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Jonesboro

   Jonesboro, Georgia, the location of Separate Fountains, is about thirty miles south of downtown Atlanta on Route 41 as one travels south to Macon, Georgia. When Separate Fountains takes place, Route 41 was a part of a chain of connecting roads making up Route 1 that one traveled from New York City to Miami.
     Currently Jonesboro is a lively suburb of Atlanta but when Patti Wilson Byars, author of Separate Fountains, was growing up in Jonesboro in the 1940s and 1950s, Jonesboro was a sleepy little town along the railroad tracks. The economy was supported by jobs in the stores or jobs at the courthouse that were a part of managing Clayton County's government. Farmers were also contributors to the economy, with many dairy farms, and farms with cotton and peaches as the main crops. Some of the male residents drove about fifteen miles north to Hapeville and worked on the assembly line at the Ford Motor Company. Most white women in Jonesboro were homemakers. However, a few women worked as secretaries or sales clerks in the local stores; some worked at the peach packing plant in the summer. The Colored people worked as "hired help" on the farms, and many Colored women worked as housekeepers, cleaning the white families' houses and raising their children.
     Before the Civil War, Jonesboro was a town with many beautiful cotton plantations on the outskirts of town. Many fields of cotton were destroyed when General Sherman led one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War against the Georgia troops. The Battle of Jonesboro took place August 31 - September 1, 1864. Although the cotton fields were burned, for some reason Sherman spared the stately homes in the area, using them as headquarters for his troops on their march to Savannah. 

     Even when Patti was growing up in Jonesboro in the 1940s and 1950s, several descendants of the cotton plantation families owned many of the businesses and buildings in the downtown Jonesboro area and owned much of the land surrounding the town. These descendants were also the political leaders of the town. Some of the descendants of these plantation families are still living in Jonesboro today...