Newspaper Page Text
PAGE 8A PICKENS COUNTY PROGRESS THURSDAY. MAY 14. 2020
Downtown parking lot opened; Public bathrooms still in works
Social distancing council members and guests (l-r) Sonny Proctor, John Foust Jr., Carol Caywood from Entegra
Bank, city hall employee Adam Howard, Mayor Steve Lawrence, city hall employee Lonnie Waters, council member Kirk
Raffield and City Manager Brandon Douglas present the new parking area for downtown.
At right, City Manager Douglas removes pylons as city hall employees Waters and Howard move the barricade to
open the north Main parking lot.
By Dan Pool
Editor
dpool@pickensprogress.com
The Jasper City Council
and city hall staff held a brief
ceremony (using social dis
tancing protocol May 6th) to
open the new parking area on
North Main Street.
The .17 acre property was
purchased last year from En
tegra Bank, including the
drive-thru building for
$100,000 with plans for pub
lic bathrooms and general
public parking.
The work open now has
added 15 new parking spaces
downtown with a one-way
entrance off Main and exit on
to Mark Whitfield Street at
the rear.
City Manager Brandon
Douglas said the city has
spent $16,000 on the asphalt
and curbing. Douglas noted
that for the project account
ing, they split the $100,000
purchase price in half so the
parking lot has $50,000 in the
property plus the additional
$16,000 or $66,000 total,
about $4,400 per space (15
spaces). He said they are
proud this is below the indus
try average of $5,000 to
$10,000 per parking space.
Jasper Mayor Steve
Lawrence said the bathroom
project is still in the works,
but didn’t have a timeline for
it at this point.
Passionate about History
The wooden clogs come to Civil War Pickens
Silvine Tabereaux put his
cobbler skills to use here
during the Civil War period.
By Blake Moss
Throughout the Civil War,
leather, among other things,
was heavily rationed and
hard to come by for the aver
age Southerner because of
the need to furnish shoes for
the soldiers. Many surviving
photos of Southerners during
war time, show people with
either very ragged or no
shoes whatsoever. Pickens
County was no different, that
is until an innovative Belgian
by the name of Silvine
Tabereaux (Tab-Ber-Oh) saw
a way to solve this problem.
Bom somewhere in what
we know today as Belgium in
1809. The years following
Tabereaux's birth were filled
with political turmoil and
hard times for the tiny nation.
Belgium itself had not been
an independent nation for
several years and was under
the control of Napoleonic
France when Tabereaux was
bom. After the defeat of
Napoleon Bonaparte in 1814,
Belgium was placed under
the rule of the new kingdom
of the Netherlands.
By the time Tabereaux
was in his twenties, the king
dom of the Netherlands was
experiencing unrest, due to
religious differences in the
people of their south (Mod
ern day Belgium) and the
people of the north (The
Netherlands).
High unemployment rates
for Belgians also fed the
flame of revolution when on
August 25th, 1830 the Bel
gian Revolution started.
By the end of the Revolu
tion in 1839, Tabereaux, now
a shoemaker, had been mar
ried and fathered his first
child. In the newly independ
ent state of Belgium, political
tensions were still high so
Tabereaux, along with his
wife and children, boarded a
ship along with 24 other de
fectors and escaped to Amer
ica.
While making the trans-
Atlantic voyage, Tabereaux’s
wife and oldest child, both of
whose names have been lost,
died and their bodies were
buried at sea.
The head of this group
was General Louis Joseph
Barthold Le Hardy. Le Hardy
was an experienced soldier
and a wealthy nobleman
funding the entire voyage
himself, and leading his
countrymen from New York
Harbor, to the growing com
munity of Rome, Georgia.
Upon arriving in Rome,
Tabereaux settled into the
farming life, along with sev
eral of his surviving children,
Jelang, Batus, Adeline,
Franny and Mary, all of
whom appeared in the 1850
Floyd County census.
However, in 1854,
Tabereaux received a deal on
160 acres of land about 50
miles north in Gilmer County
from a prominent landowner
in that area, Samuel Tate. So,
Tabereaux moved his family
north near the fledgling com
munity of Jasper and by 1856
Jasper had become the seat of
the newly formed Pickens
County.
[An area known as the
Tabereaux Place appeared on
surveys until relatively mod
em times and could be found
at what is now Fainting Goat
Vineyard on Highway 136.
Tabereaux would meet his
second wife, Delilah Mc-
Gaha who was originally
METAL ROOFING
/\_n_
' METAL
ROOFING
SALES, INC
\ BUY DIRECT
in Dawsonville
Painted Galvelume Metal Roofing
17 Colors In Stock
Delivery Available * Contractor Referal
82 Etowah River Road • Dawsonville
706-265-3099 • 800-519-4616
from Habersham county.
Delilah was an estimated 25
years younger than
Tabereaux, being born in
1834, while his birth was
around 1809. The two would
wed in February of 1858 and
have five children together,
doubling the size of the fam
ily after the final birth in
1871.
But before this, in 1861
when the Civil War had just
started, Jelang, the eldest son
of the Tabereaux family vol
unteered for service in the
Confederate Army. He en
listed with the 23rd Georgia
Volunteer Infantry which
gathered at Big Shanty, Geor
gia, now Kennesaw.
With Jelang off fighting
the war, and the rest of the
children doing their best to
survive, Tabereaux needed a
way to feed his growing fam
ily. The roughly 53-year-old
began to hear complaints of
locals at the store in Jasper
about the prices of shoes and
other leather items. Most of
his own family didn't even
have decent shoes to wear in
the fields.
So with Jelang on leave
from the Army and visiting
home, he and his father got
the idea to make wooden
shoes like they did back in
Belgium.
The "Clog" as we mostly
know it is a wooden shoe tra
ditionally worn in Belgium
and the Netherlands by the
lower classes as far back as
the middle ages to the begin
ning of the 1900s.
The process started with
slowly carving the shape out
of a block of wood, and over
time working the wood into
the shape of a shoe. This
came easily to Tabereaux be
cause prior to the 1830 revo
lution that caused him to
leave his homeland, he had
been a shoemaker with his
son.
Once Jelang had returned
to the Army, Tabereaux con
tinued making the shoes, not
just for himself but his neigh
bors and eventually selling
them to people in Jasper al
lowing for people to spend
less money on replacing
shoes.
Historian Luke Tate wrote
about the event in his book
History of Pickens County
even labeling "the wooden
shoe industry" as an integral
part of early Pickens busi
ness.
Once the war ended in
1865, the price of leather
dropped and factories re
turned to producing for the
civilian market so the need
for wooden shoes dwindled.
Silvine Tabereaux also re
turned to his life as a farmer
and passed away peacefully
in 1883 and was interred at
Crossroads Baptist. The
exact spelling of his name is
unknown, his headstone la
beling him "S. Tabereaux".
Much of his family is
buried in the Norton Ceme
tery in Jasper and Crossroads
Baptist in Jasper.
Sources:
Pickens County Heritage
1856-1998;
History of Pickens County
By Luke Tate;
A History of Rome and
Floyd County By George
MaGruder Batty, Jr.
What Is the Origin of the
Wooden Clog
Leaf. www.leaf.TV
[Blake Moss is a lifelong
native of Talking Rock. He is
currently a student at Pickens
High School.]
Forest Glen Apartments
504 Indian Forest Rd.
Jasper, GA 30143
706-692-5355
TDD
1-800-255-0056
2 Bedroom Apartments
$555 - $655 a month
Deposit same as rent
Taking applications for waiting list
Please call for details
Office Hours Mon - Fri
4:00 PM - 6:00 PM
FOREST GLEN IS AN EQUAL
OPPORTUNITY PROVIDER
irhattahoochw
Chattahoochee
TECHNICAL COLLEGE
Apply Now
for Fall Semester
Classes begin in August
Many Students Qualify for Financial Aid
ChattahoocheeTech.edu
770-528-4545
A Unit of the Technical College System of Georgia. Equal Opportunity Institution.