Members of a local family are happy to see their father’s name on new markers for the Highway 515 bridge across Turniptown Creek.
Georgia House Speaker David Ralston recently joined several members of that family to unveil the new signs and dedicate the Cecil Mathews Memorial Bridge.
A state proclamation read at the dedication recognizes Cecil Mathews’ lifelong employment in the lumber industry, as well as his entrepreneurial spirit, innovation and foresight, which “contributed to the modernization of the lumber industry and attracted numerous other businesses to the Gilmer County area.”
Mathews opened his own sawmill in 1965 after years of cutting timber and hauling logs for the Appalachian and Gennett lumber companies, remembered daughter, Patsy Harris.
“Life in the mountains was hard then,” Harris said. “You either had farming or you worked in the lumber business because there was lots of timber here.”
Mathews’ sawmill, which was located where Sparks Lumber Company is today, was the first facility of its type and size to be electrified by Amicalola Electric, Harris noted while reading from a 1966 article in the power company’s Beacon newsletter. According to that article, electrification allowed for streamlined production of 15,000 feet of lumber a day at the modernized sawmill, which provided an increase in the local lumber supply mostly used to manufacture furniture and flooring.
Harris said her dad and mother, Margaret, raised seven children in the Northcutt community not too far from where the bridge is today.
“Highway 515 took out the whole Northcutt community. It was a lovely little community. Everybody cared for each other and got along. Then the whole thing was gone,” she said.
“(All seven of us) are all still alive and in good health,” said Harris of her siblings. “My oldest sister is 85, and the youngest of us is 73. I say it’s to the glory of God. We’re all Christians, and we trust and believe in him.”
Harris said her parents were devout Christians, members of the Ellijay Church of God, and her mother used to run a grocery store out of their house.
“The thing that always amazed me was that my mother would let people charge groceries. If they couldn’t pay, she would take home-canned food in payment for the groceries,” she added.
Another of Mathews’ daughters, Jackie Allums, remembered working in the home grocery store as a youngster.
“It was a little country store, and there were gas pumps. The log trucks filled up there. You wrote down what they got and how much in a little book. I don’t think anybody was turned down that needed something,” she recalled.
Harris and Allums said their dad also ran what, at one time, was probably the county’s only grading operation.
“He was the first person that owned bulldozers in Gilmer County. He graded a whole lot of roads, (including some of the) county roads,” Harris said.
“I know he graded on Ray Mountain Road, (where there were) big boulders people tried to get around,” added Allums. “He took his dozer up there and moved all those big boulders out of the road to where it was passible.”
Allums said her dad’s handshake was his word.
“He was a man who did handshakes, and it was more important to him than a legal document. That’s the main thing I remember about him,” she said.
Harris and her siblings have fond memories of Turniptown Creek. Their dad’s sawmill was about a mile from there, and Mathews often took his family to the creek to fish and swim.
“My dad was a great fly fisherman, and he loved fishing on Turniptown Creek. That was our swimming hole, below the bridge. We used to get in there as kids. It was so large then that daddy couldn’t even stand up. He would swim with all the children on his back,” Harris said. “He was a great daddy. I can never remember him raising his voice, not ever.”
Mathews passed away in 1986. Now, anyone who travels over the creek where he once fished and swam will see the bridge named in his memory.
“It means my dad lives on,” said Allums.