Articles About Madison

Madison Named #1 Small Town in America

Talk about dodging a bullet: In 1864, General Sherman was Marching to the Sea and razing everything in his path, which happened to include Madison's grand planters' homes. Luckily, one resident was a Georgia senator who happened to be a pal of Sherman's brother. Sherman and the senator came to a "gentlemen's agreement," and the general moved on. Though much of this pretty town is now a national historic district, it doesn't feel like a museum. To be sure, tree-lined Post Office Square, with its brick sidewalks, has its share of antiques shops and galleries. But there's nothing precious about the place: They make a mean milkshake at Madison Drug, and you can get pretty much whatever else life requires at the town's big old hardware store. For all that, the ladies are still addressed as "Miz Polly" and "Miz Eulalia," and pulling up a rocking chair on a big shady front porch, julep in hand, still counts as a day well-spent.

Georgia Town Savors its Place in History
Madison, Ga. -- When a national travel magazine named Madison the best small town in the America last summer, life here suddenly got busy."The networks came in, and so did newspapers," says town spokeswoman Marguerite Copeland. "We began to see an increase in the number of visitors."

Now that flurry of publicity has waned, which suits Madison's citizens just fine. While house hunters from nearby Atlanta are still scouting the Madison area, "were trying very hard not to be 'suburbs,'" Copeland says.

Situated just off I-20 east of Atlanta, Madison is an hour's drive from the Georgia metropolis. It's a good place to stop en route between Atlanta and points in South Carolina. It's also an appealing detour for motorists headed from Savannah to Atlanta.

Although it's a long commute on a busy thoroughfare, the drive from Atlanta is worth it for those who appreciate Madison's small-town ambiance, antebellum homes, and proximity to the Lake Oconee recreation area.

Madison has another distinction. It's known as "the town Gen. Sherman refused to burn." It is one of the few communities left intact by the Civil War general who torched everything in his path during a march from Atlanta to the sea in 1864. The exception of Madison came about through the intervention of one of Madison's leading citizens, Sen. Joshua Hill. A strong opponent of secession, Hill also was a friend of Sherman's brother. He used those credentials to negotiate a deal with the general to spare the town. As a result, Madison possess an uncommon trove of antebellum houses.

One of them is Hill's former home, a mansion on Academy Street, where many of the antebellum houses are. Like most other such homes in Madison, it is privately owned and cannot be visited. But another sumptuous home, Heritage Hall, is open to the public year-round

A sophisticated example of Greek revival architecture, the columned Heritage Hall has 14-foot ceilings and is furnished in the elegant style of the period. It also boasts an unusual feature.

"Visitors say they've seen the ghost of a young woman in the upstairs bedroom," says Sandra Brown, a volunteer docent. Some also say an image of the woman who died in that room at a young age, can be seen on the hearth of the bedroom fireplace. But it takes a bit of imagination to visualize.

Another home open to the public, but less exalted, is the middle-class Rogers House, built in the Piedmont Plain style common in the rural South. It is a comfortable home, but hardly on the scale of the expansive Heritage Hall.

Next to it is the small Rose Cottage, which Adeline Rose, a former slave, built in 1891 and occupied until her death in 1959. In her early years, Rose made a living by taking in washing and ironing. One of her customers was the Hardy House, a boarding home owned by the mother of rotund comedian Oliver Hardy.

Several Victorian homes also have been preserved. Most celebrated of them is the Hunter House. An 1883 Queen Anne-style home with an elaborate spindle-work porch, it is probably the most photographed structure in Madison.

Taken together, those four homes present a picture of the 19th century life in the rural South. AS might be expected, Madison's cache of period homes has made it an important stop on Georgia's Antebellum Trail, a 100-mile tour that covers seven towns in the heart of the state from Athens to Macon.

In the same region are 10 cities, including Madison, that make up the state's Antiques Trail. Madison has seven antique galleries, plus 15 arts and crafts shops, in its small downtown area. But antiques and 19th-century homes aren't Madison's only attraction.

Small-town ambiance is what brought most people to Madison --and kept them there. "This town has changed a lot," admits Jimmy Cunningham, whose father founded the popular Olde Colonial restaurant. "But it's nice-sized and you know everybody. That makes a difference."

Cunningham's restaurant occupies an old bank building on the perimeter of downtown's Post Office Square and its charming array of dogwood, oak, and gingko trees. An intriguing feature of the restaurant is that a party of four can take their meal in the old bank vault.

At the other end of the scale is Ole Murray's, whose decor is nothing to boast about. But the small diner carries a reputation beyond its size. Soul food is its specialty: fried chicken, pig's feet, collard greens, black-eyed peas, and the like.

"I always use fresh foods, nothing from cans," says owner Betty Murray. Now, that's real down-home, just like Madison itself.