1875 to 1900

With the passing of venerable newspaperman Simri Rose in 1869 and Judge Asa Holt, who had served at Fort Hawkins, in 1872, a new era was beginning. Macon resumed the building of homes, businesses, and churches. Central City Park built several exposition buildings in1870, as well as a horseracing track that was said to be unsurpassed in the world. In 1871 the first Georgia State Fair was celebrated in the park.

The arrival of a new era included railroad expansion. William Wadley, whose statue still stands in a small park at Mulberry and Third, was head of the powerful-and- growing Central of Georgia Railroad. Macon was now the hub for rail spokes that reached out to Savannah, Brunswick, Augusta, Atlanta, Albany, and Columbus.⁹

Bibb County’s public school and orphanage system was founded in 1872. The public schools were called “Common Free Schools for Whites” and “Colored Free Schools.” The Methodist Children’s Home was founded in 1873. Pio Nono College (later St. Stanislaus) and Mount de Sales Academy opened, and Mercer University moved from Penfield, Georgia, to Macon in 1871. Wesleyan College for Women continued to thrive. Established in 1836 in Macon, it was the world’s first institution of higher education chartered to grant degrees to women.

The powerful textile industry expanded with the founding of Bibb Manufacturing in 1876 on the east bank of the river, adjacent to “old” NewTown and the ancient mounds. New businesses were opened to meet the demand for buggies and wagons, cotton and dry goods, steam engines and machinery, lumberyards and brick manufacturing.

In the decade that followed, municipal services expanded, providing brick streets, water and sewage, fire protection, mail delivery, electricity, telephones, and streetcars for the first time. African American businesses, including barbers, blacksmiths, and newspapers, along with at least six groceries stores, were established and expanded. Millinery, nursing, and teaching provided new employment opportunities for a burgeoning female workforce.

Growth spurred master-planned neighborhoods atop adjacent hills and heights of Macon. The neighborhoods built and expanded in the late nineteenth century included Fort Hill, Coleman Hill, Beall’s Hill, Tindall Heights, Huguenin Heights, and Vineville. Pleasant Hill, a historic African American neighborhood founded in the 1870s, was notable for its streets named for President Lincoln and the Union Generals.Nationally significant for their architecture, Macon’s neighborhoods continued the tradition of planting trees to create park-like settings.

The Macon Telegraph—first printed in 1826—published the census report in 1880 for the city proper and its growing suburbs, which revealed a total of 37,400 residents.

Built in 1883, the Grand Opera House would later showcase the chariot races of Ben Hur, Edwin Booth in the role of Hamlet, Verdi in concert, and lectures by Oscar Wilde.

The collected works of Sidney Lanier, America’s poet and Macon’s native son, appeared in 1884 after his death. The natural rhythm and language of Lanier, both a poet and musician, was inspired by his boyhood rambles along the Ocmulgee River, hills, and plain and praised Georgia’s natural beauty. Lanier’s “Song of the Chattahoochee” captures the spirit of rivers.