Newspaper Page Text
In August 1871, Robert Alston returned
home to Decatur from the state Agricultural
Society meeting In Rome to discover that he
had been called for |ury duty. At the end of
September, he was picked to try one of the
most scandalous cases ever heard in a
Georgia court: The State v. Myron D. Wood,
for the seduction of Emma Isadore Chivers.
Wood was the pastor of the Decatur Baptist
Church. Emma Chivers. 20 at the time of the
trial, was the youngest daughter of the eccen
tric poet and friend of Edgar Allen Poe.
Thomas Holley Chivers. who had died when
Emma was 6 years old. Wood had been
Emma’s pastor and schoolteacher for many
years. When she was 15 he began making
advances to her. proclaiming his love, and
claiming that his wife could not live very long
and on her death he would marry Emma The
teenager succumbed to the passionate pleas
of the man who had more than any other
stood as her father, and began a three-year
affair. When she
became convinced
that Wood’s wife was
not going to die and
that the pastor had
no intention of mar
rying her, she
brought charges. The
testimony in the case
was shocking; the
defense called on
male classmates who
testified that Emma
was a lewd girl; a
neighbor swore that
Mrs. Chivers often
entertained men late
at night; Emma
Chivers described
her pastor's atten
tions in great detail.
The jury found Wood guilty of seduction of a
minor and sentenced him to 20 years at hard
labor. His conviction was later overturned
and he was acquitted at his second trial: His
path and Robert Alston's would cross again.
Robert Alston's restless energy was never
more evident than *n the early 1870s. In 1872
he served on a committee looking into ways
of establishing direct trade between Atlanta
and Europe. Later in the year he was again a
delegate to the state Democratic convention
where he was elected an alternate presiden
tial elector. He remained active in the state
Agricultural Society and the DeKalb County
Democratic executive committee. Besides
politics, there was money: Robert Alston
never had enough money. He had a growing
family to support, and he also maintained the
aristocratic habits of lavish generosity and
opulent living formed in the palmy days of
slavery and ill-suited to the hard realities of
postwar life. To supplement the income from
his plantation. Alston signed on as a “special
agent" of the newly organized Cotton States
Life insurance Company, whose officers
included his wife’s brother, William J. MagiU,
a onearmed Confederate veteran on whose
behalf Alston interceded in 1873 to prevent a
duel that would have almost certainly ended
in MagiU’s death. The insurance business was
only the first, and most mundane, of Robert
Alton's many schemes to avoid bankruptcy.
One day in 1871 Robert Alston saw a
small, powerfully-built man with long black
hair man on horseback leading two horses
past the Georgia Railroad watering station
rioteft A. Ah ton (Courtny. QA Dept. at Arctwm and History)
near his home. He asked the stranger if he
knew anything about the man who was look
ing to buy the Wells plantation near Alston's
Meadow Nook. The stranger said that he was
the man and introduced himself as Edward A.
Cox of Morgan County. The two men soon
discovered that they had much in common:
both had lost their fathers at an early age
and had been sent away to distant cities to
be educated, had married in their new homes
and returned to Georgia on the eve of the
Civil War. Like Alston. Cox had joined a local
military unit, but resigned to enlist in the
Confederate cavalry in the West, Alston
under Morgan. Cox under Joseph Wheeler,
both had risen through the ranks to become
officers, Cox ending his service as a captain.
Cox and Alston were impulsive, demonstra
tive men who made no effort at hiding their
emotions; both had a quick, nervous, larger-
than-life air about them. After their meeting
Cox increased his offer for the Wells farm by
$500 to insure that
he would become
Bob Alston’s neigh
bor. The two men
soon began a close
friendship that was
to last until the day
eight years later
when Cox put a bul
let through Alston's
brain.
in October 1872
in the lobby of
Atlanta's Kimball
House hotel, Robert
Alston ran into
Henry Grady, the 21-
year-old editor of the
Rome Commercial.
Just over a year
before, Grady had
written a harsh article criticizing Alston's
uncle Thomas Howard, but Alston's rnger
with him had passed as swiftly as it had
appeared. Alston had been about to tele
graph Grady in Rome to urge him to come to
Atlanta and become his partner in buying a
two-thirds interest in the Atlanta Herald
Over a bowl of oysters In Thompson’s restau
rant, Grady agreed. Grady and Alston
returned to the Kimball House, took a room,
and discussed the deal until the early hours
of the morning and went to sleep. In a few
hours Grady was awakened by Alston calling
his name:
"Grady, is there anv insanity in your fami
ly?"
"None at all! Why do you ask me?"
"Well. I’ve been thinking over this Herald
trade for a week. You've only known of ft a
few hours. Now. I know that a man that's
quicker on a trade than I am must be crazy,
and I was afraid I'd gone into partnership
wiuiaiunaUcT
Alston had already haJf-jolcingly offered to
invest Li the paper on the condition that its
founder. Alexander St. Clalr-Abrams, "allow
himself to be put in an iron cage."
Within weeks. Atlantans would be won
dering whether Alston, Grady and Abrams
had not Indeed opened a journalistic branch
office of the State Asylum: The state of
Georgia had never seen, and would never see
again, more brilliant, eccentric or impractical
management of a daily newspaper.
CONTINUED NEXT WEEK
i/llem Oiit
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Ridding the world of singles, one couple at a time.
MAY 7, 1 997
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