A visit to a mill in Banks County and a little bit about how mills work.

Ragsdale Mill:  https://millpictures.com/mills.php?millid=693

In the 'Hands up!' episode I told the story of Bill Miner.  He was a famous train robber from Canada who pulled his last job robbing a train outside Gainesville.  It's a good story, and when I found some further details about the train robbery and Miner's capture, plus two escape attempts from prison, I couldn't resist.  

A quick discussion of the tools and processes that were used in Georgia to find gold.

Ty Cobb was one of the best baseball players ever.  Through the years he gained a reputation as a drinker, a fighter, and a racist- but this reputation may not have been deserved.  For years all I knew about Cobb was that he was from Banks County and that he was a jerk; of course there is more to the story than that.  

A short look at some of the items found in local newspapers around the turn of the century.

How five Northeast Georgia counties got their names, all explained in just under ten minutes- before 'Freebird' runs out.  We discuss who Elbert, Lumpkin, Forsyth, and Towns county were named after, and find one county in Georgia that was named after the ugliest man in England. 

Millions of counterfeit greybacks flooded the South at the start of the Civil War, causing economic mayhem.  The cause of these fakes did business out of a little stationary shop in Philadelphia, advertised in the local paper, and never once feared the law.  

James Longstreet had a long and impressing military career, including being called General Lee's 'Old War Horse".  After the war, however, criticism of his personal politics and his conduct during Gettysburg would cause some to think of him as a traitor to the Southern cause. 

This week, the career of a Gainesville resident who rests in Alta Vista Cemetery.

The Declaration of Independence as it might have been written today.  This was published by an organization called The Pacific Legal Foundation in an effort to help people understand the rights we were asserting, and were willing to die for, on July Fourth.

In 1921 the writer H.L. Mencken published the Declaration of Independence in what he called 'American'.  It wasn't the King's English, or the Queen's either.