![]() ![]() My Thrasher cousin drove me to the site of the old town. But in the decades after the Civil War, the town died and very little remains of it today. In antebellum days Salem had been one of the three most important settlements in what was then Clarke County – the other two were Athens and Watkinsville. Gradually I discovered that my family, beginning almost 200 years ago, had been residents of a thriving town called Salem, Georgia. And having found this first tangible trace of the family roots I’d never known, I was hooked, and had to learn more. A feeling of legitimate belonging which my growing up in Atlanta, among other transplants, had never given me. When we lifted the heavy marker from the ground, and I read what was carved on it, I was overwhelmed with a feeling of connectedness. Thus, my nonchalant rambling ended up bringing me face-to-face with my great-great-grandmother’s tumbled-down gravestone, in a small cemetery lost in the brambles and pines off a country road. Having lived in the area for 70 years, my newfound cousin knew immediately where I needed to go, and he took me there. ![]() Meeting this distant relative was the breakthrough I had been looking for. An older Farmington resident, sitting in his yard swing across from the town’s post office, responded to my questions by sending me down Salem Road to ask the last surviving Thrasher in the area. When visits to Watkinsville cemeteries turned up nothing, I drifted south down Highway 441 to Farmington. Over the next few months, I wandered down roads in and around Watkinsville, thinking how interesting it would be to find the grave of that other “Mary Celestia Bird” four generations back. Later, I asked my father where his grandmother came from, and it made a lot of sense when he told me, “Watkinsville.” And her mother, for whom I was named – an improbable, old-fashioned name – was an Elder before she married, wasn’t she? And weren’t my third cousins in Atlanta named Bishop?” “My grandmother’s mother was named Thrasher. Along the way, I began to notice some unexpectedly familiar names on street signs: Thrasher Street, Elder Covered Bridge, and the town of Bishop. In the mood for exploring one day, I drove to Watkinsville and followed some of the roads around it. I barely knew of Watkinsville, and I’d never heard of Farmington, much less Salem. I had moved from New York City and was new to Athens. Thank you, Celestea for your family detective work! Celestea Sharp set out find out about it…This article, which first appeared in Athens Magazine, August 1990, continues below with exclusive permission to the Thrasher Family Association…somewhat edited, abbreviated and updated for our website. Now… more than one hundred and seventy years ago, south of Watkinsville, Georgia, was the small but thriving antebellum town of Salem with a church, shops, offices, hotels, a tannery, and a boarding school. ![]()
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