I don't know how Graball Rd got its name; have heard its is a contraction for "Grab All," but have no idea it is correct or what it means if so. Graball Rd (Ga Spur 44) was along the line of the original road from Lisbon to Washington, and would have bene the route taken by the Davis Party and the specie train. I have not been to the site of Lisbon since 1950 or '51, when my father took us on a Saturday drive there, just before the store closed. As well as I can remember (and I was only 7 or 8), the dirt road cmae to a T-Junction at the store. The store would have been on the southeast side of that intersection, and was a typical country store. There was an old unpainted house across the road from the store, surronded by a broken down wooden picket fence, of course also unpainted. When I think of it, fifty-odd years later, it reminds me of the Bo Radley Place in To ill a Mockingbird. The road to the right (in front of the house and store) apparently led to Hester's Ferry, while the road beside the store led down to a car ferry across the Broad River to Petersburg, which we took. I know it had to be about then because the trees had already been cleared for the flooding of the lake.

Up into the late 30's, a star mail route out of Mt. Carmel served the little post office at Lisbon, which apparently was in the store. The ferry over the river was gone, but the mail carrier, Willie Hester, apparently kept at bateaux at the river, and drove there, and then poled across. How he got from the river to Lisbon is beyond me. That saved him a long trip by Calhoun Falls and Petersburg. His nephew, Pat Hester, of Mt. Carmel, is knowledgable about this, and I am sure would be delighted to talk with you. His wife Emily was one of the Dunaways who lived over in Lincoln County.

The line between Indian country and the British settlements immediately before the Revolution came in about the mouth of the Broad River, and the Carolian government built a stone and earthen fort on the Carolina side, just above the ferry site and across from the mouth of the Borad. It was called Fort Charlotte, and was captured by Whig militia very early in the war. My father took us to it, just beore it was flooded. At very extrmee low water, you can still see the top of the stone wall -- but must be below about 305 m.s.l. There's a historical marker for it in Mt, Carmel. Pat Hester's home is just down the road from the marker on the way to the ferry.

In the years after the Revolution, three towns were built to capture the growning lucrative tobacco trade. The mouth of the Broad was considered the head of navigation. Lisbon was on the Georgia side, on the south side of the Broad, Petersburg was on the north side of the Broad, and on the Carolina side was Vienna. (All named for then-Eurppean capitals.) A ford connected Vienna and Petersburg, called Island Ford; that name survives on old Island Ford Road in South Carolina leading to the river. They were all dead towns by the early 1830's, except for Lisbon, which kept a tenouous existence into the middle of this century, probably because it was on the main road from Abbeville to Washington. But it wasn't much of a town. The Petersburg boats which plied the river until into the early 20th Century to carry cotton to Augusta were named for Pettersburg; the Augusta people have reconstructed one which is on display somewhere there.

There is a book on old Petersburg, old and not very readable, the name of which entirely escapes me, but if you are in to this in a big way, they have copies at the Elbert County public library and I am sure in Washington and Lincolnton.

This is pretty much off subject as to a Civil War message board. But the road was a main thoroughfare after Sherman cut the railroad connections in south Georgia and South Carolina, thus causing the Confederacy to put up a pontoon bridge. The had one across the Board River in South Carolina as well on this same route. There-- that gets us back on topic.