In 1900, Asa Candler, Sr., bought controlling interest in a cotton mill in Hartwell, GA. Witham Cotton Mill was a large operation, owned and named after family friend William “Billy” Witham. Billy’s mill was struggling to stay afloat, and Asa, Sr., saw an opportunity to help a friend and make a profit. He invested with the intention of turning things around and making a success of the venture. But he needed someone to run operations.

At the same time, he had a son who had spent the last year out in California and was falling deeper into vice and mismanaging the West Coast branch of his core business. He needed to pull Buddie out of the hot fires of temptation and place him somewhere peaceful, somewhere with a strong Methodist community where he could sharpen his business skills and contribute to the family’s bottom line. Witham Cotton Mill was the answer.

In June of 1900 two things happened: First, Asa, Sr., brought Buddie home for what was billed as a one-month stay. Second, he and Billy Witham came to an agreement on the mill transaction, which was completed by the end of July. On September 3, 1900, he put his son on a train and sent him more than 100 miles northeast to Hartwell, which sat near the border between Georgia and South Carolina. He installed Buddie as a bookkeeper at the mill and later promoted him to secretary & treasurer. He told Howard that he hoped Buddie would do well enough to be promoted to president of the mill someday.

For once Buddie seemed invested in making the most of it. In letters to his sister, he spoke highly of himself and his role. He puffed himself up and ensured that his important status was known, which is a theme that would emerge in his writing throughout his whole life. When his letters weren’t ordering her to stay away from boys or explaining why he hadn’t written, how he didn’t like to write, and why he might not write more in the future, he was painting a portrait of himself as an important businessman.

A very important businessman.

The most important businessman.

While Hartwell was far from a bustling metropolis, in fact its train only ran twice a day to the next small town over, its modest size may have enabled Buddie to perceive himself as a big fish in a small pond. He referred to himself jokingly as Lucy’s “country brother,” but his self-image was not so humble. Always one to try to leverage his family’s status for an advantage, he held an important position at the largest business in town. A look at turn of the century Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps reveals that Hartwell was heavily dependent upon cotton and the warehousing industry, with much of the warehouse space utilized for guano storage. Aside from the fertilizer industry, there wasn’t much else dominating local employment but the mill. The mill even had its own village adjacent to the mill property, which still stands today. So in this small town, cotton was king. Which made Buddie a member of the royal court with a clear path to the crown.

Which isn’t to say he was happy. His letters from this time period reveal a bitterness that seeped in at the edges as he lavished his younger sister with affection. He referred to her, just two years his junior, as “little girl” and offered repeatedly to buy her candy. Her whole family infantilized her like this, but Buddie was most egregious. When he wasn’t speaking to her like a child or gushing about their parents, he was stewing about his isolation. In a letter from March of 1901 he brushed off her request for a photo and brooded over the reason why he had none to offer. He revealed his loneliness, and his identity as an outsider.

He didn’t sit around the boarding house as a shut-in. He threw himself into his work, and he was already dabbling in his new hobby of automobiles, which of course meant parts and maintenance and all kinds of lovely distractions. But work and his loudly declared devotion to his parents (covered in Sunny California) could only hold him accountable to his new life for so long, and his commitment not to meet anyone new couldn’t hold. He was an extrovert, someone who drew energy from the revelry of company and crowds. His need for social gratification was a ticking clock.

Then he met Helen.

Helen Magill was the daughter and second child of John Magill, editor and owner of the Hartwell Sun newspaper. His role with the local paper made him an important figure in the community, and his family’s affiliation with the local Methodist church put them in Buddie’s social circle. Church is likely where he met Helen, where she’d earned a reputation as a beautiful singer. When he fell for her, he fell hard.

There’s no mention of Helen in his 1900 letters. No mention in his family members’ letters. In January of 1901 he tested the waters by making a blasé reference to dating in a letter to Lucy. One must conclude that she wasn’t mentioned over Christmas and that they may not have been dating yet, since his unguarded, candid nature suggests he would have mentioned her if there was any relationship to mention. He updated Lucy on his life and included his usual protests about how busy he was. Too busy to write, of course. And then almost as a throwaway he said:

Capitalized and underlined and everything.

The relationship progressed quickly. By April they were planning to be married, but for unspoken reasons Buddie felt compelled to keep their engagement a secret. He first told Lucy in early May of 1901 and swore her to secrecy in another passage that exposed his bitter feelings of separation from his family.

Her response is lost to time, since his papers aren’t preserved in the Emory archive. But his next letter suggested that she was dismayed by his plans, and he was hurt by her reaction. Once again he showed the bitterness of isolation, of not sharing a home with his family, and used it like a weapon. Often when people use words as a weapon, those words reveal what hurts them most.

There was no swaying him. Buddie always did what he wanted to do, and not even his sister’s objection would slow his plans. His emotions were raw and unfiltered, scrawled on the page in long, run-on sentences with spelling and grammar errors not seen in other family members’ writings. Note: I have cleaned up some of his writing for the sake of intelligibility here. He was his own person, an unguarded, unfiltered and unpolished sort who captured his thoughts on paper without a thought for tact or consideration. Again, her reply is not on record, but it’s clear from his next letter that she came around, and once she did he decided to go full-bore into the announcement of his plans.

Lucy gave him the support he so desperately needed, and his relief in his next letter to his sister is palpable. As are his excitement to be married and his infatuation with Helen. Remembered by family as bright, charming and jovial (when he wanted to be), this letter demonstrates a breathless passion that verges on poetic in a way that no other letter on record does. Buddie’s narcissistic, martyred public persona later in life can sometimes overshadow the more positive aspects of his personality, but this letter gives us a glimpse into the man his family loved and his friends found so charismatic.

His next step was to tell his parents. He traveled down to Atlanta on May 25th to do so in person, giving them just two and a half weeks of notice. His parents convinced him to postpone until July. One month, no longer. What was the rush, and why did they only push out a few weeks? There may have been a very good reason.

The wedding was on for July 16, and the Candlers all attended. In addition to his immediate family they were joined by his uncles, Bishop Warren Candler and Judge John Slaughter Candler, and their wives. On Helen’s side the attendee list was sparse. She had no wedding party attendants and neither of her parents are listed in the announcement. Her mother and father did not attend, and neither did her brother. The ceremony took place at her aunt and uncle’s house, not her own home. Stories claim that her father disapproved of Buddie and gave him stony silence rather than his blessing. The complete absence of Magills from her wedding supports that claim.

The next day Helen and the Candlers all spent a day at Lake Toccoa, frolicking in the sun, on a full-family honeymoon. This may have been Asa, Sr.’s, idea, since years later he attempted to accompany Lucy and her new husband on their honeymoon. On the 18th they all boarded a train for Atlanta and on the 19th threw a big celebration in honor of the newlyweds at their home on Seaboard Avenue.

It’s interesting that Helen’s parents didn’t attend any of this, and that her father wasn’t swayed by the prominence of the Candler family. By now Coca Cola was well known throughout the South, and Warren and John Candler were leaders in their fields, too. But Helen’s father didn’t concede. It’s said that he didn’t patch things up with Buddie until their first child was born 35 weeks later.

Family lore says Lucy III was born prematurely. Evidence indicates that this is an enduring myth. More about the miraculous birth of Lucy III will be included in a future site update.

After the wedding Asa, Sr., bought the newlyweds a house, the history of which can be found here. They hired a man named Landrum Anderson, who stayed by Buddie’s side until the day he died, and whose past is also rife with myth and mystery. Stay tuned for more about the legacy of Landrum Anderson as this site continues to be developed.

Marrying, settling down, and focusing on career didn’t set Buddie on the path to success like everyone, including himself, expected. His renewed troubles began soon after Lucy III’s birth. Helen endured a hard labor, and possibly due to chronic illness she delivered a small baby at 5 1/2 lbs who needed extra care. Helen required extended recovery time, so she remained with her in-laws in Atlanta.

Weeks passed. Buddie couldn’t ignore the needs of the mill so he went back to Hartwell by himself and spent the spring of 1902 traveling back and forth between Hartwell and Atlanta, 100 miles each way by train, to visit his young family. Traveling would have been an all day ordeal. The wood-fired, narrow-gauge Hartwell train engine named the Nancy Hart only made the trip to Bowersville twice a day. From there he had the option to transfer to either the Elberton or Athens line, and then transfer again to an Atlanta line.

In April Asa., Sr., wrote to Howard, who was now stationed in New York City and running East Coast Coca Cola operations. He updated Howard on Helen’s recovery and noted Buddie’s impatience to have her home with him. Whatever sentiment Buddie had expressed about the situation was objectionable enough that Asa, Sr., enclosed it in his letter to Howard so he could read it for himself. He then took a jab at his second son to his first.

On May 7th he complained about his daughter-in-law to Howard, suggesting that she was “utterly short on maternal wisdom.” It was the same old dynamic that played out in college, where Asa, Sr., discussed Buddie’s life with Howard as though they were fellow parents.

To distract his frustrated, impatient, exiled namesake, he sent Buddie to New York City to visit Howard and investigate claims that Billy Witham was off gambling with cotton mill funds on the Cotton Exchange. This was in response to Buddie’s claim that the mill was insolvent because Billy was messing with their finances. There may have been some truth to that. Billy Witham wasn’t a cotton man. He was in banking, and the cotton mill was nothing more than an investment opportunity. But given Buddie’s troubles managing the California Coca Cola branch and his publicized problems with math, it’s likely that Buddie was at least as much of the problem as Billy Witham was.

But Asa, Sr., wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. He sent Buddie off to New York to visit his brother and spy on Billy’s activities. He had him investigate a rumored attempt to purchase the mill by a group of financiers, and he looked into the claim that Billy lost $9000 in May of 1902 after winning $8000 right before the trip. Asa, Sr., considered this kind of speculation to be gambling and didn’t approve. On May 10th he wrote to Howard to have him peek in on Billy when Buddie wasn’t there:

History isn’t black and white. Billy Witham may very well have played too much with the mill’s money. And Buddie very well may have struggled to keep things on track. Buddie claimed that Billy was gambling and losing money but there’s no record of Asa, Sr., confronting him about it, although he wasn’t blind to the books and he was inclined to believe his son. As mentioned in the Sunny California timeline Asa, Sr., uses the phrase “good boy” in a letter addressed to Howard when the finances look dire. He refers to Buddie as a “brave, good boy.” This phrasing appeared during Buddie’s worst college escapades, during the L.A. office mismanagement, and now during the Mill’s financial struggles. One wonders whether “good boy” was wishful thinking or coded insincerity to prevent frustration from being spoken plainly.

Regardless, Buddie was distracted from his work, which couldn’t have helped. He sought out distractions wherever he could find them in the best of circumstances. With a frustrating job and a sick wife and baby far away in the city with the rest of his family, he was isolated and living on the outside once again.

He found reasons to visit Atlanta whenever an opportunity presented itself. In late May of 1902 he learned of the crippled younger sister of two mill employees. Her parents were both dead and she had become paralyzed from the waist down. Buddie recognized that she wouldn’t get the medical help she needed in a small town like Hartwell, so he accompanied her to Atlanta and brought her to the National Surgical Institute, where doctors felt her prospects of recovering the use of her legs were good. He left her in the care of the Decatur Orphan’s home.

He also traveled to Atlanta to pick up parts for his first automobile. During his young adult years the piece of his personality that had fallen in love with bicycles reasserted itself and fell in love with cars. Later in life he would reminisce about puttering around the streets of Hartwell in his steamer, the only man in town with a car. Automobiles were rich men’s toys, and as an important man at an important mill, his status necessitated a toy or two. And if he couldn’t afford it, his Papa was willing to lend him the money. Presumably Buddie’s burgeoning love of automobiles was behind Howard’s 1902 urge to purchase a car in New York City following one of his brother’s visits. Asa, Sr., was initially against it, seeing it as a waste of Coca Cola resources. But as he usually did when pressured by his sons, he came around. So then both Buddie and Howard had automobiles.

Whatever the reasons, all of Buddie’s traveling added up to one thing: lack of focus at the mill. The business suffered. It ran in the red year after year and never showed signs of stabilizing. One can only speculate about how long Asa., Sr., would have permitted the struggle to continue, but the family wasn’t given the chance to see it through. When the great blizzard of 1905 hit, the decision was made for them.

Buddie and Helen had welcomed their second child on June 10, 1904, this time a son named Asa III. Asa, Sr., loved his first grandson, his namesake’s namesake, with his whole heart. When the blizzard hit on Feb 6, 1905, Asa III was only a few days shy of eight months old. He fell ill, but because the blizzard knocked out telegraph lines, felled trees, and halted rail traffic, Asa and Helen were unable to seek medical help. On Feb 8, 1905, baby Asa III passed away. More about the death of Asa III to come in a future update.

Following the death of his grandson, Asa, Sr., made his final executive decision about Asa, Jr.’s life. The mill had suffered continual financial losses since he purchased it, and the thought of his son isolated so far from home as his beloved grandson passed away was more than he could bear. He decided to sell the mill at a loss and bring Buddie home. They spent the rest of 1905 wrapping up his duties, and in 1906 Buddie, Helen and Lucy III boarded the Hartwell Railway one last time, bound for Atlanta for good.

The mill struggled on for a couple of years, and in 1910 Asa, Sr., flirted with the idea of building a mill closer to Atlanta and transferring the equipment. That idea never became reality. In 1910 he sold the mill.

Marriage, Mill and Family Timeline

Mill, Marriage & Family Gallery

Mill, Marriage & Family Resources

• Hartwell and Mill Info:

  • The history of the Hartwell Sun

  • Hartwell Mill Sanborn Fire Map 1901

  • Witham Cotton Mill Village National Register of Historic Places Application

  • Proceedings of the Annual Convention of the Southern Cotton Spinners Association, 1902

  • Cotton: Boston Journal of Commerce and Textile Industries and Southern Mills, Vol 74, No. 3, January 1910

  • God's Capitalist, Kathryn W. Kemp, 2002

• Train Info:

  • Hartwell Rail Line

  • South Hartwell Rail Line Redevelopment Proposal

  • Hartwell to Bowersville to Elberton Line

  • Hartwell to Athens line

  • Hartwell to Bowersville Rail Schedule