Joe Stock Memorial Park - LaFayette Presbyterian Church - Fort CummingJoe Stock Memorial Park was dedicated in June 2002 in memory of Joe Stock, who had a business in downtown LaFayette for many years. Stock was active in many civic efforts, and creating a park in town was his long-time dream. The park is next to Chattooga Academy (John B. Gordon Hall) and the Marsh House. The City of LaFayette dismantled a metal prefabricated building on the site, and public and private funds were used to build the park. The park’s walkway features personalized bricks purchased to honor family and friends. The park also has benches and a small fountain in which children may play.
The city owns and maintains the park. It may be reserved for special events through the LaFayette Recreation Department at (706) 639-1590. The park is available to the public for walking, picnics or meditation.
LaFayette Presbyterian Church
In 1836, residents of the town then called Chattooga organized a Presbyterian Church. The two white and two African-American residents held their meetings in the Baptist and Methodist churches and in Chattooga Academy, also called John B. Gordon Hall. The pastor was Reverend William Quillan.
The congregation petitioned the presbytery to change the name to LaFayette Presbyterian Church after the town had changed its name to LaFayette. The church met in various buildings until 1848 when a building was built north of the Square to house the congregation. Amos Wellborn and his son donated 5,000 bricks for the church’s construction. Wellborn’s slaves made the bricks, which were hauled by ox cart from his Rock Spring farm. The original building had a bell tower and slave gallery. The church was one of the few churches that accepted slaves as members.
The church was used as a hospital during the June 24, 1864, Battle of LaFayette. Union doctors treated Confederate and Union soldiers. Doctors placed long tables inside the double doors of the building and laid planks over the pews to create crude beds and operating tables.
In 1883, the church was repaired, slave gallery removed and a vestibule added. The church’s appearance changed dramatically in the winter of 1922-23 when the building was rebricked with cream brick, the bell tower removed and the front Federal pediment added. Other upgrades at that time included installing electric lights and the first memorial stained glass windows. The church is the city’s oldest building that has been continuously used for the purpose for which it was built.
Fort Cumming
Fort Cumming was a stockade that housed Cherokee Indians before their removal on the Trail of Tears. Nothing remains of the fort.
On December 29, 1835, at New Echota, the capital of the Cherokee Nation, some of the Cherokee leaders signed a treaty with the U.S. government agreeing to the removal of all Cherokees to the West. The Native Americans who signed the treaty also agreed to relinquish all Cherokee lands east of the Mississippi River.
The U.S. Senate ratified the treaty on May 23, 1836, and the Cherokees were given two years to leave Georgia. Many Cherokees did not recognize the New Echota Treaty and refused to leave their homes. Gen. Winfield Scott was charged with gathering together the Cherokees and removing them from Southeast.
Stockades were built to house the Cherokees until they could be removed to the West. Fort Cumming in LaFayette was one of those stockades. Capt. Samuel Farris and a company of Georgia volunteers guarded the Cherokees until their removal. The fort is believed to have housed about 500 men, women and children. It was built in 1836 and named for David B. Cumming, a Methodist minister and missionary to the Cherokees.
The fort was a large enclosure of upright logs with a rifle tower in each corner. No photos or drawings of the structure have been found. The stockade with block house was built on a hill just above the area now known as Big Spring. Today the site is near the west end of Indiana Avenue.
(Source: James A Sartain’s History of Walker County, 1932, and This is Your Georgia, 1977, by Bernice McCullar and Sibley Jennings.)