>> Hello. My name is Marion Tash.
I'm a student in Kansas University.
>> And I'm Brent Parmley.
We're here at Barnsley Gardens, inside the museum.
For the record, would you please state your name.
>> My name is Philip Clent Coker.
>> And do you consent to
being recorded for this interview?
>> Well, I do.
>> Thank you.
>> And the date is October 8th, 2018.
>> Thank you very much. So let's
just start with where did you grow up?
>> Let me say this. Can I speak now?
>> Yes.
>> Yes, sir.
>> I gave you my full name but nobody knows me so.
I'm Clent with everything.
So please calling Clent.
>> Sorry. So where did you grow up?
>> I actually grew up in right here in this area.
Of course, my father traveled quite a lot
through the years and lived in various places.
But this was home here,
right here close to Barnsley,
and close to Adairsville
for the last four generations of my family.
>> You mentioned your father there.
What were your parents' names?
>> My father was Sherman Henry Coker,
and my mother was Sibyl Sutton Coker.
>> And can you tell us a little bit about them?
>> Well, they married back in the mid 1930s.
My mother, Sibyl Sutton, before she married,
was the great granddaughter
of Payton O'Mara who helped build Barnsley Gardens.
My father's family was from up in Union County,
and there's a very lot of history in their family too.
And so they married,
and then I was first child born,
and they moved away.
I was actually born down in Covington,
Georgia, Newton County, and
then we moved back here again.
So I started school here in Adairsville for years.
But I actually finished school
in Lake Oregon in Michigan,
because we moved up there for a few years,
and I finished high school up there.
>> So I understand you're a bit of a local historian.
What's it like being a historian
in a small town like Adairsville?
>> Well, I've enjoyed it,
because I spent a lot of
my life putting the history back together.
Of course, maybe the Barnsley history
and my family history,
but also history of Adairsville and Bartow County.
Bartow County has always been rich in history.
And so I fell in love with it as a child, and so forth.
So through the years, it's been rewarding,
because I've had a lot of folks come
to me and want to know the history even
about their families and
different things than about the Barnsley history.
So we've had a lot of good guests
through the years that have really enjoyed.
>> So do you do a lot of
family research and history for other people?
>> Well, not for other people.
I did for my family and for the Barnsley.
I fell in love with the Barnsley story as a child.
One of my great grandmothers was
born right here in the historic area.
And she's the one
that actually got me involved in
all of this when I was a little boy,
and some of my great aunts and
my grandmother telling me stories,
sitting at the fireside on
cold winter nights, listening to stories.
That used to be a favorite
pastime in the South to do that.
And it was a great entertainment for
me, and I just loved it.
I stayed right with her.
I was all aders listening
to everything they could tell me.
And as time progressed,
I became more and more obsessed with it,
and really wanted to put this story back together.
So then I started
researching actually at a very young age,
my family was so close to this family, four generations.
And later on, when the last of
the Barnsley blood passed away, Ms.
Saylor here, they held
a big auction and sold this place,
and all of this arrogance and artifacts and so forth.
And my family purchased quite a lot of that.
And as I began growing up and
really getting deeper into this project,
they had these things to give me to get started.
But I would later spend a lot of years collecting things
from other people who
attended the auction here in the 1940s.
>> So you spoke about
a family connection to the Barnsley's.
Was that just location
or did they know the Barnsley as well?
>> Well, I guess, location.
Actually one of my great great grandfathers
had worked with Barnsley in
his shipping empire and sent out.
And we'll talk a little more about that later about how
Barnsley came here and all this came came to be.
So we were just, through the years,
my family came up and got involved
in the Cherokee Indian land lottery,
no Georgia here, Barnsley later followed.
He had several friends
who came up and got involved in this lottery.
Mr. William Henry Styles,
who established Stylesbor nearby,
Charles Wallace Howard at Kingston Laws was here,
my great great grandfather,
Payton Morrow, and several other people.
And so our family the area started to grow,
and the Catherine Barnsley later
came and invested in land lots here.
Some people were willing to sell their land lots.
Actually, what happened is,
our government made a deal with
the Cherokee Indians for their lands North of Atlanta,
and they took their lands
and divided them off into the land lots,
held a big land lottery here with
54,000 land lots of 160 acres each.
So our families came in,
and people came in from all over from the Carolinas,
especially from the low lands where it was so hot,
and they wanted to get out of the low lands
and come to the cooler mountains,
and came up and got involved in the lottery.
But some were willing to sell later.
It was a tough trip up here.
Three weeks to get here every time you met Savannah.
And so some were willing to settle later,
because it was pretty rigged up here.
And so Barnsley came
involve land lots from those who were willing to sell.
And he would finally, at one point,
his land in gulf, 8,000 acres.
>> That's a lot. So we're here at Barnsley Gardens.
What role do you have here
at the at the resort and at Barnsley Gardens?
>> Well, I'm the Barnsley author and historian,
and I'm a museum director.
I actually established a museum here with artifacts that
I collected back all
through the years that went through that auction,
not only from my family but from
others here in North Georgia who had
purchased the artifacts at the auction.
And so I tell
people I'm the author of historian museum director
of dish digger and bottle washer.
We've had to do it all through
the years to restore a little bit of this place.
>> And so within that role,
what's a daily routine here at the at the museum?
>> Daily routine is museum opens at 9:00 in
the morning and goes at 5:00 in the evening.
And we have a lot of guests coming through who
want to here a little bit the story, and see.
And actually, visit the museum and visit the grounds.
We do have some of the original gardens left.
We have a very old garden right out front of
the museum here, the boxwood frontier.
It's been standing here since long before the Civil War.
And we're happy we've been able to save that one.
And people come to visit the estate,
and now to visit
the resort that we have established here.
>> So how has
the estate contributed to Adairsville overall?
>> Well, I think it's
benefited the city of Adairsville and the entire county,
because since we have the resort going,
a lot of guests come in,
we do a lot of corporate business.
We had over 60 weddings here last year.
And we have several amenities.
We have horseback riding and play shooting,
and we've been growing for the last 15, 20 years.
And it's been good revenue
for the area and for the county.
And it's actually for a lot of tours to the area.
>> So it's very clear
that your expertise is in
Godfrey Barnsley and the Barnsley estate.
Can you tell us a little bit about the study of that,
and tell us some of Godfrey Barnsley stories?
>> Yes. And it's such a complex story.
I could get round up, and we'd be here all day,
but I've always said it's 1,000 stories within a story,
surrounding four generations of the family.
It's one of the greatest love stories of
the whole South adventures
of building a family empire
in the heart of an Indian building.
Strong women in every generation,
especially during the Civil War.
And actually,
prize fighting and bootleg whiskey of the royal 20s,
the Great American depressions,
and even one murder.
So all the stories are here,
and yet the sounder is true.
The origin of the story,
it's from young Godfrey Barnsley,
born in England in 1805.
And he grew up and became interested
in the cotton and shipping business.
Great Britain had the largest cotton mills in the world,
but they didn't have the cotton.
And they had to depend on us for the cotton,
but it was a slow process in shipping.
So young Barnsley had a dream of establishing
a better shipping operation business.
And so when he was 18 years old,
he worked his way across the sea to Savannah Georgia.
Big shipping port, Cotton Capital of the South,
went to work as a clerk for a large shipping broker.
Within a few years,
they made him a partner in the business.
Within about 15 years,
Godfrey Barnsley was considered
the wealthiest sea merchant of the South.
He shipped cotton abroad,
European goods back to this country.
He didn't grow cotton.
He didn't have a cotton plantation,
but he shipped it and he could do it much faster.
And he really amassed fortune.
He became highly recognized
for his honesty and integrity.
The president of the United States appointed him
vice-consulate to three foreign nations.
Although he never became an American citizen,
but he started so much trade
between us in those countries.
And so in Savannah,
he married into the well-known Scarborough family,
Scarborough Castle.
He's still standing in Savannah,
today known as the Ships for the Sea museum.
And he always wanted to build his wife,
Julia, this estate that he had planned for her.
And there's a real story around this estate.
It's a certain type of
estate that was very rare at the time.
And so I have chapters in my book on that.
Then they finally came up and got involved
in the lottery our families did here in North Georgia.
Barnsley came later, bought land lots,
and started building this estate.
He would later bring trees, plants,
and scrubs from the four corners of
the world instead of out here.
He built an Italian villa-style house.
It was completely different.
The house had modern plumbing even before the Civil War.
So he had a real vision here.
And even though we only saved
a small portion of the estate today,
it still echoes with his vision.
>> So the estate has changed hands many
times and has gone through a lot of difficult situations.
Can you tell us about some of
the difficulties that have happened here with the estate?
>> Yes. Four generations of the Barnsleys lived here,
but the last of
the Barnsley blood passed from the scene in 1942,
and that was the granddaughter of
Barnsley, Addie Saylor.
And her and her mother
had been through a very struggling time trying to
build the estate back after
the war because 29,000 union troops came from the land.
And it was land sacked.
Most of the buildings were not burned,
but it was left with 100 starving people,
and it was the women who saved them.
So that's quite a story.
But after that happened,
different owners had the property because Ms. Addie died,
they auctioned the place off and sold it.
And all of those heirlooms,
everything that was left.
My family purchased quite a lot of that.
I knew other people that did.
And so I went to work at a pretty young age,
trying to collect these things back on
the family and ended up with quite a collection,
hoping that someday we could restore it back.
But after the auction was held,
two different owners had their property down through
the years all the way up till 1988.
The last owner, a poultry farmer here,
tried to keep it all going and it was a huge task.
There was a lot of gardens,
a lot of land and then he became
played with the vandals sometimes and different things.
So he later decided to just padlock
the gates and lock it off
and to operate his farming business here.
And from that time on all the way up to 1988,
it became quite grown up here,
a lot of buildings covered with vines and
all things but he finally
decided to sell the property in 1988.
He put it on the open market,
advertised it, Prince Ulrich Fugger of Germany,
from the well-known Fugger family of Germany,
purchased the last 1,300
acres and what was left in the estate.
I met with Prince Fugger's attorneys and then with him.
And I pleaded with him to save the estate.
Poured my heart out to him about
this beautiful story and why we wanted to save
it and Prince Fugger began to see it.
But also, he had
always been interested in our American history.
And he had read books on
the Civil War and he was very interested in it.
He and his attorneys decided later that we
should try to clean
up the estate and restore what we could of it.
And so we went to work in 1988.
It took several years to clean out
the buildings and clean up the grounds.
We brought a wonderful agriculturalist with us in 1990,
Steve Wheaton from Pennsylvania,
who turned out to be a blessing for us.
He taught me a lot about how we
had to save these historic gardens.
So we have the boxwood
patriarch out front it's burial original,
and we have the Bob Garden in the matter below,
the Confer Hill, different areas.
And so we have saved
at least a small portion
of what Barnsley had and at least
now we've extended a little bit of
the Barnsley dream on the end of the 21st century.
>> So how do you personally feel
about this place being turned into a resort?
>> Well, I like it.
We realized, and Prince Fugger began to realize,
to make it profitable
there needed to be other amenities here to make it work,
and financially,
especially with the cost and expense of things today.
And so we were getting a lot
of visitors and things were coming up good,
but he decided to build a resort.
We talked about it, and of course,
I had said if we do it in good taste, it will work good.
But always bended around
the history and the historical theme,
the real charm of the place. And we did that.
And the historic area is still sitting here,
or the ruins and the gardens and so forth,
and that people can walk back and see.
But now we also have the resort, the golf course.
We built a village over there, cottages,
and tied it back to the same plans
that Barnsley was following in
the 1800s in building his estate.
And now we just built
the new Georgian Hall and the new [inaudible] over here.
We do a lot of corporate business here.
Corporate companies come in, hold their meetings,
enjoy visiting the estate,
and taking part in the amenities.
And we have two restaurants on the property,
and we're still growing.
And now we have the Spring bank estate right
below us where we have
the shooting clays and hunting and so forth.
So in 2005,
Prince Fugger sold the estate to
Mr. Julian Saul, the present owner.
And he is adding
more amenities and purchased
some more land right south of us here,
the Old Spring Bank state.
And now we're up to about 3,000 acres.
So now the estate engulfs about 3,000 acres.
>> So if you were able to follow
your lifelong vision for
this place in terms of conservation,
what would that look like?
>> Let me see if I understand that
completely, now say that again.
>> So if you were able to do
your personal conservationist dream
here, what would that look like?
>> Well, we do have
a few buildings yet that I would like to see restored,
and we have the long barn
down below in the lower gardens.
And now we have horseback riding there,
and we have a little farm zoo and things like
that but we've restored most of the old buildings.
I would just like to be sure that we continue to preserve
the history here because
it's such a colorful estate and the story,
and it's truly a historic treasure of Northern America.
>> So changing the subject a little bit.
Earlier, you were talking about
a key factor here being the strong Barnsley women.
Can you tell us a little bit about
the Barnsley women and
tell us a little bit of their story?
>> Yes. In every generation,
it seemed to be the case.
First of all, the first Julia,
Godfrey's wife, they had married in 1828.
Julia had eight children at the time she was 32.
Big Family quick.
And so she was a strong woman.
The seven children were born in Savannah,
and the last one appeared in the wilderness,
and he died within a few months.
Two children died in infancy.
One son disappeared in China.
And so their five children that they grew into adulthood.
So she was very strong and she loved the estate,
but she had a long illment before he brought her here.
And it wasn't easy living down
in the extreme heat of the low lands,
yellow fever, mosquitoes, and whatever.
And so that's one reason
he wanted to get her out of there.
But it's such a touching love story.
I do have the last letter that she wrote to him in
1844 when he was out in New Orleans,
setting up a new office.
He had to travel a lot his business is growing.
And so as she was pleading with him
to return to the wilderness, they called it here.
And it truly was a wilderness.
During that time she had became lonely,
of course, there was a lot of workers here,
a lot of things going on,
but she complained that she felt fully cheated that year.
Been eight months since she'd had the pleasure of seeing
him and he wrote
back and told her to give him a little longer.
He would have a new office set up in New Orleans.
He'd be back and then enjoy
completing her castle together.
But before he got back,
she was taken back to Savannah to
be under the care of her original doctor.
And he sailed to Savannah as fast as he
could and she had just passed.
So it's a very touching love story.
And he wasn't going to complete the estate
later, Julia was gone.
He had strong dreams of Julia and she was pleading
with him to finish the estate and the dreams.
And so he informed our families and my family was
involved and Mr. Comm was
here to have more bricks burned immediately.
They were made right here on the property.
Julia and I are going to
complete the estate just as we planned.
And he would spend the rest of
his life trying to do that,
never remarried, and it's such a love story.
But then it's the daughter, Julia,
named for her mother that took over at
that time just prior to the Civil War.
And she becomes the real king pin or
the strong scarlet during the war
later when the estate is raided by Union troops.
And although the army here
General James McPherson ordered the place spared because
Barnsley was not an American citizen and
the place was so beautiful and outstanding
and so he ordered the estate
spared and that they could
take food supplies and that was it.
But as he moved out the next morning hours later,
about 1,000 troops also joined in with some stragglers.
And we had a lot of stragglers
following the armies down through.
That was a very turbulent time here in North Georgia.
The railroads have been destroyed
by General Sherman's army of
the Cumberland and the strong women
here trying to keep things going.
She's expecting a child
later becomes [inaudible] that I spoke of earlier.
And even in that condition,
she steps up to the place.
We're going to survive and we're going to do it together.
And she led the women and children into
the woods and the hills and taught him survival.
How to dig roots from the woods and whatever.
And so her and her daughter,
Addie grows up later and Addie is a strong woman.
She goes through a lot in her life because
she grew up during the Southern Reconstruction era.
But the South is still struggling to build back.
And she married a chemist from Pennsylvania in
1897 and quite a story of how he worked his way in here.
But he was a brilliant man.
So he's the one who started out
[inaudible] here in this county,
[inaudible] to make aluminum. He married Addie.
They had three segar children.
Preston, Harry, and Julia,
and that's another story. And quite a story.
So they were the last ones
here with their mother to live here.
And then there was a tragedy in the family.
Some land barons stepped in between the brothers,
caused a lot of there was a lot of
outside interference pulling the brothers apart.
And finally, Preston who was actually in charge.
He had became known as Kadgan a prize fighter,
but he shot and killed his brother Harry here.
And mostly caused by
greedy people who got involved. So this is his story.
>> So the Barnsley estate has had
some rather tragic occurrences with natural disasters.
Can you tell me a little bit about the natural disasters
and the impact that they had on the estate here?
>> Well, yes. The real natural disasters
was first of all, was 1906,
tornado came through when
Addie stated her family was living in the manor,
and the roof was blown from the house.
Several attempts were made to put it back,
but they're still struggling financially and
economically from that war
and something always seemed to happen.
So they never restored it.
And through the years,
they just fell into ruin,
finally grew up into a forest inside the house.
So when we started restoration in 1988,
we had to cut the trees out before we could even
start securing the walls and whatever.
So other disasters, of course,
I always say that wars,
storms, and depressions took their toll.
And there was a lot of happiness here,
a lot of good things.
It's a place of palpable joy,
a great love story,
but also some tragedy.
And through the four generations.
>> If there were one favorite story that you had
concerning Barnsley or the Barnsley family or the estate.
What would that favorite story be?
>> That would be hard to say.
There's so many beautiful stories and of course,
I think the story of Godfrey coming into
the wilderness and bringing
all these things in
establishing all the beautiful gardens,
I still have stacks of letters,
nothing but listings of
plants that he brought in from all over the world.
And some of the trees he brought in
were hundreds of years old when he brought them in here,
Cedars of lemon and you read about it
in the Bible, redwoods, linden,
[inaudible] used from Scandinavia,
and the list goes on and on.
And so that was a very colorful story of him coming in.
In fact, most people here in
the wilderness in those days,
and there was the idea of what this man was up to.
And so he really had a vision,
had a dream and so that's a favorite story,
but also the great love story of Godfrey and Julia.
The story of General McPherson camping
on the grounds and offering to spare the estate.
I guess the strongest story is the daughter,
after the invasion of the Union army,
her life here, and
all the things she went
through trying to save the estate.
And I went through her daughter, Addie.
>> So what impact did Barnsley
have on a young Adairsville?
What what impact was there?
>> Well, when he came in Adairsville,
and my family too
came in and get involved in the lottery,
Adairsville was just a small settlement at
the county line of Bartow in Gordon County,
and of course established by
a half Scottish, half Cherokee family.
And the main town
at that time was Kingston,
down below us,
and later that became a big railroad in 1845.
And they gradually worked the railroad up through
1847 and '48 up through a deck where Adairsville is now,
and went up to Chattanooga by 1850.
But they saw the need
of moving Adairsville actually to the railroad.
So it really had an effect because Barnsley,
he brought in things from all over the world,
and there was always a lot of work here.
He raised fine show horses,
he had very large orchards and vineyards,
and he was involved in a lot of things.
So a lot of people could find work here.
My great grandfather, as a young man,
worked with Barnsley here, my great great,
great grandfather did on two sides of my family.
And so it brought revenue to the area in those days.
And then later, Barnsley would be
involved in making a lot of peach brandy here.
So a lot of things happened
here and so it was good for the economy
of old Cass County that later became Bartow in 1861.
>> I think that the story of
Adairsville is really just a story of how this small,
little town has consistently been part or
close enough to
the main transportation hubs of the region.
How has that thought process affected this place,
Barnsley Gardens and Barnsley Estates?
>> That's exactly right.
You see, we brought the railroad up to Kingston in
1845 and gradually worked
its way up, as I mentioned earlier.
But Adairsville became quite a hub too.
For example, Adairsville had
the first flour roller mill in Adairsville,
established by Mr. James Madison Veach.
And the old Veach home,
he is still standing in Adairsville.
And then as the years passed, of course,
being on the railroad,
it became a big peach center.
Godfrey Barnsley actually brought
all the peaches in in the old days,
but then more and more people got involved in it.
And Adairsville was finally
penned as the peach center of the world for a time.
And I can remember even when I was a boy,
peaches were shipped out of
the warehouse in Adairsville on the railroad.
And you couldn't drive down any road
in the county here without seeing peach orchards.
Today, it's hard to see a peach tree.
As the years passed,
the weather changed,
the weather pattern, fruit
flies, different things happened.
A lot of my family was involved in the peach business,
but then also the chenille bedspread business.
And that became quite a lucrative business
here through the years.
And actually, that would eventually
basically turn into the carpet industry.
They made a little cotton rugs,
and finally, Dalton,
they started turning into carpet and so forth.
A lot of things happened in Adairsville in those days,
and Adairsville really contributed
to the growth of Bartow County.
>> If I could interject a quick question.
Mr. Coker, can you tell us a little bit
about this building that we are in right now,
the history of this building?
When was the last time anyone
actually lived in this particular building?
>> This house was built in 1842,
actually, before the big manor was built.
He built the houses around it.
This is the kitchen wing,
and they needed that.
They had workers and a lot going on
here before they built the manor.
And then the big left wing used to be on
the other side, their cottage.
It was torn down here in the 1970s.
But this house became the kitchen house,
as you can notice here,
the huge stove,
a very rare piece,
one of a kind that
Godfrey Barnsley designed and
had it built in Liverpool, England.
It has a cooking capacity for 100 people or more,
something very, very unique for the day and age.
And so down to the years,
the family was here in
this house and on down to the Saylor family.
So four generations lived in
this house and right on through the Saylor brothers.
Ms. Addie died in the 1940s, the granddaughter here,
and she had lived in this house because in the meantime,
a storm had taken the roof from
the manor and they moved into the kitchen wing.
And so this became actually the Saylor home after that.
So Ms. Addie lived here until her death.
After it was sold in auction,
two different owners lived in this house
for only up until 1988.
And Mr. Arrow McCleskey,
who was a poultry farmer here,
lived here until he sold
the property in 1988 to [inaudible]
>> So I think the other big thing historically that puts
a Adairsville on the historical map
is the Great Locomotive Chase.
Have you ever studied anything about it?
>> Well, yes, I have at that point and I, of course,
know about it and all,
but we've had others that did too.
I know Mr. Joe Head who wrote a book on it and did
a very good job, and different ones.
So that's a real outstanding story.
And I I was happy to see when they
finally restored the old General,
and I was in Adairsville when they first came through
with it on the 100th anniversary.
The governor was on different things,
and so that started
the Great Locomotive Chase festival
and now it's been here 50 years.
But that is a very powerful story
of that train being stolen
back and forth all the way up to Chattanooga.
>> Why do you think it's become such a local phenomenon,
this whole story of the Great locomotive Chase?
Why do you think it became such a big local phenomenon?
>> Well, because it was so different.
The Union soldiers that stole
the train down at Kennesaw and brought it through,
and the Confederates was just not going to have it,
so they stole it back.
And that happened several times up
and down the track and even chasing
it on a hand-operated car and all those things.
It's a very colorful story.
And we're talking about not two or three miles here,
we're talking about 65 or 70 miles
of this going back and forth.
And it's a very colorful story.
That's why Walt Disney
filmed a portion of it at one time years ago.
>> Well, Mr. Coker,
I'd like to thank you very much for your time.
And I guess the last question here is,
if there were one thing that you
wanted recorded for posterity,
what would that one thing be?
>> Concerning the Barnsleys?
>> Concerning the Barnsleys, concerning yourself.
What would be the one thing
that you would really just want to
make sure got recorded for historical sake?
>> To make sure that the beautiful history of, well,
North Georgia, but especially Bartow County
is preserved through the years,
and I'm happy now that that's happened that way.
Many years ago, I was hoping to see
a historical society established.
I was hoping to see maybe a museum,
and now we have the Bartow History Center,
and they're doing a wonderful job with that.
And we have so much here in this county,
and I'd like to see that
preserved and the Barnsley story.
That's why I've worked so hard on it through the years.
And, of course, through
my writings and books and so forth,
it will be to a point preserved.
I would like to see it preserved for future generations.