'The 'General' Stars At New Southern Museum
By Joe Kirby
- May 2003

KENNESAW, GA.- As bombs fell on Baghdad halfway around the world, Civil War buffs here gathered March 30 to cut the ribbon on a reopened, renamed and greatly expanded museum that recalls an earlier conflict and the role played in it by railroads.

The opening ceremony for the $6 million Southern Museum of Civil War and Locomotive History also took note of the fact that halfway around the world, U.S. troops were fighting.

"While we stand here today, standing on this wonderful ground honoring another war, we remember our troops who are in a conflict to liberate Iraq," said speaker U.S. Rep. Johnny Isakson (R-Marietta).

The museum succeeds the old Kennesaw Civil War Museum, which in turn was known until the late 1990s as The Big Shanty Museum. All three have had as their centerpiece the restored steam locomotive the "General," which played a central role in one of the most stories dramas of the Civil War, the Great Locomotive Chase.

That episode began on April 12, 1862, when a band of Yankee raiders under the command of James Andrews hijacked a Confederate train pulled by the General in Big Shanty, Ga. - present-day Kennesaw. Andrews hoped to destroy railroad bridges along the strategically vital Western & Atlantic Railroad, which was supplying the Confederate Army of Tennessee near Chattanooga.

After a prolonged chase, Andrews and most of his men were captured after doing only minor damage to the railroad. The incident later served as the basis for two movies: "The General" starring Buster Keaton, and Walt Disney's "The Great Locomotive Chase" with Fess
Parker.

The museum had been closed for 15 months for the renovation and expansion. It now includes not only the General and more than 30,000 Civil War artifacts, but a one-of-a-kind museum of locomotive history.

The focal point of that portion of the museum is the reconstituted Glover Machine Works factory, which produced more than 200 steam locomotives between 1892 and the early 1930s in nearby Marietta, Ga.

The collection includes factory business records, glass plate negatives of every locomotive built there, the full-scale wooden templates for each component of the locomotives, as well as the
belt-driven locomotive assembly line and two steam engines.

Civil War artifacts from the James A. Liesendahl and George Wray and Family Collections, including uniforms, weapons and personal items, are featured in the "Railroads: Lifelines of the Civil War" exhibit.

"We in Washington are totally impressed with the quality of this museum. This is an outstanding Civil War collection, and it has really put Kennesaw on the map," said Bill Withuhn, curator of transportation at the National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian Institution, who was keynote speaker for the grand opening ceremony.

As a Smithsonian Affiliations program member the new museum will host exhibits from the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service, as well as Smithsonian artifacts within its permanent collections. The museum expects to receive between 60,000 and 90,000 visitors a year.

The General was not built by Glover, but provides a fitting link for the two themes of the museum. Because of the impracticality of moving the engine, the renovation and new construction took place as the General sat undisturbed.

"We couldn't move it, so we just incorporated that right into the new structure," Mayor Leonard Church said. The 40,000-square-foot museum is 10 times larger than the old facility.

The new museum was paid for by $4.8 million in bonds issued by the City of Kennesaw, with the rest coming from private donations.

Fundraising for the museum was challenging at times, according to board member E.W. Chastain.

"It's been some pretty hard times. Whenever you get the private sector together with the public sector, you'll be lucky if you don't have a dogfight," he said.

City officials are hopeful that having the Southern Museum in the heart of Kennesaw not only will help spur downtown development, but that it may benefit from the uncertain economy and the nationwide tourism slowdown.

"The interest of many Americans is to stay close to home, so rather than driving or flying great distances, they're looking for things to do locally," said curator Jeff Drobney. Drobney formerly served as a history professor at Kennesaw State University and as director of the Center for Historic Preservation at Youngstown State University in Youngstown, Ohio.

A big part of the opening-weekend festivities featured a "reunion" for several hundred people descended from Andrews' Raiders and their pursuers. They munched on barbecued chicken, black-eyed peas, collard greens and cornbread and watched a screening of Disney's "The Great Locomotive Chase." Some of them came from as far as California.

Among the descendants on hand was Wilbert Kurtz III of Madison, Ga."If I were a Northern descendant, I wouldn't admit it," Kurtz joked to the Marietta Daily Journal. "It's only been 140 years. I still haven't forgiven them."

Kurtz's great-grandfather was Confederate Capt. William Fuller, who pursued Andrews' men first on foot and later via handcar during the chase. Kurtz was highly impressed by the new museum.

"It is incredibly well done," he said. "I just can't believe they created a museum of that caliber. It's remarkable. Kennesaw should be proud of it."

Another descendant was Glenn Waggoner of suburban Cleveland, Ohio, whose great-grandmother was the widow of Raider Sgt. John Scott. Waggoner has loaned Scott's Medal of Honor to the museum. Scott, Andrews and a number of the other Raiders were hanged in Atlanta after their capture.

Museum curator Drobney said he hopes to have similar reunions every three to five years.

The new museum is at 2829 Cherokee St., in downtown Kennesaw, about two miles off Interstate 75. Admission cost is $7.50 for adults and $5.50 for children ages 6-12. Hours are 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 12 to 5 p.m. on Sunday. For more information call the museum at (770) 427-2117 or visit its Web site at southernmuseum.org.

Those wishing to learn more about Andrews Raiders might also want to visit the Marietta Museum of History in nearby Marietta, Ga., which is housed in the antebellum Kennesaw House - the hotel in which many of the Raiders spent the night before the incident. The room in which Andrews stayed now houses the museum's Civil War collection.

The reopening of the new Southern Museum of Civil War and Locomotive History follows by just four months the long-awaited reopening of the museum in the visitors' center at nearby Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park about two miles away.