Macon Magazine

40 l Macon Magazine october/noveMber 2013 acon has no monuments to honor Jerry Cowles even though he played a major role in transforming a frontier town into a thriving center of commerce and transportation. He acquired great wealth, and then lost it. He left the town he helped build but loyally returned in wartime. His once prominent name has almost been erased in Macon, but he created two houses that remain as testaments to his taste, his courage and his achievements. At a dedication ceremony on May 7, 1983, Jerry Cowles' grandest architectural monument was renamed Woodruff House to honor a man whose only connection to the house was having contributed money toward its renovation. The ceremony was held on Bond Street, once called Cowles Street, atop Coleman Hill, once Cowles' Hill. Among those invited to and recognized at the event were descendants of each of the four families who lived in the house after Cowles' family. Guides conducting tours of the house gave brief histories of the four other families who had lived there, but mentioned Cowles only as the man for whom the house was built. On that day celebrating the renewal of his home Cowles was hardly remembered. Jeremiah Cowles, almost always called Jerry, was born on a farm near Sharon, Conn., in 1802. At the age of 17 he left home seeking opportunity in Georgia. He settled in Eatonton where Macon's forgotten man jerry coWleS left a lasting mark on his adopted home historY | by James e. barField M This photograph is an enlargement of a miniature portrait of Jerry Cowles at the age of 26 painted in 1828, a year before his marriage and two years before his move to Macon.

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