Everybody’s Cousin: 
John J. Thrasher Was One of Atlanta ’s
Founders and Most Colorful Figures

This article was originally published in the
Georgia Historical Quarterly, Summer 2000

by David E. Sumner

“When I arrived in this place in 1839, the country was entirely covered by forest. There was but one house here at the time….  First one moved in from the country and then another until we had a right smart little town. The people around here were very poor. There were a great many of the women who wore no shoes at all. We had dirt floors in our homes.”                                                                    John J. Thrasher, 1871

  John James Thrasher (Feb. 24, 1818-Nov. 13, 1899) was a railroad builder, entrepreneur, merchant, and politician, who physically and economically laid the foundations for modern-day Atlanta . Affectionately known as “Cousin John” by friend and stranger, he remains as one of Georgia ’s most colorful historical figures. His 1839 railroad settlement known as “Thrasherville” went through two name changes before it officially became Atlanta in 1845. The Union Army sacked his elegant Ashby Street home during Sherman ’s march on Atlanta in 1864, but it remained as a residence to some of the city’s most prominent families until 1931.  “He was by nature a speculator and made and lost several small fortunes,” Franklin M. Garrett wrote. [1]

            “He was a prominent figure in the old days…as well as later when Atlanta became the greatest southern city, and now his death carries away next to the last of the three famous pioneers who were here before any of the people making this their home had ever heard of the place,” read his Atlanta Constitution obituary on Nov. 14, 1899. George W. Adair and George W. “Wash” Collier were the other two Atlanta pioneers. [2]

A December 1879 article about Atlanta said, “Cousin John is the original oldest inhabitant of Atlanta because in 1839 he came here and built the first house." [3]   The current Atlanta telephone directory contains the names of 54 Thrasher households. The state legislature chose the Brown Thrasher as the state bird in 1970 and Ted Turner named his hockey team the “Georgia Thrashers” in 1997, although those choices cannot be directly linked to the Thrasher family.

            In 1839, Decatur , six miles to the east, was the state’s largest city and Milledgeville the state capital. Georgia , then fifty years old, was one of the original 13 states and, until 1802, included the area that is now Alabama and Mississippi . Atlanta became the capital in 1868.  Dennis Camilleri wrote in a 1980 newspaper article, “Even though Terminus was its official name, some people came to call the settlement Thrasherville, after resident John Thrasher’s store.” [4]   Some court documents also refer to it as “Thrasherville.” [5]

            Georgia ’s General Assembly authorized construction of the Western and Atlantic Railroad in 1836 as the state’s northward link to Chattanooga and the Midwest . It required the Georgia Railroad and the Monroe Railroad to join with the W&A at its terminus.  In 1839, John Thrasher, then only 21, received the $25,000 contract from the Monroe Railroad Company to construct an embankment to carry its track across the low ground to where it would connect with the W&A terminus. The embankment took two years to complete.  Located today near the World Congress Center , it remains the oldest man-made construction in downtown Atlanta . [6]

“Cousin John” brought in dozens of laborers, mostly Irish immigrants, built shelters to house them and opened a commissary to provide for their needs. The commissary quickly became Atlanta ’s first store, the Johnson and Thrasher General Store. [7] The city’s first incorporation occurred on Dec 23, 1843 , when the General Assembly renamed it Marthasville in honor of the daughter of Governor Lumpkin, who had been instrumental in obtaining the railroad charter for the area. Named as the feminized version of the mythical city of Atlantis , it was incorporated as the town of Atlanta in 1845 and the city of Atlanta in 1847. [8]

            At a meeting on April 24, 1871 , of The Atlanta Pioneer and Historic Society, John Thrasher provided this account of his early days in Atlanta :

"When I arrived in this place in 1839, the country was entirely covered by forest. There was but one house here at the time, and that stood where the old post office was formerly located; it was built of logs and was occupied by an old woman and her daughter, about sixteen years of age. I found a man, also, named Thurman, living in the country nearby.  I went to work building and fixing up and built a store.  First one moved in from the country and then another, until we had a right smart little town.

"The people around here were very poor. There were a great many of the women who wore no shoes at all. We had dirt floors in our homes. There was a man named Johnson in the store with me, and the firm was Johnson and Thrasher. That was the only store in the place at the time." [9]

During the same meeting, he told about Atlanta's first social event, a dance that he hosted for his Irish
laborers.

 "I was building the Monroe embankment. My foreman was a man named Mulligan. You might suspect from his name that he was Irish. He was a good workman…  Mulligan was a married man, and so were others of my laborers, the most of whom lived in the neighborhood of the present Presbyterian church. These shacks were rude cabins made from roughly sawed timber. All of them had dirt floors.

"Mrs. Mulligan heard that the shacks were not floored with boards and she refused to move down here with her husband unless her cabin was floored with planks. She was the foreman’s wife, and she felt that she was entitled to something better than a dirt floor. Mulligan would not stay with me unless his wife moved down, and so there was nothing for me to do but to buy the lumber and put a wooden floor in the Mulligan shack….

"No sooner was she fairly installed in her new home than she announced that she would give a ball, and the wives of all the other men who were working on the railroad were invited, and so were every other man’s wife. The first society of Atlanta was there, and it was a swell affair, or we thought it was. Mrs. Mulligan was mistress of ceremonies, and she said that I would have to dance the first set with her. I had on a pair of rough high-topped boots, but that gave Mrs. Mulligan no concern. She said that it did not matter at all, at all.

"We circled around a few times, and the heel of one of my boots got caught in the floor, and the heel came off. I finished the dance in a hippity-hop sort of fashion, but, as they say now-a-days, everything went then. It was a crème de la crème affair, and the function established Mrs. Mulligan as the leader of the four hundred. She was quite a fine looking woman of strong physique, and if anybody had questioned her leadership, she could have established her claim to the championship as well as to the leadership.” [10]

Today a state historic marker in front of the Federal Building on Marietta Street designates the site of “Thrasherville…Atlanta’s first store, first religious service, labor trouble, social event and baby are associated with this settlement,” the marker reads.

Cousin John was one of fourteen children born to David and Mary Hughey Thrasher in nearby Newton County .  Why was he called “Cousin John”?  One reason is that so many of the area’s earliest citizens were his cousins—including George W. Adair. Another reason was because of his gregarious, generous nature that endeared him to so many.

            The story is told that one day he announced he had more money than “should be in the keeping of one man” and that he intended to divide it. He gave a large part of his profits to his mother and father. Then he divided with his brothers and sisters and next announced that his cousins would get a share.

            Another story is told that he had a family of Alabama cousins he had not seen in years. Two poorly dressed girls arrived in Atlanta one morning on a cart pulled by oxen riding slowly up what is now Whitehall Street . On the cart was a bale of cotton. Several men offered to buy the cotton, but they refused, saying they wanted to sell it to their cousin John Thrasher.

            By the time they arrived at his store, a crowd had gathered. John Thrasher came out and said, “Fellow citizens, I know why you are here. You have come to see John Thrasher deny his poor kinfolks, but you are going to be disappointed. In the veins of these girls flows blood that is better than that in the veins of kings and queens…for they are kin to John Thrasher. They are my cousins and I am proud of them.”

            He took them home, treated them to an elegant dinner, and brought them back and offered them $1,800 worth of goods. But the girls insisted on paying in cash—and did. Turns out, they confessed that their father had become wealthy in Alabama . Hearing of his cousin’s wealth and generosity, their father sent the poorly dressed girls to Atlanta in a oxen-drawn cart just to see if “Cousin John” would live up to the generosity of his reputation.

According to biographer Dorothy Pruett, “Many of his relatives came to the area to assist him and to enjoy his generosity and success. This friendly and gregarious entrepreneur was called ‘Cousin John’ by so many kinsmen that other Atlantans began doing the same.” [11]

In 1842, Cousin John made a big mistake. A controversy developed between the town commissioners and the Monroe Railroad Company over the location of the southern terminus of the line. Commissioners ruled to move it to another location about a mile away, which inconvenienced the railroad and disgusted Thrasher. Recalling the incident in 1871, he said:    “That was my ruin; I bought 100 acres of land with the expectation that the Macon road would stop by the road shops, and when I found that the road was going down here, I was very enraged and sold out my interest in that 100 acres for $4 an acre, although it was about one-half what I gave for it. I did not think the property would ever be worth anything, and I sold out and went to Griffin in 1842,” he told the Atlanta Historic Society meeting. [12] That 100 acres that never would be worth anything sits today in the middle of downtown Atlanta .  Even in 1879, the Harper’s magazine article mentioned earlier said the land was “now worth half a million or more.” [13]

He married Bethuel Skaife on Feb. 27, 1844 , and the couple raised four sons and three daughters. After his marriage, he moved back to Atlanta and opened another store, this time on Peachtree Street diagonally across from where Jonathan Norcross’ store was to stand. Norcross’ store was pictured in a scene from “Gone with the Wind” as Sherman ’s troops marched through the city.

Thrasher was one of a group of citizens that opposed incorporation of the city in 1847, citing fears of increased taxes and responsibilities that came with municipal incorporation.  “There was a charter procured, but a few of us declared that we would not have such laws as they had made. A lawyer said that he could break up the whole thing for $50 and we paid it, and went on without a charter until the next meeting of the Legislature.  This was in 1846, and in the year 1847, they got another….” [14]  

In 1854, Thrasher built one of the city’s most magnificent homes on what is now the west side of Ashby Street, S.W. , opposite West End Avenue . The home was then surrounded by a 300-acre plantation. [15]

A 1930 Atlanta Journal Magazine article, published just before the razing of the historic home, described it this way: “It was the finest residence for miles around. He built it of brick, the bricks themselves probably made by slaves, and he built it solidly, a house to last for generations. This is evident today for the inside walls between the spacious, high-ceilinged walls, are one-foot thick.” [16]

From 1859 to1861, Thrasher represented Fulton County in the legislature at the state capital in Milledgeville. [17] Lttle is known about his legislative activity. John Thrasher was also a product of his times—and a slaveowner. He once said, “I made money so fast that I told my partner Johnson, I was going to close out. Why one day six niggers did enough work to make me $50. Clear. That seemed to me to be making money too fast. They were paying us part cash and part stock in the company.” [18] [1]

During most of August 1864, General John B. Hood, commander in chief of Confederate troops around Atlanta, occupied Thrasher’s home as his headquarters, just prior to its ransacking by Sherman’s Army. John Thrasher served the Confederacy by making salt in Florida , but little else is known of his military service except that his family remained in the house until General Hood took it over. After that, they stayed with relatives.

On the night of Sept. 1, 1864 , Atlanta was abandoned by the Confederate troops to the sound of explosions from stores of ammunition. But Cousin John’s house was one of a few not destroyed. Instead, the Union troops tore out and carried away the marble mantels, melted the outside ornamental ironwork and converted the library into a blacksmith’s shop. As Henry Grady once remarked, “General Sherman was very careful about what he did with fire.” [19]

A 1930 article about “The Homestead,” as it came to be known, said: “If dwellings could talk, what a tale this one could tell. For it has seen birth and death, wars and weddings, destruction and reconstruction. Originally a plantation house, built by slave labor, it was spared in the burning of Atlanta, sheltered Sherman’s troops and bears in its sides the scars of battle. It has sent forth its sons to war and its daughters as brides and many whose names are well known in the south have lived within its walls,” wrote Lauretta Fancher.

The battles of Atlanta left the city a burned waste of destruction and with it all of John Thrasher’s possessions. Money was worthless; his store burned and his home was ruined. He was 46 years old. The energetic and enigmatic Thrasher, however, was down but never out.  He stayed one in Atlanta for about five more years to make some significant civic contributions to the city.

In 1864, he served as foreman of a Grand Jury that recommended improvements in health and social conditions of the city.  Among its five recommendations, the Grand Jury recommended:  “We are pained to observe that there are a large number of idle and vicious boys strolling about the city, appearing to be under no control…. We recommend that a House of Correction be provided for them by those who duty and authority it is to make such provisions.” The jury also recommended  “schools for the education of the children of the poor of the city and county be organized, that there may be thus developed among the poor, many good minds otherwise groping in mental darkness, which too often tends to hasten human beings along the paths of destruction.” [20]

In 1865, a local newspaper, The Intelligencer, commended Thrasher for his work in supervising the construction of the new Fulton County jail: “Through the indefatigable industry of that most indefatigable of all men, J.J. Thrasher, Esq., the new jail rapidly approaches completion. The difficulties under which that gentleman has labored as superintendent of its construction have been innumerable and of a nature he could not remedy.  The building is neither gorgeous nor picturesque, but it is substantial, and it will answer its purpose…” [21]

 In February 1866, he was one of the 12 charter members appointed by the legislature to the Atlanta Street Railway Company, which was formed to develop a street railway system for the city: “The idea for, if not the actuality of, a street railway system for Atlanta was born in 1866.  On Feb. 23^rd an Act of the Legislature was approved whereby George Hilyer, James L. Grant, B.D. Smith, J.B. Campbell, Even Hillyer, John G. Westmoreland, J.J. Thrasher, J.J. Morrison, W.B. Cox, I.E. Bartlett, William Solomon, and W.R. Webster were declared a body politic and corporate as the Atlanta Street Railroad Company.” [22]

            In 1870, John Thrasher left Atlanta and founded the town of Norcross .  He bought Land Lot No. 254 in Gwinett County about twenty miles northeast of Atlanta, subdivided the lot, sold it at auction, and developed it.  He named it after his friend, Jonathan Norcross, Thrasher’s fellow merchant and second mayor of Atlanta .  Incorporated Oct. 26, 1870 , Cousin John was elected the first mayor along with four council members: S.T. McElroy, M.C. Lively, G. Robertson, and a Mr. Autry. [23]

Work on the Richmond and Danville Railroad began in 1868 and the first train ran from Norcross to Atlanta in June 1870. The “Airline Belle,” a four-coach train, left Norcross every morning at 8:00 a.m and returned at 6:00 . It was probably Atlanta ’s first commuter train.

While in Norcross, Thrasher also built the Brunswick Hotel, a 29-room resort hotel, which wealthy Atlantans frequented during short excursions. “Here you will fare as well as you could wish. You will find here fat, yellow-legged chickens; butter without any features of oleomargarine; mutton from the mountain sides where the water, the feed, the air, all combine to make it the finest in the world,” was how W. Oscar Groce described it in 1875, calling it “Atlanta’s favorite summer resort.” [24]

“Our former fellow-citizen, Cousin John Thrasher, with his wide-awake energy, is fast infusing life into the beautiful village of Norcross ,” noted an 1870 Atlanta Constitution article.  “His splendid hotel, and his own character as a finished gentleman and good feeder, will make Norcross a place of result for our citizens during the summer months.” [25]

The hotel went out of business after the Depression and was torn down in 1957 to make room for a post office. He also donated a square city block in downtown Norcross for a park, which was named in his honor in 1934.

Today a historic marker at Thrasher Park , reads: “…’Cousin John’ purchased tracts of land which he subdivided and sold as lots along the developing Richmond and Danville Railroad Line in Gwinett County . He laid out and donated a square of land for a park ‘so to be used for all time, never for industrial purposes of any kind.’”

Besides this donation, Cousin John also made other philanthropic gifts.

An 1895 family history noted that, “He contributed largely to the erection of First Baptist Church (of Atlanta) which is an elegant brick building, and now has for its pastor Rev. J.B. Hawthorne, a man of extensive reputation in the South as a pulpit orator. He also donated houses and lots to five preachers in Norcross in 1870, creating what was then tagged as  “Holy Row.”  Originally named  “ Church Street ,” it was changed to “Sunset Drive” in 1962. [26]

Despite his Atlanta roots—and a legacy he seemed to fail to recognize—John Thrasher had an ambitious wanderlust about him. He moved around several times, including out of and back to Atlanta twice. “Mr. Thrasher must have been a very restless person, speculating, moving about, generous to a fault,” wrote one biographer. [27]

About 1878, he left the Atlanta area for good, moving to the town of Central , South Carolina , where he opened a very successful “Railroad Eating House.”  The 1879 Harper’s magazine article featured a sketch of Cousin John ringing a dinner bell in front of his newest entrepreneurial venture:

"Passengers on the Air Line Railroad to Washington will remember a little breakfast station called Central up in the mountains of western South Carolina . As the train comes round the bend of the hill, and slows up a dinner bell is heard, and the eyes take in a white building with a long, cool piazza, where a man whose genial, smiling face and generous amplitude of waist and solid support of legs, auger well for the fare that awaits within.

 "He rings the bell with one hand, and with the other busily welcomes the passengers as though they were old friends. Then, how eagerly he pressed upon you a choice of good things; how distressed he is if you do not eat heartily. He assures there is plenty of time to eat as he takes your fifty cents!  Do you wonder that he is known from one end of the Cotton States to the other and that every body loves “Cousin John” Thrasher. The path to a man’s heart is his stomach, it is said, and this generous, easy-natured caterer has secured the right of way in this part of the world. [28]

 "In later years, John and his wife followed three of their sons, Barton, David Oliver, and Willis Edgar, to Dade City, Florida, about forty miles north of Tampa. Here they lived on an orange grove. David Oliver Thrasher, became an attorney, county judge and Pasco County ’s first school superintendent.  Barton became a druggist while Willis engaged in the citrus business."

In 1930, Atlanta ’s WSB radio played a phonographic recording made by John Thrasher during a visit to Atlanta a couple of years before his death in 1899. According to a story by Medora Perkerson in the Jan. 7, 1940 , Atlanta Journal Magazine, “His hands shaking with palsy and his sight failing, ‘Cousin John’ made the recording at the urging of a relative, Walter Hancock, who took him to a phonograph parlor on Peachtree street . The recording was carefully packed away and had been played twelve years after [his] death for his son, Barton Thrasher, a Dade City druggist.  A 1911 Atlanta newspaper article gave an account of this event:

“Standing with head bowed low in holy reverence, Barton Thrasher, himself a Confederate veteran, decorated with the Cross of Honor, stood Saturday and listened to the voice of his father, who 12 years ago answered the final summons and closed his eyes in rest after an eventful life, covering a period of 82 years….

“And how did this man hear the voice of his father who years ago passed from life? The answer is simple. It was done with the aid of a phonograph and a little record onto which he had spoken in 1894.

“The man whose voice came seemingly from the realms beyond was no less a person than Cousin John Thrasher, about whose memory there still clings many tender sentiments among those early citizens of Atlanta who remember him in his younger days and among those of a younger generation who knew and loved him in his declining years.” [29]

The recording provided a rambling account of Atlanta ’s early history.  The family’s efforts to find the recording, if it exists, have been unsuccessful. [30]

            It would please Cousin John to know that his first cousin, Caroline Thrasher’s great grandsons, Robert and George Woodruff, were among the best-known and most generous citizens of the city he helped to settle. Robert Woodruff was president and CEO of Coca Cola, Inc. from 1923 to 1939 and a board member until 1985. He gave away more than $350 million to civic and charitable causes.

Allen Philip Francis dedicated his 1967 history of Norcross to John Thrasher, saying of him, “Let us never lose sight of the unusual ability of our true founder [and] his kindness, his generosity and his courage to carry on after the devastation of war. Although he was never to recapture the affluence of his pre-war years, he was not deterred, he continued doing good, making his way, leaving all too little as a true record of his activities. We do know of his excellence as a man, a Christian, a doer of good, a restless developer.”

John Thrasher always built and promoted railroads. In a 1946 interview, his friend Jasper C. Carter of Dade City said Thrasher gave speeches and helped get a railroad through that central Florida town. [31]   Both Cousin John and his wife, Bethuel, are buried in the Dade City Cemetery at the western edge near the rail line he helped acquire and now used by Amtrak. Maybe when all is said and done, it’s enough to say, “He was a railroad man.”

ENDNOTES