1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Marietta (Georgia)

MARIETTA, a city and the county-seat of Cobb county, Georgia, U.S.A., in the N.W. of the state, about 17 m. N.W. of Atlanta. Pop. (1890), 3384; (1900), 4446, of whom 1928 were negroes; (1910), 5949. The city is served by the Louisville & Nashville, the Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis, and the Western & Atlantic railways, and is connected with Atlanta by an electric line. Marietta is situated about 1118 ft. above the sea, has a good climate, and is both a summer and a winter resort. The principal industries are the manufacture of chairs and paper, and the preparation of marble for the markets; there are also locomotive works, planing mills, a canning factory, a knitting mill, &c. At Marietta there is a national cemetery, in which more than 10,000 Federal soldiers are buried, and at Kenesaw Mountain (1809 ft.), about 21/2 m. west of the city, one of the fiercest battles of the Civil War was fought. After the Confederate retreat from Dalton in May 1864, General William T. Sherman, the Federal commander, made Marietta his next intermediate point in his Atlanta campaign, and the Confederate commander, General Joseph E. Johnston, established a line of defence west of the town. After several preliminary engagements Sherman on the 26th and 27th of June made repeated unsuccessful attempts to drive the Confederates from their defences at Kenesaw Mountain; he then resorted to a flanking movement which forced the Confederate general to retire (July 2) toward Atlanta. Marietta was settled about 1840, and was chartered as a city in 1852.