The Hooper-Turner House

5811 Oakdale Road

Cobb County, Georgia

A Brief Historical Background

The house at 5811 Oakdale Road, acquired by the City of Smyrna from Ms. Frances Presley, originally stood as a typical “hall and parlor” house, a rural design that was prevalent in the area from the 1840s until the 1890s.  Hall and parlor houses are two rooms wide, one room deep, with a central hall dividing the two rooms.

Although local folk lore suggests the house served as a Civil War hospital, research by historians and preservationists have not be able to find documentation to substantiate this claim.  Such evidence would be historically significant, as the house is situated on what was the center of Confederate Gen. Joseph Johnson’s River Line defenses of late June and early July of 1864.

By conducting deed research, the RLHA traced the property on which the house sits to Thomas Hooper, who deeded the property to his son, Thomas Jr., in 1868.  The senior Hooper is considered one of the pioneering white settlers of Cobb County, arriving in the area in the 1830s.  Four years after his death, his son deeded the property to John H. Turner in 1883.  Turner and his wife lived on the property until their deaths in 1899 and 1913, respectively.  The Turners’ family burial ground still stands on a hillside not far from where Turner’s Ferry once crossed the Chattahoochee (now where Bankhead Highway crosses the river.)  According to his headstone, John H. Turner was a proud member of the Masonic Order.  However, the nearby Turner’s Ferry (horse and rider fee, circa 1850: 12 ½ cents) was the namesake of his father, Daniel R. Turner.

The earliest mention of a structure on the Oakdale property appears in a deed from 1924, which refers to the “old John Turner house place.”  The Turners and the Hoopers, like other early settlers of Cobb County, appear intermittently in county records.  In the 1851 “Cobb County Digest”, a property census, the records show that Thomas Hooper owned 6 slaves and 531 acres; John H. Turner owned 2 slaves and 80 acres, and Daniel R. Turner, the ferry owner, claimed 4 slaves and 740 acres.

In 1919, the Turner heirs sold the Oakdale property to W.H. Pittman.  The property would change hands several times in the twentieth century.  Unpaid back taxes forced the property into foreclosure during the Depression era, and the property was owned by Cobb County until Mrs. Guy L. Corley assumed the unpaid debts and took over the property in 1941.  Names from the property’s past include Fred and Sam Saunders, Mrs. A.J. Carter, Mrs. Bessie McGaughey, Ara Corley Betts, and Geraldine Corley West.

Unfortunately, due to the numerous alterations and additions that have been made to the John Turner house over the years, state preservationists have determined that the house is not eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places.  However, many believe that the house has witnessed much history and that is has many stories to tell.  Do you have any to share?  Contact Roberta Cook