The name Hiawassee was derived from the Cherokee word Ayuhwasi, meaning meadow. However, if you look around Hiawassee, you no longer see a meadow. This was because, in 1941, the Tennessee Valley Authority purchased most of the Hiwassee Valley in Towns County, stretching along the Hiwassee River to construct the Chatuge Dam, a flood control reservoir consisting of 6,976 acres to help control the flow of water downstream to power electric plants that were needed during the wartime efforts. The building of Chatuge Dam dislocated many farming families in Towns & Clay County who had called the land their home for generations. The land was also the most fertile and best-producing in the area.

 

In the painting, you see in the background the construction of Chatuge Dam. The dam is an earthen-filled dam, and anything in the path of the reservoir - including structures, trees, and cemeteries - was moved. Many families were split because of the building of what would become Towns County’s largest economic driver. Being a patriotic community, they were willing to do what was needed to support the war effort; however, in doing so, they were losing their home, their land, and their way of life.

 

The artist’s inspiration for the setting was imagining an elderly woman watching as everything she knew was being taken away in the name of ‘progress’. He imagined the house was a generational family house that the woman had grown up in and had lived her entire life in, that she was being forced to leave behind.

 

The woman in the painting holds a copy of the December 12, 1941 edition of the Towns County Herald. This edition of the Herald headlined the Chatuge Dam being completed with various photos of the houses, buildings, and lives that had to be moved. In the bottom corner, it was also announced that Japan had bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7.

 

The portrait of the Civil War soldier in the top right of the painting is of Edwin Francis Jemison. Though not from Towns County, Jemison was from Milledgeville, GA, and the portrait of the young soldier killed during the Civil War became one of the most iconic symbols of young soldiers for both sides of the war. He was killed on July 1, 1862, at the Battle of Malvern Hill. The artist’s reasoning for including this is to represent family members whose memory is still held near as the lake waters rise before her eyes.

 

The frame is connected to Lake Chatuge, as it is part of a dead tree that washed ashore on the banks, the artist salvaged to make a frame.