Samuel Charles Candler1
Male, #45848, (6 Dec 1809 - 15 Nov 1873)
| Parent | Daniel Candler1 (1779 - 1816) | |
| Parent | Sarah B. Slaughter1 (circa 1784 - 1 Jun 1865) | |
Samuel Charles Candler|b. 6 Dec 1809\nd. 15 Nov 1873|p45848.htm|Daniel Candler|b. 1779\nd. 1816|p45846.htm|Sarah B. Slaughter|b. circa 1784\nd. 1 Jun 1865|p45847.htm|Col. William Candler|b. 21 Apr 1736\nd. Sep 1789|p45841.htm|Elizabeth Anthony|b. 10 Mar 1746\nd. 14 Jul 1784|p45840.htm||||||| | ||
| Birth* | 6 Dec 1809 | He was born on 6 Dec 1809.1 |
| He was the son of Daniel Candler and Sarah B. Slaughter.1 | ||
| Marriage* | 1833 | He married Martha Bernetta Beall at Cherokee Co., Georgia, in 1833.1 |
| Death* | 15 Nov 1873 | He died at Carroll Co., Georgia, on 15 Nov 1873.1 |
| Biography* | In the later 1830s, Samuel Candler and his fourteen-year-old bride, Martha, came to the rolling hills of Carroll County, Georgia, bringing with them two wedding gifts from her father: an Indian pony named Picayune and a slave girl named Mary. Several streams watered the 300 acres of land where they began to farm. There, Samuel and Martha built their home on the crest of a ridge surrounded by oak and hickory trees. Facing south, it began as a "dog trot" house--two small structures with doors that opened on a covered hall or breezeway between them. Large porches sheltered the front and rear of the building. Following the custom of the time, one large room, warmed by a fireplace in winter, doubled as a dining room and sitting room. The kitchen was a separate building. Over the years, Samuel and Martha had eight sons and three daughters and as the family expanded, so did the house. Eventually, their "comfortable but not ostentatious" home contained many books and a piano, enough evidence for their grandson's opinion that "both were unusually cultured for their period and place." The farm was, of course, a commercial enterprise, but Samuel's business interests extended far beyond its boundaries. He also occasionally held public office. Early in Samuel Candler's childhood his father had died, so he grew up partly in the care of a kinsman, Dr. Ignatius W. Few, who became the founder and first president of Emory College in Oxford, Georgia. Candler's large extended family was moderately comfortable, but as an orphan, he had to make his own way in the world. As Samuel Candler entered adulthood, a new opportunity for wealth appeared. In the spring of 1830, tales of gold nuggets snagged in the roots of fallen trees and gold dust in the gravel of mountain streams brought thousands of prospectors into the lands of the Cherokees in the northwest quarter of the present state of Georgia. No one knows the exact place or time of the original discovery, but by the end of the year it was clear that the prospectors had come to stay. The Cherokees resisted for nearly a decade before they were forced to march west on the Trail of Tears to the Oklahoma Indian Territory. The state of Georgia divided the former Cherokee lands to form all or parts of twenty-four new counties. The history of northwest Georgia now became a story of miners and farmers and men who built new cities. The miners came first, probing to discover the diagonal band of gold deposits that ran from Carroll County, west of Atlanta, to Rabun County in the state's extreme northeast corner. The most intense activity clustered in the Dahlonega area and in the area between Acworth and Canton; about thirty miles west of Atlanta, another cluster of activity developed in Carroll County. All sorts of people tried their luck in the hunt for gold. After bringing in their harvests, small farmers left their fields to prospect; prosperous planters leased gold lots, sending their slaves to work at panning or placer mining. Some full-time miners prospected the countryside on their own; others sought employment with mining companies. As a young man during the Georgia gold rush of the early 1830s, Samuel Candler pursued various mining activities, first in Carroll County and then in Cherokee County. It was in 1833, during this stay in Cherokee County, that he married Martha Bernetta Beall. Samuel made a good impression on his neighbors who elected him sheriff in 1834 and then sent him as a representative to the legislature in 1835. However, the newlyweds soon moved to the farm in Carroll County. Acting as the agent for a group of Macon investors who leased out gold prospecting rights on land they owned in the area, Candler received ten percent of the rents he collected for them. He also began to diversify his business interests. With several partners, he developed the site that became the present town of Villa Rica. Candler then borrowed $1500 to open a store in the town and was successful enough to repay the sum promptly.' This general store-Villa Rica's first-usually contained $2,000 in stock. Miners came to the store with gold dust that they packed in goose quills for safe-keeping; thus the storekeeper became a small dealer in gold. Through these and other investments, Samuel Candler became one of the most prosperous men of his region. As Carroll County matured, although its gold deposits dwindled, the area retained its simple, frontier qualities. The inhabitants continued some mining, and they also raised stock or engaged in subsistence farming. Only those like Candler, who could afford the best acreage, undertook commercial agriculture and speculated in land: in 1847 Samuel Candler owned 7,800 acres in Carroll and Paulding counties. In the nineteenth century, the R. G. Dun Company--predecessor to today's Dun and Bradstreet--collected credit information on American firms from respected local businessmen. In their confidential reports on Samuel Candler, his fellow merchants consistently rate him as a safe, reliable man with good business capacity. In 1848 the entry calls him "a careful money saving money loving man," worth between $5,000 and $10,000. According to this report, he invested equally in real estate, stock in trade (for his store), and Negroes. When the market value of slaves rose more rapidly than the value of land, slave ownership indicated the location of the true wealth of Carroll County. In 1850 this was the case, when 3.5 percent of the county's ten thousand free inhabitants owned the county's 1500 slaves. The largest Carroll County owner was Elijah Dobbs, who owned forty-five slaves in 1860. Candler--with just under twenty slaves--ranked among the county's larger slave holders, in terms of the number of individuals owned. Some of the area's more prosperous men may have bought slaves for speculative purposes. Many of Candler's slaves must have been engaged in working on his farm, but whether all were doing so is unknown. In June 1860 Candler owned four "slave houses" occupied by seventeen persons of various ages and both sexes. At the same time, acting as an agent for S. B. Chapman (possibly as executor of an estate), Candler reported an additional nineteen persons and three houses. By the time of the birth in 1851 of his eighth child, Asa, the elder Candler had retired from the store, leaving it in the charge of William, one of his older sons. However, he continued his involvement in public affairs and Democratic party politics. During his long residence in Carroll county he served a term in each house of the legislature and was elected judge of the Inferior Court (justice of the peace). Other members of the Candler family served in similar ways; at one point Samuel sat in the legislature at the same time as his brother Ezekiel and Ezekiel's son Milton. While Samuel secured the family's fortunes, Martha took a strong role in their home. She led her eleven children in daily family worship, aided by the "English book of prayer." For many years she took the children to the Primitive Baptist Church, although the Candler family later became Methodist. Samuel himself did not join a church until later in life, but strong habits of hard work and sober living certainly contributed to the family's growing prosperity. In keeping with such principles, the Candlers, although comfortable, did not indulge themselves. ///////////// Following the practice of most rural families of their day, Samuel and Martha required the children to help with the work of the farm. A friend of the family later claimed that the Candler boys "found play in work" under their father's firm discipline: "Even on Saturdays, when other boys would be idle, the Candler boys were busy doing something." A small, wiry child, Asa lost the hearing in one ear when he fell from a loaded wagon while helping to harvest a field of corn. One of the wheels struck his head. However, if the discipline was firm, it was not so rigid as to stifle the children's sense of fun. One night, Asa hid under the bed of his youngest brother Charlie, a boy who suffered from a great fear of cats. Asa let out a life-like feline yowl and his terrified brother ran to their mother. Samuel was forced to rise from his bed to restore order to the agitated household. In a photographic portrait from this time the boy Asa looks at the camera with the same direct, skeptical gaze that was to be seen on the front pages of Atlanta's newspapers more than half a century later. Perhaps he remembered his own youth years later, when Asa Candler described a typical boy: "A boy... loves to do things that he imagines makes him appear to be a man. See him raking his upper lip vainly endeavoring to coax to the surface a mustache before its time, nauseating his stomach trying to chew tobacco and spit amber...all to make himself believe that he is a man." Samuel and Martha gave particular, tender care to their third child, Noble Daniel Candler, who was mentally impaired. According to one family history, Noble had been a normal child until he suffered "a disease of the brain" when he was four years old. His brother John described Noble as "a man in stature, but less than a child in mind." He lived all his life with his mother, who cared for him until his death in 1887. Asa Candler's heartfelt expressions of love and concern for his own children and the life-long bonds that connected him with his brothers and sisters bear silent witness to the fundamentally sound character of Martha and Samuel's child-rearing methods, stern though they might have been. Even in his youth, Asa demonstrated an acute business sense. One enterprise began when a marauding mink disturbed the peace of the hens that lived under his mother's kitchen. Asa went to the rescue, diving under the house to rout the predator. He scrambled after the mink, out of the yard, through the woods and into a creek, where he caught up with it. The mink bit him, leaving a permanent scar on his arm, but young Candler triumphed, forever ending the mink's menace to the family chickens. He decided to send the pelt to Atlanta by wagon, hoping to sell it for twenty-five cents. To his delighted surprise, it brought a dollar. Young Candler's entrepreneurial character... (See book for balance of biography.) (Names referenced above: Samuel Charles Candler Samuel Charles Candler).2 |
Family | Martha Bernetta Beall (1813 - ) | |
| Marriage* | 1833 | He married Martha Bernetta Beall at Cherokee Co., Georgia, in 1833.1 |
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| Last Edited | 7 Sep 2002 |
Citations
- Todd & Gail Cason, compiler, Cason Family Genealogy.
(Could not find site in Dec 2005). - Kathryn W. Kemp, God's Capitalist: Asa Candler of Coca Cola Mercer University Press, Macon, GA, 2002, Repository: Warren Culpepper's Personal Library.
pages 7-11.