Appalachian History

It still stands on record as the 5th deadliest twister in American history. Shortly before 9:00 A.M. on the morning of April 6, 1936, the citizens of Gainesville, a prosperous northeast Georgia textile mill center, were dealt an agonizing blow when a series of deadly tornadoes ripped through the heart of the city.

Eyewitness reports recalled seeing at least two tornadoes strike the southwest section of Gainesville, then move northeast through the commercial district and on to the residential neighborhoods near North Green Street. From the northeastern residential area, the tornado traveled east two miles towards the textile center of New Holland where it destroyed nearly one hundred homes, as well as the Pacolet Manufacturing Company. The whole thing was over in under ten minutes.

William M. Brice, a prominent citizen and correspondent for the Atlanta Journal and Associated Press, described Gainesville in his writings as "a city laid waste."

"We were talking about how dark it had become,” then teenager John "Rudy" Rudolph remembered many years later. “My friends and I stopped in front of a store in downtown when the owner came out and told us to take cover. I really didn't understand what he meant. It was daytime, but the sky was as dark as night.

"We'd never seen anything like it...just before it struck there was a sound so loud that I felt in my body... When I woke up, I couldn't move my leg. I waited for what seemed like hours for someone to come and help me...my leg was broken (from falling debris)."

Minutes after the attack, numerous fires erupted throughout the Public Square and downtown area. Damage from the tornadoes immobilized the Gainesville Fire Department and forced rescuers to dynamite buildings on the Public Square as a means of controlling the rapid spread of fire.

The most tragic of these fires occurred at Cooper Pants Factory, a two-story garment factory located on the corner of West Broad and Maple Streets. When the tornado struck, many of the 125 workers, most of who were young women and girls, rushed to seek shelter in the basement level of the factory. The sudden clamor of the employees coupled with damage sustained from the tornado caused the building to collapse and ignite into flames. Sixty of the factory's employees died.

In the days following the tornado disaster, an army of 2000 relief workers converged to haul away the millions of tons of debris in the city's business section. The American Red Cross reported that over 500 homes were destroyed and nearly 750 dwellings were damaged. More than two hundred men, women, and children were killed and an estimated 1,600 citizens were injured.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt paid two visits to Gainesville, a brief one three days after the tragedy and one two years later. Of the rebuilt city he stood before in 1938, he noted "You were not content with rebuilding along the lines of the old community. You were not content with throwing yourselves on the help that could be given to you by the State and by the Federal Government.

"On the contrary, you determined in the process of rebuilding to eliminate old conditions of which you were not proud; to rebuild a better city; to replace congested areas with parks; to move human beings from slums to suburbs. For this you, the good people of Gainesville, deserve all possible praise."


sources: http://dlg.galileo.usg.edu/tornado/history.php
http://ngeorgia.com/weather/gainesvilletornado.html
http://www.gendisasters.com/data1/ga/tornadoes/gainesville-tornadoapr1936.htm


Gainesville+GA tornadoes FDR+in+Gainesville appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

Jesse Jewell (1902-1975) started what was to become the Georgia's largest agricultural crop- poultry. The now $1,000,000,000 a year industry has given Gainesville the title "Poultry Capital of the World."

Jewell pioneered vertical integration—the combining of all phases of the business, such as raw materials, processing, and distribution, within a single company—in the poultry industry. At the helm of J. D. Jewell, Inc. for more than twenty years, Jewell was a key national leader of the poultry industry.

Jewell's father, Edgar Herman Jewell, owned a feed, seed, and fertilizer business. He died when Jewell was only seven years old. In 1922 young Jesse began working in the family feed business, along with his mother and stepfather, Leonard Loudermilk.

When his stepfather died in 1930, Jewell began managing the family business. As the Great Depression drained the company's receipts, he tried a new approach to boost feed sales. He bought baby chicks and supplied them, along with chicken feed, on credit to cash-poor farmers. Once the chicks were grown, Jewell bought them back at a price that covered his feed costs and also guaranteed the farmers a profit. More and more Hall County farmers began to contract to grow chickens for Jewell.

By the late 1930s Jewell began adding the elements that would make J. D. Jewell the largest integrated chicken producer in the world. The first step, in 1940, was to open his own hatchery. Next came a processing plant in 1941. The booming World War II economy gave a lift to the fledgling Jewell enterprise. By 1954 Jewell added the final touches—his own feed mill and rendering plant. This vertically integrated corporation set the standard for poultry processors everywhere, as did Jewell's trademark frozen chicken. Jewell's hiring policies were also innovative: his processing plant was among the first factories in Gainesville to hire black workers.

Employees of Swift and Company Poultry, a competitor to J. D. Jewell, gathered in December of 1953 or 1954 for a Christmas party. Swift was one of the many poultry processing plants which employed African Americans in Gainesville.

Jewell was a founder and the first president of the National Broiler Council, the president of the Southeastern Poultry and Egg Association, and a U.S. delegate to the 1951 World Poultry Congress. He also gained the presidency of the Georgia Chamber of Commerce, which he led during the 1950s.

source: www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-2120

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