Pannell family instrumental in evolvement of area’s history

DALTON — ETON — Charles Pannell Sr., a former state representative and senator, didn’t mean to get into politics when he was first elected Eton’s mayor in the early 1930s.

His first run for a political office was meant to be a joke.

“Daddy was 21,” said Charles Pannell Jr., the guest speaker at Sunday’s meeting of the Whitfield-Murray Historical Society at Eton City Hall. “There were a bunch of smart alecks running around Eton. They had a club called ‘The Night Owls.’ They would run around town turning over outhouses and other silly stuff. They decided they would get up a slate of officers and would run for election.”

Two of the “Night Owls” ran for City Council, and Pannell Sr., ran for mayor.

“They ran as a joke, just to worry the older people,” Pannell Jr., said. “But my grandmother (Ila Pannell) said you don’t run as a joke. So she went around town and talked to people about voting for them. They got elected.”

Pannell Sr., who died in 1996, served as Eton’s mayor for two years from 1933 to 1935. His small stint as mayor was the beginning of a long political career.

Pannell Sr., was born in Eton in 1911. He attended Eton High School and Young Harris College. He returned to Murray County and taught for several years at the Lucy Hill Institute.

He then attended Mercer University and the University of Georgia where he completed a degree in law in 1937. He practiced law and served as Murray County’s attorney and the city of Chatsworth’s attorney in the 1940s.

“He was one of the first to take the bar exam,” said Pannell Jr., who serves as a federal judge for the Northern District of Georgia. “Before the written exam you went to a Superior Court judge and he questioned you about the law and certified you knew the law. Then they came up with a written examination, and my father was in the first or second group who took it in the 1930s.”

Pannell Sr. first started serving as a state legislator in 1939. He served as a representative and a senator until 1950 and then again from 1959 to 1963. He was on the State Board of Pardons and Paroles from 1950 to 1955 and served on the Georgia Court of Appeals from 1963 to 1976.

“He did not really enjoy the court,” Pannell Jr., said. “He enjoyed more active politics.”

As a legislator, Pannell Sr. was instrumental in keeping Georgia’s public schools open during the turmoil of integration. He introduced legislation in the 1960s designed to keep public schools open while many politicians and others were talking of closing schools to avoid integrating, Pannell Jr. said.

Also in the 1960s, Pannell Sr. helped started Dalton Junior College.

While helping former Gov. Carl Sanders with his campaign, Pannell Sr. told him that if he could promise a college in the North Georgia district, Pannell Sr., could help him receive votes from that area, Pannell Jr. said.

“The community had to raise money for the land,” he said. “Dalton could afford to do that. Chatsworth couldn’t. So the college opened in Dalton.”

Pannell Sr. was also instrumental in helping preserve the Chief Vann House, Murray County historian Tim Howard said.

Only $125 was needed to buy the land to preserve the Vann House, Howard said. So someone sent Pannell Sr., who was serving as a legislator in Atlanta at the time, a telegram informing him that he had just donated $50 to help put them closer to the final goal, Howard said.

Though the Pannells are well-known in Murray County now, they are originally from east Tennessee, Pannell Jr. said.

Jackson Pannell, Pannell Jr.’s grandfather, lived near Tellico Plains. He married a woman named Betty Frye.

“What we know about Jackson is that he went off and fought in the Civil War,” Pannell Jr. said. “He fought first on the Confederate side. The bushwhackers that lived in the mountains burned his house down while he was off fighting.”

The family was unharmed but left to live with some neighbors or other family members, he said.

“And the story is that during the war, he came back and found his house burned down,” Pannell Jr., said. “He was told by neighbors that his family had been killed. So he left the Confederate Army and re-enlisted under a different name in the Union Army.”

When the war ended, since Jackson Pannell thought his family was dead, he went to Missouri where he married another woman and raised a family there. Years later, Pannell Jr.’s grandfather, Tom Pannell, went and found Jackson Pannell in Missouri and brought him back home to Tennessee.

“Daddy said Betty Frye wouldn’t have much to do with him when he came back home because she felt abandoned,” Pannell Jr. said.

Tom Pannell married one woman who died in a house fire, another who died of tuberculosis, and another who also died. The he married Ila Allen, who was Pannell Jr.’s grandmother. They first lived in a farm near Delano, Tenn., but Tom Pannell soon got into the business of buying and selling land.

“When he was in Polk County, he owned some very nice farms,” Pannell Jr., said. “When the railroad came through Murray in 1906... He came down here and bought a farm (near present-day Eton).”

The family moved around Georgia several times before returning to the farm in Eton around 1919. Tom Pannell died in 1922 and the family remained in the area.

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