The Civil War deportation Georgia still doesn’t talk about

Sherman’s Mass Deportation of Roswell Mill Women

The women of Roswell Mills paid a harsh price for their work.

On July 5, 1864, Union troops took over the small Georgia town and found 400 women making cloth for Confederate uniforms.

Despite a French flag flying to claim neutral status, General Garrard burned all three mills the very next day. Then came the real shock.

General Sherman ordered everyone at the mills charged with treason and sent north.

First held on Roswell’s town square, then moved to Marietta, these women and children were soon packed into boxcars bound for Kentucky and Indiana. Some died on the harsh trip.

Most who lived never saw Georgia again, building new lives far from home.

The historic Roswell Town Square still stands today, a silent witness to this forgotten chapter of Civil War history.

Women Kept Mills Running When Union Forces Arrived in Roswell

The Roswell Manufacturing Company ran at full speed in early July 1864.

About 400 women worked the two cotton mills and one woolen mill, making “Roswell Gray” fabric for Confederate uniforms, plus rope, canvas, and tent cloth.

Most rich mill owners had already run away as Union troops got closer, but the women stayed behind to keep working. They needed the money to support their families while their husbands fought in the war.

Union General Kenner Garrard rode into town on July 5, 1864, looking for a way to cross the river to reach Atlanta.

Theophile Roche, a Frenchman who ran the Ivy Woolen Mill, hung a French flag over the building, hoping soldiers would think it was neutral. Garrard spotted Confederate “CSA” stamps on the fabric being made.

Sherman’s Harsh Order Treated Mill Workers as Traitors

Garrard burned all three mills down on July 6, 1864. He told General William Sherman about the mills and women workers the next day.

Sherman quickly approved the burning and went further on July 7.

He ordered the arrest of everyone linked to the mills, calling them traitors for making supplies for Confederate troops.

“I repeat my orders that you arrest all people, male and female, connected with those factories, no matter what the clamor, and let them foot it, under guard, to Marietta,” Sherman wrote.

He let the women bring their children and some clothes if they could carry them. The rich mill owners had already escaped.

Families Spent a Night on the Town Square Under Guard

Union soldiers rounded up the mill workers, their children, and a few men (mostly too young or too old to fight) and held them overnight on Roswell’s town square.

Among them was Adeline Bagley Buice, a pregnant seamstress whose husband Joshua was away fighting for the Confederacy. The workers waited under guard with no idea where they would go or what would happen to them.

Many kept working at the mills because they needed money to feed their families.

The arrests tore them from their homes, belongings, and any family members who didn’t work at the mills.

Wagon Ride to Marietta Began Their Forced Journey North

The workers traveled by military wagon from Roswell to Marietta on July 9. They bounced along for about 13 miles in wagons with no seats or springs.

Guards took them to the empty Georgia Military Institute in Marietta, where they joined workers from the New Manchester Mills, which Union forces had also burned down.

The prisoners stayed there for about a week while Sherman’s troops set up trains to take them north. Northern newspapers later reported that the women arrived “thinly clad” after their rough wagon trip.

A few lucky women got jobs with Marietta families and avoided being sent north.

Boxcars Carried Hundreds Away From Georgia Forever

By July 15, soldiers loaded the workers into railroad boxcars with just a few days’ worth of food. The dark, crowded cars carried them through the hot July weather as trains headed toward Chattanooga, Tennessee.

After stopping in Nashville, the trains kept going north to Louisville, Kentucky. The journey killed some women.

Mary Ann Sumner died before reaching Louisville. Margarette Wood made it to Louisville but died there later in 1864.

One old woman was so weak soldiers carried her onto an Ohio River steamship while sitting in a rocking chair, but she died during the river crossing.

Louisville Paper Reported on Hundreds of “Refugees” Arriving

The Louisville Daily Journal told readers on July 21 that 249 women and children had shown up from Nashville the night before.

Louisville became the final stop for many workers, though others crossed the Ohio River into Indiana. At first, the women stayed at a Louisville refugee hospital run by the military.

Soon they were on their own, forced to find places to live and work in cities already packed with war refugees.

Most of the women couldn’t read or write, making it impossible for them to send letters home to Georgia telling their families where they were.

Northern Winter Proved Deadly for Georgia Women

Women sent to Indiana faced the toughest conditions. Many settled near the Ohio River and took any work they could find.

Some women and children starved or froze to death before local mills opened and gave them jobs. Indiana newspapers wrote about refugees living in shacks without proper clothes for cold northern winters.

Some desperate women turned to prostitution to survive. Others gave up their children for adoption to save them from starvation.

Local groups asked the Federal government for help, even just seeds so the women could grow gardens, but got nothing.

Newspapers Criticized Sherman’s Treatment of Female Workers

Northern papers including the New York Commercial Advertiser, New York Tribune, and Indiana’s New Albany Ledger printed stories attacking the deportation.

A New York Tribune writer complained about “four hundred terrified Ellens, Susans and Maggies transported in springless army wagons… all for the offense of weaving tent-cloth.”

The New York Commercial Advertiser ran a story called “Sherman’s Female Captives” describing conditions where the women stayed in Louisville.

Editors in the North questioned whether it was right to send poor women hundreds of miles from their homes to try to survive among strangers.

Many Women Started New Families Up North

Cut off from their homes and unable to contact their families, many women eventually married northern men. Large numbers settled for good in Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio, raising new families there.

Lucinda Wood married Confederate veteran James Shelly in Kentucky in 1866, then moved to Illinois with her sister. She only returned to Georgia in 1886 when her health got worse.

Some women who tried to go back to Georgia after the war found mill owners wouldn’t hire them, blaming the workers for not protecting the mills.

As years passed, the Roswell workers mixed in with other groups of refugees moving through the region.

One Woman’s Five-Year Walk Home Ended in Heartbreak

Adeline Bagley Buice, heavily pregnant when arrested, ended up in Chicago where she gave birth to her daughter Mary Ann in August 1864.

Over the next five years, Adeline and Mary slowly made their way back to Georgia, mostly on foot. Her husband Joshua came home to Roswell when the war ended and learned his wife had been sent north.

After years with no word from her, he thought she had died and married another woman. When Adeline finally reached Roswell in 1869, she found her husband had remarried about a year earlier.

Her grave marker, placed by her descendants in the 1990s, reads: “Roswell Mill Worker Caught and Exiled to Chicago by Yankee Army 1864 – Returned on Foot 1869.

The Story Vanished for More Than a Century

Fewer than a handful of the 400 workers ever made it back to Georgia after the war. Despite getting lots of attention in 1864 newspapers, the tragedy was almost completely forgotten for over 100 years.

Only in the 1980s did researchers like Michael D. Hitt (who spent eight years investigating, finishing in 1992) and Mary Deborah Petite start tracking down individual stories.

The Roswell Mills Camp of the Sons of Confederate Veterans began a project in 1998 to identify victims and find descendants. They learned most had settled permanently in the North.

On July 8, 2000, a memorial monument featuring a ten-foot broken Corinthian column went up in Roswell’s Old Mill Park to honor the 400 deported workers.

Visiting Historic Roswell Square, Georgia

You can learn about the 1864 deportation of Roswell Mill women at several spots around town.

Start at Roswell Town Square on South Atlanta Street, then visit the mill worker monument at Sloan Street Park on Sloan Street. Old Mill Park on Mill Street is open from one hour before sunrise to one hour after sunset.

For deeper history, join History Seek Saturday walking tours that cover the deportation events – call (404) 967-9099 to register.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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