As this part of Cobb County was settled in the mid-1800's, many or the early settlers from Dekalb and other counties in Georgia, brought with them family servants, and owned slaves. As the railroad was being built, more blacks were pressed into labor along the route through Vinings and beyond. As the Shoup entrenchments were built along the river, these and more (as many as 1,000) were forced into construction of same - and some stayed.
After the war, as freemen, many remained and were pressed into post-war reconstruction of the railroad, homes, and farms. This continued as the labor and bartered servant population as far forward as the 1950's. Women raised the white resident's children, prepared meals, and washed clothes for the family. Men provided labor, plowed gardens with their mules, cleared land, and hauled stones for home building. Their own children were provided little to no education.
Through all of these chronologics, their personal lives were hard, repressed, and centered - in two connective locations by their original proximity to the railroad; the St. John's community south of Vinings, and the Vinings community along Paces Ferry at the mountain. Their churches were the cornerstones, their paths connecting down the tracks. Families of the two communities intermarried, buried their dead, surviving racial discrimination and sometimes abuse.
Progress in the late 1900's, and the thirst for development properties doomed and disbursed these communities, much like the land lotteries and gold rush doomed the Cherokee before them - unthanked, unremembered (except for Nellie Mae Rowe for her folk art), and cast aside.
All that remains is the Vinings Cemetery on Paces Ferry, and the soon to be remnants of the St. John Cemeteries. It behoves that Vinings be inclusive of ALL her history, and appreciate that these communities not be forgotten.
