Smyrna Sunday Lecture to Explore the Truth Behind the City’s Early History

The Friends of the Smyrna Library is hosting a noted local historian to explore Smyrna’s early history and put the Jonquil City’s formative years into a new context.

Dr. William P. Marchione, author of A Brief History of Smyrna, Georgia, will present the Sunday Lecture, “The City That Never Was: Fact and Fallacy in the Early History of Smyrna, Georgia, 1872-1910.” The free event will take place at 3 p.m. on Sunday, Aug. 3, in the library’s first-floor meeting room at 100 Village Green Circle in downtown Smyrna. Light refreshments will be served.

The talk will challenge long-held assumptions about Smyrna’s early municipal government.

For years, the absence of records from the 1872-1900 period was attributed to a fire that supposedly destroyed the city’s earliest documents. However, Marchione’s research into hundreds of Smyrna news accounts published in the Marietta Journal during those years tells a different story.

Through a close analysis of these primary sources, Marchione concludes that although Smyrna was officially chartered in 1872, it did not establish a functioning municipal government during that period. His presentation will explore the evidence behind this surprising revelation and offer a fresh perspective on the city’s formative years.

This event is part of the Sunday Lecture Series sponsored by the Friends of Smyrna Library. For more information, visit FriendsOfSmyrnaLibrary.com.