Findley heir holds on to heritage
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by Rosemary Taylor
May 05, 2005
Today when Gene Findley Jr. stands on the Duluth land that's been in his family since 1850 he can still see some remnants of the nearly 3,000 acres his family once owned.
He can see the farmhouse his great-grandfather built in 1878. He can also see the original Findley Road – the one graded in the 1930s with mule-drawn equipment.
And if he looks really hard, he can still see a smidgeon of the woods where he used to play as a child.
But what Findley sees the most are the modern subdivisions that surround Findley Farm, the homestead where he lives with his wife and horses.
Two years ago, he bought back six adjoining acres his father sold years ago just to keep a developer from getting it.
"It was the only way we could keep living in the old farmhouse," he said.
As it is now, when he looks out his windows Findley sees subdivisions on three sides of his house. Thanks to that extra acreage, he can see woods on one side — for now.
He knows he can't fight progress. Who can?
But he's trying to do everything he can to hold on to the last 10 acres he has that connect him to his Scots-Irish ancestors who first walked on this land nearly 175 years ago.
His great-great-grandfather Benjamin Franklin Findley came to the Sheltonville (later known as Shakerag) area of Milton County from South Carolina in the late 1830s.
He came to find gold, for those were the gold fever days in Georgia. He did find some gold in Cauley Creek and Johns Creek, and then did well up in Dahlonega in what became America's first gold rush in the 1840s.
Bit by the even bigger California Gold Rush, Benjamin Franklin Findley set out in 1849, riding a mule through the jungles of Panama part of the way, and found lots of gold out West.
With those riches, he came back to Georgia and bought 135 acres of farmland near the current intersection of Medlock Bridge Road and McGinnis Ferry Road.
He grew cash crops of cotton and corn and became a successful farmer with nine children, who farmed the land with him.
Three of his sons bought farmland adjacent to his, increasing the size of the family's holdings and branching out into a dairy business, coal company and feed mill as the 19th century slowly turned toward the 20th century.
Through the Depression of the 1930s the Findleys held on, and did well in the cattle business shortly after World War II.
They continued to farm the land into the early 1970s. At their high point, Benjamin Franklin Findley's descendents owned nearly 3,000 acres of land surrounding present-day Sargent Road, Medlock Bridge, Jones Bridge and Abbotts Bridge Road.
Following the deaths of two of Benjamin's grandsons, a large amount of acreage from their estates was sold in 1963 for the developments of Johns Creek Technology Park and the Standard Golf Club.
From then on, bit by bit, most of the Findley property, once one of the largest landholdings in North Fulton, was sold off for residential and commercial development.
After all, nine children produced many grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren.
That many people are not going to see eye-to-eye on the pros and cons of development, and most of Benjamin's descendents have moved on from the area.
Unlike them, Gene Findley Jr. has not.
"Other than a couple of years when I was younger, I've pretty much always lived somewhere on Findley land," he said one recent afternoon as he worked around his place.
Through the years he's adjusted to all the development, taking it in stride as much as possible.
"The county wanted to change the name of Findley Road to something else when they re-routed all the roads after Johns Creek came in, but our neighbors stood up for us and said no."
His father, Gene Findley Sr., 80, suffered a stroke a few years ago. The only thing he talks about now are his childhood days hunting with his 'coon dogs on his family's land —- stretching so far he couldn't see the end of it.
Now his son is holding on to his dad's memories as well as his own. He is involved in historic preservation in Johns Creek, helping to preserve some of the few remaining historical buildings such as the Warsaw Methodist Church. He also is a Civil War re-enactor and often gives talks to students at Findley Elementary while in uniform.
"I'm trying to take care of our past, our present and our future. We'll stay here as long as we can."
