Meet Derek Herron
August 17, 2016
New Happenings In Old Places
August 17, 2016
All researchers know that, at any moment, the discovery of the least little thread of evidence could suddenly change something they’ve worked on for years. This is exactly what happened a few months ago. I’ve known Bill Smedlund for about eight years now. Bill is one of those unique people who can stay on track with a project no matter where it takes him or for how long it takes. When I first met Bill, he was researching Athens’s famous Troup Artillery, that elite artillery group that was a part of Tom Cobb’s famous Georgia Legion. Bill and I stay in touch periodically with shared questions and information.
A couple of months ago, Bill called to ask me something on one of his latest chapters about the Troup Artillery (the book is due out soon) and during our conversation he breezed through a statement: “… and you know this is the same guy who painted the portrait of Lucy Cobb.”
At the same moment I caught the tail end of what he had just hit me with, sixty kids were coming through the front door of the museum and needed my immediate attention. Reluctantly excusing myself from the phone conversation, I was relieved when Bill said he would send me a couple of articles he had recently uncovered in one of the state’s newspapers. My wait was impatient: It arrived a few days later — I don’t know why the mail can’t make it out of the North Carolina mountains any quicker. Apparently, it must have come by horseback.
Inside the packet, was a short twocolumn newspaper copy of an article published in the Atlanta Journal on September 19, 1898. The article was written by one, “C.J. Oliver, Chaplain of the Troup Artillery and later of Cabell’s Battalion of Artillery.” The article was entitled “A Reminiscence of the Civil War.”
So, just who was this C.J. Oliver? I made a quick phone call to my “source of sources,” Charlotte Marshall, who has forgotten more about Athens’s history than anyone else will ever know. (Well, actually, she hasn’t forgotten any of it.) Charlotte quickly informed me that C.J. Oliver was Charles James Oliver.