Historic Macon

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Above: Washington Poe, attorney,
judge, and early mayor of Macon,
was often a force for calm and reason
in the young town.
Right: Ambrose Baber was a pioneer
Macon physician who led the effort to
create Christ Church Episcopal and
who contributed to many civic
improvements. His library formed the
basis of Macon’s first lending library.
for a new city burial ground. They chose a place
a mile and a half above the town on a high bluff
overlooking the river. Rose managed the
clearing and planting of the new site and was
rewarded by a resolution of the city council on
March 27, 1840. He was given his choice
of a lot in the new cemetery and it was
named Rose Hill in his honor.
Simri Rose worked on many projects in
young Macon. He organized the Episcopal
Sunday School and was a vestryman of
Christ Church. He held high offices in the
Freemasons Society and was an original
member of Macon’s first military corps,
The Macon Volunteers. He was a trustee of
Macon’s first school, the Bibb County
Academy, and an original supporter when
the Georgia Academy for the Blind was
located in Macon. The Volunteer Fire
Department honored his long service to it
by naming an engine “The Simri Rose.”
When Rose died in 1869 his newspaper
wrote of him, “No man ever lived in
Macon who showed more public spirit
and unselfish interest in her welfare.”
When Simri Rose had been at Newtown
two years another man arrived who also
played a major role in the founding of
Macon. He, too, was from Connecticut
and had been a newspaperman. His name
was Oliver Hillhouse Prince. In 1796, at
age fourteen, Prince moved Washington,
Georgia to help his aunt run a newspaper.
In 1806 he became a lawyer. He was
elected to the Georgia Legislature and, in
1822, was appointed to the commission to
create Macon. When lots were sold in the
new town, he bought one at the corner of
Plum and Fifth Streets. On his lot he built
a combination house and law office. There
he lived, worked, and served as one of the
five commissioners who governed Macon.
Prince was a leader in improving the
new town. He helped set up the Bibb
County Academy and became a director of
Macon’s first bank. In 1828 he was
appointed to a vacant seat in Congress. In
1831 Prince presided at a convention to
discuss building a railroad from Savannah
to Macon. His name was familiar to all
Georgia lawyers because he had put
together the first digest of the state’s laws.
Prince’s wife and family remained in Macon
after he bought, in 1832, a newspaper in
Milledgeville, the state capital, and moved there
to run it. After three years Prince sold the
10 ✦ HISTORIC MACON