John J. A. Sharp’s Education Legacy
by Bruce Baker
John James Augustus Sharp was not only sharp in name; he would leave a legacy of intelligence and education that continues to thrive right here in Cherokee County. Born in South Carolina in March of 1828, John was one of fourteen children. At the age of 27, John and two brothers, Joseph and White Sharp, moved to Cherokee County. Finding a convenient crossroads in what we today call Waleska, they opened a store, a cotton gin, and a tobacco factory, and settled down. Six years later, the South seceded from the Union; all three siblings joined the Confederate Army.
John was known as an intelligent man, very well-read, and in possession of a sizable collection of books. He was well-respected, and so it comes as little surprise that he was able to raise an entire company of men, known as the 23rd Georgia Infantry, and enter the Civil War with the rank of Captain. The group found themselves annexed to Colquitt’s Brigade, joining the Army of Northern Virginia, and John and his men saw action in some of the largest and most lethal battles of the war, including Seven Pines, Malvern Hill, Fredericksburg, and Antietam.
The single bloodiest day of the war was at Antietam, with 23,000 men killed or wounded, and it was there that the 23rd Georgia took heavy losses. The commander of the regiment, Colonel William P. Barclay, was killed. Lieutenant Colonel Emory Best assumed command, and John was promoted in rank as well. Then at Chancellorsville in 1863, while serving as the rear guard for the retreating column of General Stonewall Jackson, they found themselves heavily outnumbered by an attacking Union Army. Only a handful of men escaped; virtually all not killed, including John Sharp, were captured. His commander, Best, was one of the few men not caught, and he was later court-martialed for dereliction of duty that day.
Fortune again intervened in John’s favor; he found himself the lucky recipient of a prisoner exchange 20 days later and immediately rejoined his regiment. But the war was not going well for the South, and in March of 1865 John was seriously wounded at Bentonville, North Carolina. Even this injury proved fortuitous, for he was not among them a month later when they, along with the rest of General Joseph E. Johnston’s army, surrendered at Durham Station. When the war ended, John J. A. Sharp was a Lieutenant Colonel. He’d miraculously survived some its bloodiest battles, enemy capture, and a very serious wound near the end of the conflict. He returned home to a Cherokee County in a very poor economic condition, only to discover that his young wife of very few years had died while he was away.
John would remarry in 1868, and by the mid-1870s was the editor of a Canton newspaper called the Cherokee Georgia. Intelligent, hardworking, and fair, and a born leader, he would serve twice in the Georgia state legislature. And when Waleska received a state charter in 1889, John J. A. Sharp would serve as the town’s first mayor.
John and his brothers also took an active role in the moral development of the young men living in their area, helping to start a Sunday School. From there, he began seeing to the education of the local young men and women, lending them books from his large collection. His love of education, learning, and book collection served his community in a way that continues to this very day, for in 1883 John and his brother-in-law would petition the North Georgia Methodist Conference to provide a teacher and preacher for the children of Cherokee County. They then opened a one-room schoolhouse on Cartersville Street in Waleska, which bore the name of John’s brother-in-law Augustus M. Reinhardt. First called Reinhardt Normal College, which we today know as Reinhardt University, and John’s prodigious book collection would be its first library. By the time of his passing on October 16, 1896, John. J. A. Sharp left an indelible mark on this county.