers made yarns and cloth. Always a company town, Scull Shoals suffered economic problems after the Civil War, and changed hands several times. There were droughts and devastating floods, culminating in the 1887 flood that left water standing for four days in the buildings. The covered bridge floated downstream. Several hundred bales of cotton were in the mill, and 600 bushels of wheat in the warehouse. All was ruined, bringing economic chaos to Scull Shoals Mills, from which it never quite recovered.  A hundred years of open-field cotton farming caused erosion that removed 8-9 inches of topsoil from the fields, depositing it in the rivers and low places. This caused more frequent flooding, covering the shoals. This heavy siltation cut the "head" of water needed to power the mills, stopping work often. By 1900, most people had left for regular work, and the mills closed for good. During the World Wars, machinery was scrapped for the war efforts, and brick buildings were dismantled and salvaged also . Today, only three walls of the warehouse and store remain standing, along with the arched bridge that took workers across the raceway into the mills. Between 1875 and 1930, the land was sold several times. Then in the 1930's it was re-assembled and sold to the government for an experimental forest. The Soil Conservation Service and Civilian Conservation Corps did massive reclamations, terracing eroded hillsides and replanting the forests. Scull Shoals became part of the Oconee National Forest in 1949. The old mill town has lain quietly waiting, marked only by the ruins in the woods: a small picnic area popular for fishing and hunting, and generally forgotten by most everyone. In 1996, Friends of Scull Shoals was chartered, and efforts expanded to study the history of this once-important industrial center in the middle Georgia Piedmont.  |
