A cotton wagon that once hauled crops to market from the fields in Powder Springs is now on display at the Austell Museum.
The wagon was decked out with Christmas decorations in the lobby of the Threadmill center in Austell over the holidays and will become part of the museum’s permanent collection, along with hundreds of other items.
James Meadows and his niece, Janice M. Stewart, made the donation on behalf of the late Jimmy Meadows (his twin brother) who collected the old farm implements and housed them in his “museum” in his backyard. The Meadows family dates back to the 1840s in Austell and Powder Springs.
“We used the wagon to haul cotton to the gin in Powder Springs,” said Meadows, 79. They also raised watermelons and peddled them in town with the wagon.
“We have a lot of items we can put out and we recycle them through the exhibit,” said Curator William Johnson.
The Meadows family has a long association with the former Coats and Clark thread making facility, family members worked there and Tom Meadows was the residential overseer of Clarkdale, the mill town.
“I worked at the mill for several years, and then went to Lockheed,” said James Meadows.
Janice M. Stewart, a niece, of west Cobb, says she has many memories of the old farm equipment.
“We used to play on the wagon,” she said. Her father built the museum because “he wanted to hold onto the things that he enjoyed when he was young.”
From the January 2016 issue of The Bright Side, Cobb County Georgia’s Newspaper covering Smyrna, Vinings, Mableton, Powder Springs and Austell, GA.
