Hello,

Historian Michael Hitt, of Roswell, GA, wrote two books some years ago on the military operations in and around Roswell. His second book, "After The Left Flank," (self-published, 1985) covers, in detail, what happened to the Roswell women.

As follows, "With the war over, most of the mill workers, charged with treason, returned home. The hundreds of others returned, according to S. H. Causey, a former Sweet Water factory employee - great was the rejoicing when the smoke of battle cleared away and by the end of 1865 practically all of them rejoined their husbands, fathers and sweethearts in their former Roswell and Sweetwater homes - as soon as peace was declared they returned home, making the trip aboard the same train which had taken them north a year before." (Source of Causey citation - Atlanta Journal magazine, Feb. 28, 1932)(Hitt, page 37)

Sweetwater was a large textile factory west of Atlanta along the Chattahoochee River many of whose employees were also sent north after the mills were destroyed by Union cavalry.

Hitt was the first modern historin to put to erest the myth of the Roswell women simply dissappearing and not being
heard from again. Another examination of this incident, I think, but am not sure 100 percent, from the Georgia Historical Quarterly, stated that some of the women fell in love up north and stayed there after the war.

Greg Biggs