Jett Ferry and the Jett family
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Roswell Manufacturing Company built a bridge over the Chattahoochee River in 1857, about thirty feet downstream from the current bridge. McAfee’s Bridge, near the present-day Holcombe Bridge was built by Robert McAfee in 1834. Before the bridges, ferries offered a way to get across the river.
There were also two areas shallow enough to cross on foot, the Shallow Ford near today’s Roswell Road bridge and Island Ford, in the area where the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area Island Ford is today. These shallow areas changed with the construction of dams, and are no longer traversable.
One of the ferries was run by the Jett family. James Jett and Rosanna Gregory Jett brought their family from South Carolina to Georgia around 1810. The couple had ten children. According to “Roswell: A Pictorial History,” James Jett began operating a ferry in 1819.
The fourth Jett son was Theophilus, born in 1801. Theophilus married Minerva Elizabeth Davis and they built a home at the intersection of today’s Eves Road and Terrace Club Drive in Roswell. Eves Road was once known as Jett Road. Theophilus worked on the farm and operated the ferry in the late 1830s and early 1840s. (“The Chattahoochee River Crossings of Roswell, Georgia” by Michael D. Hitt)
This image of a covered bridge across the Chattahoochee River leading from Sandy Springs to Roswell appears in “Roswell: A Pictorial History.” This was not the original bridge but one constructed by Charles Dunwody after the Civil War. Confederate soldiers destroyed the bridge in an attempt to slow the Federals from crossing and continuing towards Atlanta and Decatur. The Union soldiers crossed the river by using the Shallow Ford, shallow area that was crossable.
Jett’s Ferry was somewhere between the location of today’s Ball Mill pump station on Old Riverside Road and where Ball Mill Creek meets the river on the south side. Spalding Drive during this time was known as Jett Ferry Road and followed a path close to the river. A wooden bridge over Ball Mill Creek washed out in 1929, which led to that section of the road being moved further south.
Theophilus and Elizabeth’s son Adam Jett took over the ferry in the 1860s. The home of Adam Jett was along what is now Riverside Road in Roswell, near the intersection with Eves Road. He married Effie Anderson in 1877. After Effie died around 1890, Jett married Sarah Roberts.
In a 1994 interview, Horace DeLong recalled picking cotton for Adam Jett. The DeLongs lived on the south side of the Chattahoochee River. Their home was in the same area as the Four Seasons neighborhood sign along Spalding Drive. DeLong remembered Adam Jett as having a “long beard down to his waist.” (Horace Delong oral history, Dunwoody Preservation Trust archives)
Local historian Jim Perkins found that the present-day Jett Ferry Road running northeast off Spalding Drive was not part of the original Jett Ferry Road, but part of the Old Nesbit Ferry Road. This would indicate that the road once led to the ferry belonging to the Nesbit family.
Many members of the Jett family are buried at the Mount Pisgah Methodist Church cemetery in Johns Creek, including Adam and Sarah Jett, Theophilus and Minerva Elizabeth Jett, and several siblings of Adam Jett.