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Published Wednesday, September 10, 2008 in Local

Special

The Leavell-Adamson cabin is one of the oldest surviving structures in Coweta County, and one of the oldest on the McIntosh Trail, as well. It is one of the last vestiges of the old town of Preston, which was relocated and renamed Turin when the railroad came through after the Civil War.

Adamson cabin at Turin stood on McIntosh Trail

By Jeff Bishop

The Newnan Times-Herald

Editor's Note: Twelfth in ongoing series. Efforts are under way to recognize a route following the historic Native American McIntosh Trail as a state Scenic Byway. The Times-Herald is featuring points of interest along the trail that runs through several counties including Coweta.

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Almost everything has changed along the McIntosh Trail in the 180 years since the Creeks were removed from Georgia.

"America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers," as James Earl Jones so colorfully described our shared history in the 1989 film "Field of Dreams."

"It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again," he said.

But on the McIntosh Trail, at least, the Leavell House -- about halfway between Sharpsburg and Senoia -- has marked the time.

Many today know the log structure as the Adamson cabin, but the house was originally built in the 1830s by Rev. Charles Leavell, a native of the Newberry District, South Carolina.

"Newberry was a jumping off place for the frontier," said the late W.C. Adamson in an Aug. 14, 1980, edition of the Newnan Times-Herald.

"A land lottery was held where people drew lots from a hat for the Indian lands," said Adamson, Leavell's great grandson.

The age of the Leavell home was recently verified by dendrochronologist Dr. Georgina DeWeese of the University of West Georgia, confirming it as undoubtedly one of the oldest surviving structures in the county.

Charles and his brother, Richard Leavell, came to Coweta County between 1825 and 1830. The brothers were sons of John Leavell, who fought in the American Revolution under Gen. Nathaniel Green.

Charles married Elizabeth Hunter in South Carolina, according to the "History of Coweta County, Georgia," published by the Newnan-Coweta Historical Society, while Richard married Martha Page.

"The Leavells received some land under the Land Grant Act, but bought much of their land from neighbors, and at one time owned from 3,000-5,000 acres in the area of Preston," according to an account in the History.

"My great grandfather started off with a land grant. It was not a big land grant," Adamson said in 1980. "I have seen records that said it was about 300 acres."

Preston was the forerunner of the town of Turin, and about one mile to the north. It had a school and a U.S. Post Office, and prominent families included not only the Leavells, but also the Carmichaels, the Pages, the Shells, the Hunters, the Dominicks, the Ragsdales, the Linches, the Morgans, the Arnalls, the Arnolds, the Summers -- the list goes on. Many of their descendants still live and farm in the same general area.

When these families settled at Preston, "there was no cotton market in Atlanta, which was then a small town called Marthasville," according to the History. "They hauled their cotton to Macon by wagon train twice each year to sell, and brought back supplies that could not be grown on the farm."

Many of the young men in Preston died during the Civil War, and they are memorialized in a poem written by Mrs. F.P. Peek found in a trunk many years later. Arbinsena Hunter also wrote a poem and essay about those dark times while she was a student at the Preston School:

"Whatever of grief may dim the sky,

Whatever the cause of sorrow,

We turn as to the weeping sky and say,

'We'll smile tomorrow.'"

Adamson remembered that the Leavell cabin was "affectionately called 'Grandma's House'" because his grandmother, Martha Jane Leavell Reese, lived in it "when Gen. Sherman was marching through Georgia and Gen. McCook was invading Coweta County." Her first husband, Dr. Lewis Brooks, was killed in 1864 while serving as a doctor in the Confederate Army.

"He was killed in a skirmish at Shakerag, in Fayette County," said Adamson. "That was part of General McCook's raid that ended in the battle at Brown's Mill.

"My grandmother was afraid that General Sherman's army would pass through the area and burn the houses and steal things," he said.

"She took her valuables and crossed the creek in the back of the house. She dug holes and put her quilts and other things in barrels inside the holes."

After the Battle of Brown's Mill, some of the Union troops were cut off from the main force, Adamson said, and "surrendered to the farmers." Two Union soldiers from Iowa who were wounded in a local skirmish were buried in the nearby Tranquil Cemetery, he pointed out.

After the war, in 1870, the Savannah, Griffin and North Alabama Railroad came through the area, and the town was basically relocated one mile to the south to be closer to the railroad. According to the History, the name of Turin was given to the town "by the Preston school children who at that time were studying about Turin, Italy."

"The settlement of Preston is gone," Adamson said in 1988, and today the Leavell cabin stands as virtually the only marker of its existence.

The cabin, too, would have crumbled into the soil long ago, if not for the Adamson family, who restored the structure in 1980.

"Many years after my grandmother lived in the two-room house, it was turned into a tenant house," Adamson said. "When they quit using it as a tenant house, they let it deteriorate."

The building was eventually used to store hay and fertilizer.

"The floor broke from the weight of the fertilizer and hay," Adamson said. "It got to the point where it had to be torn down or repaired. I did not want to lose it because of the historical value to the family."

According to a Dec. 30, 1981, article in The Newnan Times-Herald, the rebuilding of the two fireplaces in the cabin "was a first for Adamson and his sons, who removed the original stones one by one from the portions which had not already fallen."

The field stone chimneys were originally laid without mortar, Adamson said, and mud was used to hold the rocks together.

The Adamsons also used the pioneer method for locking doors when they rebuilt the structure, using only a piece of leather attached to a wood bolt. Adamson explained that the leather strip could be "pulled inside when one came in at night or pulled through a hole in the door when one left."

They discovered that the cabin probably originally consisted of only one room.

"It was two complete houses. There were two separate frames. We did not know that until we started repairing the house," Adamson said.

"The settlers needed a place to stay quickly," he said. "As they became more affluent, they added another room."

Two other rooms were added later to the rear of the home, but they were removed and replaced with the current kitchen and bathroom.

The house was supported by large, hand-hewn beams, and the front and interior of the home were "covered with wooden panels installed in tongue-and-groove fashion."

Hand-forged nails were used to nail some of the boards in place, Adamson said.

The Adamsons tried to retain as much of the original building as they could, and when replacements were warranted, they tried to adhere to original construction techniques. They did install electricity, however, and eventually added the kitchen and bathroom in the back.

A century ago, "a lot of people would not sleep in a house with a kitchen because of the danger of fire," Adamson said.

Adamson said he never intended for the cabin to be lived in following the renovations, but he thought it was important to retain and preserve "the land I live on and love," since it had been in his family for nearly two centuries.

"The thing I regret is that I did not care about what I had heard as a child from my grandmother," Adamson said. "At the time, I was more interested in baseball and horses."

That love of the land is one of the legacies that has been passed down to the successive generations, W.C.'s grandson, Will Adamson, said when he recently returned to Turin from his home in North Carolina for the burial of his uncle, Fred Adamson, who had his ashes scattered at the cabin.

"One of the things that was most important to my granddad was the land," Adamson said. "So many times when my dad was growing up, they would be next to destitute. But then they could lease some land out to a farmer or cut some timber, and they could make it through. There was always some way they could use the land to generate income and keep the family from being homeless. So the land was very important to him, and he tried to teach that to his sons."

In fact, the family may have adhered to their love of the land "a little too much."

"Times have changed," Adamson said, noting that neither he nor his brother live on the family land any longer.

"People are more transient and the land is not as important as it once was," he said.

"Still, it's been in the family for so long, you don't want to let it go," he said. "It's this ingrained feeling that this is where you're from. But we all know it's going to end up passing out of our hands at some point, with all the encroachment and development."

It's a change of events that W.C. Adamson had hoped to avoid. When the renovations were occurring, Adamson told the reporter he hoped the little cabin on the McIntosh Trail would "continue to stand for another 150 years."

"We are a part of the land," Adamson said, "as much as the rocks are."