Spalding – America needs you!
The Spalding Voice recently received an email from Spalding County in Georgia, USA.
Stefan Smith, 20, a volunteer for the Georgia Placename Heritage Project had presented a print of ‘Spalding, England’ to hang on the walls of the courthouse.
It’s a lovely gesture, but there was one problem – the image doesn’t appear to be of the town.
Even as a colourful romanticised version, there’s no street or church like that, nor a stand alone clock.
Therefore we’ve offered to ask our readers to either create an artwork showcasing Spalding, or send us a photograph to be put in a canvas.
You can email your potential submissions to [email protected] by Wednesday, March 5.
We will make a shortlist of those we feel are the best ones and send them to America for officials there to judge the most applicable for the walls of the Spalding County Georgia Board of Commissioners in Griffin, the main city in the county.
Commissioner James Dutton, the vice chair of the Spalding County Commission apologised when the image was pointed out to not be of Spalding and offered to send a representation of Spalding County to be placed here.
“I am so sorry for the mix up with the print and devastated to learn it isn’t actually a correct likeness of our namesake in England,” he said. “We would really enjoy the opportunity to make this right and to increase contact between the two Spaldings in any way we can.”
Stefan is currently taking time off his studies and as a volunteer was promoting the Global Trade and Investment Symposium by visiting cities in Georgia and presenting artwork of their namesakes.
He bought the image of Spalding from an Etsy account based in Edinburgh.
Stefan’s father, Chris Smith, is an attorney at law in Georgia as well as the honoury consulate of Denmark.
“We do not have any misgivings with the company that sold the Spalding print or Etsy as it is a lovely print even if not accurate,” he said. “We actually think it wound up being a good thing due to this wonderful dialogue about a potential art exchange.
“We’re a family that always like to think out of the box a bit if it will do some good.
“When dealing with communities, we just like to be the rock thrown in a pond. The ripple effects are what those in those communities do.
“I think the folks in Spalding County are game to build up this new relationship.”
What’s in a name?
Spalding County is in the US state of Georgia roughly 35 miles from the city of Atlanta and was founded in 1871.
It’s named after Thomas Spalding a Georgia legislator, state senator, US Congressman and a member of the Constitutional Convention of 1798. He died in January 1851.
“As he lived on the Georgia Atlantic coast over 250 miles away from Spalding County, I do not know if he ever visited there or not,” said attorney Chris Smith. “Historically, many but not all US cities in areas opened up for expansion in the mid to late 19th century named by railroad officials.
“They would run a new line between points A and B and then decided they needed stops in places along the way where practically nobody live.”
Spalding County has a population of 67,306 at the last census in 2020.
It includes the town of Orchard Hill and cities Sunny Side and Griffin, the latter where the county seat is.
It’s famous for being the birth place of outlaw John Henry ‘Doc’ Holliday, who died in the shootout at the OK Corral.
The town hosts a festival dedicated to him every September.
Spalding County’s motto is ‘Everything you need in Spalding’.
